by Simon Parke
‘No one is to leave this hall, not until I give the order,’ he said to the guards. He then returned to the crowded dais where a table, pen and ink had been set out. He was concerned – deeply concerned, as he surveyed the turbulent scene. It was clear that certain commissioners had already managed to exit before the signing. They had disappeared into the morning; some said as many as nine. The killers of the king could ill afford to lose more. They needed the company.
‘You know I have never been for a king – even a nice one,’ said Henry Marten, with alcohol on his breath. ‘One man is not wise enough to rule a whole nation. Do you not agree, Oliver?’
‘Certainly not this one, Henry.’
‘You know one who is?’
They leaned together over the table where the parchment was spread out, handwritten in iron gall ink: the death warrant of a king. It required their signatures before it could be given to the executioner; and when Henry Marten flicked ink at Cromwell, Cromwell – bullish and playful – flicked it back and Henry laughed, which some found inappropriate. But that was Henry for you – republican, drunkard and, according to Charles, ‘an ugly rascal and whore-master’.
‘Richard, you are loitering a little,’ said Ireton to Ingoldsby, who hung back from the action.
Ireton was the last person he wished to see. ‘Only waiting my turn,’ replied Richard, wishing he were well away from this place.
‘Definitely loitering, Richard, and looking like a fellow who wishes he were not here – which for an army man and Leveller seems strange.’
‘Perhaps I wish there were another way.’
‘I’m sure we all wish that, Richard, but events have made matters very clear, would you not say?’
This was Richard Ingoldsby’s first day of attendance. He had refused any part in the king’s trial until now and regretted his presence this morning. He would have left straightway after the sentencing, but got caught in conversation with Miles Corbet, of all people, and then, when he was free to leave, he’d been stopped by the soldiery at the door – a soldier stopped by soldiers.
‘Come, Richard, it is for this that you fought,’ said Ireton.
And with that he was escorted to the table, where Cromwell took hold of his hand and placed in it the quill.
‘This parchment cries out for your hand, dear Richard,’ said Cromwell with kindness, for this hesitant man was his cousin, whose politics Oliver trusted. His heart was true – just wavering a little. Oliver glanced down at the warrant as Richard inked the quill. He counted the signatures and seals . . . Bradshawe’s the first name in the column, his own name third, and then moving down, Ludlow the thirtieth to sign, and drunk Marten at thirty-two on the list. Richard would be the thirty-fourth; they still needed more. Where was Isaac Ewer?
‘There are fifty-nine commissioners on or around this platform,’ said Ireton.
‘Then we have clearly lost some from the trial.’
‘We have lost nine from the trial, Oliver – and seventy-six from our first choosing.’
This was a painful number.
‘The royalist cause is a muscular body in this land,’ said Oliver.
‘A dead hand has a firm grip.’
‘And this death will make a breach, Henry, you know this? A rough breach in our land between army and country.’
Ireton heard the panic again, saw the hesitant eyes. ‘Do you return to caution, Father, like a paralysed man on a ledge? Will I again need to persuade you?’
Oliver remembered the stars above Pontefract and gathered himself. ‘There is no caution now,’ he said. ‘No caution, I am quite decided.’
‘Good.’
‘We must prosecute this matter with speed and strength – and I will ensure that it is done.’ And then louder. ‘I will ensure that it is done!’ Some heads turned.
‘I like your resolution,’ said Ireton, relieved.
‘We will cut off his royal head with the crown still on it, if we must!’
*
‘The king is saved!’
Hammond looked confused.
‘He has said he will not do it!’ said Jane, full of rushing and excited thoughts. ‘Have you not heard, Mr Hammond? That he quite refuses?’
‘Quite refuses what? And who?’
Mrs Whorwood had discovered his lodgings and confronted him in much elation. She embodied urgency at his door – but would not be allowed in. She would stay outside; he would keep her there. How had she found him? And further, did he really wish to speak with her, having been called a coward, which rankled greatly? Robert Hammond was no coward.
‘And if Young Gregory will not do it,’ she said, oblivious to his thoughts, ‘then no one will do it! We are saved! The king is saved!’
‘You must slow a little, Mrs Whorwood . . . and explain what you speak.’
She must slow a great deal. Hammond had been attempting some maintenance of the chimney and was still wiping soot from his hands and thoughts from his mind when he responded to the frenzied knocking on his door; she had a frenzied way of knocking.
‘Brandon will not execute the king! He has said this.’
Richard Brandon was called ‘Young Gregory’ after his father, who had been the common hangman; like father, like son, Richard now wore the fatal cloak with pride. Or did he? For Brandon had been approached in secret to execute the king, but declared in public that he never would do such a thing. After all, he’d worked for Charles, he said; the king had employed him. He’d beheaded the Earl of Stafford on the king’s orders. So how could he now kill his former employer – and the monarch at that?
‘He said so publicly in an alehouse in Whitechapel,’ explained Jane. ‘He has said that he would not kill the king!’ Here were new possibilities for delay and escape. Young Gregory would hardly lie about such a thing – not in Whitechapel, where he was born!
So Charles was safe for now, surely?
*
This was to be a public killing. They would erect the scaffold in the wide streets of Whitehall where a crowd could gather from Charing Cross down to Westminster. Cromwell and Ireton had disagreed about an open-door trial and Ireton felt vindicated; it had been a disaster. But both were persuaded of a public execution. As Ludlow had said, his sins had been public, so why not his end?
‘Let as many as possible see the death of the king,’ said Ireton.
Queen Elizabeth – who he so admired – had wished the murder of Mary Stuart to be kept out of public view, a secret undertaking. But times change, needs alter and neither Cromwell nor Henry saw the benefit of some private violence in a dark place.
‘A public death does rather end his attempts at escape,’ said Ireton.
‘We must hope so,’ said Oliver. ‘Or truly he is the messiah.’
‘And we do the right thing . . . we do the right thing.’ Was Henry now nervous? ‘Pretended negotiation or plans for escape – the king knew only these two ways.’
A pause.
‘I waited for God, Henry,’ said Cromwell, feeling the need to explain. ‘I waited only for God.’
‘And he has spoken?’
‘Indeed he has.’
Better late than never, thought Henry. ‘And when was that?’
Cromwell wished to tell Henry of this, perhaps it would calm them both. ‘He spoke one cold night in a field outside Pontefract.’
‘As to the shepherds, glad tidings.’
‘He gave me there a peace that had long eluded me, Henry – the peace that passes all understanding.’ Ireton nodded. He did not mind how Cromwell came to his views, just that he stayed with them. ‘And you?’ said Oliver. ‘How did the Lord speak with you on the matter?’
‘Me?’ How would he phrase this? ‘He spoke earlier to me, Oliver – with the army at Windsor.’
‘How so?’
It would not sound as pious
as Oliver’s story; but piety is not always calm.
‘I was listening to Wood at the time. He reported on the king’s invitation to the Scots to invade our land, while he smiled benignly at parliament. Wood showed me the king’s words in a letter, poorly coded, and I thought: What a shit! It was a rage that passes all understanding – still is.’
Oliver took it surprisingly well. ‘So we came by different paths to the same clearing.’
‘Indeed, Oliver. My path was just a little quicker,’ he said, without a smile.
Oliver felt better for having spoken of God with Henry; they did not speak much of faith.
‘We do God’s work in the light of day and without shame,’ confirmed Cromwell. The execution of the king was not about revenge; but about God’s work performed in the light.
So a scaffold was erected in the wide street of Whitehall.
*
His majesty’s rooms were adequate. One’s standards drop as imprisonment stretches, and after Hurst he was just glad of a curtain. But he could not forget, could not un-hear the truth that he had once lived and entertained in palaces. And as he pondered a drab picture on the wall – a poorly painted master and dog – the sense of loss almost overwhelmed him. How he missed his pictures, his own art collection, comprising rather finer works than this . . . it had all started in Spain, of course, inspired by his visit to the Madrid court in 1623. Different days – but he’d become a knowledgeable art collector; he liked to think so and people had said as much to him.
‘Such taste, your majesty, such wonder on your walls!’
While in Spain, he’d sat for a sketch by the court favourite Velázquez – a picture he’d sadly mislaid in his recent travels – and acquired works there by Titian and Correggio, among others. And then on his return, and at some public expense, he’d commissioned Rubens’ masterpiece on the ceiling of the Banqueting House, so near to him now. He hoped to see the work one more time; it would both comfort and inspire.
His art collection had grown considerably after he purchased the Duke of Mantua’s paintings, which offered him Raphael, Caravaggio and Mantegna in their pomp. And from there it had simply carried on growing, for he was a civilized man who wished to civilize the nation, and so what better use of public funds than the acquisition of works by Bernini, Bruegel, da Vinci, Holbein and Tintoretto? These were improving things – not to mention the self-portraits by Dürer and Rembrandt. He didn’t know how many paintings he possessed; you do not count such things, you simply gaze. He had perhaps not gazed enough. But he would give them now to his friends and family, that they might gaze . . . and be civilized. Or perhaps there would be a royal gallery in his memory, where his collection might be displayed and his passion and taste recalled?
‘Charles – a man of great taste,’ they would say, and that was a pleasing thought.
But civilized times were now a fading light. Little by little, he’d travelled far from those days, though when he started the walk, he could not tell. And after Hurst Castle – a nadir of hospitality – these sparse rooms of containment were adequate. He spent Sunday in prayer, refusing to see friends, for the time left was too precious. He might die tomorrow; he wasn’t sure, no one seemed sure. When would he die? You should know when you will die. He was told they had difficulty finding an executioner, which once might have pleased him, but did not do so today. He wished for a good axeman, experienced and the best, rather than some hastily discovered extra. Was not Brandon available? Brandon was competent, he’d seen him at work. Or at least heard of his work . . . Charles had not liked to watch, particularly Stafford. How could he have watched that killing?
And now Charles was remembering again – too much time to remember – and the pain ever fresh: the execution of the Earl of Stafford, his dear friend. It was Brandon with the axe that day. Charles had never found peace since, not in a complete manner; regrets lingered in the flesh between his bones and none more virulent than this dark stain, permeating his physic. So, of course, this was God’s judgement on him: a right and inevitable judgement for tossing his friend to the parliamentary hunt to save his royal self. Stafford had even been tried in the same hall as Charles, as though prophesying his royal betrayer’s end.
And in the meantime, the banging and hammering outside, ceaseless to his ears, the noise becoming louder and quite intolerable. Charles complained to his guards.
‘The builders make too much noise,’ he said.
‘Scaffolds do not build themselves,’ came the cheerful reply, though after some discussion his gaolers took him and his dogs for a walk in St James’s Park, where it was quieter and the construction of the scaffold less invasive.
*
‘Have we found an executioner?’ asked Oliver. They met in the upper room of a hostelry off Whitehall. Elizabeth had said they could not meet at Drury Lane, since she was talking to a man about the damp. This is what she said.
‘I will do it myself, sir, if necessary.’
Oliver could well imagine Colonel Harrison with axe in hand; it was not so different from a sword, though you were more keenly watched at an execution than in battle, where each looked only to themselves and their survival.
‘I trust it will not be necessary, Thomas, but your straight heart does you credit at a time when some have become enfeebled in the cause.’
‘Brandon is clear that he will not do it and tells everyone so,’ said Harrison. ‘He finds himself the toast of Whitechapel!’
‘An aspiration for us all,’ said Cromwell.
‘He says that he will not stoop so low as to kill his king. That is what he says. The common hangman finds this death too offensive!’
‘Everyone draws their conscience with different lines,’ said Oliver wearily.
‘And this line is drawn in a sewer, Lieutenant-General – for here is the most reasonable death he will ever supervise.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Yet he will not do it!’
‘Brandon will do it,’ said Ireton, who had been sitting quiet, keeping his powder dry, as sometimes he did. Harrison found Ireton a cold fish – not really a soldier, and, lest anyone forget, a rude supporter of the king at Putney. In Harrison’s mind, if Mr Ireton had now changed his tone, it was all about his own advancement.
‘He has said that he will not,’ replied Harrison.
‘And when did the lackey Brandon become famous for the truth?’ asked Henry.
‘He has said plainly, he will not do it; that is all I say.’ Harrison would not step down in this matter.
‘He saves face, that is all.’
‘We want it done well,’ said Oliver, seeking peace between the two. ‘A clean cut – not some wretch but a craftsman . . . kind and clean, like the Frenchman who took Anne Boleyn.’
‘Thirty pounds and the contents of the king’s pockets,’ said Henry.
‘That is the offer to Brandon?’
‘It is.’
‘And you trust him, Henry?’
‘He will be paid after his work, to ensure seemly behaviour. And he’ll have an assistant on the scaffold – one known to you – to guide him if he falters in his commission.’
‘One known to me?’
‘Known to us all, Oliver.’
And now Oliver wondered: who?
*
On Monday, the day before his execution, Charles was in a gay mood. He was playful even with his guards, who preferred him morose.
‘You must take special care of me today,’ he said. ‘For I meet with God shortly and will tell him about you all, about your ways and manners.’
‘You’ll answer only for yourself,’ said Edward Hobbs, who had fought at both Naseby and Preston and limped now for his pains, the victim of a Scottish pistol invited south by Charles.
‘And I shall delight to do so. I suspect my hearing will be more cheerful than those of recent days.’ Th
e guards looked at each other but Charles was rather pleased with himself. ‘Yes, I believe I shall enjoy the cheerfulness of heaven; and I wish it for your faces today.’
Hobbs presumed that Charles would go to hell, for how would it be heaven, if this deceitful snake were there? And today, Charles allocated his possessions, for which he no longer had need. He informed Bishop Juxon, who had led him in morning prayer, that his dogs were to be sent to his wife, Henrietta, in France.
‘She always loved them, even if she hasn’t seen them for a while,’ he said. ‘They can become reacquainted. They will all like that.’
And a small casket of jewels was to be given to his children. It was all he presently had to offer, apart from some books – precious books on religion – which would go to friends . . . and maybe one or two to family. He heard that his daughter Elizabeth was a keen reader of theology, which encouraged him.
There was a knock on the door, which was unlocked by a guard and pushed open. Charles looked up, surprised. Standing in the doorway were his two youngest children: Elizabeth, aged thirteen, and little Henry, Duke of Gloucester, aged ten. They hesitated for a moment . . . so the king reached out towards them and they approached with a curtsey and a bow. It was over a year since they’d spoken, since he’d last seen them – and how they’d grown, become quite grown-up! And as surprise quietened, he wondered about his words. He wished to see them, most certainly, and would explain why he must die and what they must do. These were important matters.
‘And how are we this day, my prince and princess?’ he asked. ‘I hope everyone is being kind?’
They nodded, as though to a stranger.
‘Then that is good news.’
To Elizabeth, her father looked different: greyer, more weary . . . and thinner than when they had met at Syon House, a place of rare good memories.
‘You look tired, Father. And ill.’
‘I sleep variously and the food is not quite what your mother and I once knew. But I forgive the cooks, and I hope God will too.’
When held at Hampton Court, Charles had been allowed to see his children. They would meet at Syon House in Isleworth, the Duke of Northumberland’s home, sometimes for one day, sometimes for two. They had been good times together, riding in the grounds and walking along the Thames by the Church of All Saints. But when he’d fled from Hampton, he’d fled also from his offspring; and his letters had become less frequent over the year, his mind taken up with other matters.
