VII. CHAS. I. From Norfolk, indeed, a petition was presented CHAPTER praying for "justice against delinquents without respect of persons;" the army sent another to the same effect; beyond this the parliament received no support whatever. The nation was taken by surprise. On the 23rd of December the subject was first mentioned in the house of commons.* The king was then for the first time spoken of as "the great delinquent," and there were mutterings for justice; but nothing further was avowed. Charles himself believed that he should be assassinated, and the fears of his adherents were all in that direction. On the 2nd of January the ordinance for the trial of the king was carried up to the house of lords; on the 6th it was passed without their concurrence. On the 9th proclamation was made, with drums and trumpet, in Cheapside, at the Exchange, and in front of Westminster hall, that a high court of justice was about to sit in judgment on its sovereign lord attainted of high treason. On the 30th the dreadful sentence was carried into effect. Within six weeks, and in the depth of winter, the whole terrible design was announced and executed. Nothing can picture the dismay, the astonishment, the dread and the indignation, which suddenly possessed men's minds. The audacity of the proceeding confounded the nation; the calmness of the actors, their openness and the forms of law under which they acted, filled * And now was set on foot and begun their great design of taking away the king, whom divers in the debate did not stick to name for the greatest delinquent and to be proceeded against in justice. December 23. Whitelocke, p. 358. A.D. 1649. CHAPTER A.D. 1649. it with amazement. Still multitudes were incredulous; for credulity itself could not rise to the belief CHAS. I. of that which seemed so monstrous and so unnatural. Till the last moment of his life thousands refused to believe that Charles would really die upon the scaffold. There was to be the pageantry of an execution but nothing more:* it was meant to insult and to degrade the king but not to kill him. Baxter relates how Cromwell engaged Fairfax in prayer, under the pretence of seeking divine direction, until the fatal blow was given. The story is not true; but it proves distinctly what uncertainty prevailed. It was a common opinion that, to the last moment, Fairfax was undecided, and that after all Charles perished while even the leaders of the army were divided on his fate. When, at the restoration, the service for king Charles's martyrdom was added to the prayer-book, Calamy and Baxter protested against it on these grounds. The king's death, they said, was not a national act; the sin was very great, but it rested not upon the nation. Writers, however, of every shade have thought it necessary to assume the consent of the nation, because it has been supposed that without its concurrence such an outrage could not have been perpetrated. Recent events have taught us the weakness of this reasoning. We have seen governments uprooted, against the sense of millions, by a morning's uproar and the outrage of a mob. The actors in the king's death have left us a clear exhibition of the motives by which they were * Burnet, Own Times, vol. i. p. 64. VII. CHAS. I. A.D. 1649. guided. Their conduct was deliberate: they acted, CHAPTER as they believed, at the bidding of conscience, not the wild impulse of revenge. They lived to acknowledge their mistake, but, with a few exceptions, never to confess that they had been guilty of a crime. They are still on judgment before posterity, and their cause is undecided; for, with a not unrighteous retribution, it has happened that the men who refused a hearing to their king have been denied the same privilege at the bar of posterity themselves. Cromwell is generally regarded as the chief promoter of the king's death. This he himself denied ; but it was part of his character to put forward other men to announce his own measures in the first instance, leaving him at liberty either to fall behind and disengage himself, or to spread all sail and take the lead, as the breeze of public opinion might be favourable or adverse. It will not readily be supposed that the house of commons undertook so daring an exploit without instructions from its masters, the army, or that the army embarked in it without their generals, or their generals without Cromwell. Once begun, none urged the matter forward more eagerly, no man was more impatient to bring it to a fatal close. His motives were various up to this period of his life Cromwell had been a religious man: his conduct had been consistent his private life was pure, his affections were warm, his devotions fervent; but he was a man of vast ambition; by nature cunning and sagacious, but scarcely wise. His mind too was distempered with enthusiasm; a fault of which at this period VII. CHAS. I. CHAPTER the army generally partook :* he believed in particular impressions. He fell into the too common A.D. 1649. error of supposing that the comfort he enjoyed in prayer was the proof of its acceptance; and he often rose from his knees expressing an assurance that his petitions had been answered. It has been said, and sometimes in Cromwell's vindication, that it was on one of these occasions, and after earnest prayer, that the conviction was revealed to him that Charles must die. Cromwell's good sense might have taught him, as we suspect it would have done had the revelation been unwelcome, that supernatural impressions are only to be trusted when they are authenticated by supernatural and miraculous powers. No doubt the divine direction was implored, not only by Cromwell but by many of his party. Solemn fasts were held; fervent prayers were uttered; but amongst the delusions to which the heart of man is liable, one is to substitute the acts of devotion for the spirit of obedience. Prayer may be fervent and yet not sincere. It may be nothing more than the endeavour of the worshipper to overlay and stifle conscience, to crush misgivings, to persuade himself that the tumult of enthusiasm within him is the voice of God; and the man who kneels down in prayer to clamour for an answer which shall agree with his own wishes, offers so profound an insult to the majesty on high, that it is reasonable to suppose he will be left, if no heavier * "A woman out of Hertfordshire came to the council of the army sitting at Whitehall, and acquainted them that she had something from God to speak to them, and being admitted she did much encourage them in their present proceedings!" Dec. 29, 1648. Whitelocke, p. 360. VII. CHAS. I. A.D. 1649. punishment befall him, to be the dupe of his own CHAPTER * Hear the just doom, the judgment of the skies! And he that will be cheated,-to the last Delusions strong as hell shall bind him fast.- Cowper. + A story is related by Hume, and copied by almost all subsequent historians, which, if true, places the duplicity of Charles, even when the war was over, in a strong light. It is generally brought forward by the apologists of Cromwell to explain his severity to the king. Charles was at Hampton Court, apparently engaged in friendly negociations with the parliamentary leaders, and the Scotch: they were informed, however, by one of their own spies of the king's bedchamber, that their doom was sealed; and that they might learn all the particulars from a letter which the king had written to the queen, in which he informed her of his resolution. This letter was sewn up in the skirt of a saddle, which was to be carried about ten o'clock that night to the Blue Boar in Holborn, by a man who was not in the secret there he was to take horse and carry it on to Dover. Cromwell and Ireton, disguising themselves as common troopers, and taking one trusty soldier with them, went instantly to the Blue Boar, where they sat drinking beer till the man arrived with the saddle on his head. They X |