ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE FIRST
Baby Charles became King Charles the First, in the twenty-fifth year of
his age. Unlike his father, he was usually amiable in his private
character, and grave and dignified in his bearing; but, like his
father, he had monstrously exaggerated notions of the rights of a king,
and was evasive, and not to be trusted. If his word could have been
relied upon, his history might have had a different end.
His first care was to send over that insolent upstart, Buckingham, to
bring Henrietta Maria from Paris to be his Queen; upon which occasion
Buckingham—with his usual audacity—made love to the young Queen of
Austria, and was very indignant indeed with Cardinal Richelieu, the
French Minister, for thwarting his intentions. The English people were
very well disposed to like their new Queen, and to receive her with
great favour when she came among them as a stranger. But, she held the
Protestant religion in great dislike, and brought over a crowd of
unpleasant priests, who made her do some very ridiculous things, and
forced themselves upon the public notice in many disagreeable ways.
Hence, the people soon came to dislike her, and she soon came to
dislike them; and she did so much all through this reign in setting the
King (who was dotingly fond of her) against his subjects, that it would
have been better for him if she had never been born.
Now, you are to understand that King Charles the First—of his own
determination to be a high and mighty King not to be called to account
by anybody, and urged on by his Queen besides—deliberately set himself
to put his Parliament down and to put himself up. You are also to
understand, that even in pursuit of this wrong idea (enough in itself
to have ruined any king) he never took a straight course, but always
took a crooked one.
He was bent upon war with Spain, though neither the House of Commons
nor the people were quite clear as to the justice of that war, now that
they began to think a little more about the story of the Spanish match.
But the King rushed into it hotly, raised money by illegal means to
meet its expenses, and encountered a miserable failure at Cadiz, in the
very first year of his reign. An expedition to Cadiz had been made in
the hope of plunder, but as it was not successful, it was necessary to
get a grant of money from the Parliament; and when they met, in no very
complying humour, the King told them, ‘to make haste to let him have
it, or it would be the worse for themselves.’ Not put in a more
complying humour by this, they impeached the King’s favourite, the Duke
of Buckingham, as the cause (which he undoubtedly was) of many great
public grievances and wrongs. The King, to save him, dissolved the
Parliament without getting the money he wanted; and when the Lords
implored him to consider and grant a little delay, he replied, ‘No, not
one minute.’ He then began to raise money for himself by the following
means among others.
He levied certain duties called tonnage and poundage which had not been
granted by the Parliament, and could lawfully be levied by no other
power; he called upon the seaport towns to furnish, and to pay all the
cost for three months of, a fleet of armed ships; and he required the
people to unite in lending him large sums of money, the repayment of
which was very doubtful. If the poor people refused, they were pressed
as soldiers or sailors; if the gentry refused, they were sent to
prison. Five gentlemen, named Sir Thomas Darnel, John Corbet, Walter
Earl, John Heveningham, and Everard Hampden, for refusing were taken up
by a warrant of the King’s privy council, and were sent to prison
without any cause but the King’s pleasure being stated for their
imprisonment. Then the question came to be solemnly tried, whether this
was not a violation of Magna Charta, and an encroachment by the King on
the highest rights of the English people. His lawyers contended No,
because to encroach upon the rights of the English people would be to
do wrong, and the King could do no wrong. The accommodating judges
decided in favour of this wicked nonsense; and here was a fatal
division between the King and the people.
For all this, it became necessary to call another Parliament. The
people, sensible of the danger in which their liberties were, chose for
it those who were best known for their determined opposition to the
King; but still the King, quite blinded by his determination to carry
everything before him, addressed them when they met, in a contemptuous
manner, and just told them in so many words that he had only called
them together because he wanted money. The Parliament, strong enough
and resolute enough to know that they would lower his tone, cared
little for what he said, and laid before him one of the great documents
of history, which is called the Petition of Right, requiring that the
free men of England should no longer be called upon to lend the King
money, and should no longer be pressed or imprisoned for refusing to do
so; further, that the free men of England should no longer be seized by
the King’s special mandate or warrant, it being contrary to their
rights and liberties and the laws of their country. At first the King
returned an answer to this petition, in which he tried to shirk it
altogether; but, the House of Commons then showing their determination
to go on with the impeachment of Buckingham, the King in alarm returned
an answer, giving his consent to all that was required of him. He not
only afterwards departed from his word and honour on these points, over
and over again, but, at this very time, he did the mean and dissembling
act of publishing his first answer and not his second—merely that the
people might suppose that the Parliament had not got the better of him.
That pestilent Buckingham, to gratify his own wounded vanity, had by
this time involved the country in war with France, as well as with
Spain. For such miserable causes and such miserable creatures are wars
sometimes made! But he was destined to do little more mischief in this
world. One morning, as he was going out of his house to his carriage,
he turned to speak to a certain Colonel Fryer who was with him; and he
was violently stabbed with a knife, which the murderer left sticking in
his heart. This happened in his hall. He had had angry words up-stairs,
just before, with some French gentlemen, who were immediately suspected
by his servants, and had a close escape from being set upon and killed.
In the midst of the noise, the real murderer, who had gone to the
kitchen and might easily have got away, drew his sword and cried out,
‘I am the man!’ His name was John Felton, a Protestant and a retired
officer in the army. He said he had had no personal ill-will to the
Duke, but had killed him as a curse to the country. He had aimed his
blow well, for Buckingham had only had time to cry out, ‘Villain!’ and
then he drew out the knife, fell against a table, and died.
The council made a mighty business of examining John Felton about this
murder, though it was a plain case enough, one would think. He had come
seventy miles to do it, he told them, and he did it for the reason he
had declared; if they put him upon the rack, as that noble Marquis of
Dorset whom he saw before him, had the goodness to threaten, he gave
that marquis warning, that he would accuse _him_ as his accomplice! The
King was unpleasantly anxious to have him racked, nevertheless; but as
the judges now found out that torture was contrary to the law of
England—it is a pity they did not make the discovery a little
sooner—John Felton was simply executed for the murder he had done. A
murder it undoubtedly was, and not in the least to be defended: though
he had freed England from one of the most profligate, contemptible, and
base court favourites to whom it has ever yielded.
A very different man now arose. This was Sir Thomas Wentworth, a
Yorkshire gentleman, who had sat in Parliament for a long time, and who
had favoured arbitrary and haughty principles, but who had gone over to
the people’s side on receiving offence from Buckingham. The King, much
wanting such a man—for, besides being naturally favourable to the
King’s cause, he had great abilities—made him first a Baron, and then a
Viscount, and gave him high employment, and won him most completely.
A Parliament, however, was still in existence, and was _not_ to be won.
On the twentieth of January, one thousand six hundred and twenty-nine,
Sir John Eliot, a great man who had been active in the Petition of
Right, brought forward other strong resolutions against the King’s
chief instruments, and called upon the Speaker to put them to the vote.
To this the Speaker answered, ‘he was commanded otherwise by the King,’
and got up to leave the chair—which, according to the rules of the
House of Commons would have obliged it to adjourn without doing
anything more—when two members, named Mr. Hollis and Mr. Valentine,
held him down. A scene of great confusion arose among the members; and
while many swords were drawn and flashing about, the King, who was kept
informed of all that was going on, told the captain of his guard to go
down to the House and force the doors. The resolutions were by that
time, however, voted, and the House adjourned. Sir John Eliot and those
two members who had held the Speaker down, were quickly summoned before
the council. As they claimed it to be their privilege not to answer out
of Parliament for anything they had said in it, they were committed to
the Tower. The King then went down and dissolved the Parliament, in a
speech wherein he made mention of these gentlemen as ‘Vipers’—which did
not do him much good that ever I have heard of.
As they refused to gain their liberty by saying they were sorry for
what they had done, the King, always remarkably unforgiving, never
overlooked their offence. When they demanded to be brought up before
the court of King’s Bench, he even resorted to the meanness of having
them moved about from prison to prison, so that the writs issued for
that purpose should not legally find them. At last they came before the
court and were sentenced to heavy fines, and to be imprisoned during
the King’s pleasure. When Sir John Eliot’s health had quite given way,
and he so longed for change of air and scene as to petition for his
release, the King sent back the answer (worthy of his Sowship himself)
that the petition was not humble enough. When he sent another petition
by his young son, in which he pathetically offered to go back to prison
when his health was restored, if he might be released for its recovery,
the King still disregarded it. When he died in the Tower, and his
children petitioned to be allowed to take his body down to Cornwall,
there to lay it among the ashes of his forefathers, the King returned
for answer, ‘Let Sir John Eliot’s body be buried in the church of that
parish where he died.’ All this was like a very little King indeed, I
think.
And now, for twelve long years, steadily pursuing his design of setting
himself up and putting the people down, the King called no Parliament;
but ruled without one. If twelve thousand volumes were written in his
praise (as a good many have been) it would still remain a fact,
impossible to be denied, that for twelve years King Charles the First
reigned in England unlawfully and despotically, seized upon his
subjects’ goods and money at his pleasure, and punished according to
his unbridled will all who ventured to oppose him. It is a fashion with
some people to think that this King’s career was cut short; but I must
say myself that I think he ran a pretty long one.
William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the King’s right-hand man
in the religious part of the putting down of the people’s liberties.
Laud, who was a sincere man, of large learning but small sense—for the
two things sometimes go together in very different quantities—though a
Protestant, held opinions so near those of the Catholics, that the Pope
wanted to make a Cardinal of him, if he would have accepted that
favour. He looked upon vows, robes, lighted candles, images, and so
forth, as amazingly important in religious ceremonies; and he brought
in an immensity of bowing and candle-snuffing. He also regarded
archbishops and bishops as a sort of miraculous persons, and was
inveterate in the last degree against any who thought otherwise.
Accordingly, he offered up thanks to Heaven, and was in a state of much
pious pleasure, when a Scotch clergyman, named Leighton, was pilloried,
whipped, branded in the cheek, and had one of his ears cut off and one
of his nostrils slit, for calling bishops trumpery and the inventions
of men. He originated on a Sunday morning the prosecution of William
Prynne, a barrister who was of similar opinions, and who was fined a
thousand pounds; who was pilloried; who had his ears cut off on two
occasions—one ear at a time—and who was imprisoned for life. He highly
approved of the punishment of Doctor Bastwick, a physician; who was
also fined a thousand pounds; and who afterwards had _his_ ears cut
off, and was imprisoned for life. These were gentle methods of
persuasion, some will tell you: I think, they were rather calculated to
be alarming to the people.
In the money part of the putting down of the people’s liberties, the
King was equally gentle, as some will tell you: as I think, equally
alarming. He levied those duties of tonnage and poundage, and increased
them as he thought fit. He granted monopolies to companies of merchants
on their paying him for them, notwithstanding the great complaints that
had, for years and years, been made on the subject of monopolies. He
fined the people for disobeying proclamations issued by his Sowship in
direct violation of law. He revived the detested Forest laws, and took
private property to himself as his forest right. Above all, he
determined to have what was called Ship Money; that is to say, money
for the support of the fleet—not only from the seaports, but from all
the counties of England: having found out that, in some ancient time or
other, all the counties paid it. The grievance of this ship money being
somewhat too strong, John Chambers, a citizen of London, refused to pay
his part of it. For this the Lord Mayor ordered John Chambers to
prison, and for that John Chambers brought a suit against the Lord
Mayor. Lord Say, also, behaved like a real nobleman, and declared he
would not pay. But, the sturdiest and best opponent of the ship money
was John Hampden, a gentleman of Buckinghamshire, who had sat among the
‘vipers’ in the House of Commons when there was such a thing, and who
had been the bosom friend of Sir John Eliot. This case was tried before
the twelve judges in the Court of Exchequer, and again the King’s
lawyers said it was impossible that ship money could be wrong, because
the King could do no wrong, however hard he tried—and he really did try
very hard during these twelve years. Seven of the judges said that was
quite true, and Mr. Hampden was bound to pay: five of the judges said
that was quite false, and Mr. Hampden was not bound to pay. So, the
King triumphed (as he thought), by making Hampden the most popular man
in England; where matters were getting to that height now, that many
honest Englishmen could not endure their country, and sailed away
across the seas to found a colony in Massachusetts Bay in America. It
is said that Hampden himself and his relation Oliver Cromwell were
going with a company of such voyagers, and were actually on board ship,
when they were stopped by a proclamation, prohibiting sea captains to
carry out such passengers without the royal license. But O! it would
have been well for the King if he had let them go! This was the state
of England. If Laud had been a madman just broke loose, he could not
have done more mischief than he did in Scotland. In his endeavours (in
which he was seconded by the King, then in person in that part of his
dominions) to force his own ideas of bishops, and his own religious
forms and ceremonies upon the Scotch, he roused that nation to a
perfect frenzy. They formed a solemn league, which they called The
Covenant, for the preservation of their own religious forms; they rose
in arms throughout the whole country; they summoned all their men to
prayers and sermons twice a day by beat of drum; they sang psalms, in
which they compared their enemies to all the evil spirits that ever
were heard of; and they solemnly vowed to smite them with the sword. At
first the King tried force, then treaty, then a Scottish Parliament
which did not answer at all. Then he tried the Earl of Strafford,
formerly Sir Thomas Wentworth; who, as Lord Wentworth, had been
governing Ireland. He, too, had carried it with a very high hand there,
though to the benefit and prosperity of that country.
Strafford and Laud were for conquering the Scottish people by force of
arms. Other lords who were taken into council, recommended that a
Parliament should at last be called; to which the King unwillingly
consented. So, on the thirteenth of April, one thousand six hundred and
forty, that then strange sight, a Parliament, was seen at Westminster.
It is called the Short Parliament, for it lasted a very little while.
While the members were all looking at one another, doubtful who would
dare to speak, Mr. Pym arose and set forth all that the King had done
unlawfully during the past twelve years, and what was the position to
which England was reduced. This great example set, other members took
courage and spoke the truth freely, though with great patience and
moderation. The King, a little frightened, sent to say that if they
would grant him a certain sum on certain terms, no more ship money
should be raised. They debated the matter for two days; and then, as
they would not give him all he asked without promise or inquiry, he
dissolved them.
But they knew very well that he must have a Parliament now; and he
began to make that discovery too, though rather late in the day.
Wherefore, on the twenty-fourth of September, being then at York with
an army collected against the Scottish people, but his own men sullen
and discontented like the rest of the nation, the King told the great
council of the Lords, whom he had called to meet him there, that he
would summon another Parliament to assemble on the third of November.
The soldiers of the Covenant had now forced their way into England and
had taken possession of the northern counties, where the coals are got.
As it would never do to be without coals, and as the King’s troops
could make no head against the Covenanters so full of gloomy zeal, a
truce was made, and a treaty with Scotland was taken into
consideration. Meanwhile the northern counties paid the Covenanters to
leave the coals alone, and keep quiet.
We have now disposed of the Short Parliament. We have next to see what
memorable things were done by the Long one.
SECOND PART
The Long Parliament assembled on the third of November, one thousand
six hundred and forty-one. That day week the Earl of Strafford arrived
from York, very sensible that the spirited and determined men who
formed that Parliament were no friends towards him, who had not only
deserted the cause of the people, but who had on all occasions opposed
himself to their liberties. The King told him, for his comfort, that
the Parliament ‘should not hurt one hair of his head.’ But, on the very
next day Mr. Pym, in the House of Commons, and with great solemnity,
impeached the Earl of Strafford as a traitor. He was immediately taken
into custody and fell from his proud height.
It was the twenty-second of March before he was brought to trial in
Westminster Hall; where, although he was very ill and suffered great
pain, he defended himself with such ability and majesty, that it was
doubtful whether he would not get the best of it. But on the thirteenth
day of the trial, Pym produced in the House of Commons a copy of some
notes of a council, found by young Sir Harry Vane in a red velvet
cabinet belonging to his father (Secretary Vane, who sat at the
council-table with the Earl), in which Strafford had distinctly told
the King that he was free from all rules and obligations of government,
and might do with his people whatever he liked; and in which he had
added—‘You have an army in Ireland that you may employ to reduce this
kingdom to obedience.’ It was not clear whether by the words ‘this
kingdom,’ he had really meant England or Scotland; but the Parliament
contended that he meant England, and this was treason. At the same
sitting of the House of Commons it was resolved to bring in a bill of
attainder declaring the treason to have been committed: in preference
to proceeding with the trial by impeachment, which would have required
the treason to be proved.
So, a bill was brought in at once, was carried through the House of
Commons by a large majority, and was sent up to the House of Lords.
While it was still uncertain whether the House of Lords would pass it
and the King consent to it, Pym disclosed to the House of Commons that
the King and Queen had both been plotting with the officers of the army
to bring up the soldiers and control the Parliament, and also to
introduce two hundred soldiers into the Tower of London to effect the
Earl’s escape. The plotting with the army was revealed by one George
Goring, the son of a lord of that name: a bad fellow who was one of the
original plotters, and turned traitor. The King had actually given his
warrant for the admission of the two hundred men into the Tower, and
they would have got in too, but for the refusal of the governor—a
sturdy Scotchman of the name of Balfour—to admit them. These matters
being made public, great numbers of people began to riot outside the
Houses of Parliament, and to cry out for the execution of the Earl of
Strafford, as one of the King’s chief instruments against them. The
bill passed the House of Lords while the people were in this state of
agitation, and was laid before the King for his assent, together with
another bill declaring that the Parliament then assembled should not be
dissolved or adjourned without their own consent. The King—not
unwilling to save a faithful servant, though he had no great attachment
for him—was in some doubt what to do; but he gave his consent to both
bills, although he in his heart believed that the bill against the Earl
of Strafford was unlawful and unjust. The Earl had written to him,
telling him that he was willing to die for his sake. But he had not
expected that his royal master would take him at his word quite so
readily; for, when he heard his doom, he laid his hand upon his heart,
and said, ‘Put not your trust in Princes!’
The King, who never could be straightforward and plain, through one
single day or through one single sheet of paper, wrote a letter to the
Lords, and sent it by the young Prince of Wales, entreating them to
prevail with the Commons that ‘that unfortunate man should fulfil the
natural course of his life in a close imprisonment.’ In a postscript to
the very same letter, he added, ‘If he must die, it were charity to
reprieve him till Saturday.’ If there had been any doubt of his fate,
this weakness and meanness would have settled it. The very next day,
which was the twelfth of May, he was brought out to be beheaded on
Tower Hill.
Archbishop Laud, who had been so fond of having people’s ears cropped
off and their noses slit, was now confined in the Tower too; and when
the Earl went by his window to his death, he was there, at his request,
to give him his blessing. They had been great friends in the King’s
cause, and the Earl had written to him in the days of their power that
he thought it would be an admirable thing to have Mr. Hampden publicly
whipped for refusing to pay the ship money. However, those high and
mighty doings were over now, and the Earl went his way to death with
dignity and heroism. The governor wished him to get into a coach at the
Tower gate, for fear the people should tear him to pieces; but he said
it was all one to him whether he died by the axe or by the people’s
hands. So, he walked, with a firm tread and a stately look, and
sometimes pulled off his hat to them as he passed along. They were
profoundly quiet. He made a speech on the scaffold from some notes he
had prepared (the paper was found lying there after his head was struck
off), and one blow of the axe killed him, in the forty-ninth year of
his age.
This bold and daring act, the Parliament accompanied by other famous
measures, all originating (as even this did) in the King’s having so
grossly and so long abused his power. The name of Delinquents was
applied to all sheriffs and other officers who had been concerned in
raising the ship money, or any other money, from the people, in an
unlawful manner; the Hampden judgment was reversed; the judges who had
decided against Hampden were called upon to give large securities that
they would take such consequences as Parliament might impose upon them;
and one was arrested as he sat in High Court, and carried off to
prison. Laud was impeached; the unfortunate victims whose ears had been
cropped and whose noses had been slit, were brought out of prison in
triumph; and a bill was passed declaring that a Parliament should be
called every third year, and that if the King and the King’s officers
did not call it, the people should assemble of themselves and summon
it, as of their own right and power. Great illuminations and rejoicings
took place over all these things, and the country was wildly excited.
That the Parliament took advantage of this excitement and stirred them
up by every means, there is no doubt; but you are always to remember
those twelve long years, during which the King had tried so hard
whether he really could do any wrong or not.
All this time there was a great religious outcry against the right of
the Bishops to sit in Parliament; to which the Scottish people
particularly objected. The English were divided on this subject, and,
partly on this account and partly because they had had foolish
expectations that the Parliament would be able to take off nearly all
the taxes, numbers of them sometimes wavered and inclined towards the
King.
I believe myself, that if, at this or almost any other period of his
life, the King could have been trusted by any man not out of his
senses, he might have saved himself and kept his throne. But, on the
English army being disbanded, he plotted with the officers again, as he
had done before, and established the fact beyond all doubt by putting
his signature of approval to a petition against the Parliamentary
leaders, which was drawn up by certain officers. When the Scottish army
was disbanded, he went to Edinburgh in four days—which was going very
fast at that time—to plot again, and so darkly too, that it is
difficult to decide what his whole object was. Some suppose that he
wanted to gain over the Scottish Parliament, as he did in fact gain
over, by presents and favours, many Scottish lords and men of power.
Some think that he went to get proofs against the Parliamentary leaders
in England of their having treasonably invited the Scottish people to
come and help them. With whatever object he went to Scotland, he did
little good by going. At the instigation of the Earl of Montrose, a
desperate man who was then in prison for plotting, he tried to kidnap
three Scottish lords who escaped. A committee of the Parliament at
home, who had followed to watch him, writing an account of this
Incident, as it was called, to the Parliament, the Parliament made a
fresh stir about it; were, or feigned to be, much alarmed for
themselves; and wrote to the Earl of Essex, the commander-in-chief, for
a guard to protect them.
It is not absolutely proved that the King plotted in Ireland besides,
but it is very probable that he did, and that the Queen did, and that
he had some wild hope of gaining the Irish people over to his side by
favouring a rise among them. Whether or no, they did rise in a most
brutal and savage rebellion; in which, encouraged by their priests,
they committed such atrocities upon numbers of the English, of both
sexes and of all ages, as nobody could believe, but for their being
related on oath by eye-witnesses. Whether one hundred thousand or two
hundred thousand Protestants were murdered in this outbreak, is
uncertain; but, that it was as ruthless and barbarous an outbreak as
ever was known among any savage people, is certain.
The King came home from Scotland, determined to make a great struggle
for his lost power. He believed that, through his presents and favours,
Scotland would take no part against him; and the Lord Mayor of London
received him with such a magnificent dinner that he thought he must
have become popular again in England. It would take a good many Lord
Mayors, however, to make a people, and the King soon found himself
mistaken.
Not so soon, though, but that there was a great opposition in the
Parliament to a celebrated paper put forth by Pym and Hampden and the
rest, called ‘The Remonstrance,’ which set forth all the illegal acts
that the King had ever done, but politely laid the blame of them on his
bad advisers. Even when it was passed and presented to him, the King
still thought himself strong enough to discharge Balfour from his
command in the Tower, and to put in his place a man of bad character;
to whom the Commons instantly objected, and whom he was obliged to
abandon. At this time, the old outcry about the Bishops became louder
than ever, and the old Archbishop of York was so near being murdered as
he went down to the House of Lords—being laid hold of by the mob and
violently knocked about, in return for very foolishly scolding a shrill
boy who was yelping out ‘No Bishops!’—that he sent for all the Bishops
who were in town, and proposed to them to sign a declaration that, as
they could no longer without danger to their lives attend their duty in
Parliament, they protested against the lawfulness of everything done in
their absence. This they asked the King to send to the House of Lords,
which he did. Then the House of Commons impeached the whole party of
Bishops and sent them off to the Tower:
Taking no warning from this; but encouraged by there being a moderate
party in the Parliament who objected to these strong measures, the
King, on the third of January, one thousand six hundred and forty-two,
took the rashest step that ever was taken by mortal man.
Of his own accord and without advice, he sent the Attorney-General to
the House of Lords, to accuse of treason certain members of Parliament
who as popular leaders were the most obnoxious to him; Lord Kimbolton,
Sir Arthur Haselrig, Denzil Hollis, John Pym (they used to call him
King Pym, he possessed such power and looked so big), John Hampden, and
William Strode. The houses of those members he caused to be entered,
and their papers to be sealed up. At the same time, he sent a messenger
to the House of Commons demanding to have the five gentlemen who were
members of that House immediately produced. To this the House replied
that they should appear as soon as there was any legal charge against
them, and immediately adjourned.
Next day, the House of Commons send into the City to let the Lord Mayor
know that their privileges are invaded by the King, and that there is
no safety for anybody or anything. Then, when the five members are gone
out of the way, down comes the King himself, with all his guard and
from two to three hundred gentlemen and soldiers, of whom the greater
part were armed. These he leaves in the hall; and then, with his nephew
at his side, goes into the House, takes off his hat, and walks up to
the Speaker’s chair. The Speaker leaves it, the King stands in front of
it, looks about him steadily for a little while, and says he has come
for those five members. No one speaks, and then he calls John Pym by
name. No one speaks, and then he calls Denzil Hollis by name. No one
speaks, and then he asks the Speaker of the House where those five
members are? The Speaker, answering on his knee, nobly replies that he
is the servant of that House, and that he has neither eyes to see, nor
tongue to speak, anything but what the House commands him. Upon this,
the King, beaten from that time evermore, replies that he will seek
them himself, for they have committed treason; and goes out, with his
hat in his hand, amid some audible murmurs from the members.
No words can describe the hurry that arose out of doors when all this
was known. The five members had gone for safety to a house in
Coleman-street, in the City, where they were guarded all night; and
indeed the whole city watched in arms like an army. At ten o’clock in
the morning, the King, already frightened at what he had done, came to
the Guildhall, with only half a dozen lords, and made a speech to the
people, hoping they would not shelter those whom he accused of treason.
Next day, he issued a proclamation for the apprehension of the five
members; but the Parliament minded it so little that they made great
arrangements for having them brought down to Westminster in great
state, five days afterwards. The King was so alarmed now at his own
imprudence, if not for his own safety, that he left his palace at
Whitehall, and went away with his Queen and children to Hampton Court.
It was the eleventh of May, when the five members were carried in state
and triumph to Westminster. They were taken by water. The river could
not be seen for the boats on it; and the five members were hemmed in by
barges full of men and great guns, ready to protect them, at any cost.
Along the Strand a large body of the train-bands of London, under their
commander, Skippon, marched to be ready to assist the little fleet.
Beyond them, came a crowd who choked the streets, roaring incessantly
about the Bishops and the Papists, and crying out contemptuously as
they passed Whitehall, ‘What has become of the King?’ With this great
noise outside the House of Commons, and with great silence within, Mr.
Pym rose and informed the House of the great kindness with which they
had been received in the City. Upon that, the House called the sheriffs
in and thanked them, and requested the train-bands, under their
commander Skippon, to guard the House of Commons every day. Then, came
four thousand men on horseback out of Buckinghamshire, offering their
services as a guard too, and bearing a petition to the King,
complaining of the injury that had been done to Mr. Hampden, who was
their county man and much beloved and honoured.
When the King set off for Hampton Court, the gentlemen and soldiers who
had been with him followed him out of town as far as
Kingston-upon-Thames; next day, Lord Digby came to them from the King
at Hampton Court, in his coach and six, to inform them that the King
accepted their protection. This, the Parliament said, was making war
against the kingdom, and Lord Digby fled abroad. The Parliament then
immediately applied themselves to getting hold of the military power of
the country, well knowing that the King was already trying hard to use
it against them, and that he had secretly sent the Earl of Newcastle to
Hull, to secure a valuable magazine of arms and gunpowder that was
there. In those times, every county had its own magazines of arms and
powder, for its own train-bands or militia; so, the Parliament brought
in a bill claiming the right (which up to this time had belonged to the
King) of appointing the Lord Lieutenants of counties, who commanded
these train-bands; also, of having all the forts, castles, and
garrisons in the kingdom, put into the hands of such governors as they,
the Parliament, could confide in. It also passed a law depriving the
Bishops of their votes. The King gave his assent to that bill, but
would not abandon the right of appointing the Lord Lieutenants, though
he said he was willing to appoint such as might be suggested to him by
the Parliament. When the Earl of Pembroke asked him whether he would
not give way on that question for a time, he said, ‘By God! not for one
hour!’ and upon this he and the Parliament went to war.
His young daughter was betrothed to the Prince of Orange. On pretence
of taking her to the country of her future husband, the Queen was
already got safely away to Holland, there to pawn the Crown jewels for
money to raise an army on the King’s side. The Lord Admiral being sick,
the House of Commons now named the Earl of Warwick to hold his place
for a year. The King named another gentleman; the House of Commons took
its own way, and the Earl of Warwick became Lord Admiral without the
King’s consent. The Parliament sent orders down to Hull to have that
magazine removed to London; the King went down to Hull to take it
himself. The citizens would not admit him into the town, and the
governor would not admit him into the castle. The Parliament resolved
that whatever the two Houses passed, and the King would not consent to,
should be called an Ordinance, and should be as much a law as if he did
consent to it. The King protested against this, and gave notice that
these ordinances were not to be obeyed. The King, attended by the
majority of the House of Peers, and by many members of the House of
Commons, established himself at York. The Chancellor went to him with
the Great Seal, and the Parliament made a new Great Seal. The Queen
sent over a ship full of arms and ammunition, and the King issued
letters to borrow money at high interest. The Parliament raised twenty
regiments of foot and seventy-five troops of horse; and the people
willingly aided them with their money, plate, jewellery, and
trinkets—the married women even with their wedding-rings. Every member
of Parliament who could raise a troop or a regiment in his own part of
the country, dressed it according to his taste and in his own colours,
and commanded it. Foremost among them all, Oliver Cromwell raised a
troop of horse—thoroughly in earnest and thoroughly well armed—who
were, perhaps, the best soldiers that ever were seen.
In some of their proceedings, this famous Parliament passed the bounds
of previous law and custom, yielded to and favoured riotous assemblages
of the people, and acted tyrannically in imprisoning some who differed
from the popular leaders. But again, you are always to remember that
the twelve years during which the King had had his own wilful way, had
gone before; and that nothing could make the times what they might,
could, would, or should have been, if those twelve years had never
rolled away.
THIRD PART
I shall not try to relate the particulars of the great civil war
between King Charles the First and the Long Parliament, which lasted
nearly four years, and a full account of which would fill many large
books. It was a sad thing that Englishmen should once more be fighting
against Englishmen on English ground; but, it is some consolation to
know that on both sides there was great humanity, forbearance, and
honour. The soldiers of the Parliament were far more remarkable for
these good qualities than the soldiers of the King (many of whom fought
for mere pay without much caring for the cause); but those of the
nobility and gentry who were on the King’s side were so brave, and so
faithful to him, that their conduct cannot but command our highest
admiration. Among them were great numbers of Catholics, who took the
royal side because the Queen was so strongly of their persuasion.
The King might have distinguished some of these gallant spirits, if he
had been as generous a spirit himself, by giving them the command of
his army. Instead of that, however, true to his old high notions of
royalty, he entrusted it to his two nephews, Prince Rupert and Prince
Maurice, who were of royal blood and came over from abroad to help him.
It might have been better for him if they had stayed away; since Prince
Rupert was an impetuous, hot-headed fellow, whose only idea was to dash
into battle at all times and seasons, and lay about him.
The general-in-chief of the Parliamentary army was the Earl of Essex, a
gentleman of honour and an excellent soldier. A little while before the
war broke out, there had been some rioting at Westminster between
certain officious law students and noisy soldiers, and the shopkeepers
and their apprentices, and the general people in the streets. At that
time the King’s friends called the crowd, Roundheads, because the
apprentices wore short hair; the crowd, in return, called their
opponents Cavaliers, meaning that they were a blustering set, who
pretended to be very military. These two words now began to be used to
distinguish the two sides in the civil war. The Royalists also called
the Parliamentary men Rebels and Rogues, while the Parliamentary men
called _them_ Malignants, and spoke of themselves as the Godly, the
Honest, and so forth.
The war broke out at Portsmouth, where that double traitor Goring had
again gone over to the King and was besieged by the Parliamentary
troops. Upon this, the King proclaimed the Earl of Essex and the
officers serving under him, traitors, and called upon his loyal
subjects to meet him in arms at Nottingham on the twenty-fifth of
August. But his loyal subjects came about him in scanty numbers, and it
was a windy, gloomy day, and the Royal Standard got blown down, and the
whole affair was very melancholy. The chief engagements after this,
took place in the vale of the Red Horse near Banbury, at Brentford, at
Devizes, at Chalgrave Field (where Mr. Hampden was so sorely wounded
while fighting at the head of his men, that he died within a week), at
Newbury (in which battle Lord Falkland, one of the best noblemen on the
King’s side, was killed), at Leicester, at Naseby, at Winchester, at
Marston Moor near York, at Newcastle, and in many other parts of
England and Scotland. These battles were attended with various
successes. At one time, the King was victorious; at another time, the
Parliament. But almost all the great and busy towns were against the
King; and when it was considered necessary to fortify London, all ranks
of people, from labouring men and women, up to lords and ladies, worked
hard together with heartiness and good will. The most distinguished
leaders on the Parliamentary side were Hampden, Sir Thomas Fairfax,
and, above all, Oliver Cromwell, and his son-in-law Ireton.
During the whole of this war, the people, to whom it was very expensive
and irksome, and to whom it was made the more distressing by almost
every family being divided—some of its members attaching themselves to
one side and some to the other—were over and over again most anxious
for peace. So were some of the best men in each cause. Accordingly,
treaties of peace were discussed between commissioners from the
Parliament and the King; at York, at Oxford (where the King held a
little Parliament of his own), and at Uxbridge. But they came to
nothing. In all these negotiations, and in all his difficulties, the
King showed himself at his best. He was courageous, cool,
self-possessed, and clever; but, the old taint of his character was
always in him, and he was never for one single moment to be trusted.
Lord Clarendon, the historian, one of his highest admirers, supposes
that he had unhappily promised the Queen never to make peace without
her consent, and that this must often be taken as his excuse. He never
kept his word from night to morning. He signed a cessation of
hostilities with the blood-stained Irish rebels for a sum of money, and
invited the Irish regiments over, to help him against the Parliament.
In the battle of Naseby, his cabinet was seized and was found to
contain a correspondence with the Queen, in which he expressly told her
that he had deceived the Parliament—a mongrel Parliament, he called it
now, as an improvement on his old term of vipers—in pretending to
recognise it and to treat with it; and from which it further appeared
that he had long been in secret treaty with the Duke of Lorraine for a
foreign army of ten thousand men. Disappointed in this, he sent a most
devoted friend of his, the Earl of Glamorgan, to Ireland, to conclude a
secret treaty with the Catholic powers, to send him an Irish army of
ten thousand men; in return for which he was to bestow great favours on
the Catholic religion. And, when this treaty was discovered in the
carriage of a fighting Irish Archbishop who was killed in one of the
many skirmishes of those days, he basely denied and deserted his
attached friend, the Earl, on his being charged with high treason;
and—even worse than this—had left blanks in the secret instructions he
gave him with his own kingly hand, expressly that he might thus save
himself.
At last, on the twenty-seventh day of April, one thousand six hundred
and forty-six, the King found himself in the city of Oxford, so
surrounded by the Parliamentary army who were closing in upon him on
all sides that he felt that if he would escape he must delay no longer.
So, that night, having altered the cut of his hair and beard, he was
dressed up as a servant and put upon a horse with a cloak strapped
behind him, and rode out of the town behind one of his own faithful
followers, with a clergyman of that country who knew the road well, for
a guide. He rode towards London as far as Harrow, and then altered his
plans and resolved, it would seem, to go to the Scottish camp. The
Scottish men had been invited over to help the Parliamentary army, and
had a large force then in England. The King was so desperately
intriguing in everything he did, that it is doubtful what he exactly
meant by this step. He took it, anyhow, and delivered himself up to the
Earl of Leven, the Scottish general-in-chief, who treated him as an
honourable prisoner. Negotiations between the Parliament on the one
hand and the Scottish authorities on the other, as to what should be
done with him, lasted until the following February. Then, when the King
had refused to the Parliament the concession of that old militia point
for twenty years, and had refused to Scotland the recognition of its
Solemn League and Covenant, Scotland got a handsome sum for its army
and its help, and the King into the bargain. He was taken, by certain
Parliamentary commissioners appointed to receive him, to one of his own
houses, called Holmby House, near Althorpe, in Northamptonshire.
While the Civil War was still in progress, John Pym died, and was
buried with great honour in Westminster Abbey—not with greater honour
than he deserved, for the liberties of Englishmen owe a mighty debt to
Pym and Hampden. The war was but newly over when the Earl of Essex
died, of an illness brought on by his having overheated himself in a
stag hunt in Windsor Forest. He, too, was buried in Westminster Abbey,
with great state. I wish it were not necessary to add that Archbishop
Laud died upon the scaffold when the war was not yet done. His trial
lasted in all nearly a year, and, it being doubtful even then whether
the charges brought against him amounted to treason, the odious old
contrivance of the worst kings was resorted to, and a bill of attainder
was brought in against him. He was a violently prejudiced and
mischievous person; had had strong ear-cropping and nose-splitting
propensities, as you know; and had done a world of harm. But he died
peaceably, and like a brave old man.
FOURTH PART
When the Parliament had got the King into their hands, they became very
anxious to get rid of their army, in which Oliver Cromwell had begun to
acquire great power; not only because of his courage and high
abilities, but because he professed to be very sincere in the Scottish
sort of Puritan religion that was then exceedingly popular among the
soldiers. They were as much opposed to the Bishops as to the Pope
himself; and the very privates, drummers, and trumpeters, had such an
inconvenient habit of starting up and preaching long-winded discourses,
that I would not have belonged to that army on any account.
So, the Parliament, being far from sure but that the army might begin
to preach and fight against them now it had nothing else to do,
proposed to disband the greater part of it, to send another part to
serve in Ireland against the rebels, and to keep only a small force in
England. But, the army would not consent to be broken up, except upon
its own conditions; and, when the Parliament showed an intention of
compelling it, it acted for itself in an unexpected manner. A certain
cornet, of the name of Joice, arrived at Holmby House one night,
attended by four hundred horsemen, went into the King’s room with his
hat in one hand and a pistol in the other, and told the King that he
had come to take him away. The King was willing enough to go, and only
stipulated that he should be publicly required to do so next morning.
Next morning, accordingly, he appeared on the top of the steps of the
house, and asked Comet Joice before his men and the guard set there by
the Parliament, what authority he had for taking him away? To this
Cornet Joice replied, ‘The authority of the army.’ ‘Have you a written
commission?’ said the King. Joice, pointing to his four hundred men on
horseback, replied, ‘That is my commission.’ ‘Well,’ said the King,
smiling, as if he were pleased, ‘I never before read such a commission;
but it is written in fair and legible characters. This is a company of
as handsome proper gentlemen as I have seen a long while.’ He was asked
where he would like to live, and he said at Newmarket. So, to Newmarket
he and Cornet Joice and the four hundred horsemen rode; the King
remarking, in the same smiling way, that he could ride as far at a
spell as Cornet Joice, or any man there.
The King quite believed, I think, that the army were his friends. He
said as much to Fairfax when that general, Oliver Cromwell, and Ireton,
went to persuade him to return to the custody of the Parliament. He
preferred to remain as he was, and resolved to remain as he was. And
when the army moved nearer and nearer London to frighten the Parliament
into yielding to their demands, they took the King with them. It was a
deplorable thing that England should be at the mercy of a great body of
soldiers with arms in their hands; but the King certainly favoured them
at this important time of his life, as compared with the more lawful
power that tried to control him. It must be added, however, that they
treated him, as yet, more respectfully and kindly than the Parliament
had done. They allowed him to be attended by his own servants, to be
splendidly entertained at various houses, and to see his children—at
Cavesham House, near Reading—for two days. Whereas, the Parliament had
been rather hard with him, and had only allowed him to ride out and
play at bowls.
It is much to be believed that if the King could have been trusted,
even at this time, he might have been saved. Even Oliver Cromwell
expressly said that he did believe that no man could enjoy his
possessions in peace, unless the King had his rights. He was not
unfriendly towards the King; he had been present when he received his
children, and had been much affected by the pitiable nature of the
scene; he saw the King often; he frequently walked and talked with him
in the long galleries and pleasant gardens of the Palace at Hampton
Court, whither he was now removed; and in all this risked something of
his influence with the army. But, the King was in secret hopes of help
from the Scottish people; and the moment he was encouraged to join them
he began to be cool to his new friends, the army, and to tell the
officers that they could not possibly do without him. At the very time,
too, when he was promising to make Cromwell and Ireton noblemen, if
they would help him up to his old height, he was writing to the Queen
that he meant to hang them. They both afterwards declared that they had
been privately informed that such a letter would be found, on a certain
evening, sewed up in a saddle which would be taken to the Blue Boar in
Holborn to be sent to Dover; and that they went there, disguised as
common soldiers, and sat drinking in the inn-yard until a man came with
the saddle, which they ripped up with their knives, and therein found
the letter. I see little reason to doubt the story. It is certain that
Oliver Cromwell told one of the King’s most faithful followers that the
King could not be trusted, and that he would not be answerable if
anything amiss were to happen to him. Still, even after that, he kept a
promise he had made to the King, by letting him know that there was a
plot with a certain portion of the army to seize him. I believe that,
in fact, he sincerely wanted the King to escape abroad, and so to be
got rid of without more trouble or danger. That Oliver himself had work
enough with the army is pretty plain; for some of the troops were so
mutinous against him, and against those who acted with him at this
time, that he found it necessary to have one man shot at the head of
his regiment to overawe the rest.
The King, when he received Oliver’s warning, made his escape from
Hampton Court; after some indecision and uncertainty, he went to
Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight. At first, he was pretty free
there; but, even there, he carried on a pretended treaty with the
Parliament, while he was really treating with commissioners from
Scotland to send an army into England to take his part. When he broke
off this treaty with the Parliament (having settled with Scotland) and
was treated as a prisoner, his treatment was not changed too soon, for
he had plotted to escape that very night to a ship sent by the Queen,
which was lying off the island.
He was doomed to be disappointed in his hopes from Scotland. The
agreement he had made with the Scottish Commissioners was not
favourable enough to the religion of that country to please the
Scottish clergy; and they preached against it. The consequence was,
that the army raised in Scotland and sent over, was too small to do
much; and that, although it was helped by a rising of the Royalists in
England and by good soldiers from Ireland, it could make no head
against the Parliamentary army under such men as Cromwell and Fairfax.
The King’s eldest son, the Prince of Wales, came over from Holland with
nineteen ships (a part of the English fleet having gone over to him) to
help his father; but nothing came of his voyage, and he was fain to
return. The most remarkable event of this second civil war was the
cruel execution by the Parliamentary General, of Sir Charles Lucas and
Sir George Lisle, two grand Royalist generals, who had bravely defended
Colchester under every disadvantage of famine and distress for nearly
three months. When Sir Charles Lucas was shot, Sir George Lisle kissed
his body, and said to the soldiers who were to shoot him, ‘Come nearer,
and make sure of me.’ ‘I warrant you, Sir George,’ said one of the
soldiers, ‘we shall hit you.’ ‘Ay?’ he returned with a smile, ‘but I
have been nearer to you, my friends, many a time, and you have missed
me.’
The Parliament, after being fearfully bullied by the army—who demanded
to have seven members whom they disliked given up to them—had voted
that they would have nothing more to do with the King. On the
conclusion, however, of this second civil war (which did not last more
than six months), they appointed commissioners to treat with him. The
King, then so far released again as to be allowed to live in a private
house at Newport in the Isle of Wight, managed his own part of the
negotiation with a sense that was admired by all who saw him, and gave
up, in the end, all that was asked of him—even yielding (which he had
steadily refused, so far) to the temporary abolition of the bishops,
and the transfer of their church land to the Crown. Still, with his old
fatal vice upon him, when his best friends joined the commissioners in
beseeching him to yield all those points as the only means of saving
himself from the army, he was plotting to escape from the island; he
was holding correspondence with his friends and the Catholics in
Ireland, though declaring that he was not; and he was writing, with his
own hand, that in what he yielded he meant nothing but to get time to
escape.
Matters were at this pass when the army, resolved to defy the
Parliament, marched up to London. The Parliament, not afraid of them
now, and boldly led by Hollis, voted that the King’s concessions were
sufficient ground for settling the peace of the kingdom. Upon that,
Colonel Rich and Colonel Pride went down to the House of Commons with a
regiment of horse soldiers and a regiment of foot; and Colonel Pride,
standing in the lobby with a list of the members who were obnoxious to
the army in his hand, had them pointed out to him as they came through,
and took them all into custody. This proceeding was afterwards called
by the people, for a joke, Pride’s Purge. Cromwell was in the North, at
the head of his men, at the time, but when he came home, approved of
what had been done.
What with imprisoning some members and causing others to stay away, the
army had now reduced the House of Commons to some fifty or so. These
soon voted that it was treason in a king to make war against his
parliament and his people, and sent an ordinance up to the House of
Lords for the King’s being tried as a traitor. The House of Lords, then
sixteen in number, to a man rejected it. Thereupon, the Commons made an
ordinance of their own, that they were the supreme government of the
country, and would bring the King to trial.
The King had been taken for security to a place called Hurst Castle: a
lonely house on a rock in the sea, connected with the coast of
Hampshire by a rough road two miles long at low water. Thence, he was
ordered to be removed to Windsor; thence, after being but rudely used
there, and having none but soldiers to wait upon him at table, he was
brought up to St. James’s Palace in London, and told that his trial was
appointed for next day.
On Saturday, the twentieth of January, one thousand six hundred and
forty-nine, this memorable trial began. The House of Commons had
settled that one hundred and thirty-five persons should form the Court,
and these were taken from the House itself, from among the officers of
the army, and from among the lawyers and citizens. John Bradshaw,
serjeant-at-law, was appointed president. The place was Westminster
Hall. At the upper end, in a red velvet chair, sat the president, with
his hat (lined with plates of iron for his protection) on his head. The
rest of the Court sat on side benches, also wearing their hats. The
King’s seat was covered with velvet, like that of the president, and
was opposite to it. He was brought from St. James’s to Whitehall, and
from Whitehall he came by water to his trial.
When he came in, he looked round very steadily on the Court, and on the
great number of spectators, and then sat down: presently he got up and
looked round again. On the indictment ‘against Charles Stuart, for high
treason,’ being read, he smiled several times, and he denied the
authority of the Court, saying that there could be no parliament
without a House of Lords, and that he saw no House of Lords there.
Also, that the King ought to be there, and that he saw no King in the
King’s right place. Bradshaw replied, that the Court was satisfied with
its authority, and that its authority was God’s authority and the
kingdom’s. He then adjourned the Court to the following Monday. On that
day, the trial was resumed, and went on all the week. When the Saturday
came, as the King passed forward to his place in the Hall, some
soldiers and others cried for ‘justice!’ and execution on him. That
day, too, Bradshaw, like an angry Sultan, wore a red robe, instead of
the black robe he had worn before. The King was sentenced to death that
day. As he went out, one solitary soldier said, ‘God bless you, Sir!’
For this, his officer struck him. The King said he thought the
punishment exceeded the offence. The silver head of his walking-stick
had fallen off while he leaned upon it, at one time of the trial. The
accident seemed to disturb him, as if he thought it ominous of the
falling of his own head; and he admitted as much, now it was all over.
Being taken back to Whitehall, he sent to the House of Commons, saying
that as the time of his execution might be nigh, he wished he might be
allowed to see his darling children. It was granted. On the Monday he
was taken back to St. James’s; and his two children then in England,
the Princess Elizabeth thirteen years old, and the Duke Of Gloucester
nine years old, were brought to take leave of him, from Sion House,
near Brentford. It was a sad and touching scene, when he kissed and
fondled those poor children, and made a little present of two diamond
seals to the Princess, and gave them tender messages to their mother
(who little deserved them, for she had a lover of her own whom she
married soon afterwards), and told them that he died ‘for the laws and
liberties of the land.’ I am bound to say that I don’t think he did,
but I dare say he believed so.
There were ambassadors from Holland that day, to intercede for the
unhappy King, whom you and I both wish the Parliament had spared; but
they got no answer. The Scottish Commissioners interceded too; so did
the Prince of Wales, by a letter in which he offered as the next heir
to the throne, to accept any conditions from the Parliament; so did the
Queen, by letter likewise.
Notwithstanding all, the warrant for the execution was this day signed.
There is a story that as Oliver Cromwell went to the table with the pen
in his hand to put his signature to it, he drew his pen across the face
of one of the commissioners, who was standing near, and marked it with
ink. That commissioner had not signed his own name yet, and the story
adds that when he came to do it he marked Cromwell’s face with ink in
the same way.
The King slept well, untroubled by the knowledge that it was his last
night on earth, and rose on the thirtieth of January, two hours before
day, and dressed himself carefully. He put on two shirts lest he should
tremble with the cold, and had his hair very carefully combed. The
warrant had been directed to three officers of the army, Colonel
Hacker, Colonel Hunks, and Colonel Phayer. At ten o’clock, the first of
these came to the door and said it was time to go to Whitehall. The
King, who had always been a quick walker, walked at his usual speed
through the Park, and called out to the guard, with his accustomed
voice of command, ‘March on apace!’ When he came to Whitehall, he was
taken to his own bedroom, where a breakfast was set forth. As he had
taken the Sacrament, he would eat nothing more; but, at about the time
when the church bells struck twelve at noon (for he had to wait,
through the scaffold not being ready), he took the advice of the good
Bishop Juxon who was with him, and ate a little bread and drank a glass
of claret. Soon after he had taken this refreshment, Colonel Hacker
came to the chamber with the warrant in his hand, and called for
Charles Stuart.
And then, through the long gallery of Whitehall Palace, which he had
often seen light and gay and merry and crowded, in very different
times, the fallen King passed along, until he came to the centre window
of the Banqueting House, through which he emerged upon the scaffold,
which was hung with black. He looked at the two executioners, who were
dressed in black and masked; he looked at the troops of soldiers on
horseback and on foot, and all looked up at him in silence; he looked
at the vast array of spectators, filling up the view beyond, and
turning all their faces upon him; he looked at his old Palace of St.
James’s; and he looked at the block. He seemed a little troubled to
find that it was so low, and asked, ‘if there were no place higher?’
Then, to those upon the scaffold, he said, ‘that it was the Parliament
who had begun the war, and not he; but he hoped they might be guiltless
too, as ill instruments had gone between them. In one respect,’ he
said, ‘he suffered justly; and that was because he had permitted an
unjust sentence to be executed on another.’ In this he referred to the
Earl of Strafford.
He was not at all afraid to die; but he was anxious to die easily. When
some one touched the axe while he was speaking, he broke off and called
out, ‘Take heed of the axe! take heed of the axe!’ He also said to
Colonel Hacker, ‘Take care that they do not put me to pain.’ He told
the executioner, ‘I shall say but very short prayers, and then thrust
out my hands’—as the sign to strike.
He put his hair up, under a white satin cap which the bishop had
carried, and said, ‘I have a good cause and a gracious God on my side.’
The bishop told him that he had but one stage more to travel in this
weary world, and that, though it was a turbulent and troublesome stage,
it was a short one, and would carry him a great way—all the way from
earth to Heaven. The King’s last word, as he gave his cloak and the
George—the decoration from his breast—to the bishop, was, ‘Remember!’
He then kneeled down, laid his head on the block, spread out his hands,
and was instantly killed. One universal groan broke from the crowd; and
the soldiers, who had sat on their horses and stood in their ranks
immovable as statues, were of a sudden all in motion, clearing the
streets.
Thus, in the forty-ninth year of his age, falling at the same time of
his career as Strafford had fallen in his, perished Charles the First.
With all my sorrow for him, I cannot agree with him that he died ‘the
martyr of the people;’ for the people had been martyrs to him, and to
his ideas of a King’s rights, long before. Indeed, I am afraid that he
was but a bad judge of martyrs; for he had called that infamous Duke of
Buckingham ‘the Martyr of his Sovereign.’