King Charles walked right through the Banqueting Hall under a beautiful ceiling which he himself had paid a great painter to paint. You can walk there yourself now under the same ceiling, for the place is a museum, and anyone can go to see it.
Then he went through one of the windows upstairs—no one is quite sure which, but it is supposed to be the second one from one end—and when he stepped out on to the scaffold there was the dreadful executioner, with his black mask on and his sharp axe. It was the custom for the executioner to wear a mask, and I think he must have been glad of it that day. The scaffold was all draped in black, and on it was a block, at which the King must kneel, and on which he must rest his head. He said gently the block was very low, and he had expected it to be higher; but they told him it must be so, and he said no more.
Then he took off a beautiful star he wore, the decoration of an order, which he handed to a captain in the army, a friend of his own, in whose family it still remains, and some other things, which he gave to Bishop Juxon, who stood by, and as he did so he said: 'Remember.' No one has ever quite known what he meant by that, for the Bishop never told. It is supposed either he meant that Bishop Juxon was to remember to give these things to his son Prince Charles, or that he was to tell Prince Charles to remember to forgive his father's murderers.
Then King Charles said to the executioner that he would put his head on the block, and when he stretched out his hands he might strike. In a few minutes he finished praying, and stretched out his hands. Down fell the sharp axe, and a deep groan rose up from all the multitude as King Charles was beheaded. Now every day hundreds of people walk up and down on the pavement before the Banqueting Hall, but hardly one thinks of that awful day when a King's blood was shed on this very place.
The old palace of Whitehall has quite gone. Over the place where it was are houses and gardens; some of the houses are large and some are quite old. Only the Banqueting Hall remains, that part of the magnificent palace that Inigo Jones meant to build for James I.
At the top of Whitehall at Charing Cross there is a statue of King Charles on a horse, as if he were riding down toward the place where he died. On the very spot where it stands, before it was put up, the worst of the men who murdered Charles were themselves executed only a short distance from the place of the King's execution. For after Cromwell's death England realized her wickedness, and Charles's son came back to reign. But never, never can be forgotten the dreadful deed that happened in Whitehall more than two hundred and fifty years ago.