A Child's History of England

by Dickens, Charles

  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