THE KING'S EXECUTION. 585 occupied by troops, so that no one could pass, and that the ap proaches of the city were covered with cavalry, so as to prevent any one from coming in or going out. . . The same day, between two and three o'clock, the king was taken to a scaffold covered 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 administration of the laws of it. "t 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 * Despatch from the Ambassador Extraordinary of the States General; in the Appen dix to Guizot's "English Revolution." ↑ Warwick, p. 345. ད་ 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 death of Charles, a bad king, though in some respects a good man, was necessary for the life of England, and for her teaching other nations how to live." We must accept as just and true Milton's admonition to his countrymen in reference to this event, which he terms "so glorious an action," with many reasonable qualifications as to its glory; and yet apply even to ourselves his majestic words :-" After the performing so glorious an action as this, you ought to do nothing that is mean and little, not so much as to think of, much less to do anything but what is great and sublime. Which to attain to, this is your only way: as you have subdued your enemies in the field, so to make appear, that unarmed, and in the highest outward peace and tranquillity, you of all mankind are best able to subdue ambition, avarice, the love of riches, and can best avoid the corruptions that prosperity is apt to introduce (which generally subdue and triumph over other nations), to show as great justice, temperance, and moderation in the maintaining your liberty, as you have shown courage in freeing yourselves from slavery." "Defensio pro populo Anglicano. PROCLAMATION AGAINST A NEW KING. 587 CHAPTER XXXI. Proclamation against a new king.-The Icon Basiliké.-Council of State appointed.Trial and Execution of Royalists.-The Levellers.-The Levellers in the Army sup pressed.-Trial of Lilburne.-Charles II. at St. Germain's.-Ireland.-Cromwell Lord Liet tenant.-Cromwell's Campaign.-Drogheda.-Wexford.-Cromwell's Account of the Slaughters.-Waterford.-Rupert driven from the Coast.-Surrender of Cork.-Cromwell's Policy in Ireland.-Cromwell returns to London. On the afternoon of Tuesday, the 30th of January, the Serjeantat-arms accompanied by poursuivants, and surrounded by cavalry, appears at Cheapside. Trumpets sound, and crowds gather about, to hear a proclamation, that whoever shall proclaim a new king, without authority of parliament, shall be deemed a traitor. An hour only has passed, since the last king, upon the scaffold at Whitehall, "bowed his comely head Down as upon a bed."* What a night of curiosity and fear in the public haunts and private chambers of the great city! That afternoon the House of Commons order "that the Post be stayed until to-morrow morning, ten of the clock." That Post, which under the Parliament has become general, instead of being irregularly despatched upon a few roads, is now a weekly conveyance of letters into all parts of the nation. On that morning of the 31st it will go out of London with letters and little newspapers that will move terror and pity throughout the land. A few will rejoice in the great event; some will weep over it; others will vow a fearful revenge. "The more I ruminate upon it," writes Howell seven weeks afterwards, "the more it astonisheth my imagination, and shaketh all the cells of my brain; so that sometimes I struggle with my faith, and have much ado to believe it yet." There was, at the time of the king's execution, a book being printed which was to surround his life with the attributes of a saint, and to invest him in death with the glory of a martyr. The "Icon Basiliké, or Portraiture of his Sacred Majesty in his Solitudes and Sufferings," purported to be written by Charles ↑ "Letters," vol. iii. p. 36. Andrew Marvel. the first himself. Milton, who was directed by the Parliament to answer this Icon, or Image, treats it in his Iconoclastes, or Imagebreaker, as if the king had "left behind him this book as the best advocate and interpreter of his own actions;" but at the same time Milton is careful to add, "as to the author of these soliloquies, whether it were the late king, as is vulgarly believed, or any secret coadjutor (and some stick not to name him), it can add nothing, nor shall take from the weight, if any be, of reason which he brings." The question of the authorship of this book has now passed out of the region of party violence; the controversy on that matter has almost merged, as a literary problem, into the belief that it was written by Dr. Gauden, afterwards bishop of Exeter. This divine probably submitted it to Charles during his long sojourn in the Isle of Wight; he published it as the work of the king; but he claimed the authorship after the Restoration. Mr. Hallam remarks upon the internal evidence of its authenticity that "it has all the air of a fictitious composition. Cold, stiff, elaborate, without a single allusion that bespeaks the superior knowledge of facts which the king must have possessed, it contains little but those rhetorical commonplaces which would suggest themselves to any forger." But these "rhetorical commonplaces" are the best evidence, not of the genuineness of the book, but of the skill of the author. They were precisely what was required to make "attachment to the memory of the king become passion, and respect, worship; "-so M. Guizot describes the effect of the Icon. It was an universal appeal to the feelings, in a style moving along with a monotonous dignity befitting royalty, though occasionally mingled with cold metaphors. It set forth the old blind claims to implicit obedience-or, as Milton has it, maintained "the common grounds of tyranny and popery, sugared a little over,"-amidst the manifestations of a sincere piety and a resigned sadness. In one year there were fifty editions of this book sold. "Had it appeared a week sooner it might have preserved the king," thinks one writer. That may be doubted. But it produced the effect which those so-called histories produce which endeavour to fix the imagination solely upon the personal attributes and sorrows of kings and queens, instead of presenting a sober view of their relations to their subjects. Sentiment with the majority is always more powerful than reason; and thus Milton's 'Iconoclastes,' being a partisan's view of Charles's public actions—a cold though severe view, in the • Laing. COUNCIL OF STATE APPOINTED. 589 formal style of a state-paper,-produced little or no effect upon the national opinions, and is now read only for the great name of the author. On the 6th of February the Commons, now reduced to little more than a hundred members, by their vote declared the House of Lords "useless and dangerous." On the 7th another vote was recorded: "It hath been found by experience, and this house doth declare, that the office of a king, in this nation, and to have the power thereof in any single person, is unnecessary, burthensome, and dangerous to the liberty, safety, and public interest of the people of this nation, and therefore ought to be abolished." The body of king Charles, on this day, when the abolition of the royal office had been thus decreed, was removed to Windsor. On the 8th the duke of Richmond, the marquis of Hertford, and the earls of Southampton and Lindsey, arrived at the Castle, "to perform the last duty to their dead master, and to wait upon him to his grave." Amidst a fall of snow the corpse was borne from the great hall of the Castle to St. George's Chapel; and it was deposited "in a vault, where two coffins were laid near one another, supposed to contain the bodies of king Henry VIII. and queen Jane Seymour.' The governor of the Castle forbad the Church Service to be performed, through his bigoted resolve that, the Common Prayer having been put down, he would not suffer it to be read in the garrison where he commanded. A due provision for the Exercise of the Executive authority was speedily made by the Parliament, in the appointment of a Council of State, consisting of forty-one persons. This Council comprised the three chief judges; the three commanders of the army; five peers, and thirty members of the House. It was required of the individuals composing the Council that each should sign a document expressing approbation of the proceedings by which the monarchy had been overthrown. Twenty-two refused to enter into such an engagement. There were violent debates; but moderation ultimately prevailed. The past was to remain unnoticed, in a pledge of fidelity for the future. Sir Henry Vane has left his testimony to the course which he took under these circumstances: "When required by the Parliament to take an oath, to give my "Herbert's Memoirs." Charles II. caused a search to be made for the vault, when the parliament had voted a large sum for a public interment. The search was fruitless, and the king put the money in his pocket. George V. wished to gratify a reasonable curiosity, and the vault with its coffins was readily found. |