The last two days and three nights of Charles's life were spent by him in the utmost possible privacy. From the first day of his trial, by an order of the Commons, procured by the intercession of Hugh Peters, he had been allowed to have Dr. Juxon, ex-Bishop of London, constantly in attendance upon him; and there was a fresh order continuing this favour after the sentence. Except Juxon and the faithful gentleman of the bedchamber, Thomas Herbert, the King did not desire company; and it was a relief to him when, on the remonstrances of these two with Hacker, that officer desisted from his intention of placing two musketeers on guard in his chamber. [Footnote: Commons Journals of the 20th and the 27th, and Herbert, 182-3.]
On the evening of the 27th, the day of the sentence, the King's nephew, the Prince Elector, who had special permission to see him, came for the purpose, accompanied by the Duke of Richmond, the Marquis of Hertford, the Earls of Southampton and Lindsey, and some other noblemen. They had to be content with a message of thanks through Herbert, and went sorrowfully away. The same evening there also arrived Mr. Henry Seymour, with a letter from the Prince of Wales, dated from the Hague a few days before. This messenger, having been admitted by Colonel Hacker, did see the King, and knelt passionately at his feet, while he read the letter, and returned some verbal answer. There then remained only Herbert and Juxon with the King; but, as the night came on, Herbert was sent out on a message. He was to take a ring which the King gave him, an emerald between two diamonds, and deliver it to a lady living in Channel Row, who would know what it meant. The night was very dark; but Herbert, having got the pass-word from Colonel Tomlinson, who was in command outside, made his way through the sentries to the house indicated. He saw the lady, and, on delivering the ring, received from her a sealed cabinet. It was a box of diamonds and other jewels, chiefly broken Georges and Garters, which had been deposited with the lady, who was the King's laundress and wife of Sir William Wheeler. Returning with it to St. James's, Herbert found Juxon just gone to his lodging near, and the King alone. Herbert slept that night in the King's chamber, as he had done since the beginning of the trial, a pallet-bed having been brought in for the purpose by the King's order, and placed near his own bed. As always, the wax-light in the silver basin was kept faintly burning. [Footnote: Herbert, 170-178; and Wood's Ath. IV. 28-31. Wood's account was derived from Herbert himself, and substantially is the same as Herbert's own in his published Memoirs, but with additional particulars, of which some are peculiarly interesting.]
Of the next day, Sunday the 28th, there is nothing to record, save that in the morning the King opened the cabinet of jewels, and that the rest of the day was passed in hearing a sermon from Juxon on Romans ii. 16, and in private readings and devotions. Clement Walker, indeed, foists into this day a myth he had heard about a certain "paper-book" tendered to the King by "some of the grandees of the Army and Parliament," offering him his "life and some shadow of regality" on conditions of such a portentous character, so "destructive to the fundamental Government, Religion, Laws, Liberties, and Properties of the People," that his Majesty firmly refused them. The air was full of such myths. [Footnote: Clement Walker's Hist. of Independency, Part II, 109, 110.]
On Monday, the 29th, the two royal children then in England, the Princess Elizabeth, thirteen years old, and the Duke of Gloucester, a boy of eight, came to St. James's to bid their father farewell. The Princess, as the elder, and the more sensible of her father's condition, was weeping excessively; the younger boy, seeing his sister weep, took the like impression, and sobbed in sympathy and fright. He sat with them for some time at a window, taking them on his knees and kissing them, and talking with them of their duty to their mother, and to their eldest brother the Prince of Wales, who should be rightful King of England in long future years, when they would hardly remember their dead father. He distributed to them most of the jewels from the recovered casket; and at last, when the time allotted for the interview was over, and the door was opened from without, he rose hastily, again kissed them and blessed them, and then turned about to hide his own tears, while they departed crying miserably. [Footnote: Herbert, 178-180. In one particular there is a discrepancy between Herbert's account of the two days immediately succeeding Charles's sentence and the account found in Rushworth and others. Herbert says that on Saturday, after the sentence, Charles was taken from Westminster Hall back to Whitehall, "whence after two hours' space he was removed to St. James's." Accordingly it is at St. James's, as in the text, that Herbert represents Charles as passing the Saturday night and the Sunday and Monday. In Rushworth, on the other hand, the King remains at Whitehall through Saturday night and Sunday; and it is not till Monday that he is removed to St. James's, where he sees his children. Herbert's surely is the better authority in this matter.]
And what of surrounding London, what of England, what of the three kingdoms, and the world beyond the seas? A King condemned as a Traitor and a Murderer by a fraction of his subjects; his children taking farewell of him; his time on earth now measured by hours, and the hours by the ticks of a clock; the hum close at hand of carpenters at work in hideous, unnameable preparations! Was there then to be no arrest, might there be no delay? Would not the very stones of London rise and mutiny; might not the land around, even if led but by popular fury, surge in to the rescue; from beyond the seas might there not come execration sufficient, and some foreign voice to stop?
Nearly eight weeks, it is to be remembered, had elapsed since the Army had assumed the absolute political mastery by Pride's Purge of the Commons; and somewhat more than three weeks since the small stump of the Commons which they had fitted for their purpose had voted the Peers a farce, declared all power to reside in itself, and appointed the High Court of Justice for the Trial of the King. If there was to be interposition for Charles, from within Great Britain or from abroad, there had therefore been time for it before his Trial actually began, or at least before his Sentence. What had been the appearances? Among foreign powers and potentates a mere curious amazement, a feeling that the strange Islanders had gone mad, too mad to be meddled with: in France perhaps, where Mazarin had his own notions, even a pleasure in the sense of being unable to interfere and a willingness to see the English fury burn itself out in its own way. The French Ambassador in England had, indeed, conveyed a letter from Queen Henrietta Maria, addressed to the Speaker of the House of Commons; but the House had passed it by, and left it unanswered. Then, among the English Royalists abroad! Among them, of course, a phrenzy unutterable,—passionate pacings of rooms and courtyards in the foreign towns that quartered them; wild clamours of grief wherever a few of them were gathered together; mingled sobbings, curses, prayers, gnashings of teeth, at the thought of what was passing in the home-island beyond their reach! But what within that island itself? What of England and London? The population, as we know, consisted of three sections—the numerous Independents and Sectaries; the multitudinous Presbyterians; and the suppressed and all but silenced Prelatists, or adherents of the old Church of England, What had been the signs from these three sections? Well, while petitions had come in to the Commons from the "well-affected," i.e. the Independents and Sectaries, of various counties, praying for justice on Delinquents of whatever rank, and therefore virtually adhering to the Army; while the Independents of the City of London itself had bestirred themselves in the same sense, and, in spite of the opposition of the Lord Mayor and most of the Aldermen, had carried at a Guildhall meeting an Address from the Common Council to the Commons, which the Commons received with great form and much expression of thanks; while all this had been done in the Army's interest, there had been much fainter counter-demonstrations, from either the Prelatists or the Presbyterians, than might have been expected. The Prelatists, believing their interference would do harm, had remained in dumb horror: only Dr. John Gauden and Dr, Henry Hammond had ventured on protestations in the King's behalf, addressed to Fairfax and the Army Council. The Presbyterians, having more liberty in the way of speech, had certainly not been silent. What indignation among them, what outcries, during the last seven weeks, over the suppression of all legal authority, and the monstrous usurpation of power by the Army-Grandees and their heretical adherents! Among the Presbyterian multitudes of London there had been no protester in this sense more brave than Prynne. Whatever could be done with pen and ink, or by vehement verbal messages, in addition to his published Brief Memento, from his durance in the King's Head Tavern, he had done, and continued to do. Clement Walker was hardly less active. From the Presbyterian Clergy of the City also, notwithstanding the exertions of Hugh Peters and others, in private conferences with them, to keep them from interfering, there did come voices of remonstrance. The Westminster Assembly, or what of the body then remained sitting, had signified their unanimous desire for the King's release; and forty-seven ministers, meeting at Sion College, had drawn up and signed a document, addressed to Fairfax, in which they protested most earnestly, in the name of Religion and general morality, and also of the Solemn League and Covenant, against the usurpation of power by the Army and the violence intended to the King's person. There had been manifestations to the same effect from Presbyterian ministers in various parts of the country, in which, it appears, even some of the Independent ministers had joined. Finally, there was all Presbyterian Scotland. What of it? The Scottish Parliament had met in Edinburgh on the 4th of January, and had been greatly agitated by the news, received from the Earl of Lothian, Sir John Chiesley, and William Glendinning, then acting as Scottish Commissioners in London, "how that above 160 members of the House of Commons were extrudit the House by the blasphemous Army," and how there was no doubt but the King's life was in peril. There had been an express to London in consequence, with instructions to the Commissioners to do their best, by every form of entreaty and remonstrance, to avert the dreaded catastrophe. Both before and during the Trial, accordingly, these Commissioners, aided by Mr. Blair and other Commissioners of the Scottish Kirk, had been going to and fro in London, reasoning, threatening, and imploring. Charles Stuart was King of Scotland; the whole Scottish nation was loyal to Monarchy in him and in his race; from all the pulpits in Scotland there were prayers for him, and forgiveness of his past errors in pity of his present state; would the English nation dare, in defiance of all this, and in outrage of the League and Covenant, to put him to death? [Footnote: Commons Journals, Jan. 15, 1648-9; Neal's Puritans, III. 490-6; Whitlocke Jan. 3; Walker's History of Independency, Part II. 61-87; Balfour's Annals, III. 373 et seq. Life of Robert Blair (Wodrow Society), pp. 213-215.]
All this before the King's trial had actually begun, or at least before his sentence. And what now that the sentence had been pronounced, and Charles in St. James's was making ready for his doom? The Trial had been swift; hardly more than the expectation of it can have reached foreign shores; of the actual sentence many parts of England were yet ignorant. Only at the centre, only in London itself, could there be interference at this last moment. To the last there were some efforts. After the sentence the pleadings and protests of the Scottish Commissioners became nearly frantic in their vehemence, the Presbyterianism of London too numb for farther expression itself, but speaking through the Scots. All to no effect. Nor was greater attention paid to the intercession of the only foreign Power that then made an effort to save Charles. The States- General of Holland had sent over a special embassy for the purpose; but, though the Ambassadors were in London on the 29th and were received that day with most ceremonious respect by the Commons as well as by the Lords, they knew that they had come on a vain errand.
Why was all in vain? For one very simple and yet very sufficient reason. At the centre of England was a will that had made itself adamant, by express vow and deliberation beforehand, for the very hour which had now arrived, and that, amid all entreaties and pleadings of men, women, classes, corporations, and nations, would go through with the business that had been begun. Relentings there were near the centre, but not at the very centre. Fairfax had relented; Pennington had relented; others who had taken part in the Trial had relented; Vane, St. John, Skippon, Fiennes, leaders hitherto, had withdrawn from the work, and were looking on moodily; there was an agony over what was coming among many that had helped to bring it to pass. Only some fifty or sixty governing Englishmen, with OLIVER CROMWELL in the midst of them, were prepared for every responsibility, and stood inexorably to their task. They were the will of England now, and they had the Army with them. What proportion of England besides went with them it might be difficult to estimate. One private Londoner, at all events, can be named, who approved thoroughly of their policy, and was ready to testify the same. While the sentenced King was at St. James's there were lying on Milton's writing- table in his house in High Holborn at least the beginnings of a pamphlet on which he had been engaged during the King's Trial, and in which, in vehement answer to the outcry of the Presbyterians generally, but with particular references also to the printed protests of Prynne, the appeals of the Prelatists Hammond and Gauden, and the interferences of the Scots and the Dutch, he was to defend all the recent acts of the Army, Pride's Purge included, justify the existing government of the Army-chiefs and the fragment of Parliament that assisted them, inculcate Republican beliefs on his countrymen, and prove to them above all this proposition: "That it is lawful, and hath been held so through all ages, for any who have the power, to call to account a Tyrant, or wicked King, and, after due conviction, to depose and put him to death, if the ordinary Magistrate have neglected or denied to do it!" The pamphlet was not to come out in time to bear practically on the deed which it justified; but, while the King was yet alive, it was planned, sketched, and in part written. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Jan, 22 and 29; Lords Journals, Jan. 29; Rushworth, VII. 1426-7; Milton's Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, and his Def. Sec.—That Milton's Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, though not published till after the King's death, had been on hand before, if not completed, might be inferred from the pamphlet itself, the language and tense of some parts of which are scarcely explicable otherwise. But see his account of the composition of the pamphlet in his Def. Sec. He there says that the book did not come out till after the King's death, and consequently had no direct influence in bringing about that fact; but this very statement, and the sentences which precede it, confirm what is said in the text as to the time when the pamphlet was schemed and begun.]
Actually on Monday, Jan. 29, while the Dutch Ambassadors were having their audiences with the two Houses, the Death-Warrant was out, as follows:—
"At the High Court of Justice for the Trying and Judging of Charles
Stuart, King of England, January XXIXth, Anno Dom. 1648.