Shortly after sunrise on his 66th birthday, multiple police vehicles pulled up outside Wood Farm, the secluded residence Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor now occupies on King Charles III‘s private Sandringham estate in Norfolk, England.
Around 8 a.m., officers arrested the former Duke of York on suspicion of misconduct in public office. The move came weeks after the U.S. Justice Department released emails suggesting he had passed along sensitive government documents to predator Jeffrey Epstein while serving as Britain’s trade envoy.
Nearly 11 hours later, he was released from custody, but an investigation continues. If ultimately charged and convicted, he faces a sentence of up to life in prison.
The dramatic scene that morning marked a stunning moment for Britain’s monarchy — and a historic one as well.
To find the last British royal arrested before Mountbatten-Windsor, historians have to go back nearly four centuries.
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A king’s downfall
The last senior British royal to face arrest and imprisonment before the former Prince Andrew was King Charles I. And his story makes Mountbatten-Windsor’s legal troubles look tame by comparison.
Charles I surrendered to Scottish forces in Southwell, England, in 1646 during the English Civil War, arriving in disguise at a local inn. The Scots handed him over to the English Parliament months later in 1647.
Two years after that, he was put on trial for treason. Though he refused to enter a plea — rejecting the court’s legitimacy — it didn’t save him.
On the chilly morning of his execution in 1649, he requested a thick shirt so that witnesses wouldn’t mistake his shivering for fear, according to Smithsonian magazine. He was beheaded in a single sword blow.
Royal arrests before Charles I
Although arrests of modern royals are almost unheard of, earlier centuries saw many imprisonments.
One of the most famous involved Mary Queen of Scots. Forced to abdicate the Scottish throne in 1567, she fled to England seeking protection from her cousin Queen Elizabeth I, only to spend the next 19 years imprisoned before being tried for treason and executed in 1587.
Elizabeth I herself once faced imprisonment. In 1554, the then-future queen was locked in the Tower of London by her half-sister Queen Mary I on suspicion of involvement in Wyatt’s Rebellion. She was released after two months when evidence failed to tie her to the plot.
Several other Tudor royals met grim fates. Henry VIII‘s wives Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were both arrested, imprisoned in the Tower of London and executed on charges of adultery and treason.
Modern British royals’ brushes with the law
Other than Mountbatten-Windsor, no member of the modern British royal family has been arrested, though some have had minor brushes with the law, Newsweek reported.
The most recent incident involving police and the U.K. royals was in 2019 when the late Prince Philip — husband of the late Queen Elizabeth II — was involved in a car crash that flipped his Land Rover and injured another driver.
Police investigated the collision, but there was no arrest or charge, though Philip voluntarily surrendered his driver’s license.
Princess Anne was fined about $570 for speeding in 2001.
The next year, she became the first member of the modern royal family to be convicted of a criminal offense after pleading guilty under the Dangerous Dogs Act because her bull terrier bit two children. She was fined $900 plus compensation, though she was not arrested.
The Princess Royal’s daughter, equestrian Zara Tindall, has racked up multiple speeding convictions and was banned from driving for six months in 2009 after accumulating too many penalty points on her license, though she was not arrested.
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