_Accession of Charles I.—Unfavourable Omens—“The White
King”—Henrietta Maria—Her French Followers—The
Royal Pictures—Their Partial Sale—The King and Queen
at Dinner—Death of Strafford and Laud—Charles at
Westminster—Place of the Scaffold—Last Scene._
James I. died in 1625, at Theobalds, having removed thither from
Whitehall shortly before. His son Charles I. succeeded him, and for
the first years of his reign lived in the old royal apartments on the
Thames’ bank. The omens observed at the time were all against the
new King. Had his reign been prosperous we should have heard nothing
about them. First of all, it was remarked that the breath was hardly
out of King James’s body when the Knight Marshal, in proclaiming his
successor at the gate of Theobalds, made a bad blunder. He said Charles
was the late King’s rightful and _dubitable_ heir. He meant to have
said “indubitable.” When the news came to Whitehall, Bishop Laud was
in the middle of his sermon, for it was a Sunday, and broke off in
order to let Charles be proclaimed, nor did he afterwards conclude, so
that the new King and the congregation went away without a blessing.
At the coronation, in February, 1626, it was similarly noticed that
no procession through the City from the Tower to Westminster could
take place, because the plague was raging. Several still more ominous
accidents marked the day. The wing broke off the golden dove which
formed part of the regalia. The Bishop of Carlisle, Richard Senhouse,
by an inexcusable blunder, took for the text of his coronation sermon,
“Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life,”
from the Revelation. This was much remarked upon then and afterwards,
and it is very possible that Charles alluded to the sermon in the last
words he ever uttered. But another circumstance was most remarked
upon that dark February day in the gloom of the old Abbey. For some
unexplained reason, Charles was dressed, not in purple, like the kings
before him, but in white satin. Later on this gained for Charles the
name of “The White King,” and at his burial, in February, 1649, at
Windsor, in a snow-storm, as the flakes fell upon the coffin, there
were some present who remembered the omen of twenty-three years before.
Finally, as if to crown all, that day was marked in the memories of
many by a shock of earthquake.
There is little at first to connect Charles with Whitehall, but towards
the end of the coronation year a curious scene took place there. The
King, weary of the young Bishop and his twenty-nine priests who had
come over with Henrietta Maria, decreed that they must return home.
This they were very unwilling to do. With them were also to go an
immense crew of attendants, whose vagaries disturbed both Whitehall and
St. James’s. They exceeded in numbers even the four hundred who had
formed the household of Henry, prince of Wales. Contemporary letters
are full of their arrogance and greed. With the French priests came
a crowd of English Jesuits and the like, whose position, as the law
stood then, was wholly illegal. The story that Henrietta Maria had to
do penance at the instance of her French confessor, by going barefoot
to Tyburn to glorify the memory of the Gunpowder Conspirators, rests
on very slight evidence. One thing is certain: if she went, it was at
the instance of one of the English priests. Even at the present day
few Frenchmen know anything of English history thirty years old. It
was, however, one thing to resolve, another actually to get rid of
these intruders. At first the King wrote to Buckingham, who was then
at Paris, to try to persuade the queen-mother of the necessity of the
step he contemplated, and, moreover, to ask her to “find a means to
make themselves suitors to be gone.” Whether she complied or not, the
Queen’s servants were far too well off to think of moving. Marshal
Bassompierre came over in order to arrange matters, but without avail.
His report of a stormy interview with Charles is a mass of bombast.
The King, coming to Whitehall, and entering the Queen’s apartments
to inform her that he must be obeyed—that he had put the matter
into the hands of that stern soldier, Lord Conway, who had arranged
everything—found “a number of her domestics irreverently dancing and
curvetting in her presence.” He took her by the hand, led her into an
adjoining chamber, and locked himself in with her.
[Illustration: _The Guardroom, Scotland Yard_.
_From an Etching by_ J. T. SMITH, 1805.]
Meanwhile, Conway took the French Bishop and his priests into St.
James’s Park, and informed them briefly of the King’s unquestionable
causes of complaint, and of the arrangements made for their immediate
departure. The Bishop refused to move, saying he regarded himself as an
ambassador. Conway replied that he might regard himself as he pleased,
but that if he did not depart peacefully he would be turned out by
force.
Next, Lord Conway entered Whitehall, where he firmly but politely
informed the French servants of the Queen of his errand. They were to
go first to Somerset House in the Strand, where he proposed to make
separate arrangements for each of them. The women screamed and stormed,
and after Conway had given them reasonable time, he summoned the yeomen
of the guard, who thrust them out forcibly and locked the doors after
them. They went to Somerset House, where Charles himself visited them
the same afternoon.
More than a month later they were still at Somerset House, when Lord
Conway was again called in; but, what with the obstinacy of the Bishop,
and the clamour of the women, it took four days and forty carriages to
transport them to Dover. The whole story is in Ellis’s _Letters_, and
in _D’Israeli’s Curiosities of Literature_, and is well summarised by
Jesse in his _Court of England under the Stuarts_, to which I may refer
a reader interested in the subject; my own concern having, of course,
been only with that part which related to Whitehall.
That Charles should have been forced into war, and, above all, a civil
war, was a great misfortune to the progress of civilisation, as shown
in the arts and sciences. Painting, music, architecture flourished
at his Court, together with poetry and science. He probably brought
more fine pictures into England than all the kings put together since
his time. Walpole says, “As there was no art which Charles did not
countenance, the chasers and embossers of plate were among the number
of the protected at Court.” Casting in bronze was a favourite art,
and Fanelli, who made the statues of Charles and his Queen at St.
John’s College, Oxford, should be named, as well as Le Sœur, who made
the King’s equestrian statue which is now at Charing Cross, but which
was originally made for Lord Portland and set up at Roehampton. The
King’s cabinet pictures were lodged at Whitehall in a chamber expressly
built for them by Inigo Jones. Undoubtedly the pictures were, of all
his works of art, those which Charles chiefly loved. He contrived to
acquire a magnificent collection, and it is evident from one or two
entries that Jones had a general commission not to let anything slip
which would prove a desirable addition to the royal gallery. Although
his taste lay chiefly in ancient pictures, Charles largely patronised
Van Dyck, and Van Dyck’s principal pupils and contemporaries, such
as Janssen, Walker, and Dobson. Moreover, he bought on occasion
lavishly. The collection of the Duke of Mantua came into the market,
and was bought whole by the agents of King Charles. He hung it on the
walls of the Banqueting House, but intended to have embellished that
building with paintings by Van Dyck, representing ceremonials of the
Order of the Garter. These would naturally have comprised portraits
of most of the great men of the day. There was also a scheme on foot
for establishing a school of art somewhat on the lines of our Royal
Academy, but more distinctly intended for teaching. This, of course,
fell through, like all other schemes of the kind, during the civil war.
Before his death the leaders of the Commonwealth endeavoured to sell
off or otherwise make away with the treasures of art which Charles had
gathered. Their animosity against pictures containing representations
of the second person of the Holy Trinity or of the Virgin Mary induced
them to order their destruction. That very few of these orders were
carried out is plain from the list preserved by Walpole. We are
anticipating the order of events if we pause here to describe the
gradual dispersal of the great royal collection. The sale went on at
intervals from 1648 to 1653, but many pieces remained in England. Some
did not even leave Whitehall, and there are now many in the National
Gallery which once belonged to the unfortunate Charles.
The best account of the sale is that written by Horace Walpole, who
used for his purpose the notes of George Vertue, the engraver. The
prices were fixed, but the highest bidder, if more was offered, was
adjudged the buyer. We cannot do better than take some items from
Walpole’s list. The cartoons of Raphael were bought in by Cromwell for
the insignificant sum of 300_l._ The other cartoons, those representing
the triumphs of Cæsar, by Andrea Mantegna, went for 1000_l._, and were
also reserved for Cromwell. They had formed part of the Mantua Gallery
already referred to. Apparently they had been removed from Whitehall to
Hampton Court, where they have ever since remained. We read of many
Madonnas; one, said to be by Raphael, fetching 800_l._; but another
Raphael, afterwards estimated much more highly, was the celebrated
“St. George and the Dragon,” sometimes called “St. Michael,” now in
the Louvre. A Venus, called “Del Pardo,” by Titian, sold for 600_l._
The “Mercury teaching Cupid, with Venus standing by,” painted by
Correggio, which is now in the National Gallery, went for 800_l._ This
had also formed an item in the great Mantua Collection. The picture had
many adventures. The Duke of Alva took it to Spain and subsequently
it became the property of the famous Prince of the Peace, in whose
collection it remained until 1808, when it fell into the hands of
Murat. It thus found its way back into Italy. Lord Castlereagh bought
it and the “Ecce Homo,” which hangs near it, from the ex-Queen of
Naples at Vienna, and in 1834 it was purchased from Lord Londonderry
for the National Gallery. Rubens’ “Peace and War” was presented to
Charles by the painter in 1630. It now only fetched 100_l._, and went
to the Doria Gallery at Genoa, whence it was sold, brought back to
England, and presented to the National Gallery in 1828 by the first
Duke of Sutherland. After the Restoration, strong efforts were made to
gather the dispersed pictures again. The States of Holland bought the
whole collection of Gerard Reyntz and presented them to Charles II. on
his restoration. The Government went to law with Van Leemput, who had
bought a great portrait of King Charles I., by Van Dyck, for 150_l._
There were various negotiations, in which Van Leemput was offered a
fair compensation. As he refused, the law was put in force, and Van
Leemput got nothing. This must not be confused with the Marlborough
Van Dyck which is now in the National Gallery. It is plain, remarks
Walpole, from a catalogue made for James II., that a large number
of pictures remained at Whitehall unsold, and it is very possible
that Oliver Cromwell intervened, when he had the power, to prevent
their sale. We must always thank his taste for having rescued the two
great sets of Mantegna’s and Raphael’s cartoons. It will be observed
that though the store was by no means exhausted, the sales ceased in
1653, the year of his inauguration as Protector. In 1660 Cromwell’s
widow tried in vain to retain possession of some pictures and other
treasures.
Before we go on to speak of the great tragedy which gave Whitehall
a world-wide celebrity, we may make a note from a passage quoted by
Mr. Law in his catalogue of the pictures at Hampton Court. One of
these pictures represents Charles I. and his Queen dining in public.
The picture is by Van Bassen, who also painted the King and Queen
of Bohemia similarly employed. Mr. Law’s account of the first-named
picture is very interesting, and relates mainly to life at Whitehall.
The King and Queen are being “served by gentlemen-in-waiting with
dishes, more of which are being brought in from the door opposite them
by attendants. In the right corner is a sideboard, and wine cooling
in brass bowls on the floor. Several dogs are running about. At the
end of the hall is a raised and recessed daïs, where spectators are
looking on through some columns. The decoration of the hall is in
the classic taste, and is very fine and elaborate. On the walls hang
several pictures.” Though this doubtless belonged to Charles I., it is
not found catalogued among his pictures; but in the catalogue of James
II. we find No. 937: “A large piece, where King Charles the First and
Queen, and the Prince are at dinner.” It is dated over the door, on the
right, 1637. It is engraved in Jesse’s _Memoirs of the Stuarts_, and is
chiefly valuable for the architecture and decoration, and as exhibiting
the manners of the time, and the prevalent custom in that age of
royalty dining in public. “There were daily at Charles I.’s Court,
86 tables, well furnished each meal; whereof the King’s table had 28
dishes; the Queen’s, 24; 4 other tables, 16 dishes each, and so on. In
all about 500 dishes each meal, with bread, beer, wine and all things
necessary. There was spent yearly in the King’s house, of gross meat,
1500 oxen; 7000 sheep, 1200 calves; 300 porkers, 400 young beefs, 6800
lambs, 300 flitches of bacon; and 26 boars. Also 140 dozen geese, 250
dozen of capons, 470 dozen of hens, 750 dozen of pullets, 1470 dozen of
chickens; for bread, 364,000 bushels of wheat; and for drink, 600 tuns
of wine and 1700 tuns of beer; together with fish and fowl, fruit and
spice, proportionately.” (_Present State of London_, 1681.)
As to Henrietta Maria at dinner, an anecdote is reported by Jesse:
“Notwithstanding her conciliating manners on her first arrival in
England, it soon became evident that the spirit of Henry IV. was not
entirely dormant in the bosom of his daughter. A singular scene, which
took place at Court, shortly after her marriage, is thus described by
an eye-witness. ‘The Queen, howsoever very little of stature, is yet
of a pleasing countenance, if she be pleased, but full of spirit and
vigour, and seems of a more than ordinary resolution. With one frown,
diverse of us being at Whitehall to see her, being at dinner, and the
room somewhat over-heated with the fire and company, she drove us all
out of the chamber. I suppose none but a Queen could have cast such a
scowl.’” (See Jesse’s _Court of England under the Stuarts_, ii. 16.)
The whole sad history of the Great Rebellion has been told at full
length in divers places, and only incidentally concerns us here. We
see that Charles was shifty and wanting in straightforwardness. None
of his political opponents could trust even his promises. No one could
deny him both courage and coolness in the hour of danger. We might
dwell on what might have happened if he had saved Strafford; but the
bold policy in which that would have landed him—the policy Strafford
himself described as “thorough”—though it might have rid him of his
enemies, would have cost a tremendous price to the nation. When Charles
promised Strafford to save his life, he had scarcely power to make his
promise true. He gained nothing by Strafford’s death, and only lost one
of the two or three really able advisers he had. It is not possible to
believe that he thought the savage fanatics who clamoured for the great
minister’s blood would pause and ask no more. “Moderation” was a word
that did not exist in their vocabulary, and it is rather melancholy to
see John Milton made the mouthpiece of a series of foul scandals on a
King whose private life seems to have been absolutely pure, as Milton
must have known. But politics were up to boiling point in those days.
It was not enough to defeat an opponent in the House or at the poll;
he must be put to death. So far the traditions of the Tudor times
survived. Having stimulated their appetite by the death of Strafford,
under legal forms and with the unwilling consent of the King, they
proceeded to murder, by the travesty of a judicial process, the
highest they could find in the country. Archbishop Laud was brought
to trial, or rather to condemnation, in March, 1644, and in January,
1645, he was beheaded. There was only left to quench their thirst for
the best blood in the land a few nobles—the Duke of Hamilton, the Earl
of Holland, and others; but there was one victim, the highest of all,
and they had no notion of sparing him, though, by compassing his death,
they ruined their own cause.
[Illustration: _Lambeth and Whitehall_.
_From the Engraving by_ W. HOLLAR.]
We can easily see that a Prime Minister like Strafford had done many
things to make himself hated. We can see that Laud was also hated,
mainly for being an archbishop. Another minister or another archbishop
would be appointed in course of time, and both would be hated, and
that, too, by a great many people who were, on the whole, loyal to
the Crown, if not to the person of Charles. The death of Charles at
Whitehall changed the feelings of this whole class. They may have
groaned, as we hear they did. Some groaned because their King was
killed, even though they may have thought he deserved his fate; but
the great majority saw that all the good the popular party might have
carried out for the people was annihilated at that one blow. Murderers
are seldom moderate and beneficent reformers, though Agathocles did
contrive to succeed in both these _rôles_ in Sicily. But that was a
long time ago and a long way off, and few of the truer patriots of
1649 looked at these violent proceedings without both apprehension and
horror—apprehension lest a murder of such huge dimensions should only
mean anarchy in the Government and oppression of the people—as, in
effect, it did—and horror at the perpetration of such an irrevocable
crime without any reference to the people, either at the hustings or by
a direct vote. But it appeared as if the Parliament, though, with the
help of the army, it could kill the King, could not dissolve itself.
The soldiers, however, without the Parliament, could, and did, force
a dissolution, and in our next chapter we shall see the chief leader
of the rebels residing in the old palace of Whitehall as a sovereign
prince.
The greatest of all these changes was simply this. If we allow, as many
of the so-called Puritans did, that the King had strictly forfeited his
life, imprisonment, like that inflicted on Henry VI. for many years, or
exile, like that which James II. afterwards underwent, would have been
a sufficient penalty. France would not have gone to war to reinstate
a Protestant dynasty, as it did not half a century later go to war
to reinstate a Romanist, and the longer Charles I. lived the more
improbable the return of his son became. But that scaffold at Whitehall
altered the state of affairs. Instead of a King who certainly had not
deserved well of his people, it gave them a young and, so far as they
knew, an innocent and blameless King, whose coming they were forced, by
the violence of the dominant faction, to hope for as for the salvation
of their country.
Very little of the history of the Great Rebellion concerns Whitehall,
at least until Oliver Cromwell assumes possession, and apes royalty
in the old halls; but in Rymer’s _Fœdera_ we may observe that, from
the beginning of the reign of James I., “Whitehall” gradually and
more and more becomes the official designation of the palace. Charles
naturally was not there during a long term of years. He was marching
and counter-marching in the north, and so mismanaging all his affairs
successively that, regarded as a game, the Civil War consisted of a
series of alternate military and diplomatic defeats. The inevitable
consequence was the utter ruin of the royal cause. In January, 1649
(then reckoned 1648), the King, a prisoner, was brought from Windsor
Castle and lodged at St. James’s. On Saturday, the 20th, he walked,
strongly guarded, across the park to Whitehall. He probably entered his
old palace by the stairs near the tilt-yard, and traversed the passage
which led to his former apartments. Here was a “bridge,” or floating
pier on the water’s edge, and he was put into a boat and rowed up to
Westminster, where he was placed in Sir Robert Cotton’s house. The King
was then brought into Westminster Hall and allowed a seat. Bradshaw was
president of the Court, and there were some eighty commissioners. The
King attended the Court four times in all, sometimes going in a Sedan
chair, sometimes, as we have seen, by boat. We need not detail the
proceedings of Bradshaw and his assessors; but there is one thing which
must be noted, namely, the dignity and tact of the King’s behaviour
when brought up to receive sentence. Green, who had but little sympathy
with him, observes, quoting Marvel, “Whatever had been the faults and
follies of his life—
“‘He nothing common did nor mean
Upon that memorable scene.’”
[Illustration: _Whitehall, from the River_.
_From_ OGILVY’S _Map_, 1677.]
This fact—for it is not merely an opinion—seems to answer a question
that is often asked: Did the coolness of Charles on that last day
at Westminster Hall, and again on the scaffold at Whitehall, betray
any feeling, any certainty that he would be respited or rescued? A
moment’s thought dispels the idea. Charles was manly, dignified,
truthful before Bradshaw and before the crowds which had assembled
to see him die, because he recognised that all the finessing, the
double meanings, the secret understandings, and the thousand miserable
subterfuges which he imagined to be “statesmanship,” and with which
he had endeavoured to impose on the Scots and on the authorities of
Carisbrooke and of Hampton Court, had done nothing for him, and if
renewed now would have ensured that the fate which he foresaw had
at last overtaken him would be justified by a large section of his
contemporaries. He rose to the occasion. During those few hours at St.
James’s he saw that all he could do would be to save the throne for his
son, and he succeeded, but it was by a line of conduct wholly different
from that by which he had lost it for himself.
The place of execution was most carefully chosen. Though called “the
open street of Whitehall,” it was far from being really open. On
the south were buildings pierced by the narrow archway of Holbein’s
Gate. On the west were the walled tilt-yard and the barracks and
other buildings, ending with Wallingford House. On the north was the
comparatively open roadway to Charing Cross. On the eastern side were
long rows of gabled buildings already described, with, just south of
an archway into the old courts of the palace, the Banqueting House.
It was sworn at the trials of the Regicides, a few years later, that
Oliver Cromwell superintended the arrangements. The evidence is not
well supported, but, owing to Cromwell’s great military reputation and
to his subsequent elevation to the Protectorate, everything at this
conjuncture was attributed to him. It is not very easy to reconcile
the conflicting details of different stories. It neither adds to nor
detracts from Oliver’s guilt, neither adds to nor detracts from his
fame, whether he was at Westminster or at Whitehall on that fatal day.
The crowd coming into the narrow court from Charing Cross saw an empty
space in front of the hall. The palace and the barracks, and the
innumerable passages and lodgings, were lined with “the sour-visaged
saints” of the various Roundhead regiments—men to whom the death of
Charles would be a latter-day miracle, a sign from Heaven that their
cause was won—that the Millennium, the Fifth Monarchy, was about to
begin. Even when their own turn came such men believed, till they were
actually “dancing on air,” that they would be supernaturally rescued.
The crowd which swarmed into the street saw only a few soldiers round
the black scaffold which, at the height of the first floor, stood
in front of the hall, a little to the northward. The better sort of
spectators were on the roof of Wallingford House, not directly fronting
the scaffold, but near enough to see. Here was stationed the venerable
Archbishop Ussher of Armagh, who is reported to have fainted as he saw
the King led forth. Below was a man whose account of the scene would
have been invaluable now. He only alludes to it in a note written in
October, 1660, This was Samuel Pepys; and he remarks, after witnessing
the death of General Harrison, “thus it was my chance to see the King
beheaded at White Hall, and to see the first blood shed in revenge for
the blood of the King at Charing Cross.”
The Banqueting House is clearly described for us in a note, probably
by Inigo Jones, which was printed a few pages back. It answers most of
the questions raised in a long correspondence in the papers a few years
ago. The situation, the problem to be solved, was briefly this. The
scaffold was before the two windows next to Charing Cross. A hole was
broken through the wall to admit of a passage to the platform direct
from the interior. The regicides saw that there would be great danger
in taking the King out by the only door, which was at the back or
east side of the hall. They would have had to conduct him by a narrow
open-air passage northward to the palace gate. After passing through
the gate he would have had to go several yards through the crowd before
he could reach the scaffold, wherever it was placed.
But many asked, in the correspondence just mentioned, Why did they
break through the wall? Why did they not go through the window? Simply
because there was at that time no glazed window on the western front of
the hall. A great window was at the “upper end,” probably that toward
Westminster. There was, also, it is probable, a central window looking
into the palace court on the eastern side. But toward “the street of
Whitehall” there were no open windows, all being built up—as, indeed,
the lowest tier remained until a couple of years ago. It is unlikely,
though some have asserted it, that the upper tier had been opened and
glazed at this time. In any case, these upper windows, if they existed,
which is unlikely, would have been of no use to the contrivers of the
King’s death. They were too high up and inaccessible except through a
narrow balcony within the hall, where one man might have successfully
resisted hundreds. The window “at the upper end” may have given light
enough, as the hall was not built for use in daylight. It remained in
this twilight condition until George I. opened it as a chapel about
1724. Then windows on the first floor became necessary. At first, as on
the eastern side, only the centre window was opened. As late as 1761,
the third and fifth were still built up. It was probably not until
1830, when the hall was “thoroughly restored” by Sir John Soane, that
all the windows on the western side were opened, except those on the
ground floor. The ground floor windows were opened first for the United
Service Institution. It was asserted in the daily papers that they were
re-opened, but, as a fact, they never were opened before.
If we schedule these notes we may safely conclude that the lowest tier
of windows was only glazed in our own day; that those of the middle—the
Ionic storey—were still unglazed in 1649; and that in Silvestre’s view,
taken about fifty years after the great tragedy, there was not a single
glazed window on this, the western, front. All the apparent openings
were filled with masonry.
We now understand why the wall had to be broken through, and perhaps
why the middle window was chosen. The scaffold stretched from the
opening to the north-west corner of the hall, both it and the short
passage leading to it being parallel with, and possibly close against,
the face of the blank wall with its closed and built-up windows.
The reason for this arrangement is obvious. Had the passage and the
scaffold jutted out at right angles they would have reached far into
the surging and probably angry crowd, and the number and daring of the
soldiers must have been quadrupled at least. Again, had the scaffold
stretched toward the southern extremity of the Banqueting House, it
would have been close to the gallery by which Charles had entered
the palace that morning. This gallery, in fact, touched the southern
corner of the hall. The military eye of the officer who made and
carried out the arrangements must have seen dangers of rescue and other
possibilities which it was needful to guard against. Knowing all these
things and others of the kind, we see that some of the contemporary
views—they are chiefly Dutch—which show the northward position of
the scaffold are correct, and not those—chiefly English—which adorn
prayer-books printed after the Restoration, and place the scaffold
before the middle window.
When Charles was brought out, he showed that, as he himself had said
to Lord Digby, if he could not live like a King, he could die like a
gentleman. Juxon, at that time Bishop of London, had the courage to
attend him, as well as Herbert, his long-tried servant. The King’s last
devotions in his old chapel were interrupted by the impertinences of
some of the unauthorised ministers, whose nonconformist consciences
probably justified their interference. There was some unexpected delay
in the preparations. If the carpenters employed were not Roundheads or
Fifth Monarchy fanatics, it is easy to understand that they hesitated
over a task which would make them marked men among their fellows for
years to come.
[Illustration: _The Execution of Charles I. From a Print of_ 1649.]
The King had reached Whitehall at ten. It was now past noon, the
dinner-hour of that day. Some dishes were provided for his use, but
he would not eat. He had received the Holy Communion, and would eat
no more in this world. Meanwhile, he retired to the apartments he had
occupied in happier days, and gave himself up to private meditation and
prayer. As the afternoon wore on, Bishop Juxon persuaded him, lest his
strength should fail him at the last, to eat a piece of bread and drink
a glass of wine. Then he went with the soldiers to where in the western
wall of the Banqueting House the masonry had been pierced to give
access to the scaffold. Jesse, writing just after Soane’s operations in
1830, reports that he had seen traces of the opening in the brickwork.
He does not say clearly where it was, nor does it now greatly matter,
as we know where it must have been. Charles very soon reached the
scaffold and made ready for the end. Meanwhile, Juxon spoke to him of
the future life. It was far off, he said, but the passage short. The
King replied as if grateful for the good Bishop’s dry and dull remarks.
If we contrast them with the “Son of Saint Louis, ascend to Heaven!” of
another ecclesiastic, they seem all the more tame. But to the King’s
ear they brought a different echo. He remembered that he had once been
crowned. The applauding congregation had crowded round him in the old
Abbey close by; and the words of Bishop Senhouse, so distasteful then,
so truly prophetic now, came into his mind: “Be thou faithful unto
death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” He turned to Juxon and
answered, “I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown.” The
Bishop, who was not at the coronation, probably wondered. Then followed
the gift of his jewel of St. George, with the still unexplained charge:
“Remember!” The block was low, it seemed too low. But after a moment’s
hesitation—to quote the words of Marvell once more—
“He laid his comely head
Down as upon a bed;”
and in a few moments more the White King had set out on his last
journey, “faithful unto death.”