CHAPTER XII.
More victims in the month of April were sacrificed upon the altar of revenge. Colonel John Okey, a distinguished officer in the Commonwealth Army, who had adopted Republican and Millenarian views; Miles Corbet, a member of the Long Parliament, and Recorder of Yarmouth, who had been connected with the Church under the pastoral care of William Bridge, in that town; and Colonel John Barkstead, who had been knighted by Cromwell, and had been appointed to a seat in his House of Lords—all three, after a brief trial, and a merciless sentence, for the part they had taken in the High Court of Justice, were executed at Tyburn.
A noble victim perished two months afterwards. It has been with Sir Henry Vane as with Oliver Cromwell: having disliked each other in life, they have shared a common fate in the judgment of posterity: for, after years of odium, the names of both are raised to honour. Vane's Republicanism rendered him impracticable, and his mysticism, although undeserving the reproaches of Baxter and Burnet, threw a haze over his speculations, which makes them somewhat unintelligible; but the piety and genius of his Meditations, and the purity and virtue of his life, render him an object of reverence and love.
REPUBLICAN VICTIMS.
He was tried for compassing the death of the King; yet, whatever he might be in other respects, he was no regicide. The evidence on his trial only proved that he had held office under the Commonwealth, that he had been a member of the Council of State in 1651, and had belonged to the Committee of Safety in 1659. To make the condemnation and sentence of Vane the more unrighteous, the King, after solemnly promising to spare the life of the Republican, had written to Clarendon, saying—Vane "is too dangerous a man to let live, if we can honestly put him out of the way."
The spirit of the prisoner appears in a letter which he wrote to his wife. "This dark night, and black shade," he observes, "which God hath drawn over His work in the midst of us, may be, for aught we know, the ground colour to some beautiful piece that He is now exposing to the light." His execution was an ovation. From the crowded tops and windows of the houses, people expressed their deep sympathy, crying aloud, "The Lord go with you, the great God of heaven and earth appear in you and for you;"—signs of popular feeling which sustained the sufferer, who gratefully acknowledged them, "putting off his hat and bowing." When asked how he did, he answered, "Never better in all my life;" and on the scaffold his noble bearing so affected the spectators that they could scarcely believe "the gentleman in the black suit and cloak, with a scarlet silk waistcoat (the victorious colour) showing itself at the breast, was the prisoner." Frequent interruptions from the sound of drums drowned his voice, which, as Burnet says, was "a new and very indecent practice." The officers, as they put their hands in his pockets, searching for papers, exasperated the populace, whilst Vane's calmness led a Royalist present to say, "he died like a prince." Before receiving the last stroke, he exclaimed, "I bless the Lord, who hath accounted me worthy to suffer for His name. Blessed be the Lord, that I have kept a conscience void of offence to this day. I bless the Lord I have not deserted the righteous cause for which I suffer."—"Father, glorify Thy servant in the sight of men, that he may glorify Thee in the discharge of his duty to Thee and to his country." One blow did the work. "It was generally thought," remarks Burnet, "the Government had lost more than it had gained by his death." Pepys declares the people counted his constancy "a miracle;" adding, "The King lost more by that man's death than he will get again for a good while."[347]
1662.
Thus fell one of the triumvirate described in a former volume—thus fell the noblest mystic of the age, next to George Fox—thus was devoted to death in the Temple of Expediency, one who had never bowed at the shrine of that heathen goddess, but had always fervently worshipped in the Temple of Christian Virtue. Whatever his enemies might do with his body, they could not prevent his pure soul from entering that adjacent Temple of Honour, on the walls of which his name is inscribed for evermore.
Some of the regicides escaped with their lives. Well known is the story of Edmund Ludlow—how he fled at the Restoration, and went to Geneva, and settled at Vevay; how he came back to England at the period of the Revolution, and set sail for Ireland to assist William III. at the siege of Londonderry, and was compelled to return because that prince would not allow in his fleet, the presence of one who had been implicated in his grandfather's execution.[348] But history tells of another regicide, less known to fame—whose fortunes were less happy, and more wonderful. Edward Whalley figured amongst Cromwell's Major-Generals, and was so considerable a person that Richard Baxter dedicated to him a controversial work, entitled The Apology, in which he says, "Think not that your greatest trials are all over. Prosperity hath its peculiar temptations, by which it hath foiled many that stood unshaken in the storms of adversity. The tempter, who hath had you on the waves, will now assault you in the calm, and hath his last game to play on the mountain till nature cause you to descend. Stand this charge, and you win the day."[349]