| CHARLES I. IN CARISBROOKE CASTLE, 1648. |
It is remarkable that such important events as the trial and execution of Charles I. should not have tempted the newspapers of the day to illustrate subjects of so much interest. It may have been that such a terrible termination of the Civil War in some degree paralysed men’s energies, and drove all thoughts of trading on such an event from their minds. I have met with two very rough woodcuts professing to represent the execution. One is contained in the Confession of Richard Brandon, the Hangman, and the other forms half of a woodcut frontispiece to a broadside describing the execution of the Regicides, which I shall refer to in its proper place. The Confession of Richard Brandon was published in 1649, the same year in which the King was executed, and purports to be a death-bed statement concerning that event. There were two Brandons, Gregory and Richard, father and son. The former beheaded Lord Strafford, and was believed by Charles II. to have been the executioner of his father. According to Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, George Selwyn, ‘that insatiable amateur of executions,’ told the story of King Charles’s execution from information which he professed to have obtained from the Duchess of Portsmouth, who, he said, always asserted, on the authority of Charles II., that the King, his father, was not beheaded by either Colonel Joyce or Colonel Pride, as was then commonly believed, but that the real name of the executioner was Gregory Brandon; that this man had worn a black crape stretched over his face, and had no sooner taken off the King’s head than he was put into a boat at Whitehall Stairs, together with the block, the black cloth that covered it, the axe, and every other article that had been stained with the Royal blood. Being conveyed to the Tower, all the implements used in the decapitation had been immediately reduced to ashes. A purse containing one hundred broad pieces of gold was then delivered to Brandon, and he was dismissed. He survived the transaction many years, but divulged it a short time before he died. ‘This account,’ Wraxall adds, ‘as coming from the Duchess of Portsmouth, challenges great respect.’[2] Popular belief, however, at the time pointed to Richard Brandon, son of the above-named Gregory Brandon, whose confession, published immediately after his death, I here quote:—
‘The Confession of Richard Brandon the Hangman (upon his Death bed).
‘The Confession of the Hangman concerning his beheading his late Majesty the King of Great Brittaine (upon his Death bed) who was buried on Thursday night last, in White Chappell Church-yard, with the manner thereof.
‘Upon Wednesday last (being the 20 of this instant June, 1649) Richard Brandon, the late Executioner and Hangman, who beheaded his late Majesty, King of Great Brittaine, departed this life. But during the time of his sicknesse his conscience was much troubled, and exceedingly perplexed in mind, yet little shew of repentance, for remission of his sins, and by past transgressions, which had so much power and influence upon him, that he seemed to live in them and they in him. And upon Sunday last, a young man of his acquaintance going in to visit him, fell into discourse, asked him how he did, and whether he was not troubled in conscience, for cutting off of the King’s head?
‘He replied by reason that (upon the time of his tryal, and at the denouncing of Sentence against him) he had taken a vow and protestation, wishing God to perish him body and soul, if ever he appeared on the scaffold to do the act or lift up his hand against him.
‘Further acknowledging, That he was no sooner entered upon the scaffold, but immediately he fell a trembling, and hath ever since continued in the like agony.
‘He likewise confessed that he had 30 pounds for his pains, all paid him in half-crowns, within an hour after the blow was given, and that he had an orange stuck full of cloves, and a handkircher out of the King’s pocket, so soon as he was carried off from the scaffold; for which orange he was proffered 20 shillings by a gentleman in Whitehall, but refused the same, and afterwards sold it for ten S. in Rosemary-lane.
‘About 6 of the clock at night he returned home to his wife living in Rosemary Lane, and gave her the money, saying, That it was the deerest money that ever he earned in his life, for it would cost him his life. Which prophetical words were soon made manifest; for it appeared that ever since he hath been in a most sad condition, and upon the Almightie’s first scourging of him with the Rod of meeknesse, and the friendly admonition of divers friends, for the calling of him to repentance, yet he persisted on in his vicious Vices, and would not hearken thereunto, but lay raging and swearing, and still pointing at one thing or another, which he conceived to appear visible before him.