CHAPTER THE FIFTH CHARLES THE FIRST (CONCLUDED).
SUCH an unfortunate sovereign as Charles is a melancholy subject to dwell upon, but we must not cut him short though his contemporaries cruelly served him so. With a melancholy forboding of what was to come, the king, on the 3rd of November, 1640, opened the Long Parliament. One of its earliest acts was to release from prison our learned friend Mr. Prynne, and to give him £5000 damages for his detention. On hearing the decision he declared he would live no longer like a Prynne, but like a prince; and by way of a beginning he came down one flight of stairs, and had "2 pair, Mr. Prynne," instead of "3 pair, Mr. Prynne," marked on the door-post of his chambers.
Strafford, who felt that his turn would very soon come, remained out of town as long as he could, under the idea that, in conformity with the proverb, "Out of sight out of mind," the Commons, if they did not see him, would never think of him. Charles, however, wrote to him, telling him that "to keep so long out of sight he must, indeed, be out of his mind," and insisted on his coming up to town to take his place in Parliament. He had scarcely entered the House of Lords before Mr. Pym appeared at the bar to impeach Thomas Earl Strafford in the name of all the Commons of England. The earl was taken to the Tower; and the chief secretary, Windebank, had he not discovered something in the wind, which caused him to take to flight, would assuredly have been obliged to follow the favourite, or even to come in with him neck and neck, which means, in this instance, neck or nothing. Finch, the Lord Keeper, was next proceeded against, but, having made one speech in his own defence, he availed himself of the natural qualities of the Finch family, by taking to flight, or to speak more characteristically, he "hopped the twig," and fled to Holland. Several others were threatened with Parliamentary vengeance, and Berkeley was actually arrested while sitting as a peer in his ermine, which he said had been done because the mob had resolved to undermine the Constitution.
On the 19th of January, 1641, Mr. Prideaux brought in a bill to regulate the holding of Parliaments. Its object was to provide for their being summoned by the Lords in case of the refusal of the king, or by the Sheriffs in default of the Lords, or on the failure of King, Lords, and Sheriffs, the thing was to be done by the people. There was, by this measure, to be a new Parliament once in three years, which was allowing rather amply for wear and tear; and though Charles was very reluctant, he ultimately gave his consent to the arrangement. Those very ill-used gentlemen, the bishops, who are always selected as a mark when the spirit of revolution is abroad taking random shots at everything venerable, were of course not allowed on this occasion to escape, and the Commons voted them most unceremoniously out of Parliament.
The great event of the session, however, was the trial of Lord Strafford, who on the morning of Monday, the 22nd of March, boated it, or rather barged it, up from the Tower to Westminster. Everything, even the tide was against him, and the Earl of Arundel, who was notoriously his enemy, acted as High Steward at the trial. The impeachment contained twenty-eight articles, every one of them being capital, so that if Strafford had possessed twenty heads, it is quite clear that the deep revenge of his accusers "had stomach for them all." Strafford's reply was written out on two hundred sheets of paper, but a good bold text hand must have been employed, for the two hundred sheets, as well as the articles of impeachment, were all got through on the first day of the trial.
It is rather a strange way of proceeding to take the reply before hearing evidence in support of the charge; but such was the practice on this momentous occasion. Arundel next called upon the managers of the Commons to bring forward their proofs, and Pym began a very roundabout address in the fashion of the period. The speech of Pym was a reiteration of the charges in the impeachment, served up with a garniture of his own eloquence. Strafford declared it was a conspiracy, of course, for it is a curious fact that the most flagrant criminals have always been—if they are to be believed, which we need scarcely say they are not—the victims of a cruel combination against injured innocence. Strafford asked for time to plead, but he had not taken out a summons in the regular way, and accordingly only half an hour was awarded him. He nevertheless made such good use of this short time, that he made a capital speech, and concluded with a puzzle almost as good as the old original inquiry, with reference to the red herring and the sack of coals. * "For if," said he, "the one thousand misdemeanors will not make a felony, how will twenty-eight misdemeanors make a treason?"
* Every one knows, or ought to know, the question of the
arithmetical enthusiast: "If a red herring costs three-
halfpence, what will a sack of coals come to?" Ans.—
Ashes..
The trial was continued from day to day, and on the 10th of April Pym walked knowingly up to the bar with a variety of nods and winks, to intimate that he had a matter of vast importance to communicate. The assembly having ordered the door to be locked to prevent intrusion—as if the housemaid might have wandered in with her broom—there was a general cry of "Now then, what is it? Let's have it out without all this mystery." Pym hereupon produced a copy of notes taken at a meeting of the privy council, in which Strafford was reported to have told the king that he was "'absolved and loosed from all rule and government.'" The point was considered a strong one; but if Strafford had told Charles he was the Emperor of Morocco, and might turn all his subjects into morocco slippers by trampling them under his feet, the ministers having merely said so would not have made the fact, and he could not have been liable for it unless it had really happened. Verba non acta seemed, however, to be the motto of his judges, who took the word for the deed in numerous instances. Strafford having made the best answer he could to this part of the charge, was told by Arundel, that if he had anything more to say, the sooner he said it the better, for his judges were very anxious to have the pleasure of condemning him. The fact was, that the customary sympathy of Englishmen for a poor fellow in a mess, was beginning to show itself, and the Commons feared that the trial would not "keep" a great deal longer if they did not speedily make an end of it. The matter was accordingly hurried on, and on the 21st of April, the bill of attainder passed the Commons by a very large majority. The numbers were 204 against 59, which of course did not include the "tellers," for if it had done so, Hume, Hallam, and the rest of us, must have been comprised, for we are all of us the "tellers" of this sad story.
When the bill went up to the peers, their lordships were not at all in a hurry to despatch it, and the Commons kept sending up messages to know "How about that little Bill?" and begging that the Upper House would immediately settle it. It was rumoured that Strafford intended to escape, but it was rather idle to speculate upon the intentions of a man who was utterly unable to accomplish them. He offered a bribe of £22,000 to Balfour, the Lieutenant of the Tower; but that virtuous individual scorned the filthy dross, though some brute, who has no appreciation of the great and good, has hinted that Balfour either expected more, or was afraid that what was offered would not be forthcoming.
Charles, who was very anxious to make the favourite safe, though the odds were terribly against him, sent for the Lords and Commons, whom he begged, when drawing up their sentence, to draw it as mild as possible. He said he had listened to the evidence, and he really did not see how they could commit the earl. But Pym replied, sotto voce, that "none are so blind as those who won't see;" and Charles could elicit nothing satisfactory. At the next sitting of the Parliament a furious mob was collected outside, and the Lords naturally expressed their disinclination to being bullied into haste on the subject of the bill of attainder. Upon this, one Dr. Burgess, who had some weight with the people, went out to disperse them, and though he said some sharp things which caused that intolerable nuisance—a wag—to cry out, "Come, Burgess, none of your sauce!" he succeeded in his object.
The state of nervous agitation in which the whole country was plunged at about this period may be conceived by a little anecdote which is told on the best authority—that is to say, the best that happens to be available. Sir Walter Earl was in the midst of a cock-and-bull story about some plot that had been hatching to make a sort of girandola of the Parliament, by blowing it up with a splendid display of fireworks, in the midst of which the Speaker was to have gone off like a Jack-in-the-box, when the members, who were shivering and shaking like a grove of aspens, were startled by the following incident:—Two very corpulent members happening to stand upon one plank, which was rather the worse for wear, caused the floor to crack, and the Commons thought it was all up, or rather all down, with them. The utmost confusion prevailed, and somebody at once started off to fetch the train-bands, who acted as the police of the period. It turned out to be a false alarm, or to speak more correctly, a real alarm resting on false premises, for the flaw in the floor had been the cause of this not altogether groundless terror.
On the 7th of May the Lords passed the bill of attainder against Strafford, as well as another bill, abrogating the power of the king to dissolve the Parliament. The House was thin, and it may have happened that the recent accident with the two fat members in the Commons operated as a warning to corpulent peers not to attend till their locus standi had been looked to by the carpenter.
It now remained to be seen whether Charles would give his consent to the execution of the favourite, and poor Strafford feeling that his life hung upon a thread, sent a long yarn, in the shape of a letter, to his royal master. The king summoned his privy council to advise him what step to take, when honest Jack Juxon, the plain-sailing Bishop of London, exclaimed, bluntly, "I'll tell you what it is, your majesty; if you've any doubts about his guilt don't you go and sign his bill of attainder for all the Bills—no, nor the Bobs, nor the Dicks—in Christendom." Others, however, gave him opposite advice, and the scene ended by his resolving to give his assent, though he did so with his pocket-handkerchief before his eyes, but whether from emotion or a cold in his head is still an "open question" with all historians. On the 12th of May, 1641, poor Strafford met his doom with such heroic fortitude that, though he became shorter by a head in a physical sense, his moral stature was considerably heightened in the eyes of posterity.
The death of Strafford was the signal for the abandonment of office by several of his friends, who thought it better to live with resignation than die with resignation at this very trying juncture. Bills were passed for abolishing the Star-Chamber, and the Court of High Commission, as well as for preventing the Parliament from being dissolved, except by its own consent; so that Charles became like a king in a game of skittles, whose downfall was only a question of time and circumstance.
Being dreadfully in want of a little loyalty to comfort him, and finding very little in England—and that of the weakest kind—the sovereign paid a visit to Scotland, where he knew he could have as much as he wanted, if he chose to pay for it. His visit to that country was fast coming to a close when news reached him of a rebellion in Ireland, where the descendants of the early settlers, who were for settling everybody, and had taken the name of the "Loras of the Pale," were causing numbers to "kick the bucket."
The republican spirit had now broken out in full force; and the more the king went on doing what he was asked, the more the Commons went on being dissatisfied. At length he determined to try a bit of firmness, and walked into the House of Commons one morning to demand the impeachment of five members, two of whom were Pym and Hampden. Charles entered the assembly quite alone, and walking up to the chair of the Speaker, who had risen on the king's arrival, his majesty glided into it. He stated that he had come to take the five members into custody; but there was something so derogatory in the idea of "every monarch his own policeman," that the Commons Were rather disgusted, and greeted him with shouts of "Privilege! Privilege!"
Having made up his mind that "this sort of thing would not do," he determined to go out of town, and repaired to York, where he was soon joined by a party of volunteers more select than numerous. Charles was in that state of cashlessness so often ascribed by history to kings, who, nominally possessed of a crown, are positively not worth a shilling.
He had sold his wife's jewels, and laid out the produce in arms and ammunition, which he gave out as far as they would go to his few friends; but the distribution was a mournful business. There were scarcely swords enough to go round, and the gunpowder was served out in little packets like so many doses of salts to the small band of royalists. They mustered the money for a manifesto, in which Essex, one of his apostate generals, was denounced in very large type; and the king having corrected the proof of the poster, ordered one hundred to be worked off and stuck up at the earliest opportunity. His majesty and suite—which Strype tells us was short and suite—repaired to Nottingham, where the cause of the sovereign got a sort of lift by the hoisting of the royal standard.
When Charles found it necessary to draw the sword, he felt that he had nothing else to draw, for his funds were quite exhausted. Everything seemed to go against him, and even the elements themselves were unfavourable, for the standard which his friends had found it so difficult to hoist, was blown down, and came rattling through a skylight on to the heads of the royalists. The civil war had now regularly commenced, and the first battle was fought at Edge Hill, in Warwickshire, where Prince Rupert—the inventor of mezzotinto engraving—left the print of his sword, and several proofs of his valour, on the ranks of the king's enemies. After fighting all day the two armies put up for the night, and facing each other the next morning, they evidently did not like each other's looks, for both parties retired. Had the king's troops gone to London, they might have done some good; but they loitered about Reading, and by the time they got to Turn-ham Green, it was occupied by twenty-four thousand men, though where they managed to turn 'em in at Turnham Green is somewhat mysterious.*
* It seems more probable that the twenty-four thousand
Parliamentary troops were stationed in London than that so
many were crammed into the little suburb specified.
On the 15th of April, the Parliamentarians invested Reading, but the king having nothing to invest, could not compete for this eligible investment. Essex, who had managed the transaction, did not continue long a holder, but fell back to Thame, where a skirmish took place that would have been literally a tame affair if the illustrious Hampden had not perished in the mêlée.
Essex was one of the worst men possible to be chosen as a leader, for he had an unconquerable propensity to gib—which was the only invincibility he possessed—and he was consequently falling back whenever he should have been going forward. He had gibbed from Reading to Thame, and he now gibbed again from Thame to London, where it became a saying among the common people, "Oh, that's Essex: I know him by the cut of his jib."
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The civil war continued to rage with varying success until the battle of Marston Moor, where the royalists, under Prince Rupert, sustained a defeat they never recovered from, and the only use they could make of their right and left wing was to fly for safety. After this reverse, Charles attempted to get up a treaty called the Treaty of Uxbridge, which, after twenty days of wrangling between the Commissioners of the Parliament and those sent by the king—the former wanting everything and the latter conceding nothing—fell completely to the ground. Cromwell had contrived that Sir Thomas, now Lord Fairfax, should be appointed General of the Parliamentary Army, so that the responsibility of failure should rest upon that individual; while the wily brewer, who knew how to take his measures, would have artfully secured the merit of any success for himself. The battle of Naseby was the last decisive blow, which, in the graphic words of one of our early writers, "put the nasal organ of royalty completely out of joint." Charles behaved very gallantly, and so did Rupert; but when the former cried out to his cavalry, "One charge more and we win the day!" he might just as well have exclaimed, "Twopence more, and up goes the donkey!" for his words produced no effect. "Thank you, we've had enough of it," seemed to be imprinted on every countenance; and after a few more reverses, Charles formed the rash deliberation of throwing himself upon the generosity of the Scotch.
He might just as well have thrown himself on the pavement beneath the Monument, as the sequel proved; for the Scotch at once set to work to see what profit was to be made by the sale of the royal fugitive. After a good deal of haggling, they sold the sovereign, who had thrown himself upon their generosity, for £400,000; and they no doubt silenced their consciences—if they ever had any—by saying, "It's just a matter of beesness, ye ken," to any one who remonstrated with them upon their mercenary baseness.
The royal prisoner was shut up for some weeks at Holmby Castle, in Northamptonshire, but after a few weeks, Cromwell sent one Joyce, formerly his tailor, and afterwards a cornet in Fairfax's troop of horse, to "smug" the unhappy king and carry him to the army.
The House of Commons became exceedingly jealous of the military influence that prevailed, but the people rather sided with the soldiers; for the Parliament had, of course, in its great love of liberty, taken the liberty to lay on taxes to an extent unprecedented in the annals of royal rapacity. It is a fact worth remembering, that the people frequently find their friends more costly than their enemies.
In the autumn of 1647, the king was sent to Hampton Court, where he was allowed some indulgences, such as going out to spend the day at Sion House, where two of his children were remaining as parlour boarders with the Duke of Northumberland. Some Puritans having given indications of their imagining that they had a spiritual call to do some mischief to the king, his majesty resolved not to be at home to such a call if he could possibly help it, and leaving Hampton Court with three attendants he reached the coast of Hampshire. It was noticed at the time that Charles had probably heard of the celebrated Hampshire hogs, and fancied therefore that Hampshire must be the best place for him to go to in the hope of saving his bacon. He resigned himself to Colonel Hammond, the Governor of the Isle of Wight, who placed the royal fugitive in Carisbrook Castle; where a bowling-green was arranged and a summerhouse built, so that Charles could fancy himself, if he liked, in a suburban tea-garden. The king was a capital bowler, and when sorrow came across his mind he would try and "drown it in the bowls" which Colonel Hammond was so good as to provide him with.
In the September of 1648, another conference was attempted, and Charles took a furnished lodging at a private house in Newport, where the commissioners came to consult with him. They found him much altered, and with his hair so grey as to bespeak the fact that care had been busy in peppering his head, which he declared had got into that state during his anxious sojourn at Oxford; and this peculiar combination of tints retains to this day the title of the Oxford Mixture.
The Parliament would have been glad to diminish the influence of the army by a successful negotiation with the king; but while terms were being discussed, Cromwell, who never brewed half-and-half, struck a blow at both parties. He sent one of his draymen named Pride, who had risen from a seat on the shafts of his dray to a colonelcy in the army, to blockade the Parliament-house with a body of troops, and let in only those members who were favourable to the views of his late employer. We, who cannot imagine Barclay or Perkins going the entire in the style of their predecessor in trade, nor conceive Meux and Co. meddling with the Crown, except to supply it with beer, are of course astonished at the insolence of Cromwell. He nevertheless gained his point, for he set the Parliament at defiance, and had the king removed to Hurst Castle, in Hampshire, which was so dull that Charles could not help remarking that coming to Hurst was like going to be buried. He was again removed to Windsor, and subsequently to St. James's Palace, where the guards were ordered to call him Charles Stuart, in order to show the magnanimity of the revenge of such a man as Cromwell. The king was exposed to every petty insult that littlemindedness could suggest or coarse brutality execute. In this respect the "liberals" of England in 1649 set an example which the "liberals" of France followed in the treatment of their own fallen and powerless sovereign upwards of a century afterwards. The only comfort he enjoyed was the society of poor old Jack Juxon, the bishop who had been faithful to him in all his adversity.
It was now determined to bring the king to trial, and on the 20th of January the proceedings commenced in Westminster Hall, when upon its being declared that Charles was accused in the name of the people, a shrill voice exclaimed "Pooh, pooh! not a tenth part of them." The ushers looked in vain to see who was disturbing the audience, and the soldiers were ordered to fire into the corner whence the voice proceeded, until it turned out that Lady Fairfax was the individual by whom the proceedings had been interrupted. She was a warm politician, and with her husband had espoused the parliamentary cause, but was disgusted like him with the brutal use that the "liberals" were making of their triumph. Charles demurred to the jurisdiction of his judges for three days, but, on the 27th, they found him guilty, and sentenced him to be beheaded three days afterwards. The "people," imitating the conduct of some of their "friends," insulted the fallen monarch in his misfortune, and many a malicious, low-bred ass, tried to get a kick at the chained lion. Happily the people in our own days are very superior to the people of the time ol Charles, and there is no sympathy among the masses with ungenerous persecution, whatever may be the rank of the victim.
As Charles quitted the hall after his conviction, a wretched miscreant displayed a toad-like venom by spitting in the king's face, which drew from the sovereign the true remark, "Poor souls! they would treat their generals in the same manner for sixpence." While chronicling an act disgraceful to human nature, we must not forget to put down what is on the credit side—namely, a blessing instead of an insult from one of the guard, who was struck to the ground for giving way to this creditable impulse.
We draw a veil over the closing scene, for our history is not a register of murders; but whoever reads attentively the details of the sacrifice of Charles the First will see the original of one of the darkest scenes in the French Revolution.
The death-warrant for the execution of Charles the First was signed by fifty-nine of his judges, the list beginning with the name of James Bradshaw, and ending with that of Miles Corbet. Few of them rose to much distinction, and still fewer have left descendants capable of acquiring fame, for there is scarcely a renowned patronymic in the entire catalogue. A man in a visor performed the murderous ceremony of striking off the king's head; and we cannot be surprised that the executioner was ashamed to show his face on such an occasion.
Though the nation had stood by, in the most apathetic manner, while the mischief was doing, it was no sooner done than everybody became very indignant and very sorrowful. Women went into fits, men took to drinking, and some went so far as to commit suicide rather than survive their murdered sovereign. This sympathy was all peculiarly English, and, in fact, a little too much so; for it is the fault of our countrymen to make a great deal too much of the dead and too little of the living.
Frequently the fate of one who, after his decease, has his merits recognised by subscription and a monument. Genius not unfrequently asks in vain for bread when living, but when dead gets a stone awarded him.
Charles was in the forty-ninth year of his age, and the twenty-fourth of his reign, when he was brought to the scaffold. We regret that we cannot give a favourable character of this unfortunate person out of place—for he certainly was completely out of place on the throne of England. His disposition was mixed, like human nature in general; and indeed, what is mankind, as the philosopher would ask, but the "mixture as before" incessantly repeated? He was dignified, it is true, but so is the representative of the "fifth noble" Neglect, or even starvation, is freor "tenth senator," in an opera or play, and he was temperate also to an extent that might have fitted him for the chair of a teetotal lodge, but not for the throne of a vast empire. He was not avaricious, but if he spent money freely it was because he freely helped himself to the money of other people. He was humane to such an extent, that "he would not have hurt a fly;" but it may be said that a fly never did him any harm, and hostility therefore, to that imbecile insect, would have been at once brutal and undignified. The man who would hurt a fly must indeed be very hard up for a victim to his malevolence, and Charles cannot, therefore, have much credit given him for his amiability towards that humble member of the class of diptera. The manners of Charles were not much in his favour; "but it would not have mattered much," says the incorrigible Strype, "that he was a bit of a bear, had he been otherwise bearable."
In a commercial country, like ours, his swindling propensities will always tell against him, and his insatiable desire to obtain money, under false pretences, was quite unworthy of his exalted station, or, indeed, of any station but that where the police are paramount. It is true that his subjects would have kept him rather hard up for cash; and he often declared that the Long Parliament reduced him repeatedly to very short commons. Hume has endeavoured to give Charles the reputation of being a man of "probity and honour;" but it must have been the sort of honour said to prevail among thieves, for when he could not get money by honest means—which he seldom could—he never scrupled to rob for it.
In person, Charles had a sweet but melancholy expression, a sort of agro dolce, which made his portrait not quite a Carlo Dolce to look upon. His features were regular, but he was not vain; and he would often say or think "that he should not care about a regular nose or chin, so that he could make both ends meet by having a regular salary." He was an excellent horseman; but it is one thing to be skilful in the management of the bridle, and another to be adroit in holding the reins of power. His equestrian accomplishments would have been useful to him had fate thrown him into another circle, where his favourite, Buckingham as clown to the ring, would also have been in his proper position.
The men of letters of Charles' reign were numerous and illustrious. Ford, the dramatist, whose depth it is difficult to fathom; Ben Jonson, surnamed the Rare, and as it has been prettily said by somebody, "the rarer the better;" with Philip Massinger, belonged to the period. Speed, the topographer, commonly called the "slow coach;" Burton, the famous anatomist of melancholy, and familiarly known as the sad dog; Spelman, whose writings possess no particular spell; Cotton, who has furnished a lot of printed stuffs; and a few others, constituted the literary illuminators of the age, by their moral and intellectual moulds, dips, or rushlights.