The Comic History of England

by Gilbert Abbott À Beckett

In the September of 1648, another conference was attempted, and Charles took a furnished lodging at a private house in Newport, where the commissioners came to consult with him. They found him much altered, and with his hair so grey as to bespeak the fact that care had been busy in peppering his head, which he declared had got into that state during his anxious sojourn at Oxford; and this peculiar combination of tints retains to this day the title of the Oxford Mixture.

The Parliament would have been glad to diminish the influence of the army by a successful negotiation with the king; but while terms were being discussed, Cromwell, who never brewed half-and-half, struck a blow at both parties. He sent one of his draymen named Pride, who had risen from a seat on the shafts of his dray to a colonelcy in the army, to blockade the Parliament-house with a body of troops, and let in only those members who were favourable to the views of his late employer. We, who cannot imagine Barclay or Perkins going the entire in the style of their predecessor in trade, nor conceive Meux and Co. meddling with the Crown, except to supply it with beer, are of course astonished at the insolence of Cromwell. He nevertheless gained his point, for he set the Parliament at defiance, and had the king removed to Hurst Castle, in Hampshire, which was so dull that Charles could not help remarking that coming to Hurst was like going to be buried. He was again removed to Windsor, and subsequently to St. James's Palace, where the guards were ordered to call him Charles Stuart, in order to show the magnanimity of the revenge of such a man as Cromwell. The king was exposed to every petty insult that littlemindedness could suggest or coarse brutality execute. In this respect the "liberals" of England in 1649 set an example which the "liberals" of France followed in the treatment of their own fallen and powerless sovereign upwards of a century afterwards. The only comfort he enjoyed was the society of poor old Jack Juxon, the bishop who had been faithful to him in all his adversity.

It was now determined to bring the king to trial, and on the 20th of January the proceedings commenced in Westminster Hall, when upon its being declared that Charles was accused in the name of the people, a shrill voice exclaimed "Pooh, pooh! not a tenth part of them." The ushers looked in vain to see who was disturbing the audience, and the soldiers were ordered to fire into the corner whence the voice proceeded, until it turned out that Lady Fairfax was the individual by whom the proceedings had been interrupted. She was a warm politician, and with her husband had espoused the parliamentary cause, but was disgusted like him with the brutal use that the "liberals" were making of their triumph. Charles demurred to the jurisdiction of his judges for three days, but, on the 27th, they found him guilty, and sentenced him to be beheaded three days afterwards. The "people," imitating the conduct of some of their "friends," insulted the fallen monarch in his misfortune, and many a malicious, low-bred ass, tried to get a kick at the chained lion. Happily the people in our own days are very superior to the people of the time ol Charles, and there is no sympathy among the masses with ungenerous persecution, whatever may be the rank of the victim.

As Charles quitted the hall after his conviction, a wretched miscreant displayed a toad-like venom by spitting in the king's face, which drew from the sovereign the true remark, "Poor souls! they would treat their generals in the same manner for sixpence." While chronicling an act disgraceful to human nature, we must not forget to put down what is on the credit side—namely, a blessing instead of an insult from one of the guard, who was struck to the ground for giving way to this creditable impulse.

We draw a veil over the closing scene, for our history is not a register of murders; but whoever reads attentively the details of the sacrifice of Charles the First will see the original of one of the darkest scenes in the French Revolution.

The death-warrant for the execution of Charles the First was signed by fifty-nine of his judges, the list beginning with the name of James Bradshaw, and ending with that of Miles Corbet. Few of them rose to much distinction, and still fewer have left descendants capable of acquiring fame, for there is scarcely a renowned patronymic in the entire catalogue. A man in a visor performed the murderous ceremony of striking off the king's head; and we cannot be surprised that the executioner was ashamed to show his face on such an occasion.

Though the nation had stood by, in the most apathetic manner, while the mischief was doing, it was no sooner done than everybody became very indignant and very sorrowful. Women went into fits, men took to drinking, and some went so far as to commit suicide rather than survive their murdered sovereign. This sympathy was all peculiarly English, and, in fact, a little too much so; for it is the fault of our countrymen to make a great deal too much of the dead and too little of the living.

Frequently the fate of one who, after his decease, has his merits recognised by subscription and a monument. Genius not unfrequently asks in vain for bread when living, but when dead gets a stone awarded him.

Charles was in the forty-ninth year of his age, and the twenty-fourth of his reign, when he was brought to the scaffold. We regret that we cannot give a favourable character of this unfortunate person out of place—for he certainly was completely out of place on the throne of England. His disposition was mixed, like human nature in general; and indeed, what is mankind, as the philosopher would ask, but the "mixture as before" incessantly repeated? He was dignified, it is true, but so is the representative of the "fifth noble" Neglect, or even starvation, is freor "tenth senator," in an opera or play, and he was temperate also to an extent that might have fitted him for the chair of a teetotal lodge, but not for the throne of a vast empire. He was not avaricious, but if he spent money freely it was because he freely helped himself to the money of other people. He was humane to such an extent, that "he would not have hurt a fly;" but it may be said that a fly never did him any harm, and hostility therefore, to that imbecile insect, would have been at once brutal and undignified. The man who would hurt a fly must indeed be very hard up for a victim to his malevolence, and Charles cannot, therefore, have much credit given him for his amiability towards that humble member of the class of diptera. The manners of Charles were not much in his favour; "but it would not have mattered much," says the incorrigible Strype, "that he was a bit of a bear, had he been otherwise bearable."

In a commercial country, like ours, his swindling propensities will always tell against him, and his insatiable desire to obtain money, under false pretences, was quite unworthy of his exalted station, or, indeed, of any station but that where the police are paramount. It is true that his subjects would have kept him rather hard up for cash; and he often declared that the Long Parliament reduced him repeatedly to very short commons. Hume has endeavoured to give Charles the reputation of being a man of "probity and honour;" but it must have been the sort of honour said to prevail among thieves, for when he could not get money by honest means—which he seldom could—he never scrupled to rob for it.