In the meantime the Independents were doing their utmost to induce the English parliament to bring the king to trial for high treason. They, having in the meantime been disappointed in their views by the presbyterians, prevailed upon Fairfax to order Hammond, the governor of the Isle of Wight, to attend him at Windsor, and to send Colonel Eure with orders to seize the king at Newport, where he was conferring with the commissioners, and imprison him again in Carisbrook castle; but Hammond having declined to allow Eure to interfere without an order from the parliament, Eure left the island without attempting to fulfil his instructions. Hammond, however, afterwards left the island with the commissioners, and committed Charles to the custody of one Major Rolfe, a person who, only six months before, had been charged with a design on the life of the king, and who had escaped trial because only one witness had attested the fact before the grand jury.
The king seemed to be fully aware of the danger of his present situation, and on the morning of the 28th of November, when the commissioners left the island, he gave vent to his feelings in a strain of the most pathetic emotions, which drew tears from his attendants; “My lords,” said he to the commissioners, “I believe we shall scarce ever see each other again, but God’s will be done! I have made my peace with him, and shall undergo without fear whatever he may suffer men to do to me. My lords, you cannot but know, that in my fall and ruin you see your own, and that also near you. I pray God send you better friends than I have found. I am fully informed of the carriage of those who plot against me and mine; but nothing affects me so much as the feeling I have of the sufferings of my subjects, and the mischief that hangs over my three kingdoms, drawn upon them by those who, upon pretences of good, violently pursue their own interests and ends.”[382] As soon as the commissioners and Hammond had quitted the island, Fairfax sent a troop of horse and a company of foot, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Cobbett, to seize the king, who received notice of the approach of this body and of its object next morning from a person in disguise; but although advised by the Duke of Richmond, the Earl of Lindsay, and Colonel Coke to make his escape, which he could easily have accomplished, he declined to do so, because he considered himself bound in honour to remain twenty days after the treaty. The consequence was, that Charles was taken prisoner by Cobbett, and carried to Hurst castle.
The rest of this painful tragedy is well known. After the purified house of commons had passed a vote declaring that it was high treason in the king of England, for the time being, to levy war against the parliament and kingdom of England, his majesty was brought to trial before a tribunal erected pro re nata by the house called the high court of justice, which adjudged him “as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy to the good people of the nation, to be put to death by the severing of his head from his body,” a sentence which was carried into execution, in front of Whitehall, on the 30th of January 1649. The unfortunate monarch conducted himself throughout the whole of these melancholy proceedings with becoming dignity, and braved the terrors of death with fortitude and resignation.
The Duke of Hamilton, who, by his incapacity, had ruined the king’s affairs when on the point of being retrieved, was not destined long to survive his royal master. In violation of the articles of his capitulation, he was brought to trial, and although he pleaded that he acted under the orders of the Scottish parliament, and was not amenable to an English tribunal, he was, under the pretence that he was Earl of Cambridge in England, sentenced to be beheaded. He suffered on the 9th of March.
The Marquis of Huntly had languished in prison since December 1647, and during the life of the king the Scottish parliament had not ventured to bring him to the block; but both the king and Hamilton, his favourite, being now put out of the way, they felt themselves no longer under restraint, and accordingly the parliament, on the 16th of March, ordained the marquis to be beheaded, at the market-cross of Edinburgh, on the 22d of that month. As he lay under sentence of ecclesiastical excommunication, one of the “bloody ministers,” says the author of the History of the family of Gordon, “asked him, when brought upon the scaffold, if he desired to be absolved from the sentence;” to which the marquis replied, “that as he was not accustomed to give ear to false prophets, he did not wish to be troubled by him.” And thereupon turning “towards the people, he told them that he was going to die for having employed some years of his life in the service of the king his master; that he was sorry he was not the first of his majesty’s subjects who had suffered for his cause, so glorious in itself that it sweetened to him all the bitterness of death.” He then declared that he had charity to forgive those who had voted for his death, although he could not admit that he had done any thing contrary to the laws. After throwing off his doublet, he offered up a prayer, and then embracing some friends around him, he submitted his neck, without any symptoms of emotion, to the fatal instrument.
FOOTNOTES:
[336] History of the Family of Gordon, vol. ii. p. 495. Britane’s Distemper, p. 166.
[337] Memoirs, p. 164.
[338] This report fortunately appears to be belied by the following entries in Balfour’s Annals, 17th and 19th January, 1646. “The earl of Tulliebardine humbly petitions the House that they would be pleased to pardon his brother, William Murray’s life, in respect he averred on his honour, that he was not compos mentis, as also within age.” “The earl of Tulliebardine again this day gave in a humble petition to the House for prolonging the execution of that sentence pronounced against his brother.” Vol. iii. pp. 362, 363.
[339] Wishart p. 223.