At Whitehall a repast had been prepared. The religious emotions of
Charles had consecrated the sacrament, which he refused to mingle with
human food. The Bishop, whose mind was unequal to conceive the
intrepid spirit of the King, dreading lest the magnanimous monarch,
overcome by the severity of the cold, might faint on the scaffold,
prevailed on him to eat half a manchet of bread and taste some claret.
But the more consolatory refreshment of Charles had been just imparted
to him in that singular testimony from his son, who had sent a _carte
blanche_ to save the life of his father at any price. This was a
thought on which his affections could dwell in face of the scaffold
which he was now to ascend.
Charles had arrived at Whitehall about ten o'clock, and was not led to
the scaffold till past one. It was said that the scaffold was not
completed; it might have been more truly said that the conspirators
were not ready. There was a mystery in this delay. The fate of Charles
the First to the very last moment was in suspense. Fairfax, though at
the time in the palace, inquired of Herbert how the King was, when the
King was no more! and expressed his astonishment on hearing that the
execution had just taken place. This extraordinary simplicity and
abstraction from the present scene of affairs has been imputed to the
General as an act of refined dissimulation, yet this seems uncertain.
The Prince's _carte blanche_ had been that morning confided to his
hands, and he surely must have laid it before the "Grandees of the
Army," as this new order of the rulers of England was called. Fairfax,
whose personal feelings respecting the King were congenial with those
his lady had so memorably evinced, labored to defer for a few days the
terrible catastrophe; not without the hope of being able, by his own
regiment and others in the army, to prevent the deed altogether. It is
probable--inexplicable as it may seem to us--that the execution of
Charles the First really took place unknown to the General. Fairfax
was not unaccustomed to discover that his colleagues first acted, and
afterwards trusted to his own discernment.
[Illustration: _CHARLES I. GOING TO EXECUTION._
Photogravure from a painting by E. Crofts.]
Secret history has not revealed all that passed in those three awful
hours. We know, however, that the warrant for the execution was not
signed till within a few minutes before the King was led to the
scaffold. In an apartment in the Palace, Ireton and Harrison were in
bed together, and Cromwell, with four colonels, assembled in it.
Colonel Huncks refused to sign the warrant. Cromwell would have no
further delay, reproaching the Colonel as "a peevish, cowardly
fellow," and Colonel Axtell declared that he was ashamed for his
friend Huncks, remonstrating with him, that "the ship is coming into
the harbor, and now would he strike sail before we come to anchor?"
Cromwell stepped to a table, and wrote what he had proposed to Huncks;
Colonel Hacker, supplying his place, signed it, and with the ink
hardly dry, carried the warrant in his hand and called for the King.
At the fatal summons Charles rose with alacrity. The King passed
through the long gallery by a line of soldiers. Awe and sorrow seem
now to have mingled in their countenances. Their barbarous commanders
were intent on their own triumph, and no farther required the forced
cry of "Justice and Execution." Charles stepped out of an enlarged
window of the Banqueting House, where a new opening leveled it with
the scaffold. Charles came forward with the same indifference as "he
would have entered Whitehall on a masque night," as an intelligent
observer described. The King looked towards St. James's and smiled.
Curious eyes were watchful of his slightest motions; and the
Commonwealth papers of the day express their surprise, perhaps their
vexation, at the unaltered aspect and the firm step of the Monarch.
These mean spirits had flattered themselves that he who had been
cradled in royalty, who had lived years in the fields of honor, and
was now, they presumed, a recreant in imprisonment,--"the grand
Delinquent of England,"--as they called him, would start in horror at
the block.
This last triumph at least was not reserved for them,--it was for the
King. Charles, dauntless, strode "the floor of Death," to use Fuller's
peculiar but expressive phraseology. He looked on the block with the
axe lying upon it, with attention; his only anxiety was that the block
seemed not sufficiently raised, and that the edge of the axe might be
turned by being swept by the flappings of cloaks, or blunted by the
feet of some moving about the scaffold. "Take care they do not put me
to pain!--Take heed of the axe! take heed of the axe!" exclaimed the
King to a gentleman passing by. "Hurt not the axe; that may hurt me!"
His continued anxiety concerning these _circumstances_ proves that he
felt not the terror of death, solely anxious to avoid the pain, for he
had an idea of their cruelty. With that sedate thoughtfulness which
was in all his actions, he only looked at the business of the hour.
One circumstance Charles observed with a smile. They had a notion that
the King would resist the executioner; on the suggestion of Hugh
Peters, it is said, they had driven iron staples and ropes into the
scaffold, that their victim, if necessary, might be bound down upon
the block.
The King's speech has many remarkable points, but certainly nothing so
remarkable as the place where it was delivered. This was the first
"King's Speech" spoken from a scaffold. Time shall confirm, as history
has demonstrated, his principle that "They mistook the nature of
government; for people are free under a government, not by being
sharers in it, but by the due administration of the laws." "It was for
this," said Charles, "that now I am come here. If I could have given
way to an arbitrary sway, for to have all laws changed according to
the power of the sword, I need not have come here; and therefore I
tell you that I am _the Martyr of the People_!"