Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/317

] the trial the people had cried, "Justice! justice!" whilst others cried, "God save the king!" but that after the king was condemned, the soldiers, as he passed, insulted him in the grossest manner, spitting on him, blowing their tobacco in his face, throwing their pipes at him, and yelling in his ears, "Justice! justice! execution! execution!" But the popular party utterly denied the truth of these assertions; that they were got up to make the case of Charles resemble that of our Saviour, to render his judges odious, and himself a sacred martyr. One soldier, Herbert says, as the king was proceeding to his sedan chair, said, "God help and save your majesty!" and that Axtel struck him down with his cane, on which the king said, "Poor fellow, it is a heavy blow for a small offence." To the hired hootings of the military, Herbert says that he merely remarked, "Poor souls! they would say the same to their generals for sixpence."

Charles went back to St. James's Palace, where he spent the remainder of the day, Sunday, the 28th of January, and Monday, the 29th, the execution being fixed for Tuesday, the 30th. He had the attendance of Juxton, the late bishop of London, and the next morning he received the last visit of his only two remaining children in England, the duke of Gloucester and the princess Elizabeth. The princess was not twelve, and the king, setting her on his knee, began speaking to her—"But, sweetheart," he said, "thou wilt forget what I tell thee." The little girl, bursting into tears, promised to write down all that passed, and she did so. In her account, preserved in the "Reliquiæ Sacræ" she says, amongst other things, that he commanded her to tell her mother that his thoughts had never strayed from her, and that his love would be the same for her to the last. That he died a glorious death for the laws and religion of the land. To the duke of Gloucester he said, "Sweetheart, now they will cut off thy father's head. Heed what I say, they will cut off my head, and perhaps make thee a king. But mark what I say; you must not be a king as long as your brothers Charles and James live; therefore, I charge you, do not be made a king by them." At which the child, sighing deeply, replied, "I will be torn in pieces first." "And these words coming unexpectedly from so young a child," says the princess, "rejoiced my father exceedingly." The whole interview was extremely affecting.

"It may not," says Clarendon, "be unfit to pause in this place and take a view, and behold with what countenance the kings and princes of Christendom had their eyes fixed on this wofulwoeful [sic], bloody spectacle; how they looked upon that issue of blood, at which their own seemed to be so prodigally poured on; with what consternation their hearts laboured to see the impious hands of the lowest and basest subjects bathing in the bowels and reeking blood of their sovereign; a brother king, the anointed of the lord, dismembered as a malefactor; what combination and union was entered into, to take vengeance upon those monsters, and to vindicate the royal blood thus wickedly split. Alas! there was not a murmur amongst any of them at it.

"Cardinal Mazarin—who, in the infancy of the French king managed that sceptre, had long adored the conduct of Cromwell, and sought his friendship by a lower and viler application than was suitable to the purple of a cardinal— sent now to be admitted as a merchant, to traffic in the purchase of the rich goods and jewels of the rifled crown, of which he purchased the rich beds, hangings, and carpets, which furnished his palace at Paris. The king of Spain had, from the beginning of the rebellion, kept Don Alonza de Cardenas, who had been his ambassador to the king, still residing at London; and he had, upon several occasions, many audiences from the parliament, and several treaties on foot; and as soon as this dismal murder was over, that ambassador, who had always a great malignity towards the king, bought many pictures and other precious goods appertaining to the crown, and being sent in ships to Corunna, in Spain, were carried thence to Madrid, upon eighteen mules. Christina, the queen of Sweden, purchased the choice of all the medals and jewels, and some pictures of a great price, and received Cromwell's ambassador with great joy and pomp, and made an alliance with them. The archduke Leopold, who was governor of Flanders, disbursed a great sum of money for many of the best pictures which adorned the several palaces of the king, which were all brought by him to Brussels, and thence carried by him into Germany. In this manner did the neighbouring princes join to assist Cromwell with very great sums of money, whereby ho was enabled to prosecute and finish his wicked victory over what yet remained unconquered, and to extinguish monarchy in this renowned kingdom; whilst they enriched and adorned themselves with the ruins and spoils of the surviving heir, without applying any part thereof to his relief, in the greatest necessities ever king was subject to. And that which is stranger than all this, though they pretended that they took care to preserve it for the true owner, not one of all these princes ever returned any of their unlawful purchases to the king after the blessed restoration."

Every one must regret and condemn the sale of those noble works of art, both British and foreign, which Charles had collected, and which the leaders of the commonwealth had sent out of the kingdom. Travellers who now gaze on those at the Escurial, or at those in the Belvidere Palace at Vienna, the especial selection of Rubens' own gallery of his works, with British subjects besides, must deplore this proceeding. But it may be said in vindication of the monarchs thus attacked by the historian of royalty, that there was not one whom Charles had not contrived to make as implacably his enemy as he had done his own subjects. His treatment of the king of Spain about the marriage of his sister, his after quarrel with and attack on France, the neglect of the generals of queen Christina, the daughter of the great Gustavus Adolphus, when fighting for his sister and her son in Germany, and the very dubious prospect of ever being repaid by Charles II., remove the wonder and the blame from those royal persons in a great measure.

As to Charles's own family, the immediate prospect of his death at last roused them Queen Henrietta—though the French memoir writers positively declare that she had, during the king's life, a child by lord Jermyn—whom she soon after married—which is stated as an undoubted fact by bishop Burnet—at the news of the king's danger, wrote a very earnest letter to the speaker of the commons, praying to be allowed to come to England, to endeavour to persuade the king to consent to all their desires. But it was too