The great German historian Leopold von Ranke is rightly regarded as the best and most impartial authority on the history of Europe in the seventeenth century. This is what he says on the martyrdom of Charles I.:—
"The scaffold was erected 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.... 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 to an imperishable. 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 crossings of the streets, 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."
These weighty words of Ranke are well worth quoting, as well as the conclusion of the section of his great book in which he sums up his estimate of Charles's claim to the title of martyr:
"There was certainly something of a martyr in him, if the man can be so called who values his own life less than the cause for which he is fighting, and in perishing himself saves it for the future."
The Prospect of Bridewell.
Published according to Act of Parliament, 1755, for Stow's Survey.
King Charles I., then, is fairly entitled to be called a martyr in the calm and unimpassioned judgment of the greatest historian of modern times in the learned Empire of Germany, who tests the royal claim by a clear and concise definition, framed without any regard to the passionate political feeling which distracted England in the days of the Stuarts.
And it was in the Palace of St. James that Charles I. passed the last terrible days of his earthly life.
On the Restoration, King Charles II. resided at Whitehall, and gave St. James's to his brother James, Duke of York. Here Queen Mary II. was born, and here she was married to William of Orange late in the evening on November 4, 1677. Here also Anne Hyde, Duchess of York, died in 1671, having lived many years more or less in seclusion in the old palace.