The Whigamore Parliament met on the 4th of January 1649. By the act of the preceding session, in June of the previous year, it was “continued” till March, 1650; but, by the same act, the committee then named were authorized to call a meeting of the whole Estates at an early period, if they deemed that expedient. As already indicated, a change had “come o’er the spirit of their dream;” and that committee having been completely transformed since it was originally constituted, all those who had been engaged in carrying the engagement into effect, as appointed in the former session, were now proscribed, and excluded from this renovated convention.[404] It consisted, therefore, entirely of those who either protested against the Engagement, or of those who apostatized from their former decisions; and Loudoun, whose tergiversation during the interval had been so conspicuous, was chosen President—having previously performed penance, and professed repentance in the High Kirk, to the great delight of the clergy. At the opening of this session, a fast was appointed for the great sins and provocations of the land, to be performed in the Parliament House—the Solemn League and Covenant to be renewed; and letters from the Commissioners in London were laid before the house, giving information of all the recent proceedings in London, of which we have already given a detail.[405]
One of the earliest acts of this Parliament, (11th January,) was to ratify the acts of the whigamore committee, in September and October, and the exclusion of “all such as have been imployed in public place and trust, and have been accessary to the late unlawful Engagement;”[406] and they were also summoned to appear before the Parliament, to hear and see it take such course as it should think fit for purging of the judicatories, declaring their places vacant, and filling these with others. Another act was soon after passed, (16th January,) “repealing all Acts of Parliament or Committee made for the late unlawful ingagement, and ratifying the protestation and opposition against the same;”[407] and thus the entire proceedings of the former session were completely reversed and rescinded. The insurrection of Mauchlin Muir was also highly approved of, by an enactment to that effect; and, further, letters were received of the transactions in London from the Commissioners there. On the 18th, an answer was given to the “Testimony communicated unto them by the Commissioners of the General Assembly, and their concurrence with the same,” in reference to the “seasonable testimony against toleration, and the present proceedings of sectaries and their abettors in England;”[408] intimating their non-concurrence in the proceedings by the Commons against the King’s person. Next, on the 23d of the same month,[409] came another act, “for purging the judicatories and other places of public trust,” by which a clean sweep was made of all who had been participant in the Engagement. And, to crown all the enormities of their career, they at this time passed an act against witchcraft, on the 1st of February, ordaining, that “whatsoever person or persons shall consult with devils or familiar spirits, shall be punished with death.”[410] These, and some earnest remonstrances which appear to have been made, through the Commissioners in London, against taking away the life of the King, were the chief acts of the first Whigamore Parliament up to the time of the execution of the King. To the particulars of that tragical event, therefore, we shall now briefly advert.
On the 6th of January, 1649, the ordinance of the Commons for the King’s trial was brought in, fairly engrossed on parchment. On the 9th, the House of Lords met, and had a debate as to the publication of the grounds on which they rejected the commission for trying the King; and, the same day, proclamation was made in Westminster Hall, at the Old Exchange, and Cheapside, desiring all persons who had aught to charge against his Majesty to give in their statements to the Commissioners next day in Westminster Hall; and all “delinquents or ill-affected persons were ordered, by a military proclamation, to depart ten miles from London; these being all who had served the King during the course of the civil war. Next day, accordingly, the Commission met, and appointed Bradshaw, a lawyer, to be their president; and directed Steel as attorney, and Cooke as solicitor-general, to draw up and manage the charge against the King.” On the 13th, the “High Court of Justice” (as it was designated) agreed that the trial should be held in Westminster Hall, and that for that end the King should be removed from Windsor and brought up to London on Monday following. On Monday, the Commons received a stimulating petition from the Corporation of London, which was approved of. The commission for trial ordered the charge for trial to be abbreviated by a committee of themselves, and to examine the evidence, (thereby still further prostituting the judicial character;) and another impudent declaration was sent from the Council of the Army to the Commons, who appear in the whole of this infamous business as the abject slaves of the soldiery.
A few days after, (18th January,) “the Commons having formerly declared that the supreme power of England is vested only in the people and their representatives, and therefore voted that all committees, which before consisted of Lords and Commons, should have power to act to all intents and purposes, though the Lords join not therein;” and, the same day, adopted another contumelious vote in reference to the Peers. On the 19th the King was brought to St James’, and the Court heard the proof (in absence of the accused) to the several articles of impeachment against his Majesty. The act of the Commons being read, all the Commissioners who were present rose on their names being called; this ceremony being interrupted by Lady Fairfax, the general’s wife, who was in a window of the house, speaking aloud to the Court then sitting, “that her husband, the Lord Fairfax, was not there in person, nor ever would sit among them, and therefore they did him wrong to name him as a sitting Commissioner.” This little incident, like many others in the history of great commotions, indicates the high and generous qualities of the female character, which often shine forth to shame the virtue and the courage of manhood.
The first part of the trial was enacted on the 20th of January. At this and the subsequent sederunts of the court, the proceedings were of the most outrageous nature. The details are too tedious to be embodied in these sketches, nor shall we attempt by compression to adapt them to our pages in this place; yet they were of such a character, that, if we had not an authentic report of them in the honest pages of Rushworth, the disgusting features of that mockery of judicial procedure could scarcely be imagined or credited in these latter days. We shall, therefore, give the entire trial (which is very short) among our supplemental documents. The result of the whole was, that, on the 27th of January, the Court pronounced its sentence, which was, that the King had been guilty of high treason, and “that the said Charles Stuart, as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy to the good people of this nation, shall be put to death by severing his head from his body.”[411]
Before passing on to the last sad scene of this tragedy, we must be forgiven for marking a few of the characteristics of the till then unheard-of proceedings which were thus wound up. We need not recapitulate the objections which present themselves to every mind with regard to the unlawful nature of the whole course of the House of Commons in this matter. Without a lawful constitution in itself, according to any view of a free and full Parliament—usurping flagrantly all the prerogatives of the monarchy, and all the powers and privileges vested in the House of Peers—its composition vitiated by the exclusion of a large portion of its members—surrounded by and influenced by a military force, and vulgar external pressure—it nevertheless arrogated to itself all the functions, both executive and legislative, of all the constitutional powers of the State—it arbitrarily appointed a commission to try capitally the Sovereign of the kingdom, and the Sovereign too of another kingdom, for endeavouring to suppress rebellion; and it constituted a tribunal utterly unknown to the usages and laws of the land, and to which it could not impart any legitimate authority. That tribunal, in its proceedings, could not be surpassed in judicial iniquity by anything ever imputed to the Inquisition. The members of it were disqualified from acting either as judges or jurors by every iniquity that infers disqualification. They had prejudged the accused—they assisted in concocting the charges—they refused even to hear objections to their jurisdiction—they took evidence in absence of the King, and neither allowed him proof in exculpation, nor to be heard in his own defence; and, finally, with all these multiplied abominations on their souls, they doomed their anointed King to die the death of a traitor, in defiance of every principle of enlightened jurisprudence, and in violation of all the dictates of universal justice, wherever its purity is known and reverenced.
On the sentence of this creature of democratic despotism, a warrant for execution was issued on the 29th; and, on the 30th of January, 1649, Charles I. was beheaded in front of Whitehall—sustaining, with native elevation of character, and amidst studied insults and indignities, all the majesty of a monarch, and all the piety and heroic fortitude of a Christian martyr. The deed was one of the foulest, most deliberate, and diabolical murders that ever disgraced the records of human nature, and will ever remain an indelible stigma on the national character.[412]
We forbear from obtruding on our readers any lengthened strictures on the character of Charles, which has so often afforded a theme both for eulogy and censure; yet when turning, with sickness of heart, from contemplating the unutterable iniquities which ended in his murder, we cannot entirely refrain from exercising the privilege of our vocation, and expressing our dissent from the uncharitable constructions which have been put on his conduct. The most general imputation against him is, that he stretched the royal prerogative so as to trench on the liberties of the subject, in things both sacred and secular. But it should ever be remembered that, in this particular, he only exerted the power which he inherited with his Crown, in the law and usages of the constitution; and that even with reference to the most exceptionable point perhaps in his policy—that relating to the enforcement of Episcopacy in Scotland—he introduced no innovation, but merely urged the observance of laws which stood on the statute-book, and had been acquiesced in by a great majority of the clergy, nobility, and gentry, as well as the people, for the long period of thirty years. Even in this matter, the more rigorous enforcement and extension of the existing law may find some palliation, when it is taken into view that in this he only followed out his own principles; from which, amid all his misfortunes, he never swerved; and, besides, when the national mind was at length fully evidenced, he gave the Presbyterian Church the fullest sanction, and never after, so far as we have seen any proof, attempted its subversion.
His insincerity too has been a frequent topic of invective, in regard to the endless negotiations in which he was involved with his English subjects. But it ought to be recollected that all diplomacy is proverbially a system of duplicity; that, almost singly, he was pitted against a set of the most matchless dissemblers that the world ever saw, whose objects, he well knew, were the entire subversion of all the institutions of his kingdom, and the erection of a fierce democracy on their ruins. And it is absurd to charge him with greater duplicity in those complicated treaties, than was evinced by his adversaries; who, the one day, acceded to his concessions, and the next repudiated and renounced what they had done.
But the great and most clamant fault imputed to Charles is, that he would not ratify and give effect to the Solemn League and Covenant;—a charge which has been made by men of very opposite descriptions—by puritanical devotees on the one hand, and philosophical historians on the other—agreeing only on this one point, and differing on almost every other. To the former we would briefly reply, that his resistance to that League was a patriotic virtue; for a more undisguised and grinding system of tyranny and persecution never was invented by man, and never was practised in the worst days of Popish thraldom. Nor can the inherent vices of that league be mitigated by the plea that, practically, the extirpation of all who would not yield to its terrors, was only directed against their tenets, and not their persons; for this theory is fully refuted by innumerable facts. Many thousands were not merely proscribed and robbed of their property, but put to death in the field and on the scaffold, as rebels and traitors, for no other reason than because they would not submit implicitly to an insatiable system of spiritual despotism. To the latter class of critics, who view Charles’ adherence to Episcopacy in England as a weakness which excites the mingled emotions of compassion and contempt, and who hold that, to keep his crown, he ought to have abandoned his most cherished convictions of what was morally right, the answer is conclusive—that the mere statement of such an objection is the highest tribute that could be awarded to any human being; for amidst temptations almost overwhelming to human virtue, the object of their rebuke held fast his integrity to the death. To both classes we say, that what they reprobate in Charles can only be the subject of censure when hypocrisy becomes a virtue, when dissimulation adds lustre to the human character, and when prostitution of principle and personal honour shall be raised to the rank of a Christian virtue—an acme of perfection which, it must be allowed, was fully exemplified by blustering patriots, who remorselessly filled their country with rapine, anarchy, and oppression, as the champions of civil and religious liberty, both of which they trampled in the dust. That Charles I. committed errors, and grievous ones, is not to be questioned; but they inevitably arose from his education, and the circumstances in which he was placed; and “even his failings leaned to virtue’s side.” He was, perhaps, setting aside the fabulous attributes of other monarchs, the most exemplary and amiable, as he was one of the most unfortunate of sovereigns, that ever swayed the sceptre of the British kingdoms.