Execution of Royalist leaders.
The second civil war thus ended in utter disaster to the king's friends. Moreover, it had sealed the fate of Charles himself. There arose a large party among the victors who were determined that he should be punished for the reckless intrigue by which he had stirred up the dying embers of strife, and set the land once more aflame. The temper of the army was so fierce that, for the first time since the war began, numerous executions followed the surrender of the vanquished Royalists. The Duke of Hamilton, who had led the Scots; Lucas and Lisle, who had defended Colchester; Lord Holland, who had been designated to command the Royalists of the south, all suffered death. Hundreds of prisoners of inferior rank were sent to serve as bondmen in the plantations of Barbados.
Pride's Purge.—The Rump.
Charles himself was removed from Carisbrooke—he had made two unsuccessful attempts to escape from its walls—and put under strict guard at Hurst Castle. The Parliament still continued to negotiate with him, only making its terms more rigorous. But the army did not intend that any such agreement should be concluded. While the House of Commons was still treating, it was subjected to a sudden military outrage. Colonel Pride, a leading Independent officer, marched his regiment to Westminster on the 6th of December, 1648, and, as the members began to muster, seized one by one all the chiefs of the Presbyterian party. Forty-one were placed in confinement, ninety-six were turned back and warned never to come near the House again. Only sixty Independent members were allowed to enter, a body which was for the future known by the insulting name of "the Rump," as being the "sitting part" of the House.
Thus ended the famous Long Parliament, destroyed by the military monster which it had itself created. The "Rump," a ridiculous remnant, the slave of the soldiery, was alone left to represent the civil power in England.
Trial of the king.
The king's fate was now settled. The army had resolved to punish him, and the Parliament was to be the army's tool. On December 23, the members of the Rump passed a bill for trying the king. On January 1, 1649, they voted that "to levy war against the Parliament and realm of England was treason," and appointed a High Court of Justice to try the king for that offence. When it was seen that the king's life as well as his crown was aimed at, many of the leaders of the Independents, both military men and civilians, began to draw back. Fairfax, the chief of the whole army, refused to sit in the High Court, and of 135 persons designated to serve in it, only some seventy or eighty appeared. But the majority of the army, and Cromwell, the guiding spirit of the whole, were determined to go through with the business. The High Court met, with an obscure lawyer named Bradshaw as its president; its ranks were packed with military men, who were blind to all legal considerations, and had come merely to condemn the king. Charles was brought before the court, but refused to plead. Such a body, he said, had no right to try a King of England—it was a mere illegal meeting, deriving its sole authority from a factious remnant of a mutilated House of Commons. This was undoubtedly true, and, considering the temper of his judges, the king knew that all defence was useless. The course that he took was the only one that suited his dignity and conscience. While he stood dumb before his judges, they passed sentence of death upon him (January 26, 1649).
His execution.
Four days later he was led to execution on a scaffold placed before the windows of Whitehall Palace. He died with a calm dignity that amazed the beholders. He was suffered to make a short speech, in which he bade the multitude remember that he died a victim to the "power of the sword," that the nation was now a slave to the army, and that it would never be free again till it remembered its duty to its God and its king. He must suffer, he said, because he would not assent to the handing Church and State over to "an arbitrary sway;" it was this that his captors had required of him. Finally, he said, he died a Christian according to the profession of the Church of England, which he had always striven to maintain. Then he laid his head upon the block and met the axe with unflinching courage, amid the groans of the people.
Was his fate deserved?