My husband addressed a commendatory sonnet to the Lord General Fairfax, in which he prayed him, when he had concluded the war and crushed the hydra-heads of new rebellion, to set his hand to the task of reforming the government of England, and of so clearing our public faith from the shameful brand of public fraud that no new occasions for rebellion should arise. But this sonnet and his metrical Psalms were all the poems that he now wrote, and his grand design of Adam Unparadised was still laid aside. One day I asked him what was the reason that he did not take it up again, since he had hoped to make it the instrument of his immortality. He would not answer for a while until I twitted him, saying: “With that poem, husband, you are like St. George—always in the saddle, never on your way!”
Then indeed he broke out hotly: “A divine poem such as this can be penned only in times of civic grandeur, and by a poet who is domestically at ease. How can I write while rogues prate in Parliament, while beneficed wretches bellow nonsense from their Presbyterial pulpits, and while God yet curses me with so unhelpful and brawling a mate as yourself? Almost it is enough some days to turn me Atheist, for I cannot think but that I have deserved better of God.”
“Ay, Husband,” said I, “you are a very nonsuch of patience, a perfect Job; and like Job, I hope, you will one day be rewarded for your fidelity and healed of your grievous boils. Yet you may thank God for one thing, that you have no child dancing morrices in your belly, such as I have.”
For these were miserable times for me, with constant keckings and vomitings throughout the spring and summer, which continued until the beginning of October. It was a very lively child, whereas Nan had lain torpid.
My husband, being daunted by the failure of his first attempt to beget a great captain, had abandoned the project; yet now he was encouraged by a nativity that he had drawn (according to the rules and practice of Cornelius Agrippa, with the additions of one Valentine Naibod) and set for the night when he ceremoniously lay with me. He expected that this time he would verily beget a son who would be a famous diviner, a mathematical Merlin. He therefore ornamented my chamber with the signs of the Zodiac and of the planets, and with curious mathematical figures whereof I understood nothing but which, he said, it was not needful that I should understand forasmuch as they would work upon my son through the medium of my eyes. On this single work he spent a month or more, until he had it settled to his satisfaction, putting aside his other tasks the while. He also altered my diet, commanding me to eat watercresses, as much as I could stomach; for in an old poem watercresses had been written of as the food of Merlin, and also (I know not why) I was to eat fish and eggs in place of beef and bacon.
Yet once more only the initial letter could be saved of this nativity: on October 25th, 1648, which also was a fast day, in the morning at about 1 o’clock, was born not Merlin, but my second daughter, Mary, who is so much myself in repetition that almost the birth might have been parthenogenous. Mary is brisk, headstrong and agile, a very Turk to her playmates; and now at the age of three, when I write this, promises to grow a head of hair the equal of mine. My husband took the birth of a second daughter very ill. He could find no fault with her except that she was of the female sex; nevertheless, he accused me of a settled determination to oppose his wishes and interests.
About this time he was overcome by a new maggot. For he had seen how in Europe such scholars as Vossius, Grotius, Heinsius and Salmasius were courted and flattered by potentates and cities as worshipfully as poets had been in the time of Petrarch. Pricked by a grand ambition, namely, for Miltonus to be accounted the greatest scholar of his day, he was writing at the one time three several books of huge labour and erudition.
As for the tide of public affairs, this flowed to his liking. He was exceedingly content with the manner in which the Independents of the Army had settled their accounts with the Presbyterians in Parliament. For on December 6th of this same year Colonel Pryde (who had been a drayman before he was promoted to be an officer), coming one day into the House of Commons at the head of his soldiers, with a list in his hand, extruded all the members who were Presbyterians or otherwise displeasing to the Army. Where was then the National Covenant that the whole country had been obliged to swear for the sake of the Scots? It was cast away like an out-of-date almanac. Among members extruded were Sir Robert Pye the Elder, Sir William Waller (once the hero of the Army and styled “William the Conqueror”), General Massey the defender of Gloucester, Mr. Prynne the crop-eared martyr, and others of the same quality; these were haggling with the King upon the articles of a new treaty (spoken of as the Treaty of Newport) and would still concede to him what no single regiment of the Army counted him worthy to receive. In the Army, where victory had worked upon the soldiers like bottled ale, it was now openly affirmed that “whosoever has drawn his sword against his King must fling his scabbard into the fire.” Then the remaining members, nicknamed the Stump or the Rump, who were Independents and favourably disposed to the Army, proceeded in their hardy project. They would convert England into a Republic and, to this end, dare bring the King to trial on a charge of conspiring against his own subjects. Yet General Cromwell so ordered the matter that every member felt himself conscientially absolved of his allegiance to the King. He stood up and told them that any man who moved this business of his own design was the greatest traitor imaginable; yet since Providence and Necessity cast it upon them all, Almighty God, he hoped, would bless their counsels. The day upon which the King’s trial was ordered was the very day whereon, seven years before, he had come to this same Parliament to demand the five members who had defied him.
“Aye,” said my mother, bringing me the news from Westminster—she would call upon me in the afternoon while my husband was out walking—“for Parliaments are perishable commodities: after a year or two they turn sour and begin to stink. Here is a Parliament that stinks to high Heaven.”
This 1648 had been a strange, sad year. January had passed without any frost hardly, or any wind, but with a flattering sun smiling down continually, so that fruit trees and hedges budded out and the gooseberry trees in our garden had little leaves to them. “That is pretty to admiration,” said Trunco to me, “yet for this we shall pay later, or I am no weather-wise farmer’s daughter.” The spring entered pleasantly enough, but suddenly at the latter end of April came terrible frosts that nipped the trusting shoots and blackened them. In the countryside the rye was blasted when it was already in the ear, and much other grain with it. Summer was wonderful wet, with rain almost every day, which sometimes fell in deluges and rotted the hay and laid the corn flat. What grain could be cut would not dry, but sprouted in the shocks, and what could not be cut grew rank and would not ripen and was choked with weeds and either smutted or mildewed. Summer glided into winter, with but a short interlude of autumn sunshine, such fruits as had survived the frost again rotting dismally upon the trees. I was glad for my poor father that he had been spared the cares and distresses of this season. By Christmastide provisions in our market had risen to double or more the customary prices: beef stood at fourpence a pound, butter at eightpence, cheese at fivepence, wheat at eight shillings the bushel, sugar not to be had.
Then ensued a very disagreeable black New Year, made horrible by the trial of the King. From this awful undertaking many leaders of the nation hung back: all the noblemen who still attended the House of Lords; and the Lord General Fairfax; and of the Commons, even after Colonel Pryde’s Purge, not a few, among whom were Alderman Pennington and General Skippon and other brave commanders of the late wars. However, General Cromwell, with Ireton his son-in-law and Mr. Serjeant Bradshaw and fifty or sixty other resolute men continued with the settlement of this matter, though there were no precedent in English history for the judicial trial of a King upon any charge, let alone the capital charge of High Treason.
General Ireton came to our house on the day following the Purge, namely December 10th, and pleasantly asked my husband what writings he had in hand. My husband replied that he was engaged upon one great work, already oftentimes interrupted, namely the History of England from the Earliest Times; and upon another, a grand collection of Latin words, with a record of their occurrence in the best authors, to constitute a Complete Dictionary; and upon a third, the compiling of a Body of Divinity or Methodical Digest of Christian Doctrine.
“These are huge, deep, exceeding important and most honourable works,” said General Ireton, “and I wish you a favourable issue to your industrious labours. Yet cannot you lay them aside for a few weeks to attend to an immediate matter? We who are in power have need of your pen, which is the firmest and boldest in England, to justify the resolution we have taken to bring Charles Stuart to trial for his life. If you serve us well, I undertake that you will be honoured according to your deserts: for it is a very noble and necessary task that we shall set you.”
“I write to no man’s dictation,” answered my husband, “yet if you have need of a pamphlet upon the tenure of Kings and Magistrates, showing how they are accountable to the people over whom they are called to sit in judgment, why, I shall be as rejoiced to write it as I hope you will be to read it. For I believe, with you, that it is lawful for any who have the power, to call to account a wicked King and, after due trial, to depose him or put him to death. This can be learned from the Scriptures, from the cases of Ehud and Eglon; of Samuel and Agag; of Jehu and Jehoram. Tyrannicide also among the Greeks and Romans was an open doctrine and a deed of heroic virtue performed in a hundred cases. What more flagrant names are preserved among the Greek records than those of Harmodius and Aristogiton, or among the Romans than those of the two Brutuses? To be sure, Julius Cæsar, whom the second Brutus slew, was less tyrannical than any of his successors in the Imperial line and deserving of mercy on many accounts, yet he was a tyrant for all that, and Brutus was commendable for his act, and the more so because Julius was dear to him, a second father. To come to our own history, beginning with the historian Gildas—”
Here General Ireton, who was pressed for time, encouraged my husband and told him clearly there was no need to persuade or tempt him to a task which he was so capable and ready to accomplish. “But,” said he, “let the work be put speedily in hand, for I can assure you that this trial will not be protracted like those of the Earl of Strafford and Archbishop Laud.”
So my husband worked at the pamphlet very assiduously, putting his other writings wholly aside until he had perfected it; and took it to the printers on that fatal day, January 29th, 1649, when the sentence was pronounced by the King’s judges.
The King had been wonderfully surprised when he was brought to trial at Whitehall and at first seemed to take a light view of the matter, and would not remove his hat in token of respect of his judges’. He argued ironically with Mr. Serjeant Bradshaw, the Lord President of the Court (which met in the Painted Chamber), that it was absurd for a King to be tried by his subjects; and when Mr. Bradshaw asked, did he plead guilty or not guilty, he replied that before he could answer he must have law and reason quoted for his appearance before this novel court of justice. He proved so stubborn that the Lord President ordered the Sergeant “to take away the prisoner”; and the King was led out, disputing still. He rested his case, it was said, upon the Law and Custom of England, as also upon the words of the prophet Ecclesiastes, “Where the word of a King is, there is power; and who may say unto him, what dost thou?”
When my husband heard of this defence he snorted like a horse and, said he, “As touching the text in the Book of Ecclesiastes, the Prophet here asks a question but vouchsafes no answer; so also when the Psalmist asks, ‘Why do the heathen so furiously rage together?’ the matter is left unresolved. Yet to this question of Ecclesiastes, the God-fearing man will spontaneously answer: ‘I myself may say to the King, “What dost thou?”’ As for the other matter: those entrusted with framing the Law and Custom of England have never yet been constrained to take cognizance of so rare and uncommon a case as that of a King who ignobly levies war against his own Parliament and people; yet, if one has dared to do so, a perjured traitor to his people he must plainly appear in the eyes of every person of discretion.”
His Majesty having refused to plead, it was threatened that for his contumacy he must be adjudged to have confessed to the crime wherewith he was charged. He continued to dispute the authority of the Court, and was again removed. In his absence, witnesses from every part of the Kingdom testified to divers of his acts in levying war, from the raising of the Standard forward. On the third day the King was recalled and permitted to speak in his own defence, but not in challenge of the Court’s jurisdiction. However, he would not speak, but made a request to confer with the Lords and Commons before sentence were read. This request was refused him, as tending to delay; besides, in the New Year the House of Lords had been abolished, and the Commons, or what remained of them, not above one-eighth part of the whole, had taken all the power into their own hands.
Then the sentence was read: which was that “the said Charles Stuart, as a tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy, shall be put to death by the severing of his head from his body.”
The King would then have spoken something, but it was too late; he being accounted dead in Law immediately after sentence was pronounced. His plea was refused and he was led away.
Here was a woeful alteration in His Majesty’s fortune, who not many days before had taken careful thought for his melon-ground at the royal Manor of Wimbledon; which rarity, as my husband told me, was very well trenched and manured and admirably ordered for the growth of musk-melons and melon-pompions, with borders, herbs and flowers valued to be worth £300. His Majesty was destined never again to taste of ripe, sugared musk-melon, or with his silver knife to strip the velvet from that delicate, yellow peach, which he loved, called Melocotony. Yet still he would not believe that this was any better than a stage-show, until it happened that as he passed out with the guard from the Painted Chamber, some soldiers puffed tobacco smoke his way and no officer forbade them: which had never happened to him in his life before, and convinced him suddenly of the peril in which he stood. For he was as queasy in his stomach when tobacco was drunk about him as his father King James had been, who wrote a book against the habit.
On this same day the King was permitted to say farewell to his children, the Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Gloucester, the others being abroad: and the Princess wept very sore when the King told her what was threatened him. He also warned the little Duke (not believing that England would ever be proclaimed a Republic) against consenting to be crowned King in his stead; for that would be to rob the birthright from his eldest brother, the Prince of Wales, and in the end he would lose his own head too. “I would rather be torn into little pieces,” the child answered.
On the next day, which was a Tuesday, my husband, who had risen even earlier than was his custom, came to my room at about half an hour after five. He bade me rise and put on warm apparel and walk out with him to Westminster, where we should see a sight never before seen in England; and we must be there early before the crowds thickened. I took my Mary with me to suckle by the way, and as we went down the dark streets towards Westminster we ate bread and cheese. It was a clear night, very cold and frosty, and my husband forgot for a while his low opinion of my wits and discoursed proudly upon our country, England: how when she had cast off this devilish incubus of monarchy and risen from sleep and rubbed her eyes, she would find herself free and great—yea, far greater than the Athenian or Roman republics, despite all their wealth of brave commanders, learned scholars, wise counsellors and notable poets. He said that the ancients fell short in two things principally: first, that they had a false and delusive religion, and second that they depended for their welfare upon the unwilling labour of slaves, whereas slavery and serfdom in England were long abolished, and every man here was free, unless perhaps he were bound and confined by his own follies. Then he began to speak rhapsodically of his own part in this glorious revolution, how his pen would confirm what the sword had won, and how a hundred generations should remember him and praise him that he had refreshed their souls with the sweet wine of liberty.
He took great strides and twirled his cane as he spoke, and I could scarce keep pace with him. My child was but three months old, but she was a fat little wag and I had swaddled her well in a fleece, which made no light burden. “Oh, Husband,” I cried, “my legs and arms ache. I envy you the liberty whereof you speak so sweetly.”
He groaned and recited some Greek or Hebrew verse against my inopportune speech and said: “Confess, all the while that I poured out my heart to you, were you not thinking of to-morrow’s flesh-dinner, whether to buy pork or salt-beef, and what herbs to choose for the sauce, and whether there will be leeks in the market?”
“Some person in our household must think of these things,” I answered. “And if your purse will no longer bear the expense of a good cook’s wages, but only of a snivelling little cook-wench, why then, this person is myself.”
We continued in silence, but since, for shame, he could not carry the child for me, as being a gentleman not a common citizen, he was considerate enough to slacken his pace a little. When we came to the neighbourhood of Whitehall Palace, we heard a distant hum and chatter, like a great flock of starlings roosting in a bed of reeds, and the torches and lanterns turned the darkness into day. The crowd was already dense around the Palace, where a scaffold was erected in the open street by the Banqueting Hall, and my husband blamed me for walking so slowly that others had taken up their stations ahead of us. But by good luck we fell in with my brother John, who was now an officer in General Ireton’s own troop, and he offered to escort us to a commanding station; the which he did with loud cries of “Make way, there, citizens, in General Ireton’s name,” whereat the crowd parted on either side of us as the Red Sea parted for Moses when he led the Israelites out of Egypt. We found ourselves standing not many paces distant from the foot of the tall scaffold, which had a railing about it, almost a yard high, with the axe and block in the middle; but we would not see this engine by reason of the black cloths hung upon the railing. Then John saluted us, and departed.
Several men stood upon the scaffold already, wearing black masks, for the task before them was so odious that none durst show his naked face; and the chief executioner and his assistant wore sailors’ trousers to disguise even the shape of their legs. The chief executioner was remarkable for a grizzled wig and a grey beard which, when daylight came, had a false aspect. A company of foot-soldiers and a troop of horse were posted about the scaffold to prevent escape or rescue; we stood close to the foot-soldiers.
I listened to the soldiers conversing together, of whom one asked the other: “Comrade Sim, is this not an awful business? Does your heart quail abominationly, spite of all the strong waters that you have taken, and the strong prayers you have offered up?”
“Yea, Comrade Zack,” answered Sim, “but I hope I shall not flinch from my way of duty—no more than did certain Roman soldiers of old, whom their duty bound to consent in a business more awful by far than this—those I mean who with their swords restrained the mourning crowds at Golgotha. Are we not every whit so stout-hearted as Romans? Lift up your heart, Zack; you showed yourself a bold enough man at Newbury five years since, by the river. I would not have done what you did, no, not for five hundred pound and a jolly wife, that I would not.”
Says another: “Why, Zack, what did you then? Was it in the battle? I never heard tell that you showed yourself to advantage in the set-to that day? Come, the story!”
“It was a witch for whom I was executioner,” said Zack, “for I take no account of witches, and fear them not, being born a Sunday’s child. I confess that my Sergeant praised me and declared that I acted manfully that day.”
“Ay, so he did, I warrant,” cried Sim. “Those were the times before the reformation of our armies, while we yet lagged at our ease on the march and neglected our commanders. Zack and I were loitering by the way, in gathering nuts and black berries, and disputing together upon some point of doctrine, I know not what, and there were four or five other idle fellows not far from us. Well, Zack in jest pursued me with his sword and I ran from him and climbed up into an oak-tree, convenient for climbing; and I pulled myself up to the top branches and there defied him. It happened, as I waited in a crotch of the tree, that my thumbs began to prick. I looked through the leaves towards the river, being there adjacent, where I espied a sight of horror: there was a tall, lean, slender woman treading of the water with her feet with as much firmness as if she trampled upon the high road. I beckoned softly and called to Zack to come up, which he did, and another with him, and we watched through the leaves of the tree, nor could all our sights be deluded at once—”
Here Zack took up the tale: “Yet she was not walking upon mere water, but sliding on a small plank-board washed over with the water, to which when she came to the bank she gave a push with her foot and back it steered like an arrow to the opposing bank. Then we climbed down hastily, and the other man with us espied Reuben Kett, our Sergeant (who was come back to rebuke us for straggling), and acquainted him with what we had seen. The Sergeant began to sweat, yet he commanded that we search the wood and lay hold on her straight. The others shrank back, but I encouraged Sim and told him a charm sovereign against witches, which was to thrust his hand in his breeches-pocket and there salute the camrado who enlisted with him. Then he and I, running through the woods, found the same woman seated upon a fallen log, doing nothing, but staring before her. Straitway, I seized her by the arms, demanding what she was, but she replied no words unto me, so I hauled her before the Sergeant, who questioned her long. Yet she replied no words to him neither, feigning deafness. Then he shouted and said to her: ‘You are an apparent witch, and we shall deal you death!’ whereat she laughed in his face.”
“Nay,” said Sim, “you are mistaken there, Zack. She laughed not until afterwards, when the Sergeant chose Pious Hitchcocke and Frank Yellows as good marksmen to dispatch her. Then I was chosen to set her against a mud bank by the river, a charge of which you may imagine, good child, whether I was not reluctant. Nevertheless, I performed my duty somehow, and these two gave fire and shot at her, from a distance of not above two pikes’ length; but with deriding and loud laughter she caught the bullets, one in either hand, and tossed them back again, to their huge amazement and terror. Then Sergeant Kett prayed to God to give him strength, for he was as weak as a rush, though in general a middling bold fellow and a powerful preacher—”
“That I deny,” cried Zack. “He never moved us by his preaching, and was a very Levite, so stiff he was in his observances. I remember he would not suffer us to eat blood-pudding or hare’s flesh even in a necessity.”
“Well,” said Sim, “whether he was Levite or Sodomite makes no matter; for he prayed aloud for strength, and strength flowed upon him, and he let off his carbine close to her breast. Yet the bullet rebounded like a child’s ball and took off his leathern hat for him, whereat the witch, though speechless still, yet laughed in a contemptible way of scorn. Then was Zack only not dismayed; for which steadfastness I honour you, Zack. Zack told the Sergeant that to pierce the temples of the witch’s head with steel would prevail against the strongest sorcery imaginable; and straitway Zack was her executioner, were you not, Zack, with your capped Sheffield knife? Yea, you made no more of despatching this vermin than if she had been fox or rat.”
“Spoke she aught before she died?” asked a soldier. “Did she prophesy? Come, Zack, I know well she prophesied. What did she say before you showed yourself so manful?”
Zack looked at Sim and Sim looked at Zack again. Then Sim said: “She spoke at the end, but only to tell him, ‘Nay, Son, it is not much to murder a mad old woman, it is nothing to quail at—but will not your scalp crawl and your bowels be turned to water on the day when you consent in the murder of an anointed King?’”
When Sim had said this, there was silence for awhile in the ranks of the soldiers.
In the civil crowd about us there began to be much mockery and ribaldry, but upon indifferent matters, not upon the great overshadowing event of His Majesty’s execution, of which none spoke but in whispers.
A carpenter’s wife stood not far from me and the carpenter with her. She had a waggish wit and jeered continually at him in dulcet tones, he answering little or nothing except now and then: “In God’s name, Good Puss, cannot you hold your peace?” or “Your prattle is unseasonable, my little pig’s eye!” This woman spoke to me and said: “Hearken now, Gossip! When this dear husband of mine comes home drunken, which is not very often, not above seven nights a week, and blasphemes against the Lord and stumbles upon the stairs—what think you that I then do to him? Riddle me that, Gossip! Do you suppose, Gossip, that I ever speak him a foul word? Nay, nay, I would not so for anything. Instead, I cause his bed to be made very soft and easy that he may sleep the better, and by fair glozing speeches I coax him into bed and draw off his boots for him and stroke his head gently a few times, until he settles upon his lees.”
Here a little black-eyed serving-wench, standing beside me, interrupted and answered for me, saying: “Why, shame on you, Madam, for humouring the wretch! Ah, you weak and willing slaves, you are traitresses to your sex. Must all wives crouch in your manner to their currish and swinish husbands? Devil take me, if I do the like when I marry my Master: for if he behaved himself like a swine, so would I use him like a beast.”
“How! You marry your Master, wench?” cried a seller of brooms. “When is your bridal morning? May I be your brideman and pull the garters off your smooth white legs?”
“For that you must wait a day or two,” replied she, “until my Mistress dies.”
Then two or three asked her, of what was her Mistress expected to die?
“Why, of what else but jealousy?” she answered. “For yesterday she saw my Master’s shirt and my smock hanging close together upon a line, and she has taken to her bed with the mortification of it, and will not touch a morsel of food.”
“Ah women, women, have done with your chatter,” cried a tarry sailor. “You do nothing to recommend marriage to a lively bachelor such as I am. I believe that a good woman is like the single eel put in a bag among a thousand stinging snakes; and if a man luckily gropes out the one eel from all the rest, yet has he at best but a wet eel by the tail.”
At this a bearded old man with a hare-lip, who, for aught I know was a decayed coachman or the like, coughed and said: “Ay, as an honest bishop once dared to tell Queen Elizabeth to her face, in a preachment before her: women for the most part are fond, foolish, wanton flibbergibs, wavering, witless, without counsel, feeble, careless, rash, proud, dainty, nice, tale-bearers, eavesdroppers, rumour-raisers, evil tongued, worse minded, and in every way doltified with the dregs of the Devil’s dung-hill.”
“Was it indeed a bishop said that?” cried the serving-wench. “Then, by God, it is small wonder that the bishops have said their last goodnight. Gorge me that, Goodman Hare-lip, gorge me that!”
Presently they all began to sing together, to the tune of “Ragged and torn and true”:
It never should grieve me much
Though more Excises were:
The only tax that I grutch
Is the farthing a pot on beer.
I never would grieve nor pine
(Whatever you say or think)
If they doubled the price of wine—
For wine I seldom drink,
I found it exceeding cold, waiting for the dawn to come, and I thought I should faint; but the serving-wench, who had played truant, as she said, to see avenged the death of her three brothers (the eldest of whom fell at Taunton in the siege and the two others at Preston)—she charitably relieved me of the burden of my child for an hour or more. And she held up the child for the crowd to see and cried laughing: “See what a goodly child I have now brought forth! Ah, wait until I bring this sweet child home to my Mistress and ask pardon for my fault. If I find her risen from her bed she will fall down in a fit again and die within the hour!”
“And then I will be your brideman,” cried the seller of brooms.
The sun rose and shone upon a vast multitude of people crowding the street from the scaffold as far back as to Charing Cross, and in the other direction almost to the river’s edge by the Abbey of Westminster. My child, that had been wakeful and mewling, slept again. Presently there went a stir through the crowd that the King was come, but it was a headless rumour and there we stood a pretty while longer, until we heard the distant noise of drums and the roaring of the crowd as the King came walking through the Park from St. James’s Palace to Whitehall, with a guard of halberdiers before and behind. It is said, he walked fast and shivered for the cold. Then ensued another delay, for two hours or more, while we continued in our stations. Word went through the crowd that Parliament was passing an Act to forbid the proclamation of any new King, and that the execution must wait upon this. My husband was reading a book that he kept propped upon my shoulders, and seemed insensible of what went on around him; and I heartily wished myself home in my kitchen with a cup of warm caudle on my lap and my feet thrust up against the embers. Yet there was no escape, and if anyone fainted he was kept upon his feet by the pressing together of the crowd, which stank a good deal.
At last there was a mingled murmur of awe, commiseration and sullen hatred, and my husband put away his book. The King appeared at the middle window of the Banqueting Hall, from which the glass had been removed, and walked upon the scaffold. He wore the ribbon of the Order of the Garter, and also the jewelled Order of St. George. He looked earnestly upon the block and complained, as we thought, that it was too low, being only six inches high. Then he came up to the edge of the scaffold, with a proud, glooming countenance, to make a speech; but, seeing the vastness of the crowd, he thought better of it and addressed only the persons assembled on the scaffold. However, we could hear the greater part of what he said, for the crowd kept silent, except for coughing.
His Majesty’s speech lasted for about ten minutes, and was very much below what might have been expected of a King about to die, being both disputatious and incoherent. He did not think fit either to rail against his murderers, or to ask God’s forgiveness for them; but read us a lecture, declaring that a subject and a sovereign are clean different things and that the people have no share in Government, though he desired their liberty and freedom as much as did anybody else. He styled himself “The Martyr of the People”.
Twice he saw a gentleman go near the axe, and each time he broke off his discourse with “Take heed of the axe; pray, take heed of the axe, for that may hurt me!” He feared, as some supposed, that the axe might be overset and the edge spoilt, so that the blow struck would be a ragged one; but, as I thought, he rather reverenced in the axe a power mightier than his own. What was best in this speech was a confession of his base behaviour in the matter of the Earl of Strafford’s trial, yet this might have been Englished more precisely and honestly: for he did not speak the Earl’s name, saying no more than that an unjust sentence that he had suffered to take effect was now punished by an unjust sentence upon himself.
Then when he had finished speaking, old Bishop Juxon, who had once been Lord Treasurer15 and was no longer even a bishop, but only the King’s chaplain—he looked astonished and came forward a pace and reminded His Majesty that he had spoken nothing of religion. The King thanked him most heartily for the reminder, but said no more than that, in truth, all men knew that he died a Christian according to the profession of the Church of England as he found it left him by his father. When he had done, he took a white satin cap from the Bishop and pushed his hair all within it, the chief executioner helping him. Then he unclasped his dark cloak and gave it to the Bishop and also the George from about his neck, and took off his doublet and laid his head down upon the block. There went a buzzing whisper among the soldiers that it was the very same bright execution axe, brought from the Tower, that had served to behead the Earl of Strafford. The crowd was silent.
I could not espy His Majesty’s face as he lay there, because the corner of the scaffold was interposed; but through a chink in the hangings I saw him give the signal with stretching out his hands, and then the axe swooped down with a true aim and I saw the head leap past the chink.
The executioner’s assistant took the head and showed it to the crowd, which gave a single sighing gasp and stood silent again, for as long as one might say the Lord’s Prayer slowly over.
This silence was first broken by my husband, who declaimed in a high voice these words which he had himself translated from a play of Seneca:
…There can be slain
No sacrifice to God more ácceptáble
Than an unjust and wicked King.
“Silence, you brawling fart-bag!” cried the sailor, raising his great fists at him, the tears rolling down his cheeks. “No more of that; lay off, or, by God, I’ll ram you into the roadway! Have you no bowels, Master, have you no bowels? It troubled David that he cut but the lap of King Saul’s garment; how much the more should we not be distressed and troubled? We have lost our King; he is beheaded, do you not see?”
The broom-seller and the old coachman threatened my husband also in their own manners; but he looked contemptuously at them and answered: “Why, rogues, if you loved your King so much, why, then, did you hold back? Why did none of you raise a finger to rescue him? Why did you let him die, without protest uttered? Did you fear these few soldiers?” And to the women who wept he said scornfully: “Aye, ‘you daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in scarlet with other delights!’ For this King Saul bathed your gowns in the blood of your husbands and your brothers!”
Then came two troops of horse to disperse the crowd, the one from Westminster, and the other from the Strand, and caused a general affright. We were swept along the streets by the press, and some persons who fell were trampled and smothered. My husband and I were driven apart, but the kind serving-wench kept me close company, and we took refuge at last in a little entry by the Church of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, and waited there while I suckled my babe, waiting for the streets to be a little thinned.
In this entry stood nine or ten other people, not remarkable, and one sturdy blue-eyed fellow, with a crooked nose and mouth, who wept. He seemed to be a merchant, but that he wept inconsolably, his thumb stuck into his mouth, like a two-year-old child. After a while I knew him through his disguise, and “Oh, Mr. Archie Armstrong,” I cried, “do not lament so sorely, I beg. It cuts my heart; and yet I cannot help but laugh.”
He only bawled the louder, with thick Scottish words intermingled with his cries, of which the sense was a pitiful forgiveness of his poor Master—who upon the scaffold had plainly confessed to the unjust sentence that he had suffered to be carried out upon his Fool, who was kicked from Court only for speaking truth! Then he began to rail vehemently against Archbishop Laud; but another Scot who stood by him cried: “Whist, man, for wee Laudie has paid the piper, ye ken!” So he said no more, yet continued weeping.
I had shed no tears while I stood under the scaffold, nor did I afterwards as I betook myself home; but that night when I was a-bed I wept sore. I had indeed neither loved the King for his virtues, nor commiserated him during his captivity; but now I wept for the loneliness that overcame me when I considered that an ancient lofty pillar, the golden pillar of monarchy, was rudely knocked to the ground. What daughter is so undutiful that she grieves not when her father dies, be he never so besotted, tyrannical or fraudulent in his ways? He is dead, and he was her father. So, when a King dies, the nation mourns; yet ordinarily when a King dies, a King is born and the nation again rejoices. Now there could be no rejoicing; for Kingship was wholly abolished, and a foolish King had died a knave’s death.