apace!' When he came to Whitehall, he was taken to his own
bedroom, where a breakfast was set forth. As he had taken the
Sacrament, he would eat nothing more; but, at about the time when
the church bells struck twelve at noon (for he had to wait, through
the scaffold not being ready), he took the advice of the good
BISHOP JUXON who was with him, and ate a little bread and drank a
glass of claret. Soon after he had taken this refreshment, Colonel
Hacker came to the chamber with the warrant in his hand, and called
for Charles Stuart.
And then, through the long gallery of Whitehall Palace, which he
had often seen light and gay and merry and crowded, in very
different times, the fallen King passed along, until he came to the
centre window of the Banqueting House, through which he emerged
upon the scaffold, which was hung with black. He looked at the two
executioners, who were dressed in black and masked; he looked at
the troops of soldiers on horseback and on foot, and all looked up
at him in silence; he looked at the vast array of spectators,
filling up the view beyond, and turning all their faces upon him;
he looked at his old Palace of St. James's; and he looked at the
block. He seemed a little troubled to find that it was so low, and
asked, 'if there were no place higher?' Then, to those upon the
scaffold, he said, 'that it was the Parliament who had begun the
war, and not he; but he hoped they might be guiltless too, as ill
instruments had gone between them. In one respect,' he said, 'he
suffered justly; and that was because he had permitted an unjust
sentence to be executed on another.' In this he referred to the
Earl of Strafford.
He was not at all afraid to die; but he was anxious to die easily.
When some one touched the axe while he was speaking, he broke off
and called out, 'Take heed of the axe! take heed of the axe!' He
also said to Colonel Hacker, 'Take care that they do not put me to
pain.' He told the executioner, 'I shall say but very short
prayers, and then thrust out my hands' - as the sign to strike.
He put his hair up, under a white satin cap which the bishop had
carried, and said, 'I have a good cause and a gracious God on my
side.' The bishop told him that he had but one stage more to
travel in this weary world, and that, though it was a turbulent and
troublesome stage, it was a short one, and would carry him a great
way - all the way from earth to Heaven. The King's last word, as
he gave his cloak and the George - the decoration from his breast -
to the bishop, was, 'Remember!' He then kneeled down, laid his
head on the block, spread out his hands, and was instantly killed.
One universal groan broke from the crowd; and the soldiers, who had
sat on their horses and stood in their ranks immovable as statues,
were of a sudden all in motion, clearing the streets.
Thus, in the forty-ninth year of his age, falling at the same time
of his career as Strafford had fallen in his, perished Charles the
First. With all my sorrow for him, I cannot agree with him that he
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died 'the martyr of the people;' for the people had been martyrs to
him, and to his ideas of a King's rights, long before. Indeed, I
am afraid that he was but a bad judge of martyrs; for he had called
that infamous Duke of Buckingham 'the Martyr of his Sovereign.'
CHAPTER XXXIV - ENGLAND UNDER OLIVER CROMWELL
BEFORE sunset on the memorable day on which King Charles the First
was executed, the House of Commons passed an act declaring it
treason in any one to proclaim the Prince of Wales - or anybody
else - King of England. Soon afterwards, it declared that the
House of Lords was useless and dangerous, and ought to be
abolished; and directed that the late King's statue should be taken
down from the Royal Exchange in the City and other public places.
Having laid hold of some famous Royalists who had escaped from
prison, and having beheaded the DUKE OF HAMILTON, LORD HOLLAND, and
LORD CAPEL, in Palace Yard (all of whom died very courageously),
they then appointed a Council of State to govern the country. It
consisted of forty-one members, of whom five were peers. Bradshaw
was made president. The House of Commons also re-admitted members
who had opposed the King's death, and made up its numbers to about
a hundred and fifty.
But, it still had an army of more than forty thousand men to deal
with, and a very hard task it was to manage them. Before the
King's execution, the army had appointed some of its officers to
remonstrate between them and the Parliament; and now the common
soldiers began to take that office upon themselves. The regiments
under orders for Ireland mutinied; one troop of horse in the city
of London seized their own flag, and refused to obey orders. For
this, the ringleader was shot: which did not mend the matter, for,
both his comrades and the people made a public funeral for him, and
accompanied the body to the grave with sound of trumpets and with a
gloomy procession of persons carrying bundles of rosemary steeped
in blood. Oliver was the only man to deal with such difficulties
as these, and he soon cut them short by bursting at midnight into
the town of Burford, near Salisbury, where the mutineers were
sheltered, taking four hundred of them prisoners, and shooting a
number of them by sentence of court-martial. The soldiers soon
found, as all men did, that Oliver was not a man to be trifled
with. And there was an end of the mutiny.
The Scottish Parliament did not know Oliver yet; so, on hearing of
the King's execution, it proclaimed the Prince of Wales King
Charles the Second, on condition of his respecting the Solemn
League and Covenant. Charles was abroad at that time, and so was
Montrose, from whose help he had hopes enough to keep him holding
on and off with commissioners from Scotland, just as his father
might have done. These hopes were soon at an end; for, Montrose,
having raised a few hundred exiles in Germany, and landed with them
in Scotland, found that the people there, instead of joining him,
deserted the country at his approach. He was soon taken prisoner
and carried to Edinburgh. There he was received with every
possible insult, and carried to prison in a cart, his officers
going two and two before him. He was sentenced by the Parliament
to be hanged on a gallows thirty feet high, to have his head set on
a spike in Edinburgh, and his limbs distributed in other places,
according to the old barbarous manner. He said he had always acted
under the Royal orders, and only wished he had limbs enough to be
distributed through Christendom, that it might be the more widely
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known how loyal he had been. He went to the scaffold in a bright
and brilliant dress, and made a bold end at thirty-eight years of
age. The breath was scarcely out of his body when Charles
abandoned his memory, and denied that he had ever given him orders
to rise in his behalf. O the family failing was strong in that
Charles then!
Oliver had been appointed by the Parliament to command the army in
Ireland, where he took a terrible vengeance for the sanguinary
rebellion, and made tremendous havoc, particularly in the siege of
Drogheda, where no quarter was given, and where he found at least a
thousand of the inhabitants shut up together in the great church:
every one of whom was killed by his soldiers, usually known as
OLIVER'S IRONSIDES. There were numbers of friars and priests among
them, and Oliver gruffly wrote home in his despatch that these were
'knocked on the head' like the rest.
But, Charles having got over to Scotland where the men of the
Solemn League and Covenant led him a prodigiously dull life and
made him very weary with long sermons and grim Sundays, the
Parliament called the redoubtable Oliver home to knock the Scottish
men on the head for setting up that Prince. Oliver left his sonin-
law, Ireton, as general in Ireland in his stead (he died there
afterwards), and he imitated the example of his father-in-law with
such good will that he brought the country to subjection, and laid
it at the feet of the Parliament. In the end, they passed an act
for the settlement of Ireland, generally pardoning all the common
people, but exempting from this grace such of the wealthier sort as
had been concerned in the rebellion, or in any killing of
Protestants, or who refused to lay down their arms. Great numbers
of Irish were got out of the country to serve under Catholic powers
abroad, and a quantity of land was declared to have been forfeited
by past offences, and was given to people who had lent money to the
Parliament early in the war. These were sweeping measures; but, if
Oliver Cromwell had had his own way fully, and had stayed in
Ireland, he would have done more yet.
However, as I have said, the Parliament wanted Oliver for Scotland;
so, home Oliver came, and was made Commander of all the Forces of
the Commonwealth of England, and in three days away he went with
sixteen thousand soldiers to fight the Scottish men. Now, the
Scottish men, being then - as you will generally find them now -
mighty cautious, reflected that the troops they had were not used
to war like the Ironsides, and would be beaten in an open fight.
Therefore they said, 'If we live quiet in our trenches in Edinburgh
here, and if all the farmers come into the town and desert the
country, the Ironsides will be driven out by iron hunger and be
forced to go away.' This was, no doubt, the wisest plan; but as
the Scottish clergy WOULD interfere with what they knew nothing
about, and would perpetually preach long sermons exhorting the
soldiers to come out and fight, the soldiers got it in their heads
that they absolutely must come out and fight. Accordingly, in an
evil hour for themselves, they came out of their safe position.
Oliver fell upon them instantly, and killed three thousand, and
took ten thousand prisoners.
To gratify the Scottish Parliament, and preserve their favour,
Charles had signed a declaration they laid before him, reproaching
the memory of his father and mother, and representing himself as a
most religious Prince, to whom the Solemn League and Covenant was
as dear as life. He meant no sort of truth in this, and soon
afterwards galloped away on horseback to join some tiresome
Highland friends, who were always flourishing dirks and
broadswords. He was overtaken and induced to return; but this
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attempt, which was called 'The Start,' did him just so much
service, that they did not preach quite such long sermons at him
afterwards as they had done before.
On the first of January, one thousand six hundred and fifty-one,
the Scottish people crowned him at Scone. He immediately took the
chief command of an army of twenty thousand men, and marched to
Stirling. His hopes were heightened, I dare say, by the
redoubtable Oliver being ill of an ague; but Oliver scrambled out
of bed in no time, and went to work with such energy that he got
behind the Royalist army and cut it off from all communication with
Scotland. There was nothing for it then, but to go on to England;
so it went on as far as Worcester, where the mayor and some of the
gentry proclaimed King Charles the Second straightway. His
proclamation, however, was of little use to him, for very few
Royalists appeared; and, on the very same day, two people were
publicly beheaded on Tower Hill for espousing his cause. Up came
Oliver to Worcester too, at double quick speed, and he and his
Ironsides so laid about them in the great battle which was fought
there, that they completely beat the Scottish men, and destroyed
the Royalist army; though the Scottish men fought so gallantly that
it took five hours to do.
The escape of Charles after this battle of Worcester did him good
service long afterwards, for it induced many of the generous
English people to take a romantic interest in him, and to think
much better of him than he ever deserved. He fled in the night,
with not more than sixty followers, to the house of a Catholic lady
in Staffordshire. There, for his greater safety, the whole sixty
left him. He cropped his hair, stained his face and hands brown as
if they were sunburnt, put on the clothes of a labouring
countryman, and went out in the morning with his axe in his hand,
accompanied by four wood-cutters who were brothers, and another man
who was their brother-in-law. These good fellows made a bed for
him under a tree, as the weather was very bad; and the wife of one
of them brought him food to eat; and the old mother of the four
brothers came and fell down on her knees before him in the wood,
and thanked God that her sons were engaged in saving his life. At
night, he came out of the forest and went on to another house which
was near the river Severn, with the intention of passing into
Wales; but the place swarmed with soldiers, and the bridges were
guarded, and all the boats were made fast. So, after lying in a
hayloft covered over with hay, for some time, he came out of his
place, attended by COLONEL CARELESS, a Catholic gentleman who had
met him there, and with whom he lay hid, all next day, up in the
shady branches of a fine old oak. It was lucky for the King that
it was September-time, and that the leaves had not begun to fall,
since he and the Colonel, perched up in this tree, could catch
glimpses of the soldiers riding about below, and could hear the
crash in the wood as they went about beating the boughs.
After this, he walked and walked until his feet were all blistered;
and, having been concealed all one day in a house which was
searched by the troopers while he was there, went with LORD WILMOT,
another of his good friends, to a place called Bentley, where o
ne
MISS LANE, a Protestant lady, had obtained a pass to be allowed to
ride through the guards to see a relation of hers near Bristol.
Disguised as a servant, he rode in the saddle before this young
lady to the house of SIR JOHN WINTER, while Lord Wilmot rode there
boldly, like a plain country gentleman, with dogs at his heels. It
happened that Sir John Winter's butler had been servant in Richmond
Palace, and knew Charles the moment he set eyes upon him; but, the
butler was faithful and kept the secret. As no ship could be found
to carry him abroad, it was planned that he should go - still
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travelling with Miss Lane as her servant - to another house, at
Trent near Sherborne in Dorsetshire; and then Miss Lane and her
cousin, MR. LASCELLES, who had gone on horseback beside her all the
way, went home. I hope Miss Lane was going to marry that cousin,
for I am sure she must have been a brave, kind girl. If I had been
that cousin, I should certainly have loved Miss Lane.
When Charles, lonely for the loss of Miss Lane, was safe at Trent,
a ship was hired at Lyme, the master of which engaged to take two
gentlemen to France. In the evening of the same day, the King -
now riding as servant before another young lady - set off for a
public-house at a place called Charmouth, where the captain of the
vessel was to take him on board. But, the captain's wife, being
afraid of her husband getting into trouble, locked him up and would
not let him sail. Then they went away to Bridport; and, coming to
the inn there, found the stable-yard full of soldiers who were on
the look-out for Charles, and who talked about him while they
drank. He had such presence of mind, that he led the horses of his
party through the yard as any other servant might have done, and
said, 'Come out of the way, you soldiers; let us have room to pass
here!' As he went along, he met a half-tipsy ostler, who rubbed
his eyes and said to him, 'Why, I was formerly servant to Mr.
Potter at Exeter, and surely I have sometimes seen you there, young
man?' He certainly had, for Charles had lodged there. His ready
answer was, 'Ah, I did live with him once; but I have no time to
talk now. We'll have a pot of beer together when I come back.'
From this dangerous place he returned to Trent, and lay there
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