CHAPTER I.
Splendor in heaven, and horror on the main,
Sunshine and storm at once—a troubled day.
Dramatic Poem.
All readers of English history must be able to recall to mind with especial distinctness that period in its annals when the unfortunate Charles I. drew upon himself the odium and mistrust of Parliament, and London witnessed the unprecedented scene of the trial of a king for treason before a court chosen from amongst his subjects. It will be recollected that opposing religious interests operated with those of a merely political nature in leading many of the enemies of Charles to push their aversion to his measures to this extreme. His unwise prohibition of the Puritan emigration to the American colonies was not the least of these creating causes; and might be cited by such as are fond of tracing retributive justice in human affairs, as one of those instances in which men are permitted by their frowardness to pass upon themselves the sentence of their own destruction, since, but for that prohibition, the most powerful opponent of Charles, and the mighty instrument of his ruin, would have embarked for New England, and this country have become the theatre of Cromwell’s actions and renown—supposing that the elements of that remarkable character must have won elsewhere something of the same name he has left behind him—a name to live alike in the condemnation and commendation of mankind.
To the period alluded the beginning of this tale reverts. The trial of the king had been in progress several days. Of more than an hundred and thirty judges appointed by the Commons, about seventy sat in constant attendance. Chief in rank and importance among these was General Lisle—a man whom we should not confound either with the mad enthusiasts of that day, or with those dissembling hypocrites who used their religion only as a stepping-stone to power, or the cloak to conceal a guilty and treasonable ambition, since his opposition to Charles was actuated solely by the purest principles of patriotism and religion. He was, at the time of the trial, in his sixtieth year; and his constant attendance and unwavering firmness of purpose—the evident results of preconceived principle—during the whole sitting of that strange tribunal, were not without great effect in nerving to continued resolution the otherwise faltering minds of many of the younger judges. For it cannot be doubted that compunctious feelings must have had moments of ascendency in the hearts of a number of those with whom rested the event of this questionable trial. This was evinced in some by their occasional absence; in others, who nevertheless felt scrupulously bound to be present, by a nervous tremor at the appearance of the prisoner, and subsequent abstraction of attention from the scene, as testifying a desire to assume as small a share as possible of the deep responsibility belonging to the occasion.
Of the latter class was William Heath, the son of a Puritan divine in Sussex. At the opening of the war, he had repaired to the army, and risen by his gallantry and merits to the rank of general. Though still young, he had been afterward conspicuous in Parliament, and was one of those who took up accusations against the eleven members. Yet although he was friendly to the king’s deposition, he had at first positively refused to sit when appointed one of a Court called to make inquisition for his blood. And he had at length only consented to assume the place assigned him there, as it was notoriously believed, through the influence of Lisle, to whose daughter he was betrothed, and his nuptials with whom were to be completed on the night on which this narrative opens.
His handsome countenance, as he sat in the Court through the whole day preceding—though it contrasted with the pallor which had marked it during those previous, in wearing upon it the anxious flush of the expectant bridegroom, yet bore the same harassed air which had been seen upon it since the commencement of the trial, and which even the blissful hopes he was about to realize could not suffice to dissipate. It was only when he turned his eyes upon Lisle, unflinching in his dignified composure, that he seemed momentarily able to yield himself up to the unalloyed anticipation of happiness. So true is it, that a conscience ill at ease with itself has the power to mar the bliss of heaven.
The Court had adjourned; the prisoner had been remanded to the care of Lisle, in whose house he had been kept in strict and harsh confinement ever since his landing in London, during those hours not occupied with his trial; and but one more day remained to decide the doom of the unhappy Charles Stuart.
It was eight o’clock in the evening. In an apartment, far remote from that chamber of Lisle’s spacious but sombre-looking dwelling, which held the person of the royal prisoner, were assembled the wedding guests. As much festivity and ornament had been called to grace the occasion as was consistent with Lisle’s Puritanic views, yet the whole seemed by far too little to celebrate the marriage of the lovely divinity for whom it was prepared. The apartment was in the Elizabethan style of architecture, but devoid of those ornaments of luxurious taste, which, in the reign of Charles I. graced the houses of the opulent and distinguished of the Church of England. A quaint stiffness reigned throughout the furniture and other arrangements. Rows of high-backed chairs, interrupted here and there with a book-case, table, or other heavy piece of mahogany, stood in prim regularity against the wall; tall candlesticks, containing taller candles, cast their blue light from the mantel-piece, and a large Bible, laid open upon the table, was calculated to infuse devotional or religious sentiments into those mirthful feelings belonging to the occasion. No branches of mistletoe or holly hung around the room remained as suggestions of the recent Christmas; no superb and glittering chandelier shed its soft flood of light upon the assembly; no damask drapery or luxurious sofas gave an air of elegance and comfort to the spacious dreariness of the apartment; no music was prepared for the enlivenment of the evening; nor were any profane amusements that night to invoke the judgments of Heaven upon the approaching ceremony.