Page:Catherine of Bragança, infanta of Portugal, & queen-consort of England.djvu/414

 T was the beginning of the last chapter in the life of Charles Stuart. Careless, indolent saunterer in life, devotee of ease and pleasure, he was to meet death, as his father had walked to the scaffold, like a King and a Christian gentleman.

In Westminster Abbey, its Story and Associations, Mrs. A. Murray Smith commits herself to the following amazing statement, when describing the wax image borne at Charles's funeral, and modelled in likeness of himself. "That he certainly had a stroke of paralysis is proved by the contraction of the facial muscles on one side in his effigy, the face of which is copied from a mask taken after death. From this evidence the various versions of his last words are manifestly untrue, as, according to a medical authority who has examined the effigy, the contraction of the face must have prevented the dying monarch from uttering an intelligible word for some days before his death."

It is incredible that the attested and detailed accounts of Charles's last days and hours, in the mouth of some dozen independent and reliable witnesses, should be discounted by the distortion of an impression in wax. It may be possible that the torture of mortal agony Charles suffered for four intolerable days and nights, may have caused the muscles to contract, or it may be due to the effects of the autopsy that was performed