Page:Sketches of the History of the Church of Scotland.djvu/14

6 A monograph, which is hardly a digression, of an incident on the fatal morning, not generally known, may fittingly be inserted here. The pretended High Court of Justice had set their hands and seals to the warrant, and the carpenters had been hard at work all night framing the scaffold in the open street in the front of Whitehall. By ten in the morning the sable-hung platform, the block, the sawdust, and the man in the mask with his axe, were ready. Then the royal captive, closely encompassed by the unpitying guards who, during the mock trial, had puffed tobacco smoke into his face, mixed with loathsome spitting, was brought on foot across the park from St. James's to Whitehall. The mournful procession passed through the Long Gallery, and entered the Presence Chamber of the Banquetting House, where, in grim mockery, a stately repast was set out, in case the doomed captive should wish to "refresh himself" before he was slaughtered. Then the chief actors in the tragedy came forth through the opened window on to the scaffold, and the mighty multitude burst into a groan of pity for the victim who was to be sacrificed. All know what was done on that morning; how the illustrious prisoner, calling not "on the gods in vulgar spite, to vindicate his helpless might," calmly tried with his hand the edge of the axe, and then bowed his comely head down as upon a bed, and gave his soul to God.

"I saw a Royal Form with eye upturned, Rising from furnace of affliction free; And knew that brow of deep serenity, Whereon, methought, a crown of glory burned, With a calm smile, as if the death-cry turned On his freed ears to seraph sounds on high. Still in the guilty place the hideous cry Bark'd impotent. In quiet hope inurned Was his poor fleshly mantle; but the breath Of our bad world o'er this unquiet stage Flouts his blessed name, unpardoned even in death. And thus his holy shade on earth beneath Still walks 'mid evil tongues, from age to age, Bearing the Cross, his Master's heritage. But no unkindly word for evermore Can reach his rest, or pass the eternal door."

At that moment, while the King was delivering his jewelled George to Bishop Juxon, with the mysterious monition "Remember" the meaning of which we can only guess at, the boys of Westminster School were at prayers. Those daily orisons were still the forbidden prayers of the Church, albeit the altars of the neighbouring abbey had been desecrated, and the horses of the Puritan dragoons had been stabled in the chaples. The Doctor of Divinity, the Head Master of Westminster, still reigned supreme in his little kingdom. He prayed for the afflicted Church of England prostrate in the dust; he prayed for her Bishops and Clergy cast forth as wanderers and beggars. And then as the time, the prescience of which was in all hearts, approached, the whole school, with the vergers and monitors,