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Acknowledging that the overthrow of a rotten throne was necessary for the building up of a throne that should have its sole stable foundation in the welfare of the people, can we affirm that the men who did the mightier portion of that work, sternly, unflinchingly, illegally, yet ever professing to 'seek to know the mind of God in all that chain of Providence," are quite correctly described in the Statute for their attainder, as "a party of wretched men, desperately wicked, and hardened in their impiety."

On the 19th of January, major Harrison appeared again at Windsor with his troop. There was a coach with six horses in the court-yard, in which the king took his seat; and, once more, he entered London, and was lodged at St. James's palace. The next day, the High Court of Justice was opened in Westminster-hall. An engraving, on which is inscribed "The pageant of this mock tribunal is thus represented to your view by an eye-andear witness of what he saw and heard there," furnishes a clearer notion of the arrangements than many words can convey. The king came from St. James's in a sedan; and after the names of the members of the court had been called, sixty-nine being present, Bradshaw, the president, ordered the serjeant to bring in the prisoner. Silently the king sat down in the chair prepared for him. He moved not his hat, as he looked sternly and contemptuously around. The sixty-nine rose not from their seats, and remained covered. It is scarcely eight years since he was a spectator of the last solemn trial in this hall-that of Strafford. What mighty events have happened since that time! There are memorials hanging from the roof which tell such a history as his saddest fears in the hour of Strafford's death could scarcely have shaped out. The tattered banners taken from his Cavaliers at Marston-moor and Naseby are floating above his head. There, too, are the same memorials of Preston. But still he looks around him proudly and severely. Who are the men that are to judge him, the king, who "united in his person every possible claim by hereditary right to the English as well as the Scottish throne, being the heir both of Egbert and William the Conqueror ? These men are, in his view, traitors and rebels, from Bradshaw, the lawyer, who sits in the foremost chair calling himself lord-president, to Cromwell and Marten in the back seat, over whose heads are the red-cross of England and the harp of Ireland, painted on an escutcheon, whilst the proud bearings of a line of kings are nowhere visible. Under what law does this insolent president address him as "Charles Stuart, king of England," and say, "The Commons of England being deeply sensible of the calamities that have been brought upon this nation, which are fixed upon you as the principal author of them, have resolved to make inquisition for blood?" He will defy their authority. The clerk reads the charge, and when he is accused therein of being tyrant and traitor, he laughs in the face of the Court. "Though his tongue usually hesitated, yet it was very free at this time, for he was never discomposed in mind," writes Warwick. "And yet," it is added, “as he confessed himself to the bishop of London that attended him, one action shocked him very much for whilst he was leaning in the Court upon his staff, which had a head of gold, the head broke off on a sudden. He took it up, but seemed unconcerned, yet told the bishop it really made a great

* Blackstone, book i. c. iii., p. 196, Kerr's edition.

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impression upon him." It was the symbol of the treacherous hopes upon which he had rested,-golden dreams that vanished in this solemn hour.

Trial of Charles I. (From a Print in Nalson's Report of the Trial, 1684.)

A, the King. B, the Lord President Bradshaw. C, John Lisle; D, William Say; Bradshaw's assistants. E, Andrew Broughton; F, John Phelps; clerks of the court. G, Oliver Cromwell; H, Henry Marten; the Arms of the Commonwealth over them. I, Coke; K, Dorislaus; L, Aske; Counsellors for the Commonwealth. The description of the plate ends with these words:-"The pageant of this mock tribunal is thus represented to your view by an eye and ear-witness of what he heard and saw there."

Again and again contending against the authority of the Court, the king was removed, and the sitting was adjourned to the 22nd. On that day the same scene was renewed; and again on the 23rd. A growing sympathy for the monarch became apparent. The cries of "Justice, justice," which were

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heard at first, were now mingled with "God save the king." He had refused to plead; but the Court nevertheless employed the 24th and 25th of January in collecting evidence to prove the charge of his levying war against the Parliament. Coke, the solicitor-general, then demanded whether the Court would proceed to pronouncing sentence; and the members adjourned to the Painted Chamber. On the 27th the public sitting was resumed. When the name of Fairfax was called, a voice was heard from the gallery, "He has too much wit to be here." The king was brought in; and, when the president addressed the commissioners, and said that the prisoner was before the Court to answer a charge of high treason, and other crimes brought against him in the name of the people of England, the voice from the gallery was again heard, "It's a lie-not one half of them." The voice came from lady Fairfax. The Court, Bradshaw then stated, had agreed upon the sentence. Ludlow records that the king "desired to make one proposition before they proceeded to sentence; which he earnestly pressing, as that which he thought would lead to the reconciling of all parties, and to the peace of the three kingdoms, they permitted him to offer it: the effect of which was, that he might meet the two Houses in the Painted Chamber, to whom he doubted not to offer that which should satisfy and secure all interests." Ludlow goes on to say, "Designing, as I nave been since informed, to propose his own resignation, and the admission of his son to the throne upon such terms as should have been agreed upon.' The commissioners retired to deliberate, "and being satisfied, upon debate, that nothing but loss of time would be the consequence of it, they returned into the Court with a negative to his demand." Bradshaw then delivered a solemn speech to the king, declaring how he had through his reign endeavoured to subvert the laws and introduce arbitrary government; how he had attempted, from the beginning, either to destroy Parliaments, or to render them subservient to his own designs; how he had levied war against the Parliament, by the terror of his power to discourage for ever such assemblies from doing their duty, and that in this war many thousands of the good people of England had lost their lives. The clerk was lastly commanded to read the sentence, that his head should be severed from his body; "and the commissioners," says Ludlow, "testified their unanimous assent by standing up." The king attempted to speak; "but being accounted dead in law, was not permitted."

On the 29th of January, the Court met to sign the sentence of execution; addressed to" colonel Francis Hacker, colonel Huncks, and lieutenant-colonel Phayr, and to every one of them." This is the memorable document :

"Whereas Charles Stuart, king of England, is and standeth convicted, attainted and condemned of High Treason and other high Crimes: and Sentence upon Saturday last was pronounced against him by this Court, to be put to death by the severing of his head from his body; of which Sentence execution remaineth to be done :

"These are therefore to will and require you to see the said Sentence executed, in the open street before Whitehall, upon the morrow, being the

"Memoirs," vol. i. p. 280.

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thirtieth day of this instant month of January, between the hours of ten in the morning and five in the afternoon with full effect. And for so doing,

this shall be your warrant.

"And these are to require all Officers and Soldiers, and others the good People of this Nation of England, to be assisting unto you in this service. Given under our hands and seals,

"JOHN BRADSHAW.

"THOMAS GREY.

"OLIVER CROMWELL.”

And fifty-six others.

The statements of the heartless buffoonery, and the daring violence of Cromwell, at the time of signing the warrant, must be received with some suspicion. He smeared Henry Marten's face with the ink of his pen, and Marten in return smeared his, say the narratives. Probably so. With reference to this anecdote it has been wisely observed, "Such 'toys of desperation' commonly bubble up from a deep flowing stream below." Another anecdote is told by Clarendon; that colonel Ingoldsby, one who signed the warrant, was forced to do so with great violence, by Cromwell and others; "and Cromwell, with a loud laughter, taking his hand in his, and putting the pen between his fingers, with his own hand writ Richard Ingoldsby,' he making all the resistance he could." Ingoldsby gave this relation, in the desire to obtain a pardon after the Restoration; and to confirm his story he said, "if his name there were compared with what he had ever writ himself, it could never be looked

upon as his own hand." Warburton, in a note upon this passage, says, "The original warrant is still extant, and Ingoldsby's name has no such mark of its being wrote in that manner."

The king knew his fate. He resigned himself to it with calmness and dignity; with one exceptional touch of natural human passion, when he said to bishop Juxon, although resigning himself to meet his God, "We will not talk of these rogues, in whose hands I am; they thirst for my blood, and they will have it, and God's will be done. I thank God, I heartily forgive them, and I will talk of them no more." He took an affectionate leave of his daughter, the princess Elizabeth, twelve years old; and of his son, the duke of Gloucester, of the age of eight. To him he said;-" Mark, child, what I say; they will cut off my head, and perhaps make thee king; but thou must not be king so long as thy brothers Charles and James live." And the child said, "I will be torn in pieces first." There were some attempts to save him. The Dutch ambassador made vigorous efforts to procure a reprieve, whilst the French and Spanish ambassadors were inert. The ambassadors from the States nevertheless persevered; and early in the day of the 30th obtained some glimmering of hope from Fairfax. "But we found," they say in their despatch, "in front of the house in which we had just spoken with the general, about two hundred horsemen; and we learned, as well as on our way as on reaching home, that all the streets, passages, and squares of London were occupied by troops, so that no one could pass, and that the approaches of the city were covered with cavalry, so as to prevent any one from coming in or going out.

Forster. "Life of Marten," p. 314.

. . The

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same day, between two and three o'clock, the king was taken to a scaffold coverered with black, erected before Whitehall." *

To that scaffold before Whitehall, Charles walked, surrounded by soldiers, through the leafless avenues of St. James's Park. It was a bitterly cold morning. Evelyn records that the Thames was frozen over. The season was so sharp that the king asked to have a shirt more than ordinary, when he carefully dressed himself. He left St. James's at ten o'clock. He remained in his chamber at Whitehall, for about three hours, in prayer, and then received the sacrament. He was pressed to dine, but refused, taking a piece of bread and a glass of wine. His purposed address to the people was delivered only to the hearing of those upon the scaffold, but its purport was that the people "mistook the nature of government; for people are free under a government, not by being sharers in it, but by due admininistration of the laws of it."+ His theory of government was a consistent one. He had the misfortune not to understand that the time had been fast passing away for its assertion. The headsman did his office; and a deep groan went up from the surrounding multitude.

It is scarcely necessary that we should offer any opinion upon this tremendous event. The world had never before seen an act so daring conducted with such a calm determination; and the few moderate men of that time balanced the illegality, and also the impolicy of the execution of Charles, by the fact that "it was not done in a corner," and that those who directed or sanctioned the act offered no apology, but maintained its absolute necessity and justice. "That horrible sentence upon the most innocent person in the world; the execution of that sentence by the most execrable murder that was ever committed since that of our blessed Saviour;" forms the text which Clarendon gave for the rhapsodies of party during two centuries. On the other hand, the eloquent address of Milton to the people of England has been in the hearts and mouths of many who have known that the establishment of the liberties of their country, duly subordinated by the laws of a free monarchy, may be dated from this event: "God has endued you with greatness of mind to be the first of mankind, who, after having conquered their own king, and having had him delivered into their hands, have not scrupled to condemn him judicially, and, pursuant to that sentence of condemnation, to put him to death."§ In these times in England, when the welfare of the throne and the people are identical, we can, on the one hand, afford to refuse our assent to the blasphemous comparison of Clarendon (blasphemy more. offensively repeated in the Church Service for the 30th of January), and at the same time affirm that the judicial condemnation which Milton so admires was illegal, unconstitutional, and in its immediate results dangerous to liberty. But feeling that far greater dangers would have been incurred if "the caged tiger had been let loose," and knowing that out of the errors and anomalies of those times a wiser Revolution grew, for which the first more terrible Revolution was a preparation, we may cease to examine this great historical question in any bitterness of spirit, and even acknowledge that the Despatch from the Ambassador Extraordinary of the States General; in the Appendix to Guizot's "English Revolution." + Warwick, p. 345.

"Rebellion," vol. vii. p. 23.

"Defensio pro populo Anglicano.