Page:Hutton, William Holden - Hampton Court (1897).djvu/134

78 At last Charles prepared to escape, for his life seemed to be in danger. Royalist writers have no doubt that there were designs to murder him, and behind all the plots, in the imagination of some, lay the subtle intrigues of the man who was to rise to a sole and uncontrolled despotism by the murder of the King.

This theory may be rejected by modern criticism, but none the less behind all the intrigues of this tragic episode in the history of Hampton Court does the figure of Cromwell stand as the one which should have the arbitration of the King's fate.

These months at Hampton Court, the last Charles ever spent there, have a peculiar and pathetic interest. He was able to have two of his children with him in his loneliness: he was able to live with some of the state and dignity of a king: he was able to take pleasure in his own pictures and his own gardens, and in the faithful service of honest men; and he could say, as he too seldom could have said in times past, that "he would rather die than break his faith."

The rooms Charles occupied at the time were probably those that looked out on the private garden. He lived in public in his state apartments, and it was only the opportunity of a Thursday evening, when it