Reign of Charles I. (Concluded.) page 10

It may be imagined that such a spectacle drew immense throngs. Every avenue to the hall was guarded by soldiers, and others stood armed within it. The open space below the bar was densely crowded, and equally packed throngs of nobles, gentlemen, and ladies, looked down from the galleries right and left. A chair of crimson velvet stood elevated on three steps towards the upper end of the hall, and behind and in a line with him right and left the commissioners took the seats placed for them, which were covered with scarlet. Before the president stood a long table on which lay the mace and sword, and just below him, at its head, sate two clerks. At the bottom of the table, directly opposite to the president, was placed a chair for the king.

After the commission had been read, Bradshaw ordered the prisoner to be brought to the bar. He had been brought from Whitehall, to which he had been removed from St. James's, in a sedan chair, and the serjeant-at-arms conducted him to the bar. His step was firm, and his countenance, though serious, unmoved. He seated himself covered, according to the wont, not of a prisoner, but of a king; then rose and surveyed the court and crowds around him. The commissioners all sate with their hats on, and Charles eyed them sternly. He then glanced round on the people in the galleries and those around with an air of superiority, and reseated himself. Bradshaw then addressed him to this effect: - "Charles Stuart, king of England, - 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; and, according to that debt and due they owe to justice, to God, the kingdom, and themselves, they have resolved to bring you to trial and judgment, and for that purpose have constituted this high court of justice before which you are brought." Coke, the solicitor-general, then rose to make the charge against him, but Charles, rising and crying, "Hold! hold!" tapped him on the shoulder with his cane. In doing this the gold head dropped from his cane, and though he took it up with an air of indifference, it was an incident that made a deep impression both on him and the spectators. He mentioned the circumstance to the bishop of London, who attended him in private, with much concern, and those who saw it regarded it as an especial omen.

Coke, however, went on, and desired the clerk to read the charge, and whilst it was reading, Charles again cried, "Hold!" but as the clerk continued, he sate down, looking very stern; but when the words of the charge declaring him to be a tyrant and traitor were read, he is said to have laughed outright. When the charge was finished, Bradshaw demanded what he had to say in reply to it; but he in his turn demanded by what authority he had been brought there? And he asserted very forcibly that he was king; acknowledged no authority superior to his own, and would not by any act of his diminish or yield up that authority, but leave it to his posterity as he had derived it from his ancestors. He reminded them that he had lately, in the Isle of Wight, treated with a number of lords and gentlemen; that they were upon the conclusion of that treaty, and he wanted to know by what authority he had, under such circumstances, been brought thence.

This was very true, and would have been unanswerable, had he, as he asserted, treated with them honestly and uprightly; but we know that at the very time that he was carrying on that treaty, and to the very last, he was also carrying on a secret correspondence with Ormond in Ireland, his wife in France, and with other parties, informing them that he was only doing this because there was no help for it; but that he had games to play which would still defeat the whole affair. He was meaning nothing less, and privately declaring nothing less, than that he would, on the first opportunity, be as despotic as ever. He continued, however, to demand, "By what authority am I here? I mean lawful authority, for there are many unlawful authorities in the world - thieves and robbers by the highways. Remember, I am your lawful king: let me know by what lawful authority I am seated here; resolve me that, and you shall hear more from me." Bradshaw told him that he might have observed that he was there by the authority of the people of England, whose elected king he was. That afforded Charles another answer. "England," he said, "never was an elective but an hereditary kingdom for nearly these thousand years. I stand more for the liberty of my people than any here that are come to be my pretended judges." Bradshaw might have told him that the people thought it time to put an end to the hereditary form, and adopt a new one; but he replied, u Sir, how well you have managed your trust is known. If you do not acknowledge the authority of the court I must proceed." Charles, however, turned to another weak place in his adversary's answer, and exclaimed, "I see no house of lords that may constitute a parliament, and the king, too, must be in and part of a parliament." It was unquestionable that Charles could not be answered on the constitutional ground, only on the revolutionary one, and on that principle of the power and right of the people to revolutionise, and anew shape their constitution, which in 1688 was acknowledged and established as a great fact of the rights of nations; and Bradshaw then did bring forward that plea - "If you are not satisfied with our authority, we are satisfied with it, which we have from God and the people." He informed Charles that he would be expected to answer, and adjourned the court to Monday.

The two following days were spent by the court in receiving evidence of the king's having not only commenced the war on his subjects, but had commanded personally in it, and in settling the form of judgment to be pronounced. On the third day, when Charles was again brought forward, the same painful scene was renewed of the king's denying the court, refusing to plead, and yet insisting on being heard. Bradshaw told him in vain that if he pleaded, admitting the authority of the court, he would be at liberty to make any observation in his defence that he pleased; but that in no court could it be otherwise. He then demanded a hearing before a committee of both houses, but he was reminded that the authority of the lords was no longer admitted. He assured him that though he contended that he had no superior in the state, the law was his superior, and that there was a power superior to the law - the people, the parent or author of the law - which was not of yesterday, but the law of old. That there were such things as parliaments, which the people had constructed for their protection, and these parliaments he had endeavoured to put down and destroy. That what his endeavours had been all along for the crushing of parliament, had been notorious to the whole kingdom. "Arid truly, sir," he continued, "in that you did strike at all, for the great bulwark of the liberties of the people is the parliament of England. Could you but have confounded that, you had at one blow cut off the neck of England. But God hath been pleased to confound your design, to break your forces, to bring your person into custody, that you might be responsible to justice."

He then combated Charles' argument, that there was no law or example of people deposing or destroying their kings. He quoted many instances from foreign nations, in which they had resisted, fought against, and destroyed their kings. That his own country of Scotland, before all others, abounded with instances of the deposition, and putting to death of their sovereigns. That his grandmother had been set aside, and his own father, a mere infant, set in her place. He referred to the depositions of Edward II. and Richard II., which he contended were effected by parliament, and said that their crimes were not a tenth part so capital against the nation as those laid to his charge. As Charles again continued to reply and argue without submitting to plead, Bradshaw told him the court had given him too much liberty already, and ordered the sentence to be read. But here John Downes, one of the commissioners, a citizen of London, said to those near him, "Have we hearts of stone? Are we men?" and then rising and trembling violently, exclaimed, "My lord, I am not satisfied to give my consent to the sentence. I desire the court may adjourn to hear me." They therefore adjourned, but in half an hour returned with an unanimous verdict of guilty.

Bradshaw then proceeded to pronounce the sentence. When the names of the commissioners were read that morning, on that of Fairfax having been called, a female voice from one of the galleries had cried out, "Not such a fool as to come here to-day." When the name of Cromwell was read, the same voice had exclaimed, "A rogue and a traitor." As Bradshaw now went on to say, the king has been called to answer by the people, before the commons of England assembled in parliament, the same female voice shouted, "It is false! not one half-quarter of them!" There wa§ a great excitement; all turned towards the gallery whence the voice came, from amid a group of masked ladies. Axtell, the officer commanding the soldiers, ordered them brutally to fire into the group; but the soldiers hesitated, and a lady rose and walked out of the gallery. It was seen to be lady Fairfax, the wife of the commander-in- chief, a woman of very ancient and noble family, the Veres of Tilbury, who had come to object most decidedly to the extreme measures of the army, and had prevailed on her husband to keep away from the court.

After order was restored, Bradshaw ordered the charge to be read, the king still interfering; and then Bradshaw passed the sentence, "That the court being satisfied in conscience that he, Charles Stuart, was guilty of the crimes of which he had been accused, did adjudge him as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy to the good people of the nation, to be put to death by severing his head from his body."

After the sentence was pronounced, Charles again requested to be heard; but Bradshaw told him that after the sentence it could not be allowed, and ordered the guards to take him away. The royalist writers state that during the trial the people had cried, "Justice! justice!" whilst others cried, "God save the king!" but that after the king was condemned, the soldiers, as he passed, insulted him in the grossest manner, spitting on him, blowing their tobacco in his face, throwing their pipes at him, and yelling in his ears, "Justice! justice! execution! execution!" But the popular party utterly denied the truth of these assertions; that they were got up to make the case of Charles resemble that of our Saviour, to render his judges odious, and himself a sacred martyr. One soldier, Herbert says, as the king was proceeding to his sedan chair, said, "God help and save your majesty!" and that Axtel struck him down with his cane, on which the king said, "Poor fellow, it is a heavy blow for a small offence." To the hired hootings of the military, Herbert says that he merely remarked, "Poor souls! they would say the same to their generals far sixpence."

Charles went back to St. James's Palace, where he spent the remainder of the day, Sunday, the 28th of January, and Monday, the 29th, the execution being fixed for Tuesday, the 30th. He had the attendance of Juxton, the late bishop of London, and the next morning he received the last visit of his only two remaining children in England, the duke of Gloucester and the princess Elizabeth. The princess was not twelve, and the king, setting her on his knee, began speaking to her – "But, sweetheart," he said, "thou wilt forget what I tell thee." The little girl, bursting into tears, promised to write down all that passed, and she did so. In her account, preserved in the "Reliquize Sacras," she says, amongst other things, that he commanded her to tell her mother that his thoughts had never strayed from her, and that his love would be the same for her to the last. That he died a glorious death for the laws and religion of the land. To the duke of Gloucester he said, "Sweetheart, now they will cut off thy father's head. Heed what I say, they will cilt off my head, and perhaps make thee a king. But mark what I say; you must not be a king as long as your brothers Charles and James live; therefore, I charge you, do not be made a king by them." At which the child, sighing deeply, replied, "I will be torn in pieces first." "And these words coming unexpectedly from so young a child," says the princess, "rejoiced my father exceedingly." The whole interview was extremely affecting.

"It may not," says Clarendon, "be unfit to pause in this place and take a view, and behold with what countenance the kings and princes of Christendom had their eyes fixed on this woful, bloody spectacle; how they looked upon that issue of blood, at which their own seemed to be so prodigally poured out; with what consternation their hearts laboured to see the impious hands of the lowest and basest subjects bathing in the bowels and reeking blood of their sovereign; a brother king, the anointed of the lord, dismembered as a malefactor; what combination and union was entered into, to take vengeance upon those monsters, and to vindicate the royal blood thus wickedly spilt. Alas! there was not a murmur amongst any of them at it.

"Cardinal Mazarin - who, in the infancy of the French king managed that sceptre, had long adored the conduct of Cromwell, and sought his friendship by a lower and viler application than was suitable to the purple of a cardinal - sent now to be admitted as a merchant, to traffic in the purchase of the rich goods and jewels of the rifled crown, of which he purchased the rich beds, hangings, and carpets, which furnished his palace at Paris. The king of Spain had, from the beginning of the rebellion, kept Don Alonza de Cardenas, who had been his ambassador to the king, still residing at London; and he had, upon several occasions, many audiences from the parliament, and several treaties on foot; and as soon as this dismal murder was over, that ambassador, who had always a great malignity towards the king, bought many pictures and other precious goods appertaining to the crown, and being sent in ships to Corunna, in Spain, were carried thence to Madrid, upon eighteen mules. Christina, the queen of Sweden, purchased the choice of all the medals and jewels, and some pictures of a great price, and received Cromwell's ambassador with great joy and pomp, and made an alliance with them. The archduke Leopold, who was governor of Flanders, disbursed a great sum of money for many of the best pictures which adorned the several palaces of the king, which were all brought by him to Brussels, and thence carried by him into Germany. In this manner did the neighbouring princes join to assist Cromwell with very great sums of money, whereby he was enabled to prosecute and finish his wicked victory over what yet remained unconquered, and to extinguish monarchy in this renowned kingdom; whilst they enriched and adorned themselves with the ruins and spoils of the surviving heir, without applying any part thereof to his relief, in the greatest necessities ever king was subject to. And that which is stranger than all this, though they pretended that they took care to preserve it for the true owner, not one of all these princes ever returned any of their unlawful purchases to the king after the blessed restoration."