A history of England principally in the seventeenth century, Volume 2 (of 6)

by Leopold von Ranke

At St. James’s Charles I seems to have cherished the belief that his life would not be touched, because, according to ancient usage, his death would totally destroy the legal rights of Parliament: but the theory already adopted had made this custom meaningless.

Undeterred by the King’s protestations, or by any considerations of this kind, the court, after some evidence had been taken, resolved, on the sixth day of the proceedings, January 25, to condemn the King to death as a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a public enemy of the commonwealth of England. Two days later the sentence was to be made known to the prisoner. The King then asked for one more hearing before the two Houses; not that he would have had any special proposition to make, but that he wanted an audience before whom to speak his mind. The President remarked that this amounted to the King’s wishing to speak to the members of the court without acknowledging its authority. Without further delay the sentence was read, by which Charles Stuart was condemned to death for his treasons and crimes. Charles again tried to speak, A.D. 1649. but was prevented with insulting haste. ‘They cannot endure’ he said, ‘that their King should speak to them: what justice have others to expect at their hands?’

Life was over: after preparing himself, with the assistance of Bishop Juxon and by receiving the Sacrament, to appear before God, and give account to Him to whom alone he felt that he was answerable, he had only one royal and fatherly duty to perform: he sent for his two children who were at hand (they were living at Sion House), his daughter Elizabeth, aged thirteen, and his youngest son Henry of Gloucester, who numbered nine years. He told the boy that the army intended, it was reported, to make him King, but that he had two elder brothers, and would endanger his soul and forfeit his father’s blessing, if he accepted the crown. He begged his daughter not to grieve on his account, for it was a glorious death that he was to suffer, he was dying for the laws and liberties of his country, and for the true Protestant religion. He advised her to read Laud’s book against Fisher to strengthen her in this faith. He advised her and her sisters to obey their mother, his son James to reverence his elder brother as his King. That this latter would ascend the throne was to him beyond all doubt. Then, said he, they would all be happier than if he had remained alive (he meant under the conditions which he had accepted at Newport): he had forgiven all his enemies, and his children might do the same; but they must never trust them, for they had been false to him and, as he feared, to their own souls. He added withal that he died as a martyr.

He had often expressed the wish once more to meet the people of his capital, who had again inclined in his favour: it was granted to him on the scaffold. This was erected at Whitehall, on the spot where the kings were wont to show themselves to the people after their coronation. Standing beside the block at which he was to die, he was allowed once more to speak in public. He said that the war and its horrors were unjustly laid to his charge; the guilt was with those who had robbed him of his lawful authority over the armed forces. Yet God’s judgments were just, for an unrighteous sentence which he had once permitted was now A.D. 1649. avenged by a like sentence on himself. If at last he had been willing to give way to arbitrary power and the change of the laws by the sword, he would not have been in this position: he was dying as the martyr of the people, passing from a perishable kingdom (the phrase is his own) to an imperishable. On the suggestion of the bishop he again declared that he died in the faith of the Church of England, as he had received it from his father. Then bending to the block, he himself gave the sign for the axe to fall upon his neck. A moment, and the severed head was shown to the people, with the words—‘This is the head of a traitor.’ All public places, the street-crossings, and especially the entrances of the city, were occupied by soldiery on foot and on horseback. An incalculable multitude had however streamed to the spot. Of the King’s words they heard nothing, but they were aware of their purport through the cautious and guarded yet positive language of their preachers. When they saw the severed head, they broke into a cry, universal and involuntary, in which the feelings of guilt and weakness were blended with terror—a sort of voice of nature, whose terrible impression those who heard it were never able to shake off.

To some it will appear scarcely allowable, in the light of our times, to revert to the question how far the words repeatedly uttered by Charles I in the solemn moments between this life and eternity, that he died as a martyr, really expressed a truth. Certainly not so in the sense that has been attached to them, that he was merely a sufferer who lived and bled for the known truth. He was rather a prince who all his life long fought for his own rights and power, which he, if ever man did, personally exercised, seeking at first to extend, and later only to defend them, by all means in his power, open and secret, in council and in the field, in the battle of words and with actual weapons, and who perished in the conflict.

Let us figure to ourselves the characteristics of the several epochs of his government. For the nature of a man does not appear at once: it is rather in the separate phases of his life that his real self is developed, and the attributes which compose his character are exhibited.

A.D. 1649.

In the first stage of his public life Charles I, like most princes on their accession, seems to have felt a certain wish to be popular. Filled with personal antipathy to Spain, he rejected, even in his father’s lifetime, his system of foreign and domestic policy, which certainly gave occasion for some blame, but was universally circumspect. After he had ascended the throne he followed the same course, but then he discovered the strength of the forces which he had undertaken to resist, and the untrustworthiness of the elements on which he relied for support. In foreign affairs, especially German, he rather increased the evils and complications: we find him at war with the two great powers, between which his father had sought to steer: but at last he contented himself with a neutral position, after concluding peace with them both. In domestic politics the popular principles which he had at least partially recognised and then sought to prevent from attaining general acceptance, arrived at a full consciousness of their strength: the King stooped to neutralise by secret protests the concessions which he could not publicly refuse to them. In all things he appears never self-reliant, rather enterprising and active than of steadfast strength; justified in his own eyes, but not before the world, which above all things desires firmness and success.

There followed a period of tranquillity at home and peace abroad. The King turned his activity to commercial enterprise, and occupied his intellect with literature and art, in which he found endless delight. Intellectual conversation appeared to him the greatest of all pleasures which man can enjoy. His wife afforded him this through her attendants as well as herself, and it was for this that he first valued her. At the same time he came back to the idea of completing his father’s system, of subjecting the three kingdoms to ecclesiastical uniformity, and extending the royal prerogative so far that no parliamentary claims should have a chance of shaking it. He appears dignified, tranquil, polished, but inclined to violent repression and systematic coercion.

Then the storm broke upon him, with a universal movement of disobedience and resistance. After some violent efforts which were unsuccessful, at sight of the general desertion A.D. 1649. the King was impressed with a feeling that he had gone too far. To a harsh stubbornness, which seemed incapable of being shaken, succeeded a compliance even disgraceful. The men who had most powerfully represented the royal ideas were abandoned, and concessions never to be revoked were granted to their opponents. All seemed to depend on satisfying their claims, so as to establish an equilibrium between prerogative and parliamentary rights, when at last he discovered that this was impossible. The great current of European affairs, which had taken a turn in favour of purely Protestant ideas, aided his opponents, who had before all things adopted these opinions. When Charles I prepared to resist them, he caused the full development of the hostile powers, and saw himself reduced to the necessity of abandoning his capital to them. This was for him a period of manifold errors, of false and deceitful policy, of secret agony.