by Jordan, Don
Cromwell, who was sitting in the row in front of Downes, turned round and swiftly rebuked him. ‘Art thou mad?’ he asked. Bradshaw ordered an adjournment. The king was escorted back to Sir Robert Cotton’s house. The sixty-seven commissioners present filed out of the hall and through to the Court of Wards, situated just beyond the south door.
Phelps appears to have made no record of what occurred in the Court of Wards. Most likely, Downes was stoutly put down by Cromwell so that the court could regain its united face and go back into the great hall to pronounce sentence.
Half an hour later, the judges filed in and the king was called. Once Charles was seated, Bradshaw told him that the court was resolved to proceed to judgment. In response Charles asked that they consider delaying – ‘a little delay of a day or two further may give peace, whereas an hasty judgment may bring on that trouble and perpetual inconveniency for the kingdom’ – so that he might be heard in the Painted Chamber before the Commons and the Lords.
Bradshaw tersely answered that if the king had no more to say the court would proceed to judgment. To this, Charles replied, ‘I have nothing more to say.’
Broughton rose, unrolled a parchment and began: ‘He, the said Charles Stuart, as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and a public enemy, shall be put to death by the severing of his head from his body.’
Charles listened in dignified silence while the sentence was read out. When it was finished, Bradshaw said, ‘The sentence read and now published is the act, sentence, judgment and resolution of the whole court.’
At this, on a prearranged signal, the whole body of judges rose as one to show their unanimous agreement with the sentence. After they had sat down, the king spoke very quietly:
‘Will you hear me a word, sir?’
Bradshaw replied, ‘Sir, you are not to be heard after the sentence.’
For the first time, Charles reacted with passion and cried, ‘No, sir!’
Then Bradshaw said, ‘No, sir, by your favour, sir. Guard, withdraw your prisoner!’
By refusing to allow the king to speak after the sentence was read, Bradshaw was correctly, but brutally, applying the rules of the time. In seventeenth-century England, last words were reserved for the scaffold.23 Hacker ordered his men to form a guard around Charles to take him away. Charles again said, ‘I may speak after the sentence. By your favour, sir, I may speak after the sentence ever.’
As the guards clustered around him, Charles became clearly distressed. He shouted, ‘By your favour, the sentence, sir … I say sir, I do … I am not suffered for to speak: expect what justice other people will have!’
In this pitiful manner, the trial ended. Charles was escorted from the hall. Soldiers lining the stairs and corridors shouted ‘Justice! Justice!’ and jeered at him. Some soldiers blew smoke from their pipes in his face. Others spat on him. Regaining his composure, Charles said, ‘Poor souls, for a piece of money they would so for their commanders.’
He was led to Sir Robert Cotton’s house and then to Whitehall Palace to await his execution. The following day, the public galleries, the commissioners’ benches and the king’s velvet chair were taken away. The booksellers and lawyers reclaimed their places, stalls were set up and people gossiped where history had just been made. The court received notice that the king wished to see his children, the Duke of Gloucester and Lady Elizabeth, and Dr Juxon, the Bishop of London. In its final decision, the court granted the king’s wishes.
When the trial ended, a committee of the court met in the Painted Chamber to agree on arrangements for the execution. A warrant was drawn up, instructing three colonels – Hercules Huncks, Robert Phayre and Francis Hacker – to organise the king’s death by ‘the severinge [sic] of his head from his body’.
According to parliamentary records, the death warrant was ready to sign on Monday, 29 January, though there is good evidence that it was in fact ready by the evening of the final day of the trial two days before and that as many as twenty-nine commissioners signed it then.24 Out of the sixty-seven commissioners present on the sentencing, fifty-seven went on to sign the warrant by the end of Monday. Two commissioners who were not present at the court’s final sitting also signed the warrant: Thomas Challoner and Richard Ingoldsby. A famous story is told that Cromwell and the republican Harry Marten daubed ink on one another’s faces while signing. Though their signatures are so far apart on the warrant that they may not have signed at the same time, there is a good source for this colourful tale.25
The ten commissioners present at the final day of the trial who did not sign were all regular participants in the work and sittings of the court, with the exception of Colonel Tomlinson, whose duties as officer in charge of the king’s person throughout the trial precluded his participation except when the king was present. A. W. McIntosh has suggested the absence of signatures should not be taken as signifying any diminution of purpose. However, Nicholas Love, who helped draft the sentence, was later to claim, self-servingly, that he had wished for more discussion before actually moving to the delivery of the sentence.26
Over the years, there has been a great deal of speculation about the manner in which some signatures were obtained. While it is undoubtedly true that Cromwell drummed up signatories, there is no evidence to support the contention that some commissioners were forced to sign. Neither is there any evidence that some signatures were forged.
The warrant itself shows us that the first to sign was the president of the court, John Bradshaw. He was followed by Thomas, Lord Grey of Groby, the MP for Leicester. Grey was given prominence because he was the only peer to sit as a commissioner. His signature immediately precedes that of Oliver Cromwell. As the signatures mounted on the parchment, they became increasingly bunched up, until there was space for barely three or four more – perhaps the reason more commissioners did not sign, nor were asked to sign.
The warrant stipulated that the execution was to take place in Whitehall between ten o’clock in the morning and five o’clock in the afternoon, so that it could be carried out in daylight. The date was set for Tuesday, 30 January 1649 – the following day.
4
EXECUTION
29 January—7 February 1649
Throughout the freezing night the carpenters worked hard to finish the scaffold ready for use in the morning. The noise echoed around Whitehall and across the frozen Thames to the hovels on the far shore. It penetrated the locked and guarded room in St James’s Palace and woke the man for whom the structure was being built. Sitting up, he pulled back the heavy curtains surrounding his bed. Cold air rushed around his face. By the light of the large candle left burning through the night he read the dial of the little silver clock hanging on the bedpost. It was just after five o’clock on the morning of 30 January 1649. Charles Stuart, appointed by God as king of England, Scotland and Ireland, counted his last hours on earth.
St James’s Palace had been built by Henry VIII on the site of a hospital dedicated to the patron saint of lepers. Most of Charles’s children were born in the palace. Now he was to be led from it to his death. A court whose authority he had refused to recognise had sentenced him to be executed for crimes against the people. As Charles got out of bed, his servant, Sir Thomas Herbert, woke from his mattress where he had been sleeping beside the king’s bed. For more than two years while the king was in custody, Herbert had served as Charles’s gentleman of the bedchamber. During that time he had, though a parliamentarian himself, grown fond of the king, whose good humour in the face of adversity had impressed many who came into contact with him.
With Herbert’s help, Charles began to dress meticulously. In his memoirs, Herbert would famously tell how the king insisted on wearing two white shirts, so he would not shiver in the freezing air upon the scaffold and give the impression he was afraid.1 Herbert groomed Charles’s hair fastidiously and trimmed his beard. Though he had been appointed by Parliament, a diplomatic career had equipped him with the social graces necessary to serve a king. He had been present
the day before while the king heartbreakingly took leave of his two youngest children. The scene that followed was said to have reduced Cromwell to tears.
At the outbreak of war, Princess Elizabeth and Henry, Duke of Gloucester, had been taken into custody by Parliament. They spent the following years in the care of various families, including those of the Earl of Pembroke and the Duke of Northumbria. At the time of their father’s execution, Elizabeth was thirteen and Henry eight. The king had not seen them for eighteen months. He told Elizabeth she was no longer to think of her eldest brother, Charles, merely as her sibling, but as her sovereign. Then he said, ‘Sweetheart, you’ll forget this.’2 Elizabeth burst into tears and swore she would not forget, and that she would write down what her father told her – and so she did:
He told me he was glad I was come, and although he had not time to say much … he told me, he had forgiven all his Enemies, and hoped God would forgive them also; and commanded us, and all the rest of my Brothers and Sisters to forgive them: he bid me tell my Mother, That his thoughts never had strayed from her, and that his love should be the same to the last …
Charles also had serious matters to discuss with young Henry:
he took the Duke of Gloucester upon his knee, said, Sweetheart, now they will cut off thy Fathers head; (upon which words the child looked very steadfastly on him.) Mark child, what I say, they will cut off my head, and perhaps make thee a King: But mark what I say, you must not be a King so long as your Brother Charles and James do live; For they will cut off your Brothers heads, (when they can catch them) and cut off thy head too at the last … At which the child, sighing, said, ‘I will be torn in pieces first’. At these words, coming so unexpectedly from so young a child, rejoiced my father exceedingly.
And desired me not to grieve for him, for he should die a Martyr …
In The Hague, the Prince of Wales was frantically trying to bring pressure to have the execution abandoned. He wrote personally to Fairfax, pleading for mercy for his father. He also asked the States-General (the Dutch Parliament) for help. As a result, two Dutch ambassadors came and made direct representations to Parliament. At the prince’s request, the French ambassador also made a plea for mercy on behalf of Queen Henrietta Maria. Despite all this activity, the prince would later be criticised for not having travelled across Europe to solicit help directly from the crowned heads of as many states as possible. But the prince had done what he thought he should, though what he did was to no avail.
When daybreak came, the outlines of the frozen city were etched in frost. Europe was descending to the lowest trough of what was to become known as the Little Ice Age. The officer in charge of the king’s guard, Colonel Tomlinson, came to check on his prisoner. Through the barred windows the pallid morning light barely illuminated the room. Tomlinson saw that the king was ready. He was dressed in black, apart from the white lace of his shirts. As at his trial, he wore only two decorations: the Order of the Garter on his cloak and also on a ribbon around his neck. Against his funereal clothing, their symbolic brilliance made it clear that he saw himself as England’s martyr.
Less than a mile away across St James’s Park, muffled masses were already making their way towards Whitehall Palace to witness the execution. From Charing Cross they pressed under the palace’s massive red-brick Tudor gate towers and gathered around the scaffold erected against the Palladian façade of the royal Banqueting House. At ten o’clock a company of halberdiers commanded by Colonel Francis Hacker arrived at the palace to take Charles on his final journey. At this point, Colonel Tomlinson relinquished his role as the king’s jailer; Charles was now in the care of Colonel Hacker.
The procession left the palace for the short journey to Whitehall. Their route took them through St James’s Park. Unlike today, the park was enclosed and forbidden to the public. When Charles was a boy, it had been a zoo, set up by his father. There had been camels and even an elephant. In the lake, crocodiles had lurked. Now the lake was frozen over. All the animals had long since gone. A regiment of infantry now lined the route. The royal procession made a grand, if melancholy, sight. It was led by Colonel Hacker. The king was flanked by Bishop Juxon and Colonel Tomlinson, while immediately before and behind him walked his gentlemen-in-waiting, escorted by a company of halberdiers. Bright regimental banners fluttered incongruously against the skeletal trees. Drummers beat a rhythm like a dying heart.
When the entourage arrived at Whitehall Palace it became clear there was a hitch in the arrangements: death was not to be so swift. The king was placed under guard in the ornate cabinet-chamber which in happier times had been an anteroom to his bedroom. There was a fire burning in the grate and on the walls hung some of the finest paintings from Charles’s peerless art collection, which included masterpieces by Rembrandt, Caravaggio and his favourite, Titian. There were portraits of Charles, among them those by the incomparable wizard Anthony Van Dyck, who had done more than anyone to give Charles the appearance of a divine king.
Among Van Dyck’s portraits, the famous triple-head is interesting in the present context. It was produced to be sent to Italy so that the finest sculptor of the age, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, could carve a bust of the king. When he saw the painting, Bernini said the sitter was the saddest person he had ever seen and must surely die a violent death. Not only did the sculptor’s prophecy come true but his marble bust also had a violent end, perishing in the accidental fire that destroyed Whitehall Palace in 1698.
While Charles lingered among his paintings, Parliament had urgent business. Legal minds had discovered a problem. It had dawned on them that with the king’s death there was nothing to stop the Prince of Wales inheriting the throne. So, as the doomed king toasted his all too mortal toes by the fire, the judges hurried to pass a law stating there could be no successor. They made it illegal for anyone to declare the prince as king.
There was an even more pressing problem: the appointment of an executioner. Given the nature of the prisoner, the executioner could not be called for until the morning when the sentence was to be carried out. At the order of Colonel Hewson, troops went to the house of the public executioner, Richard Brandon, and found him at home; but his assistant Ralph Jones could not be found. So a very reluctant Brandon was taken alone under arrest with what equipment he could carry, and someone still had to be found to fill in for the headsman’s assistant. It was to remain a matter of conjecture whether Brandon, who brought the axe, was the man who wielded it.
Poised between life and death, the king prayed with Bishop Juxon. He pledged to God his forgiveness of those who were determined to obliterate the House of Stuart. It was one thing for a condemned king to forgive; as would soon become apparent, however, it was quite another for his heirs or followers to do the same.
While Oliver Cromwell and his closest companions patented the formula to make their revolution stick, another last-ditch drama was being played out around the condemned monarch. General Fairfax received a letter delivered by a courier from the Prince of Wales. When the general opened the envelope, he found two items. One was a piece of parchment, blank except for the prince’s signature and seal. The other was a letter explaining the meaning of the blank sheet: in return for his father’s life, the prince explained, the general could write his own terms, which he, as the heir to the throne, would see were obeyed. These were the heartfelt pleadings of a son to his enemies intent on executing his father,
deposing him from the royal dignity given him by God alone, who invested his person with it by a succession undisputed, or even of taking his life; the mere thought of which seems so horrible and incredible that it has moved us to address these presents to you, who now have power, for the last time, either to testify your fidelity, by reinstating your lawful king, and to restore peace to the kingdom – an honour never before given to so small a number as you – or be the authors of misery unprecedented in this country …3
The Prince of Wales was nothing if not thorough in his pleading. But the army had had enoug
h of trying to do deals with the House of Stuart.
For his part, Charles felt his downfall was due not to misrule but to a bad deed regarding Strafford. The betrayal had gnawed at him ever since. Sitting as a prisoner in his own bedroom, he resolved to say something about it on the scaffold.
There was another hold-up. A day or two before, Cromwell had found it a slow job to obtain sufficient signatories to the king’s death warrant. Now he was having difficulty getting signatures on the order for the executioner to carry out the sentence. The death warrant instructed three officers – Colonels Hacker, Huncks and Phayre (who was Herbert’s son-in-law) – to ensure that sentence was carried out. Now Huncks and Phayre refused to sign the order. In exasperation, Cromwell signed it himself and passed it to Hacker, who also signed.
