In this strain the speech continued, delivered with clearness, with force and point, yet with a rapidity that strained the speed of the licensed penmen who were taking down the report of the trial.
Bradshaw spoke with learning, with eloquence, with weight and fire; yet what he said was but a repetition of the old grounds the Parliament had taken since the beginning of the war; the law was above the King. The King had defied the law and was therefore answerable.
He cited many precedents, quoted many authorities, but he could not disguise the illegality of the tribunal over which he presided, or cloak the fact that the King was being judged by means as outside the law as his had been when he had cast Sir John Eliot into the Tower or forced John Hampton to pay ship money.
The King had lost in the long struggle and was now paying the penalty as they on the scarlet benches would have paid if he had been the victor.
This fact Bradshaw might adorn with all dignity and eloquence—but it remained obvious and undeniable.
The Lord President spoke too long; the crowd became restless; and awful as the moment was, unprecedented as was the occasion, human weakness and human levity prevailed. Some yawned, some fought their way out for fresh supplies of food and drink, some went away to spread the news the King was doomed.
Some followed the speech eagerly enough and hummed their approbation, some shouted protests and were thrown out by the soldiers.
Charles, listening to an indictment such as no king had ever listened to before, in a situation in which no king had ever been before, sat perfectly still, holding the herbs to his nostrils.
To him this talk was mere waste of air; he was, as he had said, as good a lawyer as any in the kingdom, and he knew that the Court which Bradshaw so burningly justified had no shadow of legal right; he knew that he was the victim of force, and he knew that he was suffering, not so much for the offences which the Lord President laid to his charge, as because he had remained faithful to the Church of England and the Divine right of kings; he knew that if he had forsaken these two tenets even a few days ago when Lord Denbigh came to Windsor he might have been saved.