Excitement and confusion break out for a space, but the cry of “Justice! execution!” is again raised. The king, almost beside himself, passionately cries, “Hear me! hear me!” but he is not permitted to speak. Then Bradshaw delivers a long and solemn address, the clerk reads the sentence, and the judges stand in their places to signify their assent. The king again tries to speak, but being considered dead in law is not permitted to do so. He is led away, and as he leaves the hall the soldiers on the stairs puff smoke in his face and hurl the grossest insults at him. But outside the mob shouts, “God save your Majesty!” “God deliver your Majesty from the hands of your enemies!” The soldiers retort with cries of “Justice!” “Execution!” and the king, who has now regained his serenity, observes, “Poor souls! for a piece of money they would do so to their commanders.”
The condemned king is lodged in St. James’s Palace, where he is allowed to take a last fond farewell of his weeping children. He takes the little boy on his knee, and says, “My dear heart, they will soon cut off thy father’s head. Mark, child, what I say: they will cut off my head, and perhaps make thee king; but thou must not be king so long as thy brothers Charles and James live. I charge thee, do not be made a king by them.” To which the child replies amidst its tears, “I will be torn in pieces first.” The children are removed, and the king spends the few remaining hours in prayer with his good friend Bishop Juxon. On January 30, between two and three in the afternoon, he is led by armed men through the leafless avenues of St. James’s Park to his palace of Whitehall, before which a scaffold draped with black has been erected. All marvel at the calm dignity which he displays.
The scaffold is hedged round with soldiers, and the headsman stands beside the block. The king, with head erect, steps through an opening in the wall of the banqueting hall on to the scaffold. He addresses himself to the bystanders, and in the last words he utters he shows clearly that he has not abandoned his fatal theory of kingship. Then he turns to the good Juxon, who says, “There is but one stage more, sire; it is full of trouble and anguish, but it is a very short one, and it will carry you a great way—from earth to heaven!” “I go,” returns the king, “from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown, where I shall have no trouble to fear.” Then with a mysterious admonition—“Remember!”—he lays his head on the block. The axe falls, and a deep groan of pity and horror goes up from the people.
A blood-red line has been ruled across the page of our national history—the Old Rule has gone; the New Rule has yet to appear.
Charles I. leaving Westminster Hall after his Trial.
(From the picture by Sir John Gilbert, R.A., in the Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield. By permission of the Corporation of Sheffield.)
CROMWELL AT MARSTON MOOR.
(From the picture by Ernest Crofts, A.R.A.)