“Mr. Sergeant,” says the president, “bring in the prisoner.”
There is a deep hush, and you hear the tramp of armed men and the clank of scabbards on the pavement. A guard of thirty-two officers leads the prisoner to a chair of crimson velvet at the bar. Now you see him clearly; he is none other than Charles Stuart, King of England.
Look at him well. He is tall, dark, and handsome, with a long, fine face, large black eyes, thick eyebrows, a pointed beard, and black, curly hair streaked with silver. His whole aspect is noble, dignified, and refined. He is a chaste, temperate man, devout at prayers, a good father, and a fond husband, a lover of music and painting. Nevertheless he is faithless by nature, and addicted to dark and crooked ways. Seldom or never is he straightforward in his dealings. He is firmly convinced that between him and his subjects there can be no agreement which will bind him, and he holds that whether he keeps a promise or breaks it is a matter for him to decide, and for him alone. He has inherited his father’s beliefs in the doctrines of the Divine right and the absolute power of kings, and he has pushed these doctrines to such utmost extremes that he has plunged the nation into civil war, and in the contest has irretrievably ruined himself.
He is not a clever man, and he is incurably obstinate. He cannot understand the great movements which have been going on around him. He has never been able to perceive that the time has gone by when men will allow the king to be a tyrant, and permit him to override both the law and the will of the people. For eleven years he has ruled the land without a Parliament, aided by subservient ministers, who have been very geniuses of tyranny, and have goaded and maddened the people by all sorts of illegal expedients. These ministers have gone to the block, and he has been powerless to save them. One of them has died with the ominous words on his lips, “Put not your trust in princes.”
Charles has endeavoured to make himself absolute alike in Church and State. The Puritans, who are now very strong, have been the especial object of his hatred. They have been tormented, fined, whipped, pilloried, and imprisoned. His wife is a Roman Catholic princess, whose intrigues have still further brought him into bad odour, and he has showed such favour to those of her faith that the Puritans bitterly denounce him. Many earnest men of less fanatical mind have long ago come to the conclusion that unless he is removed all freedom will be banished from the land.
Fifteen years ago John Hampden refused to pay an illegal tax, and though he was heavily fined, his resistance thrilled all England and made him “the argument of all tongues.” The patience of the Scots also broke down, and they indignantly refused to permit the king to alter their mode of worship. In the churchyard of Greyfriars, Edinburgh, they signed their bond of resistance with blood and tears. Charles would gladly have chastised them, but his soldiers were unwilling to fight and his treasury was empty. In this plight he was forced to call a Parliament, which was full of opponents, who were determined to grant no supplies until the causes of all grievances were pulled up by the roots. But when this Parliament had done much good work for liberty, the members split on religious questions, and Charles, profiting by their dissensions, was safe for a time.
Suddenly terrible news arrived from Ireland. The native Irish, who were Roman Catholics to a man, had attacked the Protestant English colonists, and had slaughtered five thousand of them with horrible cruelty. The leader of the Irish had showed his followers a letter purporting to come from the king and encouraging him to the massacre. The letter had the royal seal attached to it, and looked genuine, but it was a forgery. The English Puritans, however, were now ready to think the worst of Charles, and they firmly believed that he had instigated the Irish to slaughter their fellow-countrymen and his own subjects. When Parliament reassembled, the Puritan leaders drew up a long list of all the illegal acts which the king had done, and issued it as a manifesto to the nation. Tact and conciliation might have worked wonders at this time, but Charles was in no mood for pacific measures. His wife urged him to go to Parliament and seize the five Puritan leaders. “Pull the rascals out by the ears,” she cried, and in fatal hour Charles took her advice. He went down to Westminster at the head of five hundred men, and entered the House only to discover that “the birds had flown.” The five members had escaped to the city, and the king was foiled and humiliated. He left the House amidst low mutterings of fierce discontent and loud cries of “Privilege! privilege!” The London militia rose in arms to protect the five members, and war could no longer be avoided.
In April 1642 the king rode to Hull, where there was a large magazine of arms and gunpowder, and demanded admittance. The gates were shut in his face, and the governor declared that he would only take orders from Parliament. This was the first act of war.
On the stormy evening of August 22 the king raised his standard at Nottingham, and when it was blown down there were many who saw in the occurrence an evil omen. Then began a series of miserable years, during which father fought against son and brother against brother. The fortune of war at first favoured the king; but the tide turned, and the forces of the Parliament gradually gained the upper hand. It was inevitable that they should win: London and the most populous and wealthy part of the country were with them; the great military genius, Cromwell, rose amongst them; and a deep, religious fervour inspired them.
For three years the land rang with the tumult of battle, but on one June day in the year 1645 the crisis arrived. The Parliamentary horsemen scattered the Cavaliers of the king like chaff before the wind, and they were never dangerous again. The king fled from the field, and in his captured baggage the victors found damning proof of his intrigues with the French and the Irish, and proposals that foreign armies should come over and subdue his revolting subjects.