THE TRIAL AND THE DECAPITATION.
THE Commons voted themselves “ the Supreme Authority of the Nation,” and whatever they declared to be Law was Law, without the consent of the King and the Peers. Shortly after, when they had rid themselves of the Sovereign, they voted the Lords “ to be dangerous and useless.” Harry Marten, as reckless in his wit as in his life, with the same tolerant good-humour which he had evinced on a former occasion with Judge Jenkins, proposed an amendment in favour of the Lords, that “ they were useless but not dangerous.” By this felicitous humour this Commonwealth-man had often relieved the Royalists in their most critical circumstances, and though a Regicide, his life was afterwards spared by the grateful mediation of the numerous friends whom his facetious genius had so timely served.
An ardent critic has recently said of the trial of Charles the First, that “ He was arraigned, sentenced, and executed in the face of Heaven and Earth.” This is the poetry of the fiction ! In what manner the erection of “ the High-Court of Justice,” a court never before heard of, stood in connexion with “ Heaven and Earth,” a plainer narrative may suffice to expose.
A judicial trial of the Sovereign, I have shown, was the favourite scheme of the Army-faction, contemplated at a much earlier period than our historians have traced, at least two years before it occurred.(1) It was often dropped and resumed. When Charles had closed with the Treaty of Newport, the struggle became momentous between the two great factions. The Army advanced on London. On December 1st, 1648, they carried off the King to Hurst Castle. On the 5th the House sate through the whole night, and after a fierce debate, in the morning they carried the question, that the King’s concessions were satisfactory for a settlement. The Army-faction seemed mastered. What then happens ?
One of themselves has told us. “ The Parliament was fallen into such factions and divisions, that any one who usually attended and observed the business of the House, could after a debate upon any question, easily number the votes that would be on each side, before the question was put.” This curious circumstance had never been gravely recorded by the present historiographer, had his friends not constituted the forlorn minority. It was therefore “ a resolution,” so Ludlow expresses it, that the minority should be changed into a majority. It was “ resolved by three of the Members of the House and three of the Officers of the Army, who withdrew into a private room to consider of the best means.” In truth there were nor best nor worst ! When “ the Tyrant ” Charles had required that five Members should be put on their trial, that abrupt arrest of their persons—that feeble coup d’état went far to lose him his throne. The present six “ Tyrants ” in “ a private room ” had the list of the whole House placed before them in luxuriance, to pick and choose. “ We went over the names of all the Members, one by one, giving the truest characters we could of their inclinations, wherein I presume we were not mistaken in many.”—No matter ! the hour presses and the business is not nice ! “ The Army being ordered ”—By whom ? apparently by the six “ tyrants ” in the “ private room ”—“ to be drawn up the next morning, with guards placed in Westminster Hall, the Court of Requests, and the Lobby ”—On what business ?—“ That none might be permitted to pass into the House but such as had continued faithful to the public interest !” By this mode, “ the Minority ” of “ the public interest ” triumphed over “ the Majority.” Such is the honest history of Colonel Pride’s famed “ Purge,” delivered by their own authentic historian.(2)
This coup d’état was struck on December 6th, the very next day after their discomfiture in the House. On January the 4th the Commons invested themselves with “ the Supreme Authority,” and on the 9th the High-Court of Justice to try the King was proclaimed.
Such is the simple story of the High Court of Justice on “ the face of the Earth ;” for their acts in “ the face of Heaven ” we must look to their Chaplain and Buffoon Hugh Peters. He himself tells us that the fate of the King too deeply affected the public mind. “ The public interest ” out of the House was so far from an agreement with “ the public interest ” in it, that the Members of the High Court of Justice sate in pretended Fasts, and at State Sermons, acted by their gesticulator and comedian in the pulpit. They were edified and diverted by many a drolling tale, a gibe and a quip, or an ecstasy kneeling or weeping, now hiding his head, now clapping his hands for a new revelation.—All for “ the Red Coats !” “ Moses was now to lead the people out of Egyptian bondage ! but how ? that was not yet revealed to me !” Shrugging his shoulders, covering his eyes with his hands, burying his head in the cushion, resounding laughter polluted the choir of St. Margaret’s Chapel. The grotesque Seer starting up suddenly, cried out, “ Now I have it by Revelation ! This Army must root up Monarchy, not only here, but in France, and other Kingdoms round about—this is to bring you out of Egypt !” But it seems that there were “ foolish citizens in our Jerusalem, who for a little trading and profit would have Christ crucified (pointing to the red coats crowding on the pulpit-stairs), and that great Barabbas of Windsor released.” It was before Cromwell, and Bradshaw the Lord President of the novel Court, on the Sunday preceding the execution on the Tuesday, that the High Priest of the Revolution took for his text, “ Bind your Kings with chains, and your Nobles with fetters of Iron.” It delighted them to hear of “ the Rabble of Princes,” and Cromwell was observed to laugh.
Hugh Peters is a name covered with odium ; the moral habits of this carnal prophet have been so frequently aspersed by the Royalists, that had Hugh Peters not made his own confessions, we could never have formed any correct notion of the vile and ridiculous man himself. In this political history of human nature, he serves greatly to instruct us. He was one of those characters who are engendered in the excitement of a Revolutionary period, persons easily tempted to go all lengths with a triumphant party, and contribute to more mischief than they would of themselves incline to.
This merry-Andrew in the pulpit, and this advocate for the Sword in Law, was at bottom a grave and earnest Divine, neither wanting in learning nor in ability. By the deposition of a servant at his Trial, it appears that he was usually “ melancholy sick.” Originally an exile for his Non-conformity, under the severe administration of Laud, he had passed over into New England, and on his return home, after fourteen years of absence, found the nation plunged in Civil War. His patrons were the Parliamentary Generals. Minister, Messenger, and Minion of the Army, in his political fanaticism he maintained that all Government depended on the Sword.(3) Yet this reckless Being in his cell, awaiting his trial, could consider, as he tells us, that, “ A good government is, where men may be as good as they can, and not so bad as they would.” He grew wealthy under his Masters, who bestowed on him an estate, loaded him with frequent donations, one of which was Laud’s library, and his conscience, now the fatal tree was in his contemplation, was troubled about some parts of Lord Craven’s estate, of which he had evidently shared in the pillage with the infamous Lord Grey, whom he says, “ as I had time,” (for in truth Peters was too busy to sermonise in private,) “ I ever advised against that spirit of Levelling then stirring.” He who lives on rapine is usually improvident. Peters “ lived in debt ; for what I had, others shared in.” He would ascribe to himself the splendour of generosity, while he conceals the vulgar prodigality of the mean adventurer. This was one of the men appointed to be the Reformers of the Law. In his tract “ Good Work for a Good Magistrate, or a Short Cut to Great Quiet,” he proposed the extirpation of the whole system of our Laws, and recommended that the records in the Tower should be burnt as the monuments of Tyranny. For this suggestion he craves pardon, as his project appears to have given offence ; his only design in Law, was for “ Ease, Expedition, and Cheapness ;” but he owns, “ When I was called about mending Laws, I confess I might as well have been spared.” He asserted on his trial that he had done many good offices to the Royalists when he was in power, and wore a ring which Goring had given him for having saved his life. But when he wrote in his Confessions, before his trial had come on, that “ He never had a hand in contriving or acting the death of the King, as I am scandalised,” he seems to have thought that his memorable sermon on “ the Barabbas of Windsor,” and its Text, had been utterly forgotten. He had declared that the Commonwealth would never be at peace till they got rid of the three L’s, Lords, Levites, and Lawyers. In the hour of contrition he wrote in prison “ A dying father’s last legacy to an only child,” his daughter. Then he mourned that “ ever he had been popular, and known better to others than to myself.” When the cruel death which he was to suffer approached, then he cried that “ Life was sweet, and Death was terrible.” Thus is a man two men ! a wide interval separates the highflyer Hugh Peters at the Army, and the Hugh Peters, as he himself expresses it, “ shortly going where Time shall be no more, nor cock nor clock distinguish hours !”
When this pageant of the High Court of Justice assembled, it was discovered that in reality, two-thirds of the Members had been drawn out of the Army. There were some adventurers who looked not for their fortunes by their sword, but by their compliance. And there were a few, “ the honest Fanatics,” as Mrs. Macaulay designates Major Harrison, who subscribed the death-warrant of Charles the First, on motives and principles by which they would have expounded the Apocalypse, and by which they calculated the approach of the Millennium, or demonstrated the Anti-Christ of Rome.
When the Commissioners were preparing for the Trial of the King, they debated whether they should have in Court both a Sword and a Mace ; for this huddled government, not having yet had time to order a Commonwealth-mace, the one in use bore the royal arms. There was something antithetical in the present process of displaying the regal authority in the moment of the abolition of Monarchy. They resolved to have both, the Sword alone looking too terrible.
They had been more diligent in fixing in full view the newly-manufactured arms of the Commonwealth of England, bearing this inscription, suggested by the witty and dissolute Henry Marten. “ The first year of Freedom by God’s blessing RESTORED 1648.” This singular expression Restored he used on another occasion. In drawing up the Remonstrance of the Army, which changed the Monarchy into a Commonwealth, this Sheridan of his day, had said “ RESTORED to its ancient government of Commonwealth.” A Member rose to reprimand, and to wonder at the impudence of Harry Marten, asserting the antiquity of Commonwealth, of which he had never before heard. The Wit rejoined by a whimsical illustration of the propriety of the term, and the peculiar condition of the man who had now heard it for the first time. “ There was,” said Harry, “ a text which had often troubled his spirit concerning the man who was blind from his mother’s womb, but at length whose sight was restored to the sight which he should have had.” The witticism was keen, though almost as abstruse as the antiquity of an English Commonwealth.(4)
Charles, on his entrance before the Tribunal which had now usurped the Supreme Authority of the State, beheld Cromwell and Harry Marten sitting on each side of this escutcheon, and might have read, by that “ hand-writing on the wall,” how his days were numbered, and that he had already outlived the Monarchy.
Amidst all their public insolence to the King, the feeling was still novel and awkward among them in their familiar approach to his person. The Commonwealth’s new Mace-bearer, overcome by the awfulness of conducting Charles to the Bar, excessively trembled, and could scarcely support the Mace, or hold up the bar to admit the King to his chair within it.
There was in the common people at large a deep veneration for the Royal person. Their weeping eyes witnessed his long afflictions ; the misfortunes and the grievances of the early part of the reign of this hapless Prince hardly lived in their recollections. They had more recently listened to tales of his gallantry in the field, and of his magnanimous spirit in his prisons. Admitted into his presence, all were struck by the gravity and stateliness of him, whom Nature and habit alike formed for Sovereignty. While the prevailing Faction, small but terrible, for it lay among the Officers, was proclaiming Charles the First “ A Tyrant !” the generous nature of the uncontaminated Many was ever betraying itself, not only by a mournful silence, but often by spontaneous bursts of “ God save the King !” Hume has beautifully touched this part of the story. “ The King was softened at this moving scene, and expressed his gratitude for their dutiful affection.” An unfortunate Monarch, in the depth of his misery, could find brothers among the People. These were no hirelings, for Charles’s party was now silenced, dispersed, or in terror, suffered to exist only by their inactivity or their concealment.
The personal respect for the King was felt in every class. Some of the soldiers alone were compelled, by two or three of their commanders, to raise a forced shout or obtrude an insult. When the King was rowed to Westminster, a great concourse of boats collected ; the soldiers, commanded by Major Harrison, were covered, but the watermen insisted on rowing the King bare-headed. Colonel Tomlinson, although his Party had passed their sentence on the King as a Traitor, would conduct the King to the scaffold with hat in hand. Even the unknown executioners deemed it advisable to wear masks. As for the High Court themselves, they seem to have sat in terror. They ordered the vaults to be searched, they barred and locked themselves in at every entrance, they set guards on the leads and other places that had windows, and all back-doors. Ten companies of foot were constantly on guard, the people were beat back by the soldiers. The famed broad-brimmed hat, beneath which their Lord President scowled on the hapless Monarch, was cased with iron. These self-styled Representatives of the People were carrying on a cause in the name of the People ; but how happened it that the counsel for the Plaintiffs appear to have been most fearful of the Plaintiffs themselves ?
Charles the First, on his trial, at no time found his presence of mind fail, nor the firmness of his pulse, nor the aptness of his language. From early life he had a defective utterance, but at his trial, the intensity of his feelings carried on his voice without faltering. The King had resolved not to acknowledge by any salute the present High Court, and for this purpose would not uncover. They had anticipated this resolution, for this minute circumstance was actually debated among them. It was ordered, that “ in case the Prisoner shall in language or carriage towards the Court be contemptuous, &c. it is left to the Lord President to admonish, or to command the taking away of the Prisoner ; but, as to the Prisoner’s taking off his hat, the Court will not insist upon it this day.” Nor, indeed, did they on any one day of the Trial. An expression of public contempt for the Royal presence was yet so much of a novelty, that even these Commissioners, who had dared to try him for his life, did not venture once to offer him a public indignity, notwithstanding that the more violent of the Faction reduced his designation to “ The Man.” Bradshaw, though he never addressed the King by the style of royalty, and spoke to Charles as to an ordinary prisoner, often applied the title of “ Sir !” which was as freely bestowed by the King, the only equality which could exist between them. The State of his Royalty though dimmed, was not yet lost. Bradshaw, a Serjeant of obscure reputation, suddenly elevated into the office of the Chief Magistrate of the Land, affected an equality of pomp with Royalty itself ; yet as the same preparations had been allowed the King, it betrayed in these novices in the arts of degrading the person of the Sovereign, the involuntary concession of a tribute to public opinion. The King at the Bar was still the King. Charles never suffered himself to be hurried ; he took his chair with stateliness, he sat down leisurely, or looked about him with curiosity, often with many an enquiring glance. A paper of the day describes the King. “ With a quick eye and nimble gesture he turned himself oftentimes about, casting an eye not only on those who were on each side of the Court, but even on the spectators in the midst of the Hall.” Was there yet a lingering hope in that firm though subdued spirit, for the appearance of some unknown friend ? Or did Charles imagine that the very person of Majesty might create anew expiring Loyalty ? Four Noblemen, it is said, had indeed offered themselves to be tried for the imputed crimes of their Royal Master. They declared that they had concurred by their counsels, and alone should be deemed guilty. Honour and Patriotism emulated each other in that proffered immolation. But from the Court before him the King could receive no generous sympathy. The Solicitor for the People, a very poor but not unskilful lawyer, and who a few days before the Trial had never had any expectation of the office, with his two Republican Counsel, one of whom was the Dutchman, Dorislaus, were only separated from the King by a slight partition, and the soldiers surrounding the Court filled the intermediate passage between the King and the people. Charles the First was there as if he had stood alone in the universe. Once a solitary voice reminded him that there was in that Court one who recognized the King, and proclaimed who was the traitor ; but that voice was a female’s !(5)
Charles carried a cane, or in the style of the day “ a staff.” When Cooke, the Solicitor, was delivering himself with insolence, the King two or three times gently touched his shoulder. While the charge was being read, the King rose again to look around, and resumed his seat with a stern look, but at the passage where he was accused of being “ a tyrant, a traitor,” &c. he scornfully laughed in the face of the Court. A remarkable circumstance occurred. As the King was leaning on his cane the head broke off on a sudden, and rolled on the ground. This seemed for a moment to affect the King, as it did many who saw, or heard of it. This momentary surprise did not however derange his ideas. Not that Charles did not partake of the prevalent superstitions of omens at this time ; he afterwards confessed to Bishop Juxon that “ it really made a great impression on him.” It has been supposed that this was a malicious contrivance of Hugh Peters, who was then “ the King’s gaoler,” and who had “ artificially tampered upon his staff,” for the purpose of throwing a sudden dismay into the mind of the King. In an age when our Sages still expounded omens and chronicled their dreams, a mischance so timed before the eyes of the Public was no inconsiderable one. If it were a trick, it was the triumph of a little villain or the disgrace of a great one. It was, however, with that headless cane, that in retiring from the bar, Charles pointed to the Sword lying on the table, and scornfully said, “ I do not fear that.” But Charles had to endure the insolence of the vile, and it is said he smiled when some soldiers spat in his face, and a lady of rank who was already infamous by her loose conduct, fiercely exulted in the same honour. The prostitute could rival the bully of her faction.
The trial of the King, its chief points and the arguments, have been conveyed to the reader in our popular histories, but too many traits are lost in those summaries. Bradshaw assumes that “ the supreme jurisdiction lies with the Commons of England;” the King insists, that “ the House of Commons was never a Court of Judicature.” The words of “ The Tyrant ” may still be quoted for their simplicity and their force. “ If Power without Law may make Laws, may alter the fundamental laws of the Kingdom, I do not know what subject he is in England that can be sure of his life, or any thing that he calls his own.” Bradshaw would not allow the King to dispute the authority of this self-elected Court, insisting on his submission to it. Charles admirably replied to the “ Serjeant”—“ Sir, by your favour, I do not know the forms of Law. I do know Law and Reason, though I am no lawyer professed. I know as much law as any gentleman in England, and therefore, under your favour, I do plead for the liberties of the people of England more than you do.” Bradshaw, pressed hard by the King’s argument, who said “ I require that I do give in my reasons why I do not answer,” with rude insolence replied, “ Sir, ’tis not for prisoners to require !” The indignant Monarch for a moment gave way to his natural hastiness of temper—“ Prisoner, Sir ! I am not an ordinary Prisoner !” But if Charles by an instantaneous emotion lost his temper, the Lord President lost his presence of mind or command of language, for when the King said, “ Show me that jurisdiction where Reason is not to be heard ?” The Serjeant unwittingly replied, “ Sir ! we show it you here, the Commons of England.”(6)
On the last day there was a more subdued spirit on the King. He now perceived that no argument would avail. He would not acknowledge their authority, but he did not deny their power. We will listen to the King, “ Sir ! I know it is in vain for me to dispute ; I am no sceptic, for to deny the power you have ; I know that you have power enough ! Sir ! I must confess I think it would have been for the Kingdom’s peace if you would have taken the pains to have shown the lawfulness of your power.” Charles now condescended almost to implore for a little delay of a day or two, to be heard by the Lords and Commons to avoid a hasty judgment. When the King declared “ I have nothing more to say, but I shall desire that this may be entered what I have said,” the vulgar triumph of the pert and petulant lawyer seems barbarously marked in the retort—“ The Court then, Sir, hath something to say unto you, which although I know will be very unacceptable, yet, notwithstanding, they are resolved to discharge their duty.” The scarlet gown worn on this day had already pronounced sentence to the eyes of all present, but the wounded pride it concealed betrayed itself when Bradshaw told the King, “ Sir ! you have not owned us as a Court, and you look upon us as a sort of people met together.”
While the sentence of death was pronouncing, the King was observed to smile, and then to lift his eyes in silently appealing to Heaven. After the condemnation this extraordinary dialogue ensued.
The King addressed Bradshaw. “ Will you hear me a word, Sir ?”
Bradshaw.—“ Sir, you are not to be heard after the sentence.”
The King.—“ No, Sir !”
Bradshaw.—“ No, Sir ! by your favour, Sir ! Guard ! withdraw your prisoner !”
King.—“ I may speak after the sentence, by your favour, Sir ! I may speak after sentence, EVER !——By your favour, Hold ! The sentence, Sir ! I say Sir ! I do—I am not suffered to speak—expect what justice other people will have !”
Violently hurried from the Bar, in the broken words and the struggle of contemned Majesty, we still mark the unalterable fortitude of Charles the First. He commanded while he implored. In the dramas of Shakspeare is there a touch more natural than Charles’s EVER ? In this tragical agitation, we catch from the last words which fell from his lips, a prediction of political wisdom. Hume, in one of those inimitable passages his fine genius often cast, has exquisitely touched the picture of Charles the First at these moments. “ His soul, without effort or affectation, seemed only to remain in the situation familiar to it, and to look down with contempt on all the efforts of human malice and iniquity.”
Dragged from the bar, the King passed through a rabble of soldiers, brutal indignities were cast on him, but his spirit was constant to itself. Some soldiers were reviling him, others blowing tobacco-whiffs in his face, or throwing their broken pipes in his way ;—one honest soldier exclaiming, “ God bless you, Sir !” his Captain caned him. The King observed, that “ the punishment exceeded the offence.” In a conversation with Herbert, shortly afterwards, the King asked if he had remarked the cry of the soldiers for “ Justice and Execution !” Herbert answered that he did, and wondered at it. “ So did not I,” said Charles, “ for I am well assured the soldiers bear no malice to me. The cry was, no doubt, given by their Officers, for whom the soldiers would do the like were there occasion.
This observation is an evidence of the correct judgment of the King. We know that once Hugh Peters hurried out of Court to instigate a Colonel to command his men to give out a cry for Justice ! and that after sentence, Colonel Axtell having first caned his men to it, forced them to cry out for Execution ! as the King passed. The real persecutors of Charles were restricted to this narrow circle, nor would the King have had many even among these, had that party not imagined, and several of them declared it, that had Charles lived, their own lives were in peril.
Three days intervened between the sentence and the execution. Charles, in requesting the absence of his friends, admitted his two children, the only ones left in England. It was not possible to be with his children, and not remember their mother. His least agony was not that of bidding them a last farewell ; for having done this, and withdrawn to the window to conceal his sufferings, he broke again into a violence of grief, he returned to the door of the apartment, and once more lingered in their embrace.
A domestic incident which occurred the preceding evening, gives a touching representation of the man. Charles taking off an emerald ring from his finger, seemed anxious that Herbert, if possible, should hasten immediately and deliver it to a Lady without saying a word. Herbert by great favour procured the parole, and not with little difficulty threaded his way by the numerous sentinels, at that late hour. At the sight of the ring, the Lady, who resided in the neighbourhood, desired Herbert to wait. She returned with a little cabinet, closed with three seals, praying that it might be delivered to the hand which sent that ring, and which was left with her. In the morning the mysterious cabinet was operned, it contained diamonds and jewels, and for the most part broken Georges and Garters. “ You see,” said Charles, “ all the wealth now in my power to give my two children.” The person with whom the cabinet had been deposited by the provident Monarch was Lady Wheeler, the royal Laundress.
In the last pathetic interview with his children, Charles told the Princess Elizabeth, among other things, that “ His death was glorious, for he should die for the Laws and Liberties of the Land. He should die a Martyr.” On the scaffold he declared that “ He was the Martyr of the People.”
This style from the lips of “ a Tyrant ” is strange and unexpected, and the title of “ Martyr,” which Charles proudly professed, was long disputed by his enemies. The great genius of Milton could condescend to cavil, restricting the sense of the term to those who died for persevering in their faith ; but that, since Charles had consented to suspend, or abolish, the Episcopacy in England, he could not be held to be a Martyr to religion. The fact is, that the martyrdom of Charles was a civil and political one. Charles need not have ascended the scaffold, would he have betrayed the liberties and plundered the wealth of the nation. The King alluded to this extraordinary fact on his trial. Once turning himself to Bradshaw, and fixing his eyes on some persons near him, Charles said, “ There are some sitting here that well know, that if I would have forfeited or betrayed the liberties and rights of the people, I need not have come hither.”(7) This last of his acts seems an expiation of the errors and infirmities of the early years of his reign.
The Grandees of the Army paused to the last hour of the execution of the King ; that unparalleled event, for ancient Egypt had only in their wisdom brought their Monarchs on their decease to a judicial trial, was almost counteracted by the fears, the offers, and the interference of great parties, both at home and abroad. On the Sunday preceding the decollation written proposals were tendered to the King to restore him to his shadowy throne, on terms which a pusillanimous and dishonoured Prince would have subscribed. The Council of War proposed to be the sole government of England, and this military force was to be maintained by a heavy land-rate, to be levied by the Army. A close committee held a private meeting. Rushworth was concerned in procuring a house among his friends for this secret purpose. Charles, at the first articles, indignantly threw aside the paper which might have given him an ignoble existence, and exclaimed, “ I will rather become a sacrifice for my people, than endure this intolerable bondage of an armed Faction !”(8) Charles would not be a Slave-king. It was from this circumstance that Charles the First deemed himself to be “ a Martyr for the People.”
Halberdiers and musqueteers, who were hourly changed, for they mistrusted their own men, were instigated by some of their officers to perpetual intrusions into the privacy of the King, on the pretext to watch over their prisoner ; this occasioned Charles to sigh. It has been suggested that a diabolical device condemned the mortified Monarch to listen for two successive nights to the heavy strokes of the workmen in the erection of the scaffold.(9)
The night preceding the execution, Herbert, his faithful attendant, lay on a pallet by the King’s side, and “ took small rest.” The King slept soundly for four hours. Two hours before the dawn, he opened his curtains, and by the light of “ a great cake of wax, set in a silver basin, which burned all night,” observed Herbert disturbed in sleep. The King arousing him, discovered that he was suffering from a very painful dream. It was indeed a very extraordinary one, at that moment. Herbert, doubtless under the agitation of that direful night, had dreamed that Laud, in his pontifical habit, had entered the apartment—had knelt down to the King—that they conversed—that the King looked pensive, and the Archbishop sighed—and on retiring from the King fell prostrate. Charles said “ The dream was remarkable ; but he is dead ; had we now conferred together, ’tis very likely, albeit I loved him well, I should have said something might have occasioned his sigh.”
Charles said he would rise, “ for I have a great work to do this day.” Herbert trembled in combing the King’s hair. Charles observing that it was not done with his usual care, said, “ Though it be not long to stand on my shoulders, take the same pains with it, as you were wont to do. Herbert, this is my second marriage-day ; I would be as trim to-day as may be.” The weather was cold. The King desired to have a shirt on more than ordinary ; for “ the season is sharp, and probably may make me shake, which some will imagine proceeds from fear. I would have no such imputation. I fear not death—death is not terrible to me ! I bless my God, I am prepared. Let the Rogues come !”
By a paper of the day, it appears that Charles declared that he was glad that the act was to be done before Whitehall, rather than at St. James’s, where he now was, as the weather was keen and cold, and without a little motion he should be indisposed to what he intended to say. He walked through the Park, as his former use was, very fast, and called to his guard in a pleasant manner, “ March on apace !” A sorry fellow, “ a mean citizen,” as Fuller describes him, was allowed for some time to walk close to the King, fixing on him the genuine cannibal stare of the lowest of the populace. The King only turned his face from him. The ruffian was at length shoved aside. One of the Officers, surely to disturb him, had the audacity to ask him, whether he had not consented to his father’s death ? His chief conversation was with Colonel Tomlinson on his burial—he wished it not to be sudden, as he dwelt on the thought that his son would do that last office. On leaving the Park, an affectionate domestic reminiscence occurred. Charles suddenly stopped, and pointing to a tree, observed, “ That tree was planted by my brother Henry !”(10)
At Whitehall a repast had been prepared. The religious emotions of Charles had consecrated the Sacrament, which he refused to mingle with human food. The Bishop, whose mind was unequal to conceive the intrepid spirit of the King, dreading lest the magnanimous Monarch, overcome by the severity of the cold, might faint on the scaffold, prevailed on him to eat half a manchet of bread and taste some claret. But the more consolatory refreshment of Charles had been just imparted to him in that singular testimony from his son, who had sent a carte blanche to save the life of his father at any price. This was a thought on which his affections could dwell in face of the scaffold which he was now to ascend.
Charles had arrived at Whitehall about ten o’clock, and was not led to the scaffold till past one. It was said that the scaffold was not completed ; it might have been more truly said, that the conspirators were not ready. There was a mystery in this delay. The fate of Charles the First, to the very last moment, was in suspense ! Fairfax, though at the time in the Palace, inquired of Herbert how the King was, when the King was no more ! and expressed his astonishment on hearing that the execution had just taken place. This extraordinary simplicity and abstraction from the present scene of affairs has been imputed to the General as an act of refined dissimulation, yet this seems uncertain. The Prince’s carte blanche had been that morning confided to his hands, and he surely must have laid it before “ the Grandees of the Army,” as this new order of the Rulers of England were called. Fairfax, whose personal feelings respecting the King were congenial with those his Lady had so memorably evinced, laboured to defer for a few days the terrible catastrophe ; not without the hope of being able, by his own regiment and others in the Army, to prevent the deed altogether. It is probable,—inexplicable as it may seem to us,—that the execution of Charles the First really took place unknown to the General. Fairfax was not unaccustomed to discover that his colleagues first acted, and afterwards trusted to his own discernment.(11)
Secret history has not revealed all that passed in those three awful hours. We know, however, that the warrant for the execution was not signed till within a few minutes before the King was led to the scaffold. In an apartment in the palace, Ireton and Harrison were in bed together, and Cromwell, with four Colonels, assembled in it. Colonel Huncks refused to sign the warrant—Cromwell would have no farther delay, reproaching the Colonel as “ a peevish, cowardly fellow,” and Colonel Axtell declared that he was ashamed for his friend Huncks, remonstrating with him, that “ The ship is coming into the harbour, and now would he strike sail before we come to anchor ?” Cromwell stepped to a table, and wrote what he had proposed to Huncks ; Colonel Hacker supplying his place, signed it, and with the ink hardly dry, carried the warrant in his hand, and called for the King.(12)
At the fatal summons Charles rose with alacrity. The King passed through the long gallery by a line of soldiers. Awe and sorrow seemed now to have mingled in their countenances ; their barbarous Commanders were intent on their own triumph, and no farther required the forced cry of “ Justice and Execution.” Charles stepped out of an enlarged window of the Banqueting-house, where a new opening levelled it with the scaffold. Charles came forwards with the same indifference as “ he would have entered Whitehall on a masque-night,” as an intelligent observer described. The King looked towards St. James’s and smiled ! Curious eyes were watchful of his slightest motions ; and the Commonwealth papers of the day express their surprise, perhaps their vexation, at the unaltered aspect and the firm step of the Monarch. These mean spirits had flattered themselves, that He who had been cradled in Royalty, who had lived years in the fields of Honour, and was now, they presumed, a Recreant in imprisonment, “ the grand Delinquent of England,” as they called him, would start in horror at the block.
This last triumph, at least, was not reserved for them,—it was for the King. Charles, dauntless, strode “ the floor of Death,” to use Fuller’s peculiar, but expressive phraseology. He looked on the block, with the axe lying upon it, with attention ; his only anxiety was that the block seemed not sufficiently raised, and that the edge of the axe might be turned by being swept by the flappings of cloaks, or blunted by the feet of some moving about the scaffold. “ Take care they do not put me to pain !” Take “ heed of the axe ! take heed of the axe !” exclaimed the King to a gentleman passing by.—“ Hurt not the axe ; that may hurt me !” His continued anxiety concerning these circumstances, proves that he felt not the terror of death, solely anxious to avoid the pain, for he had an idea of their cruelty. With that sedate thoughtfulness which was in all his actions, he only looked at the business of the hour. One circumstance Charles observed with a smile. They had a notion that the King would resist the executioner ; on the suggestion of Hugh Peters, it is said, they had driven iron staples and ropes into the scaffold, that their victim, if necessary, might be bound down upon the block.
The King’s Speech has many remarkable points ; but certainly nothing so remarkable as the place where it was delivered. This was the first “ King’s Speech ” spoken from a scaffold. Time shall confirm, as History has demonstrated, his principle, that “ They mistook the nature of Government, for People are free under a Government, not by being sharers in it, but by the due administration of the Laws. It was for this,” said Charles, “ that now I am come here. If I could have given way to an arbitrary Sway, for to have all Laws changed according to the power of the Sword, I need not have come here, and therefore, I tell you that I am the Martyr of the People !”
In his last preparations, the same remarkable indifference to death appeared. He took off his cloak and George, and delivered the George to the Bishop, but he would not suffer decapitation till he had drawn a white satin cap on his head, and had put on his cloak again. Still he was casting a watchful eye on the block, which he thought should have been a little higher. He seems to have had some suspicion of a cruel massacre, for the executioner and his assistant were disguised in the dress of sailors, and wore frightful vizors.
The Bishop was insensible to the inspiration of that awful hour : cold, formal, trivial in all he did or said, we may credit the sarcastic representation of the simplicity of the man in the Memoir of Ludlow.(13) Juxon closed his last address by the frigid conceit of the parts and stages of human life ; that “ the present was a very short stage, but it would carry him a great way—from Earth to Heaven ! the prize you hasten to, a crown of glory.” The King caught this trite image, and more nobly rejoined, with deeper emotion—“ !”
To which the Bishop frigidly rejoined, “ You are exchanged from a temporal to an eternal crown. A good exchange !” Addressing the Headsman, the King said, “ When I put out my hands this way, then !” As soon as he laid his head on the block, the executioner thrust his hair under his cap ; and Charles, thinking that he had been going to strike, commanded him to “ Stay for the Sign !” On the uttermost verge of life, men could discover in the King no indecent haste, no flurry of spirits, no trembling of limbs, no disorder of speech, no start in horror—his eyes were observed by an eminent physician to be as lively and quick as ever, as his head lay on the block. The blow was struck—an universal groan, as it were a supernatural voice, the like never before heard, broke forth from the dense and countless multitude. All near the scaffold pressed forwards to gratify their opposite feelings, by some memorial of his blood—the blood of a Tyrant or a Martyr.(14) The Troops immediately dispersed on all sides the mournful, or the agitated people.
CHARLES THE FIRST received the axe with the same collectedness of thought, and died with the Majesty with which he had lived. We may forgive the mean sarcasm of the scribes of those days, of “ the King’s head being sewed on, but must not be kept embalmed till Prince Charles comes to the Crown ;” and we may pass over the stern, but not enlightened Republican Ludlow, who coldly notices the execution of the King by a single line ; but there is one person, whose part in this business will for ever attest that there is no greatness of mind that may not be degraded by the animosity of Faction, into the mere creature of an age. Had the heart of MILTON beat as coldly on the death of CHARLES THE FIRST as Ludlow’s, his democratic feelings might be respected ; but that this great tragic genius, having witnessed this solemn scene of Majesty in its last affliction, should have ridiculed and calumniated, and belied it, as the meanest of the Mob—who could credit this, had it been a secret anecdote hitherto concealed from the public eye ? Milton, in his celebrated “ Defence of the People,” treats Charles the First as a mere actor, stooping “ Veluti poetæ aut histriones deterrimi plausum in ipso exitio ambitiosissimè captare !” In the Kingly calmness of Charles’s death he sees but a player’s exit—a paltry Mime’s ambition to be clapped in retiring from the stage—the artificial decency of a theatrical Cæesar’s fall !
The strength of character of Charles the First was derived from that intense and concentrated conception of Sovereignty which was always before him, and was at once his good and his evil genius. Once, and perhaps but once, Milton conceived the ideal of A KING.
—————————“ A Crown,
Golden in show, is but a wreath of thorns ;
Brings dangers, troubles, cares, and sleepless nights
To him who wears the Regal diadem,
When on his shoulders each man’s burden lies.
For therein stands the office of a King,
That for the Public all this weight he bears.
Yet HE WHO REIGNS WITHIN HIMSELF, and rules
Passions, desires, and fears, is more a King—
And who attains not, ill aspires to rule
Cities of men, or head-strong Multitudes,
Subject himself to Anarchy within.”
This ideal Sovereign of the great Poet, we may at least conceive to have been CHARLES THE FIRST, for, amidst his variable fortunes, his hopes or his despair,
“ HE REIGNED WITHIN HIMSELF !”
1. “ This important fact I have alluded to at page 215. See Baillie’s Letters, ii. 209. May 1646. “ I abhor to think of it, what they speak of execution,” p. 213. In June he writes, alluding to the King, “ Had it not been that he foresaw he was ready to be taken at Oxford, and either to have been executed, which is the mind of too many here, or to be clapped up in perpetual prison, he had never come near us.” Again, at p. 225, in August of the same year. “ The Sectaries are the extremely malicious enemies of the blinded Prince, burning for the day to cast him and all his posterity out of England.” Baillie was himself an honest intolerant Presbyterian, and Charles the First, with him, was “ the blinded Prince,” because he could not as an English Monarch, and in conscience as a religionist, subscribe the Covenant of the Kirk of Scotland !
2. Ludlow, i. 233.
3. See Note at the end of Chapter V. for his dialogue with Lilburne.
4. I found this anecdote in the Aubrey Papers at the Ashmolean Museum. It may receive some elucidation from a passage in the trial of the great Regicide, Thomas Scott. This party maintained that the English Government originally consisted of the Commons, which Scott urged as a plea for his defence in having obeyed the Parliament, consisting solely of the Commons. The Court having observed to Scott, that he could not give one instance that ever the House of Commons did assume the King’s authority ; the Prisoner replied, “ I can many, where there was nothing but a House of Commons !” The Court. “ When was that ?”—Scott. “ In the Saxons’ time.” This, no doubt, puzzled the Court, as it has many a more profound antiquary than either the Court or Scott himself. The Court, however, were not to be baffled ; they had not sufficient erudition to contradict the assertion,—they waived the argument. Court. “ You do not come to any time within six hundred years, you speak of times wherein things were obscure.” The late David Williams, in the days of revolutionary Reforms, printed a diagram of the English Constitution, wherein the rude times of Alfred, or the Wittenagemot, (I do not recollect which,) were shown to the eye, as its perfection. According to such theories, the Anti-monarchists would throw back a nation in the highest state of civilization to barbarous periods, when the people were often slaves attached to the soil. This, then, was to be the Constitution “ restored to its ancient government of Commonwealth !”
5. It is well known who this lady was. When the charge against the King was made, in the name of the Commons and People of England, a lady exclaimed with a loud voice, “ It was a lie ! not a quarter of the people ! Oliver Cromwell is a Rogue and a Traitor !” The lady was masked. Colonel Axtell ordered his musketeers to present their muskets to the box and fire on the woman, using an opprobrious term. This produced a dreadful silence. The lady retired. The evidence of Sir Purbeck Temple ascertains that it was the Lady Fairfax.
6. These “ Reasons ” which the King was not suffered to deliver, and which if he had, would have been to no purpose, he, as was his laborious custom, left behind him in writing. He has even noted down when he was interrupted in speaking, adding “ Against reason I was hindered to show my reasons.”
7. Trials of the Regicides, 190. 4to. Edition.
8. Clement walker, Hist. of Independency, ii. 109, gives many particulars. The meeting for which Rushworth was employed to fix on a private place, where the persons assembled came singly, is told in a manuscript narrative from the daughter of the friend, who lent the use of his house on this occasion. Echard, B. ii. 659. Neither Hume nor Dr. Lingard have attended to these facts, which surely throw light on what Charles afterwards alluded to when on the scaffold.
9. All our writers have censured Hume for recording this affecting circumstance. The curious reader, I warn off any other, will take some interest in details which discover how numerous writers may err, either by echoing the first opinion promulgated, or by not being in possession of a material fact.
Mrs. Macauley reprobates the story as “ a calumny on the Parliament and the Army, propagated by the petulant Presbyterian Clement Walker. Whereas,” she says, “ the King remained at St. James’s till the morning of his execution.”
The judicious Laing considers it as “ an injudicious fiction invented by Clement Walker, in order to aggravate the deed, and Hume, though Herbert lay open before him, on this occasion wrote too much for dramatic effect.”
Charles Fox, who in the decline of life was but an ardent novice in historical research, exults that “ He had detected the trick of Hume’s theatrical and false representation of Charles the First hearing the noise of the scaffold.”
Last, but not least, to close the reverberation of historical echoes, Mr. Brodie takes the very copy of Herbert, from the Advocates’ Library, which may still be viewed, with all the marks and remarks of the simple-minded philosopher, and Mr. Brodie shows that Hume’s thumb had scratched where Herbert says, that the King on his last return from the Court passed to his bed-chamber at Whitehall, whence after two hours space he was removed to St. James’s. Mr. Brodie attacks more fatally than his predecessors, Clement Walker himself, for he makes Clement apparently refute himself. Clement after stating that the King having been disturbed all Saturday and Sunday night by the strokes of the workmen proceeds thus—“ Tuesday 30th of January was the day appointed for the King’s death. He came on foot from St. James’s to Whitehall that morning.”
Who could have conceived that after so much searching evidence and against the positive, but inaccurate statement of Herbert, the account given by Clement Walker, notwithstanding that by his careless mode of writing, Mr. Brodie ingeniously made Clement refute Clement, is however the veracious account, and that Hume stands perfectly exculpated from any attempt at a “ theatrical representation ?”
It now appears from Lord Leicester’s journal, recently published, that Charles lay at Whitehall, the two nights following his sentence, and that he was only removed to St. James’s the night preceding his execution. The fact is confirmed by this entry in the useful Gesta Britannorum among the works of Sir George Wharton, who kept a chronological Diary.
“ January.—The scaffold was erected before the Banquetting House at Whitehall.” By an omission in the printing, the date is not clear, but we find that on the
“ 29th. (Monday) King removed to St. James’s, whither his children come from Sion House.
“ 30th. King Charles beheaded.”
No reason has been given for the King’s removal from Whitehall to St. James’s on the last day. Clement Walker, in mentioning the fact of the disturbance occasioned by the erection of the scaffold at Whitehall to Charles, omitted noticing the removal of the King on Monday, to St. James’s. The more remarkable passage in Herbert, that Charles, on his return to Whitehall after the sentence, “ whence after two hours space, he was removed to St. James’s,” can only be accounted for, either as a defective reminiscence of Herbert, who wrote many years after the event, as happened to Ashburnham and others, or by a false reading of the manuscript, or a careless misprint, “ two hours ” for “ two days.” A circumstance which has often occurred with the careless readers, and the negligent printers of those days.
This may be considered as a curious history of the fallibility of written evidence, even from authentic quarters, whenever a material circumstance has been accidentally omitted, or comes to us in a mutilated shape.
10. The late Sir Henry Englefield, in conversation, told this anecdote ; it is probably traditional. He indicated the spot, as that where the cows usually stand, near the passage from Spring-Gardens. They have often been attached to the trunk of a tree, which possibly was the one in question.
11. No historical character is so darkly veiled as that of the General-in-Chief. Our historians make Fairfax a mere senseless instrument of Cromwell and Ireton. Fairfax has himself confessed that his name was put to papers to which he had never given his consent, and merely for the form’s sake. Charles the First once called him “ the brutish General,” alluding either to his ardour in fighting, or to the gracelessness of his manners. Warburton calls him “ the stupid General,” from the idea that he was entirely passive under Cromwell. Clement Walker curiously describes him as “ a gentleman of an irrational and brutish valour, fitter to follow another man’s counsel than his own.” It is extraordinary, that on repeated important occasions he professed not to know what was doing in his own name. The General, it is certain, was excessively modest, spoke little, and his manners were abrupt ; but he had opinions of his own and acted up to them. “ I have observed him at Councils of War,” says the sage Whitelocke, “ that he hath said little, but hath ordered things expressly contrary to the judgment of his Council ; and in action on the field I have seen him so highly transported, that scarce any one durst speak a word to him, and he would seem more like a man distracted and furious, than of his ordinary mildness and so far different temper.” The Duke of Buckingham, who married Fairfax’s only daughter, composed a noble epitaph on this military character, “ one born for victory.”
“ He had the fierceness of the manliest mind,
And all the meekness too, of womankind.”
Fairfax was a literary man. Although none of his writings have been published, except his “ Short Memorials ;” he
composed several treatises and translations of Military and other Authors ; versified the Psalms ; wrote a History of the Church to the Reformation, in a large folio, all in his own hand ; A System of Divinity ; and this laborious student left besides numerous opuscula. It is to be regretted, that the immense collection of all the papers, public and private, which Fairfax had received as General-in-Chief, and which must necessarily have thrown some light on the secret history of this extraordinary period, have been for ever lost to the Nation. After selling much as waste paper, a recent auction has dispersed the papers among different persons,—so reckless were the heirs of Fairfax !
12. Trial of the Regicides, 221.
13. “ When Juxon, late Bishop of London,” says the Anti-Episcopal Memorialist, “ had notice of the King’s desire to attend him, he broke out into these expressions. ‘ God save me ! what a trick is this, that I should have no more warning, and I have nothing ready !’ He went to the King, when having read one of his old sermons, he did not forget to use the words set down in the Liturgy, inviting all to confess before the Congregation gathered together, though there was no one present but the King and himself.” i. 244.
14. The Relics of Charles seem to have been numerous—the very chips of the block,—the sand stained with his blood, and some of his hair, were sold. Some washed their hands in his blood. A Poem in “ Parnassus Biceps ” is “ Upon the King’s Book (the Icon Basilike) bound up in a cover coloured with his blood.”
“ Thus closed, go forth, blessed book, and yield to none
But to the Gospel and Christ’s blood alone.”
Could this volume ever escape the eye of the Bibliomaniac ?
A more curious anecdote of the Relics of Charles the First has been handed down. The fine equestrian figure of the King by Le Soeur, was ordered to be taken down, and was purchased by a brazier, to be broken up, and converted into a variety of domestic utensils ; Cavalier and Commonwealthmen being equally eager to be supplied, and the supply was as endless as the demand. The brazier counted gold for brass. At the Restoration, he proudly produced to the eyes of all the lovers of Art, and more particularly to his customers, this beautiful production perfect and uninjured. His ingenuity was again rewarded—the equestrian statue was restored to its place—and the Relics were reduced to their intrinsic value of old brass.