And I spoze Richard had feelin’s as well as myself, and the splendor of my parlor would mad me all the more to leave it, even if it shed a glory over the seen.
Charles I. wuz tried in Westminster Hall and condemned to death, and a few years later Oliver Cromwell was inaugerated in it Lord Protector of England.
He sot in that Royal Chair, which wuz took out of Westminster Abbey for the first and last time. The chair never groaned or took on any as I’ve ever hearn on, but I should have thought it would, not for reproof, but for sorrer. For only five years after that Cromwell died, and wuz buried in Westminster Abbey amongst its royal dead, and then three years later his body wuz took up and hanged on Tyburn by command of the king, and his head wuz displayed on the pinnacles of Westminster Hall with Bradshaw and Ireton.
Hangin’ a man who had been dead for three years, and for doin’ what he thought wuz right!
Al Faizi wrote quite a lot in his book here. He looked queer as he meditated on a civilized country committin’ sech barbarities.
They laid out to have the skulls remain up there on them pinnacles for thirty years, and some say they did, and some say Cromwell’s blew down durin’ a hard storm, and some of his descendants have got it to this day, and several of his skulls are in other places, so we hearn.
Poor creeter! He seemed to have as many heads as Columbus had faces. It beats all what them poor old fourfathers went through.
In this Hall Charles I. wuz condemned to die, and also Sir William Wallace, that Josiah and I felt so well acquainted with, havin’ formed his acquaintance and loved him through Thomas Jefferson and “The Scottish Chiefs.”
And Sir Thomas More, that witty, smart creeter—philosopher, statesman, and everything else—the favorite of Henry VIII., and who succeeded Cardinal Wolsey as Lord High Chancellor, but who lost Henry’s favor in his life, by not approvin’ of Henry’s stiddy practice of marryin’ wimmen and then cuttin’ their heads off, and marryin’ another and another, and so on and so on. Here the poor creeter had his trial.
Robert, Earl of Essex, wuz tried here and condemned; and so wuz Guy Fawkes, and the Earl of Stafford, and many, many, many others.