THE TRIAL IN WESTMINSTER HALL: INCIDENTS OF THE SEVEN SUCCESSIVE DAYS: THE SENTENCE.
On Friday, Jan. 19, Charles was brought from Windsor in a coach, guarded by a body of horse under Harrison's command, and conveyed through Brentford and Hammersmith to St. James's Palace. That same night he was removed to Whitehall; and, on the afternoon of Saturday the 20th, he was taken thence to Cotton House, adjoining Westminster Hall. This great hall, used for Strafford's trial, had now been fitted up for the King's, and the High Court of Justice were already assembled in it, waiting their prisoner. Bradshaw was in the chair, and sixty-six more of the Commissioners were present. Among them were Cromwell, Ireton, Henry Marten, Edmund Ludlow, General Hammond, Lord Grey of Groby, several Baronets and Knights, Colonels Ewer, Hawson, Robert Lilburne, Okey, Pride, Hutchinson, Purefoy, Sir Hardress Waller, and Whalley, with Major Harrison, Alderman Pennington of London, and three barristers. The hall was crowded with spectators, both on the floor and in the galleries; and order was kept by a guard of red-coats under Colonel Axtell. As the Court was forming itself, there had been a rather startling interruption by a woman's voice from one of the galleries. It was that of Lady Fairfax, who had gone in indignant curiosity, and, on hearing her husband's name read in the Commission, called out loudly to this effect, "He is not here, and will never be; you do him wrong to name him." This interruption was over, and the Court composed, when Charles was brought in by Colonel Hacker, and a select guard of officers armed with halberts. The Serjeant-at-Arms receiving him, and preceding him with the mace, he was conducted to the bar, where a chair of crimson velvet had been set for him. Some of his own servants followed him and stood round him. He looked sternly at the Court and at the people in the galleries; then sat down, keeping on his hat; then stood up, and turned round to look at the soldiers and the multitude; then sat down again, still with his hat on. He was now face to face with his judges. He looked at them carefully, and recognised about eight as personally known to him. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 1394-1399, and Herbert, 150-161. It is strange to find some points of contradiction between these two trustworthy accounts. Herbert, after apparently implying that the King had been brought from Windsor to St James's before the 19th, makes his removal from St. James's to Whitehall occur on that day. Rushworth brings him to St. James's exactly on the 19th, and removes him to Whitehall next morning. Again, Herbert makes the King conveyed from Whitehall to Cotton House "in a sedan or close chair," and describes the walk through the posted guards, along King Street and Palace Yard, adding that only he himself was allowed to go with the King that way; whereas Rushworth says that the King was brought to Cotton House from Whitehall by water, "guarded by musketeers in boats." Rushworth's accounts, written at the moment, ought to be more accurate in such particulars, and especially in dates, than Herbert's, written from recollection; but Herbert can hardly have been wrong in the matter of the sedan chair. Perhaps, while the King went in such a chair, Herbert accompanying him, most of the King's servants went by water. For the names of all the sixty-seven King's Judges present on the first day of the Trial see Mr. Thomb's list in Notes and Queries, July 6, 1872. The figure 20 there appended to a name intimates presence that day.— Among those of the 135 appointed Judges who did not attend on that day or on any subsequent one, and therefore must be supposed to have agreed with Fairfax in disowning the entire business, we may note Skippon, Sir Arthur Haselrig, Sir William Brereton, Desborough, Lambert, Overton, Lord Lisle, and Algernon Sidney.]
The proceedings of the Trial will be best exhibited in the following condensed account of the particulars of each day:—
Saturday, Jan. 20:—The President, in a brief address to the King, informed him of the business on which the Court had met, and called on him to hear the Charge against him. Solicitor Cook, standing within the bar, on the King's right, then began to state the Charge, but was interrupted by the King, who held out a stick which he had in his hand, and laid it softly twice or thrice on the Solicitor's shoulder, bidding him stop. Bradshaw having interfered, the Solicitor continued his statement, and delivered in his Charge in writing, which Bradshaw called on the Clerk of the Court to read. Charles again interrupted, and continued to interrupt; but, Bradshaw telling him that he would be heard afterwards if he had anything to say, the document was at length read. It accused Charles Stuart, King of England, of having "traitorously and maliciously levied war against the present Parliament and the People therein represented;" and it supported the Charge by a recitation of specific acts of the King done in the First Civil War from June 1642 to 1646, and again more generally of acts done in 1648 before and during the Second Civil War. Charles had smiled often as the Charge was read; and, when the President at the close asked what answer he had to give, begged to know by what authority he had been brought thither. He had been in treaty with Parliament in the Isle of Wight; he had been forcibly taken thence; he saw no Lords present; the crown of England was hereditary and not elective; in whose name was this Court held? "In that of the Commons of England," Bradshaw replied; and there ensued a skirmish between him and the King on the question of authority, which Bradshaw ended by adjourning the Court till Monday at ten o'clock.
Monday, Jan. 22:-After a consultation in the Painted Chamber, the Court met in Westminster Hall, seventy members present, and answering to their names. The skirmish between Bradshaw and the King was renewed: Bradshaw requiring the King's Answer to the Charge "either by confessing or denying," and the King refusing the Court's jurisdiction, not for his own sake alone, he said, but "for the freedom and liberty of the people of England," imperilled by the assumption of the Court's legality. "Sir, I must interrupt you," said Bradshaw; "which I would not do, but that what you do is not agreeable to the proceedings of any Court of Justice." No Court, he said, could permit its own authority to be questioned; the King must not go out into such wide discourses; he must give a punctual and direct answer. No such answer would the King give; he would have law and reason for his being in that place at all. "Sir, you are not to dispute our authority," again interrupted Bradshaw; "you are told it again by the Court: Sir, it will be taken notice of you that you stand in contempt of the Court, and your contempt will be recorded accordingly." The King "did not know how a King might be a delinquent by any law he ever heard of;" but any Delinquent might put in a demurrer. And so on and on for a considerable time, the Clerk of the Court reading out the Resolution of the Court that the King should give his answer, and the King still insisting on giving reasons why he would not. "Serjeant, take away the prisoner," said the Lord President at last; and the King, still talking, was removed to Cotton House.——He left in writing, for subsequent publication, the reasons he wanted to state to the Court that day. The chief of them was that no earthly power could justly call a King to account. He quoted, as Scripture authority, Eccles. viii. 4: "Where the word of a King is, there is power; and who may say unto him, What dost thou?" But he appealed also to the Law and Custom of England.
Tuesday, Jan. 23:-The Court again met in Westminster Hall, 63 Commissioners present. Solicitor Cook moved that, the King having refused to plead either Guilty or Not Guilty, the rule for such cases of contumacy should be applied to him, his refusal taken pro confesso, and judgment pronounced. The Lord President, calling the King's attention to this motion, offered him another opportunity of pleading, which he used only to return to the discourses of the two previous days. "Clerk, do your duty!" said Bradshaw at last. "Duty, Sir!" exclaimed the King; and, the Clerk having again read out a paper requiring the King's positive answer to the Charge, and the King still refusing, "Clerk, record "the default," said Bradshaw, "and, gentlemen, you that took "charge of the prisoner, take him back again." That night, like the preceding, was spent in Cotton House.
Wednesday, Jan. 24, and Thursday, Jan. 25:—No public meetings of the Court in Westminster Hall on these days; but more private sessions in the Painted Chamber for the purpose of receiving the depositions of witnesses,—the Court having determined that, though not obliged to that course, they would adopt it for their own satisfaction. Accordingly there were examined more than thirty witnesses from various parts of England— "W. C., of Patrington in Holderness, in the county of York, gentleman, aged 42;" "W. B., of Wixhall, in the county of Salop, gentleman;" "H. H., of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire;" "R. L., of Cotton in Nottinghamshire, tiler;" "J. W., of Ross in Herefordshire, shoemaker;" "S. L., of Nottingham, maltster, aged 30 years;" "A. Y., citizen and barber-surgeon of London, aged 29;" "H. G., of Gray's Inn, in the county of Middlesex, gentleman;" &c. &c. They deposed to various acts of the King seen by themselves, from the setting up of his standard at Nottingham onwards. Papers in the King's own hand, or by his authority, were also produced and read. Finally, the Court, "taking into consideration the whole matter," resolved to proceed to sentence on the King as "a tyrant, traitor, and murderer," and as "a public enemy to the Commonwealth of England."
Friday, Jan. 26:—A private sitting of the Court in the Painted Chamber, in which the Sentence was drafted, agreed to, and ordered to be engrossed.
Saturday, Jan. 27:—First another private meeting in the Painted Chamber to settle the procedure of the Court for the day, and give President Bradshaw instructions for his behaviour in any contingency that might arise, one of them being that he "should hear the King say what he would before the sentence, and not after." Then, about one o'clock, an adjournment to full state in Westminster Hall. The Lord President was now robed in scarlet, and there were 67 Commissioners present. The Court having been opened, Charles, whose presence had not been required on the three preceding days, was brought in. As he went to his place, the soldiers in the Hall called out "Justice," "Justice," and "Execution!" till the Court commanded silence. The King, in his usual posture, with his hat on, immediately began to speak. The President told him he would have liberty to do so, but must hear the Court first. After some farther attempts to speak then, the King submitted; and Bradshaw, reminding him of what had passed in the first three meetings of the Court, related the subsequent action of the Court, and their conclusion on the whole matter, and called upon him to say anything he pleased in bar of judgment, provided it were in his own defence, and not in renewed challenge of the Court's jurisdiction. With difficulty keeping off the forbidden topic, Charles dwelt on the dangers of a hasty sentence, and urged a special request which he had reserved for the occasion. It was that, before sentence was read, he should be permitted to have a conference with the Lords and Commons in the Painted Chamber. Bradshaw, though he gave it as his opinion that the request only tended to delay, and was in fact a farther declining of the jurisdiction of the Court, yet announced that the Court would withdraw to consider it. There was therefore a private consultation for half an hour in the Court of Wards, the King meanwhile being removed from the Great Hall. When the Court had returned thither, and the King had been brought back, Bradshaw intimated that the consultation had been pro forma only, that the request could not be granted, that the Court must proceed to sentence. There was another painful altercation, the King pressing his request for delay, and seeming to hint he had some important proposal to make to the Lords and Commons (abdication in favour of the Prince of Wales, it was afterwards guessed); and Bradshaw trying to stop him. At length, the King ceasing to interrupt, Bradshaw's words took continuous form for a minute or two in that kind of address which a Judge makes to a capital criminal before passing sentence. "Make an O yes," he said in conclusion to the officers, "and command silence while the Sentence is read." The Clerk then read out the sentence as it had been engressed on parchment, as follows:—"Whereas the Commons of England in Parliament, &c. this Court doth adjudge that the said Charles Stuart, as a Tyrant, Traitor, Murderer, and a Public Enemy, shall be put to death by the severing of his head from his body. "The President then said, "The sentence now read and published is the act, sentence, judgement, and resolution of the whole Court;" whereupon all the Commissioners stood up to express their assent. "His Majesty then said, Will you hear me a word, Sir? President: Sir, you are not to be heard after the sentence. King: No, Sir? President: No, Sir, by your favour. Sir. Guard, withdraw your prisoner. King: I may speak after sentence, by your favour, Sir; I may speak after sentence, ever. By your favour, hold [the guard, one must suppose, now hustling around Charles]. The sentence, Sir—I say Sir, I do—I am not suffered to speak; Expect what justice other people will have." As he passed out with the guard, there were again cries from the soldiers of "Justice," "Justice," and some brutes among them puffed their tobacco-smoke in front of him, and threw their pipes in his way. He was taken to Whitehall and thence to St. James's. [Footnote: Abridged mainly from Rushworth's collection of accounts in 30 folio pages (VII. 1395-1425). The sixty-seven of the King's judges who were present in Westminster Hall on the 27th, when the sentence was pronounced, are to be regarded as the men most resolute in the business, the committed Regicides. Two of these (George Fleetwood and Thomas Wayte) came in at the last moment, not having attended any of the previous meetings of the Court from the beginning of the Trial on the 20th. On the other hand, some nine or ten who had been present on one, two, or even all of the three previous public days of the Trial (the 20th, 22nd, and 23rd), had dropped off before the sentence; among them whome I note Alderman Isaac Pennington. He had been present all the three previous days; but could not reconcile himself to the conclusion. Of the sixty-seven who did reconcile themselves to it, fifty-one, as I reckon, are conspicuous for their unswerving steadiness throughout the proceedings, never having missed a day in their attendance from the 20th to the 27th inclusively. Among these are Bradshaw, Cromwell, Ireton, Marten, General Hammond, Ludlow, Lord Grey of Groby, Sir John Danvers, Pride, Purefoy, Hewson, Hutchinson, Robert Lilburne, Okey, Sir Hardress Waller, Whalley, Harrison, Sir M. Livesy, and Thomas Scott. Several of those, however, who had missed one or even two of the days of the Trial had done so accidentally, or for some reason of business, and not from flinching. Finally, of the sixty-seven who were present at the sentence, and stood up when it was pronounced to signify their concurrence, several were either reluctant at the time, or at all events afterwards wished people to believe that they were.]