by Simon Parke
‘You set your people at war to keep hold of the trinkets of power. You care neither for the lives nor for the possessions of your subjects!’
Before Charles could reply, the colonel spat in the king’s face, the slobber hitting the royal left eye, which opened in shock and then closed.
Silence broke out in the Great Hall, the hush of shock.
‘God has justice in store,’ said Charles, wiping the soldier’s drivel with his handkerchief and returning to his seat. ‘Both for you and for me, my friend.’
‘God has justice in store!’ echoed a female voice from the gallery.
Charles recognized the voice and looked up to see Jane looking down. He offered the faintest of acknowledgements and hoped she would not declare her love; he would not want that here, as the spitting colonel climbed down from the stage and rejoined his men. He stood awkwardly with them, glaring at the audience. The crowd was stirred, none believing what they’d seen – the king spat upon – but concern was held in, with no obvious disturbance.
It was, however, the end of the day’s proceedings. Things had scarcely begun, yet already they were reckoned too broken for mending.
‘This court is no longer in session,’ said John Bradshawe, unsure how now to proceed.
‘So soon?’ asked Charles.
Bradshawe hoped that Molly would not hear of the morning’s events – though she would, for everyone would hear that a soldier had walked on stage, shouted at the king and then spat in his face.
‘What has happened to England?’ asked John Stafford, Hammond’s neighbour in the gallery. ‘That a subject gobs on his king!’
‘Indeed,’ said Hammond. ‘Can disrespect find better form than that?’ He would not mention the fist that had knocked his majesty over.
*
Bradshawe, Ludlow and a slightly drunk Marten insisted that Cromwell listen.
Their leader had been taking the air in St James’s Park, walking through the slush and snow with Ireton. The trial was a shambles to this point, and if God was here he was a master of disguise. Was the trial a sin? Charles had suggested as much and Elizabeth was angry in the kitchen; there was much on Oliver’s mind. So his son-in-law was his companion these days – almost his guard, ensuring no voice favourable to the king found his ear.
‘You fear I will say yes to the wrong person, Henry?’
And Henry smiled, though without joy. Oliver was a determined man but porous to the charm and pleading of another; Henry knew this . . . and therefore a danger to himself and the cause.
‘As the king is guarded, so is Oliver!’ joked Marten, as they approached the hunched couple. Soldiers walked not far away, mindful of royal assassins. There were rumours.
‘May the Lord’s work be done,’ said Bradshawe, striding forward.
‘Perhaps he will need less guarding after our news,’ said Ludlow, who thought Bradshawe an idiot. But it was to him the prison guards reported, as president of the court, and so he must be the bearer of the revelation.
‘The three witches approach,’ said Oliver when he saw them, and began to shoo them away, as a man who wanted peace. But they insisted he listen, and when Oliver talked over Bradshawe, Ludlow intervened.
‘He does not regret the killings,’ said Ludlow, catching Ireton’s eye.
‘Who?’ asked Cromwell.
‘His majesty.’
‘He spoke with you, Edmund?’ There was mockery in Cromwell’s tone, and perhaps a little jealousy, supposing it was true.
‘He has been speaking with his guards,’ said Ludlow. ‘Those who endure him at night as we must during the day.’
‘They sought me out,’ said Bradshawe, wishing to reclaim the story. ‘He does not speak with the court – but he speaks with his gaolers!’
‘And he tells them he does not regret the killings he caused,’ said Ludlow, wishing for absolute clarity in the chill London wind.
‘He says this?’ said Cromwell, whose disappointment was manifest.
‘The guards speak truthfully, I believe,’ said Bradshawe. ‘They say the king and his conscience claim no regrets at all.’
‘It is there in his attitude, Oliver,’ said Henry. ‘It should not surprise; we have known this.’
And they had known it, though still it surprised, to hear it spoken. They all sensed the darkness fall over their leader’s demeanour.
‘Then we must encourage regret,’ he said. ‘For regret is a most godly virtue. Let us now find ourselves a warming fire . . .’
*
For the following three days, the trial of the king continued, but in private.
‘Private – but not secret,’ said Oliver, still trying to reassure, for many felt uncomfortable with this change.
But a different spirit ruled them now, a harder spirit, with news of the prison guards’ words spreading fast. Oliver’s fury, evident to all, made short and forceful work of all legal quibbles and pained consciences. He could be so strong.
‘The king tells his gaolers he regrets not one single death,’ he’d say, ‘whereas I regret them all!’
For Ireton, nothing had changed. He’d thought it the best way to proceed all along, and the first two days of the trial did little to change his mind. In private session, without Lady Fairfax and the defendant, there would be fewer interruptions. And did the unrepentant king deserve any better? If he refused to acknowledge the court, did the court need to acknowledge him?
‘The king has cunning,’ said Ludlow, ‘but it is a silly cunning – one that loses him all his friends. My mother used to warn me against such behaviour. Silly cunning only makes a fool of you, Edmund, she’d say.’
Bradshawe reminded the private gathering of the charges against Charles: that he took up arms against parliament and invited foreign armies to invade England. And in the secrecy of their own company, evidence was easy to find on both counts, even if some army witnesses wondered whether it was truer to say that parliament had taken up arms against Charles. However, this attitude was not deemed helpful in the circumstances – it was certainly not a thought to offer the ferocious Lady Fairfax – and so the hearing continued without further regard for the matter.
The main point – as witness after witness established – was that the king had fought against the lawfully elected parliament. Who may or may not have started it was not pertinent at this present time.
And he’d certainly invited the Scots.
*
‘Have we perhaps met before, madam?’
‘I would not know, Mr Hammond.’
‘Yet you know my name.’
‘I know Satan’s name – but have never met him, to my knowledge.’
‘I hope I am not Satan, madam.’
She was a striking lady: something both hard and soft about her.
‘But related perhaps – for you are Mr Hammond, once of Carisbrooke Castle.’
‘I am. But—’
‘Where you failed to protect the king in his time of need.’
They were talking as the gallery emptied, having been sitting close to each other.
‘I protected the king better than any man!’ he complained in a loud voice, which he then regretted and hushed. He did not want his past made present here; it would not be well received. ‘No man could have done more for the king.’
‘But perhaps a woman did.’
And then it came to him, with a flood of fear . . . the ginger hair.
‘Might you be Mrs Whorwood?’ he queried. He remembered the warnings – and the rumours.
‘Maybe.’
‘I think more than maybe!’
‘A name is not an offence, as far as I know,’ said Jane. ‘Though who can be sure these days?’
Hammond would reassure her, pacify her. She appeared nervous in manner. ‘Nothing is ordinary, I grant you, madam. These d
ays are difficult.’
‘Difficult?’ He had clearly upset her. ‘Our king is crucified by lies and you announce it as merely “difficult”?’
‘Our king has my support, Mrs Whorwood, but he lied to me every day I knew him.’ This woman needed pulling in a little.
‘How can a king lie to one with no right to know his business? He does not keep you informed, for he is king and you a subject . . . a subject in the pocket of Cromwell.’
‘How would you know anything about such things?’ He was hurt by that jibe.
‘Cromwell wrote you letters. He was like a weight on your back, like a rider on a horse, exhorting you to imprison the king more securely and to listen only to the army.’
This talk was too familiar. ‘Letters are a private affair. I don’t know how—’
‘And you never read mine – or those of the king?’ Hammond kept silence. ‘And on occasion,’ she added in amazement, ‘the king found you searching his bedroom while you imagined him busy elsewhere . . . searching the bedroom of the king!’
Did she know about the punch? He hoped she did not. But then really, why did he even concern himself with these matters now? What could it change?
‘I’m not against you, Mrs Whorwood, believe me.’
‘But are you for me?’
‘For you?’
‘I think I am clear.’
He wished to be out of the courtroom, to wash himself of the second day of the trial. But this woman pressed him, and blocked him from the staircase. They were now alone in the gallery, all others gone.
‘And what exactly would one who was for you, be for?’
‘There is still time.’ Now she was whispering.
‘Time for what?’
‘Do you believe the king should die?’ she asked.
Hammond looked around for snooping ears. There were none as far as he could see, though still a loud commotion below him, as soldiers struggled to empty the hall.
‘I am not in favour of such a thing,’ he said, ‘and for that reason, I – and many others – are not sitting with the commissioners.’ He had made a stand, and at some personal risk. Did she not appreciate this? ‘You are hardly the king’s only—’
‘Then join with those who would see him free!’
Hammond laughed. ‘You imagine the king can be stolen from Whitehall, so soaked with soldiery?’
‘We can take him in St James’s Park.’
‘Not so easily done.’
‘We have a guard on our side. They will walk him there.’
‘Go back to your family, Mrs Whorwood.’
She drew nearer to him; she was a striking woman.
‘You could visit Charles, make him aware of the plans. Tell him of our designs, that we have a boat ready for France.’
‘Another one? Every boat in England has been ready at one time or another.’
Her face came close. He saw the skin, rutted by childhood disease, the blue-grey eyes alive with a plan.
‘This is our moment – if you will join us.’
‘You must think of something else to do,’ he said moving back, stumbling on a chair. ‘Really you must. This can’t—’
‘We will do it without you.’
‘Really?’ Was that a threat? ‘And if I inform on your mischief?’
‘You do not have the courage, Mr Hammond. I’ve always known you for a coward.’
And then she was gone down the stairs, as if too busy to stay with one so dumb, so lacking in spirit; and Hammond stood alone in the gallery. Should he go after her?
*
On 27 January, Charles, king of England, was declared guilty of the charges laid against him.
In the quiet privacy of the Painted Chamber, the English monarch was declared ‘a tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy to the commonwealth of England’. The following day, he was brought again to the Great Hall to hear the outcome of his trial. Not all wished for this, Henry included, but Cromwell was insistent that all must be public; that there must be nothing private about their royal dealings, nothing covered over.
‘We do what we do in the light!’ he said, though the clouds were dark that day.
The hall was packed once again as the commissioners made their entrance and took their scarlet seats, less comfortable than they looked. They settled nervously, aware of their decision and troubled by it – or some at least. How would events conspire? The crowd settled, more silent than on those first two days. Some commissioners feared they’d revolt, there in the hall, and murder them all. What could the soldiers do if such an action was taken?
‘I would like to speak,’ said Charles, from his seat on the stage.
‘You will not speak,’ replied John Bradshawe. He was wearing a scarlet robe but kept his metal hat, which he felt he might need today, particularly on his return home to Molly; for he knew what must be done, the Lord’s will in the matter. Charles again demanded that he be heard, that he had something particular to say, hitherto unexpressed.
‘You would do well to hear me,’ he said.
‘I think not.’
‘For what I report is most material to the peace of the kingdom,’ Charles added. ‘Most material.’
There was a compelling insistence in his words, as if he now spoke the truth – and he won a response in the commissioners’ ranks. This was what they had wanted to hear. Perhaps even now matters could be altered?
‘Is he offering concessions?’ said one.
‘Has this stubborn little man finally seen sense?’ said another.
Though most commonly expressed was the question: ‘Does he mean abdication?’ Many hoped he did.
Everyone was looking at Bradshawe, who was looking at Cromwell. John Downes, a row behind them, leaned forward in agreement with the king’s request.
‘I say we hear him on this matter,’ he said.
John Downes was the MP for Arundel in Sussex. He was a man made rich from his dealings in confiscated royalist estates. He was also a close friend of Oliver Cromwell – though not today.
‘What ails thee, John?’ asked Cromwell witheringly.
‘Only the sense that . . . that perhaps the king should be heard, Oliver?’
‘And providence spat upon?’
‘I hardly said that.’
‘This man has not recognized this court and yet wishes to lecture us further?’
‘Well . . .’
‘Sit back, John, sit back. I have wrath to spare today.’
The commissioners ceased to confer with each other. Ireton looked at Downes, while Cromwell turned to Bradshawe, who turned down the king’s request.
‘You have not owned us as a court, neither have you removed your hat – therefore permission is refused.’
And so beneath Richard II’s hammer-beam roof in the Great Hall of Westminster, the verdict was delivered by the president, John Bradshawe, ‘that the king, for the crimes contained in the charge, should be carried back to the place from whence he came, and thence to the place of execution, where his head should be severed from his body’.
There was a communal gasp: the death of a king announced.
Some said, ‘They are killing God’s anointed one.’
‘What sort of a day is this?’ asked a commissioner to himself. He would not sign the warrant, he knew that now. He would slip away, avoid the task and he cared not for the consequences.
But suddenly Charles was calling out. ‘I may speak after sentence, I may speak after sentence!’ he claimed, with panic now in his voice. ‘I may speak after the sentence!’
But he was taken away, surrounded by soldiers. Some said that he looked like Christ, this narrative growing in force. They’d reached down to lift him from his chair, but with a royal wave of the hand he insisted on standing alone ‘without rude handling’. He protested a
s he left, though he did not shout, for kings do not shout.
‘I am not suffered to speak after sentence?’ he said, in exaggerated wonder. ‘Is this to be believed? The king is not suffered to speak? Then imagine what justice other people may expect!’
News of the verdict spread through the streets and the first trestles were set up outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall. They would become the scaffold.
‘Old sanctities mean nothing now,’ remarked one observer.
‘The people of England have spoken,’ said another.
‘This was not the work of the people,’ said a third. ‘It’s the passion of the demented few!’
‘The mandate is from heaven,’ said another. ‘What further mandate is needed?’
While young Samuel Pepys, absconding from St Paul’s School to hear the outcome of the trial, told his friends that if he had to preach a sermon on the king, his text would be, ‘The memory of the wicked shall rot.’
‘You think he’s wicked?’
‘Of course he’s wicked!’
‘How can a king be wicked?’
‘The larger the throne, the bigger the wickedness.’
While up the hill, in the square by the Charing Cross, the republican preacher Hugh Peters chose Isaiah 14.18–20 to capture the day: ‘All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, everyone in his own house. But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and as the raiment of those who are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcase trodden under foot. Thou shall not be joined with them in burial because thou hast destroyed thy land and slain thy people! The seed of evil doers shall never be renowned!’
Though inside the hall, Cromwell had another matter on his mind. The judges were trying to escape.
*
He had put soldiers on the doors to ensure no one left, as some commissioners had tried to do. Cromwell knew their game. They did not wish to put their name to the death warrant, did not desire to be named as regicides, fearing the consequences . . . and made discreet attempts to scuttle away and join the crowd.
