As the King was led from the Court, the soldiers gave a great shout, crying fiercely, “Execution, execution!” Others, it was said, reviled him as he passed by them, and blew their tobacco smoke in his face. But outside, in the street, as he went from Westminster to Whitehall, “shop-stalls and windows were full of people, many of whom shed tears, and some of them with audible voices prayed for the King.” It was clear that the feeling of the people was on the King’s side, and that consideration, if no other, might well have induced the army leaders even at the last to draw back. But even had they wished it, the army would not have permitted them to do so. Moreover, Cromwell all through the trial never wavered or hesitated, and his influence kept the Regicides together. When the King’s judges came to be tried for their own lives, some strove to represent themselves as acting under coercion. One said that Cromwell and Ireton laid hold of him and compelled him to take his place in the court; others described Cromwell as forcing recalcitrant judges to sign the death-warrant, and bearing down the little minority who wished the King to be heard after sentence had been pronounced. Colonel Ingoldsby boldly declared that Cromwell seized his hand and guided his pen, though the truth is that Ingoldsby’s signature shows no signs of constraint. Many such legends circulate in contemporary literature, fictitious in themselves, yet all testifying to a well-founded popular impression. Cromwell had made up his mind that the King must die, and when his mind was made up he was inflexible. Against that will, all efforts to save the King were futile. Fairfax was applied to by Prince Charles, but while steadfastly refusing to take any part in the trial, he remained in all other respects a passive tool in the hands of his council of officers. The Dutch ambassadors appealed to Parliament, but what remained of Parliament was helpless or obdurate.
The commissioners of the Scottish Parliament presented public protests and made private appeals to the leaders of the army. They argued with Cromwell, telling him that the Covenant obliged both nations to preserve the King’s person, and that to proceed to extremities against him was to break the league between England and Scotland. Cromwell answered them by a discourse on the nature of the regal power, asserting that a breach of trust in a king ought to be punished more than any other crime. As to the Covenant, its end was the defence of the true religion; if the King was the greatest obstacle to the establishment of the true religion, they were not bound to preserve him. “It pledged them,” he added, “to bring to condign punishment all incendiaries and enemies to the cause, and were small offenders to be punished and the greatest of all to go free?”
Meanwhile, during Sunday and Monday, Charles prepared himself for death. He spent much time in prayer with Bishop Juxon, burnt his papers, distributed the small remains of his personal property, and took leave of his children. As he feared that the army would make the Duke of Gloucester king, he charged him in simple language not to take his “brother’s throne.”
“Sweetheart,” said Charles, taking the child upon his knee, “now they will cut off thy father’s head [upon which words the child looked very steadfastly upon 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 brothers 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; and therefore I charge you do not be made a king by them.”
At which the child, sighing, said, “I will be torn in pieces first.” What Charles said to his daughter, the Lady Elizabeth herself related:
“He wished me not to grieve and torment myself for him, for it would be a glorious death that he should die, it being for the laws and liberties of this land, and for maintaining the true Protestant religion. 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 had never strayed from her, and that his love should be the same to the last.”
Then, striving to console her, he bade her again “not to grieve for him, for that he should die a martyr, and that he doubted not but the Lord would settle his throne upon his son, and that we should all be happier than we could have expected to have been if he had lived.”
Monday night the King slept at St. James’s. Two hours before the dawn of the 30th of January, he rose up, and, calling to his servant Herbert, bade him dress him with care. “Let me have a shirt more than ordinary,” said he, “by reason the season is so sharp as probably may make me shake, which some will imagine proceeds from fear. I would have no such imputation; I fear not death. Death is not terrible to me. I bless my God I am prepared.”
About ten o’clock, Colonel Hacker came to fetch the King to Whitehall. Attended by Herbert and Juxon, he walked through St. James’s Park. A guard of halberdiers surrounded him, and companies of foot were drawn up on each side of his way. “The drums beat, and the noise was so great as one could hardly hear what another spoke.” It was a cold, frosty morning, and the King walked, as his custom was, very fast, and calling to his guard “in a pleasant manner,” told them to march apace. When he reached Whitehall, he was kept waiting in his bedchamber for two or three hours, perhaps in order to give Parliament time to pass an act forbidding the proclamation of any new king. During part of this time, he prayed with Juxon, and at the bishop’s urging ate a mouthful of bread and drank a glass of claret. About half-past one, Hacker came again to summon the King to the scaffold. In the galleries and the Banqueting House, through which Charles followed him, men and women had stationed themselves to see the King go by. As he passed “he heard them pray for him, the soldiers not rebuking any of them, seeming by their silence and dejected faces afflicted rather than insulting.”
From the middle window of the Banqueting House, Charles stepped out upon the scaffold. He was dressed in black from head to foot, but not in mourning, and wore the George and the ribbon of the Garter. The scaffold was covered with black cloth, and from the railings round it, which were as high as a man’s waist, black hangings drooped. In the middle of the scaffold lay the block, “a little piece of wood, flat at bottom, about a foot and a half long,” and about six inches high. By it lay “the bright execution axe for executing malefactors,” which had been procured from the Tower—probably the very axe which had beheaded Strafford. Near the block stood two masked men; both were dressed in close-fitting frocks,—like sailors, said one spectator; like butchers, said another. One of them wore a grizzled periwig and seemed by his grey beard an old man. Immediately round the foot of the scaffold stood ranks of soldiers, horse and foot, and behind them a thronging mass of men and women. Other watchers filled the windows and the roofs of the houses round.