had been allowed to attend him, called to him, "There is but one stage more. This stage is turbulent indeed and troublesome, but very short, and which in an instant will lead you a most long way, from earth to heaven, where you shall find great joy and solace." "I go," replied the king, "from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown, where can be no trouble, none at all." "You shall exchange," said Juxon, " a temporal crown for an eternal one; it is a good change." The king then said unto the executioner, "Is my hair as it should be?" Whereupon he put off his cloak, and his George, which he gave to Juxon, saying, "Remember!" At two in the afternoon his head was severed by one blow from his body. A man in a vizor performed the office of executioner; another, in a like disguise, held up to the spectators the head streaming with blood, and cried aloud, “This is the head of a traitor!" (January 30, 1649). A deep groan burst from the multitude. The crowd swayed hither and thither. Many with a desire of dipping their handkerchiefs in the blood that flowed from the scaffold, were trampled on and driven back by the soldiers. An incident is recorded, during the execution, which might have graced the pages of Livy. A flight of wild ducks, hovering over the scaffold, could not be driven off by the swords of the soldiers. When the king's head was severed from his body, one of the number suddenly swooped down, dipped its beak in the blood, and immediately disappeared with its companions. Charles was of a comely presence; of a sweet, but melancholy, aspect. His face was regular, handsome, and well-complexioned; his body strong, healthy, and justly proportioned; and being of a middle stature, he was capable of enduring the greatest fatigues. He excelled in horsemanship and other exercises; and he possessed all the exterior as well as many of the essential qualities which form an accomplished prince. His greatest misfortune was a distrust of his own judgment, and a habit of deferring to others of inferior capacity to his own. This often made him waver and change his resolution, not unfrequently for the worse, but always with the disadvantage of disappointing those who advised him, and of appearing insincere. But dissimulation in one form or another was the common vice of the age, "which the extreme hypocrisy of many among his adversaries," as Hallam remarks, might palliate in his case and in the difficulties of his position, though it could not excuse. At his trial he was not allowed council or assistance of any kind, and his funeral was indecently hurried on from the dread of a popular reaction. In a few days the commons passed votes to abolish the House of Peers and the monarchy as useless parts of the constitution, and they ordered a new great seal to be engraved, on which their house was represented, with this legend-ON THE FIRST YEAR OF FREEDOM, BY GOD'S BLESSING, RESTORED, 1648. The forms of all public business were changed from the king's name to that of the keepers of the liberties of England. It was declared high treason to proclaim, or any otherwise acknowledge, Charles Stuart, commonly called prince of Wales. The duke of Hamilton, as earl of Cambridge in England, lord Capel, and the earl of Holland, were cor demned and executed some weeks after. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. ICON BASILIKE. Shortly after the execution of Charles I. appeared a work entitled "Icon Basiliké (eikiv Bariλíký, kingly image), or a Portraiture of His Sacred Majesty in his Solitude and Sufferings." It consists of meditations or soliloquies on the king's calamities, and was generally believed at the time to be the composition of Charles himself. It made a great impression on the public, met with a great sale, and in the middle of last century it was computed that 47 editions, or 48,500 copies, had been issued (Jos. Ames, in London Magazine for 1756). In 1649 Milton, who was commissioned by the parliament to answer it, treated it as a genuine work. Lord Anglesey left a memorandum in his handwriting that he was told in 1675, both by Charles II. and by the duke of York, that the work was not written by their father, but by Dr. Gauden. Burnet was assured by James, in 1673, that the book was Gauden's composition. Yet both of these princes authorized the book to be published as the king's in the editions of their father's works. In a letter to chancellor Hyde, January 21, 1660, Gauden claims the authorship, and says he sent it to the king, who adopted it as his own. Clarendon, state Papers, iii. Sup. xxix. On the other hand the most important evidence is that of sir Thomas Herbert, who closely attended the king throughout his troubles. "At this time it was (as is presumed) he composed his book, called Suspiria Regalia, published soon after his death, and entitled The King's Pourtraieture in his Solitude, etc., which MS. Mr. Herbert found amongst those books his Majesty was pleased to give him, those excepted which he bequeathed to his children in regard Mr. Herbert, though he did not see the king write that book, his Majesty being always private when he writ, yet comparing it with his handwriting in other things [he] found it so very like, as induces his belief that it was his (the king's) own handwriting." Herbert's Memoirs, from which this extract is taken, appeared in 1678, 18 years after the publication of the "Icon Basiliké;" and if it had been written by Gauden, or a surreptitious copy been palmed upon the world, it is scarcely likely that Herbert, so faithful to his master's memory, would have omitted all notice of these circumstances. The probable solution is that Charles adopted and modified Gauden's MS. Evidences from style are worth little. Hallam thinks the book unworthy of the king, and attributes it from likeness of style to Gauden. Burnet thinks "that no man, from a likeness of style, would think him (Gauden) capable of writing so extraordinary a book." Dr. C. Wordsworth claims the authorship' for king Charles. On the other side, see Hallam's Constitutional History, ii. 230. Pattern for a crown of the protector Oliver Cromwell. Obv.: OLIVAR. D.G.R.P. ANG. SCO. HIB &C PRO. Bust of protector to left. Rev.: PAX. QVÆRITVR. BELLO. Crowned shield with arms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the coat of Cromwell in an escutcheon of pretence: above, 1658. He §. 1. State of England, Scotland, and Ireland. § 2. Cromwell's campaign in Ireland. § 3. Charles II. in Scotland. Cromwell's campaign in Scotland. Battle of Dunbar. §4. Charles crowned at Scone. advances into England. Battle of Worcester. Flight and escape of Charles. § 5. Settlement of the Commonwealth. § 6. Dutch war. Blake and Tromp. § 7. Cromwell expels the parliament. § 8. Barebone's parliament. Cromwell protector. § 9. Defeat of the Dutch and peace with Holland. § 10. Cromwell's administration. His first parliament. Royalist insurrection. War with Spain. § 11. Blake's naval exploits. Jamaica conquered. Death of Blake. § 12. Cromwell's third parliament. He refuses the crown. The "humble petition and advice." § 13. Dunkirk taken. Discontents and insurrections. § 14. Cromwell's sickness, death, and character. § 15. His foreign policy. § 16. Richard Cromwell protector. § 17. Long parliament restored and expelled. Committee of safety. § 18. General Monk declares for the parliament. The parliament restored. Monk enters London. Long parliament dissolved. § 12. A new parliament. The Restoration. § 1. THE death of the king was followed by a dissolution of the constitution, both civil and ecclesiastical. Nominally, the Rump remained supreme, but every man had framed for himself the model of a republic; every man had adjusted his own system of religion. The millenarians, or fifth monarchy men, required that government itself should be abolished, and all human powers be laid in the dust, in order to pave the way for the dominion of Christ, whose second coming they suddenly expected. One party declaimed against tithes and a hireling priesthood; another inveighed against the law and its professors. The royalists, consisting of the nobles and more considerable gentry, were inflamed with the highest resentment and indignation against those ignoble adversaries who had reduced them to subjection. The presbyterians, whose credit at first supported the arms of the parliament, were enraged to find that, by the treachery or superior cunning of the sectaries and independents, the fruits of all their labours had been ravished from them. The young king, poor and neglected, living sometimes in Holland, sometimes in France, sometimes in Jersey, comforted himself amidst his present distresses with the hopes of better fortune. The only solid support of the republican independent faction was an army of nearly 45,000 men. But this army, formidable from its discipline and courage, as well as its numbers, was actuated by a spirit that rendered it dangerous to the assembly which had assumed the command over it. Cromwell alone was able to guide and direct all these unsettled humours. But though he retained for a time all orders of men under a seeming obedience to the parliament, he was secretly paving the way to his own unlimited authority. The Rump parliament, consisting of 50 members, began gradually to assume more the air of a legal power. It re-admitted a few of the excluded and absent members, but only on condition that they should sign an approbation of whatever had been done in their absence with regard to the king's trial. It issued writs for new elections, in places where it hoped to have interest enough to bring in its own friends and dependents; and it named an executive council of state, 41 in number, of which Bradshaw was appointed the president, and Milton foreign secretary. As soon as it should have settled the nation, it professed its intention of restoring the power to the people, from whom it pretended all power was derived. The functions of this council embraced government at home, the army and navy, superintendence of trade and negociations with foreign powers. The situation of Scotland and Ireland alone gave any immediate disquietude to the new republic. After the successive defeats of Montrose and Hamilton, and the ruin of their parties, the whole authority in Scotland fell into the hands of Argyle. Invited by the English parliament to model their government into a republican form, the Scots resolved still to adhere to monarchy, which, by the express terms of their Covenant, they had engaged to defend. After the execution, therefore, of the king, they immediately proclaimed his son and successor Charles II. (Febuary 5); but upon condition of his strict observance of the Covenant. The affairs of Ireland demanded more immediate attention. When Charles I. was a prisoner among the Scots, he sent orders to Ormond, if he could not defend himself, rather to submit to the English than the Irish rebels; and accordingly, the lord-lieutenant, being reduced to extremities, delivered up Dublin, Drogheda, Dundalk, and other garrisons, to colonel Jones, who took possession of them in the name of the English parliament. Ormond himself went over to England, and after some time joined the queen and prince of Wales in France. Meanwhile the Irish catholics, disgusted with the indiscretion and insolence of Rinuccini, the papal nuncio, and dreading the power of the English parliament, saw no resource or safety but in giving support to the declining authority of the king. The earl of Clanricarde secretly formed a combination among the catholics. He sent to Paris a deputation, inviting Ormond to return and take possession of his government. Ormond, on his arrival in March, had at first to contend with many difficulties. But in the distractions which attended the final struggle in England, the republican faction totally neglected Ireland, and allowed Jones, and the forces in Dublin, to remain in the utmost weakness and necessity. The lord-lieutenant, having at last assembled a considerable army, advanced upon the parliamentary garrisons. Dundalk, Drogheda, and several other towns surrendered or were taken. Dublin was threatened with a siege; and the affairs of the lieutenant appeared in so prosperous a condition, that the young king entertained thoughts of coming in person into Ireland. When the English commonwealth was brought to some tolerable settlement, men turned their eyes towards the neighbouring island. After the execution of the king, Cromwell himself began to aspire to a command where so much glory, he saw, might be won, and so much authority acquired; and he was appointed by the parliament lieutenant and general of Ireland (June 22). § 2. He applied himself, with his wonted vigilance, to make preparations for his expedition. He sent a reinforcement of 4000 men to Jones, who unexpectedly attacked Ormond near Dublin; chased his army off the field; seized all their tents, baggage, ammunition; and returned victorious to Dublin, after killing 600 men, many in cold blood, and taking above 2000 prisoners (August 2). This loss, which threw some blemish on the military character of Ormond, was irreparable to the royal cause. Hearing of Jones's success, Cromwell soon after arrived with fresh forces in Dublin, where he was welcomed with shouts and rejoicings (August 15). He hastened to Drogheda, which, though well fortified, was taken by assault, Cromwell himself, along with Ireton, leading on his |
