Catherine was subdued to her yoke, and this was the treatment of an English king to a princess who brought him besides a splendid money dowry, the Settlement of Tangier, which might in any reign of sense and policy have been made a commanding station in the Mediterranean, and Bombay, our first Settlement in India, the nucleus of our present magnificent Indian empire.
Whilst these scenes had been passing in the palace, the lives of Cromwell's supporters were brought into question without. Vane and Lambert were put upon their trial before the Court of King's Bench on the 2nd of June. The prominent actors in the drama of the late Rebellion had both in their different ways done immense damage to Royalty; and though the Convention Parliament had requested Charles to leave them unpunished—notwithstanding that they were not included in the Bill of Indemnity—and Charles had assented, the Cavaliers could not rest satisfied without their blood. Lambert had been one of Cromwell's chief generals—one of his major-generals—and to the last he had done his best to maintain the cause of the Commonwealth by his sword, and had attempted to prevent the march of Monk at the very time that he was planning the return of the king. Vane had been one of the very ablest counsellors and diplomatists that the Commonwealth had had. True, he had not sat on the trial of the king, he had had no hand whatever in his death; but he had done two things which could never be forgotten or forgiven by the Royalists. He had furnished the minutes of the Privy Council from his father's cabinet, which determined the fate of Strafford, and the Court held him to be the real author of his death; next, though he did not assist in condemning the king, he accepted office under what was now termed the rebel Government. Besides and beyond these, he was a man of the highest diplomatic abilities, and of a spotless character and high religious temperament, which caused the vile spirit and lives of the new reigning power and party to look even viler by the contrast. The prisoners were charged with conspiring and compassing the death of the present king, and the recent acts in proof of this were alleged to be consulting with others to bring the king to destruction, and to keep him out of his kingdom and authority, and actually assembling in arms. These were vague and general charges, which might have been applied to all who had been engaged in the late Government, and on the same pleas all the Commonwealth men might have been put to death.
Lambert, who had been most courageous in the field, appeared, before a court of justice, a thorough coward. His late transactions had shown that he was a man of no military genius, and now he trembled at the sight of his judges. He assumed a very humble tone, pretended that when he opposed General Monk he did not know that he was a favourer of the house of Stuart, and he threw himself on the royal clemency. As there was clearly nothing to be feared from such a man, he received judgment of death, but was then sent to a prison in Guernsey for life, where he amused himself with painting and gardening.
But Vane showed by the ability with which he defended himself that he was a most dangerous man to so corrupt and contemptible a dynasty as now reigned. The nobility of his sentiments, the dignity of his conduct, and the acuteness of his reasonings, all marked a man who kept alive most perilous and disparaging reminiscences. Every plea that he advanced, and the power with which he advanced it, which before a fair and independent tribunal would have excited admiration, and ensured his acquittal, here only inspired terror and rage, and ensured his destruction. He contended that he was no traitor. By all principles of civil government, and by the statute of Henry VII., he had only contended against a man who was no longer king de facto. The Parliament, he said, before his union with it, had entered on the contest with the late king, and put him, on what they held to be sufficient grounds, out of his former position and authority. Moreover, by the law of the land—the statute of the 11th of Henry VII., and the practice based upon it—the Parliament were become the reigning and rightful power. Under that power, and by the constitutional, acknowledged Government he had acted, taking no part in the shedding of the king's blood; and what he did after he did by the authority of the only ruling Government. He therefore denied the right of any court but the High Court of Parliament to call him in question, and he demanded counsel to assist him in any case in rebutting the charges against him. But every argument that he advanced only the more militated against himself. The court was met to condemn him and get rid of him, and the more he could prove its incompetence, the worse must their arbitrary injustice appear. The more he could prove the Commonwealth a rightful Government, the more must the present Government hate and dread him. The judges declared that Charles had never ceased to be king either de facto or de jure from the moment of his father's death. That he was not king de facto, but an outcast from England, deprived of all power and name, was notorious enough, but that mattered little; they were resolved to have it so. In order to induce Vane to plead, they promised him counsel, but when he had complied, and pleaded not guilty, they answered his demand for counsel by telling him they would be his counsel.
Before such a tribunal there could be but one result—right or wrong, the prisoner must be condemned; but Vane made so able and unanswerable a defence, that the counsel employed against him were reduced to complete silence: whereupon Chief-Justice Foster said to his colleagues, "Though we know not what to say to him, we know what to do with him." And when he adverted to the promise of the king that he should not be condemned for what was past, and to his repeated demand for counsel, the Solicitor-General exclaimed, "What counsel does he think would dare to speak for him in such a manifest case of treason, unless he could call down the heads of his fellow traitors—Bradshaw or Coke—from the top of Westminster Hall?" He might have added—in that vile state of things, that disgraceful relapse of the English public into moral and political slavery—what jury would dare to acquit him? The king was so exasperated at the accounts carried to him at Hampton Court of the bold and unanswerable defence of Vane, that he wrote to Clarendon, "The relation that hath been made to me of Sir Harry Vane's carriage yesterday in the hall is the occasion of this letter, which, if I am rightly informed, was so insolent as to justify all that he had done, acknowledging no supreme power in England but Parliament, and many things to that purpose. You have had a true account of all, and if he has given new occasion to be hanged, certainly he is too dangerous a man to let live, if we can honestly put him out of the way. Think of this, and give me some account of it to-morrow." What account Clarendon gave we may imagine, for he is careful in his own autobiography to pass over altogether so small a matter as the trial and death of this eminent man.
Vane was condemned, and executed on Tower Hill on the 14th of June, 1662, on the very spot where Strafford suffered, thus studiously making his death an act of retribution for his evidence against that nobleman. On taking leave of his wife and friends, Sir Harry confidently predicted—as the former victims, Harrison, Scott, and Peters had done—that his blood would rise from the ground against the reigning family in judgment, on earth as well as in heaven. "As a testimony and seal," he said, "to the justness of that quarrel, I leave now my life upon it, as a legacy to all the honest interests in these three nations. Ten thousand deaths rather than defile my conscience, the chastity and purity of which I value beyond all this world." So alarmed were the king and courtiers at the impression which this heroic and virtuous conduct was likely to make on the public, that they took every means to prevent the prisoner from being heard on the scaffold. They placed drummers and trumpeters under the scaffold, to drown his voice when he addressed the people. When he complained of the unfairness of his trial, Sir John Robinson, the Lieutenant of the Tower, rudely and furiously contradicted him, saying, "It's a lie; I am here to testify that it is a lie. Sir, you must not rail at the judges." When he began again, the drummers and trumpeters made the loudest din that they could, but he ordered them to be stopped, saying he knew what was meant by it. Again, as he attempted to proceed, they burst forth louder than ever; and Robinson, furious, attempted to snatch the paper out of his hand which contained his notes. Vane, however, held it firmly, and then Robinson, seeing several persons taking notes of what the prisoner said, exclaimed in a rage, "He utters rebellion, and you write it;" and the books were seized, or all that could be discovered. They next, two or three of them, attempted to wrest his papers from him, and thrust their hands into his pockets, on pretence of searching for others. A more indecent scene never was witnessed, and Vane, seeing that it was useless to attempt being heard, laid his head on the block, and it was severed at a stroke.
RESCUED FROM THE PLAGUE, LONDON, 1665.
From the painting by F. W. W. TOPHAM, R.I.
"IT WAS THE CHILD OF A VERY ABLE CITIZEN OF GRACIOUS [GRACECHURCH] STREET. A SADDLER, WHO HAD BURIED ALL THE REST OF HIS CHILDREN OF THE PLAGUE, AND HIMSELF AND WIFE NOW BEING SHUT UP IN DESPAIR OF ESCAPING DID DESIRE ONLY TO SAVE THE LIFE OF THIS LITTLE CHILD; I SO PREVAILED TO HAVE IT RECEIVED STARK NAKED INTO THE ARMS OF A FRIEND, WHO BROUGHT IT (HAVING PUT IT INTO FRESH CLOTHES) TO GREENWICH."—Pepys's Diary.