490.* Charles the First. King of England.
[Born 1600. Beheaded 30th January, 1649. Aged 49.]
Grandson of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, whose misfortunes and drear fate he inherited, if he did not invite. A monarch whose exaggerated notions of prerogative, whose obstinacy, wilfulness, untruthfulness, and double-dealing, justified the resistance of a people awakened to a sense of their rights, and roused to the vindication of their liberties; yet a man whose sorrows, whose dignified bearing in misfortune, whose private virtues, love of literature and art, and gentle demeanour, render him an object of the deepest commiseration, and the most plaintive interest. His death was deliberate murder; and there is too much reason to fear that they who thought least of defending liberty, were the most thirsty of his blood. Yet some palliation for the guilt is found in the circumstance that in the public dealings of Charles with his Parliament his plighted word was not worth the paper upon which it was given. Irresolute and double-minded, he had never kept faith with his people. It was the misfortune of Charles to be born at a period when the conflicting elements of Royalty and Democracy were seething into tumult. Had he lived a little earlier, or a little later he would not have lost his head upon the block. A little earlier, the “divinity that doth hedge a king” would have shielded him in England from the sacrilege. A little later, he would have been hunted from English soil, as his son was. The catastrophe of his unhappy reign can never be re-enacted. His blood purchased that security. Never had the character of Englishmen, in many respects, looked so fair to the world as during the civil wars of Charles the First. The true-hearted loyal gentlemen who, knowing by experience the character of their master, yet clung to his cause and to his person until the last extremity, counting all sacrifice as delightful service, were not surpassed by the professed knights of chivalry. The devoted Republicans, who for the sake of man’s rights and God’s blessing seized arms for the first time in their lives, and became great Generals and Admirals—the glory of their country, and the terror of the world—take rank in the estimation of history, side by side with her most splendid heroes. We receive from them our cherished charters, and the liberty which finds no harm even when Europe is in conflagration. Terrible indeed must have been the state of the atmosphere in 1649, when the thunderbolt fell that struck down Charles, but purified the air for ever afterwards.
[The statue of Charles the First, which is in the South Transept, is from the bronze equestrian statue by Hubert le Sueur, which was erected at Charing Cross in the year 1674. It had been cast in 1633, near the church in Covent Garden, but never placed: and during the wars it was sold by Parliament to a brazier “living at the Dial, near Holborn Conduit,” with strict orders that he should break it up. The brazier concealed the statue and horse underground until after the Restoration. Le Sueur was a Frenchman, and pupil of John of Bologna. He arrived in England about 1630, and died here. The pedestal is by Grinling Gibbons, who was born about the middle of the 17th century.]
491. James II. King of England.
[Born in England, 1633. Died in France, 1701. Aged 68.]
The second son of Charles I., whose fate he challenged by his obstinacy, wilfulness, and double dealing. He was a Roman Catholic, and in the blind defence and advocacy of his faith against the Constitution and laws of the country he governed, he perilled his crown which he lost, and his life which he ignominiously saved. He was not without good qualities. He was personally brave—not unmindful of the services of friends, and he exhibited devotion in the maintenance of the religious cause which he believed it his paramount duty to uphold. But he was bigotted, cruel, and wrongheaded. He could not be trusted whenever he was acting in the interests of the Pope. Louis XIV. in vain remonstrated with his royal cousin of England. James II. was too sincere a zealot to listen to reason. Louis Quatorze was too fine a gentleman, and too practised a courtier, to be betrayed into fanaticism. When James went a fugitive and an exile to France, Louis received him with a magnificence worthy of a triumphal progress.
[From the well-known statue by Grinling Gibbons in Privy Gardens, Whitehall. Represented in the costume of a Roman Emperor, according to the taste of the day.]
492. George III. King of England.
[Born 1738. Died 1820. Aged 82.]