confusion and misery in which the deposing and taking away his majesty's life will involve them, their posterity, and all men professing godliness in the three kingdoms.*

It must be confessed, the independents were a sort of mal-contents, and had reason to be dissatisfied with the treaty of Newport, because they were not only excluded the new establishment, but debarred of a toleration; and yet, as Mr. Eachard and Dr. Bates the physician observe, several of them joined with their brethren in declaring against the design of putting the king to death, in their sermons from the pulpit, in conferences, monitory letters, petitions, protestations, and public remonstrances.

The Scots kirk, by their commissioners, declared and protested against the putting the king to death, as absofutely inconsistent with their solemn league and covenant. They published a protestation, directed to the ministers of the province of London meeting at Sion college, Jan. 25, 1648-9, with a letter, exhorting them to courage and constancy in their opposition to the proceeding of the house of commons, and to an universal toleration.

Sundry foreign princes and states, by their ambassadors, interceded for the king; some from their respect to his person, and others from a regard to the honor that was due to crowned heads. But it was impossible to stop the impetuous wildfire of the army, who, having brought the king from Hurst-Castle to Windsor, obtained a vote in the parliament (if we may so call it) that all ceremonies due to a crowned head be laid aside; and then came to the following resolutions, Jan. 4: First, that the people under God are the original of all just power. Secondly, that the house of commons are the supreme power of the nation. Thirdly, that whatever is declared for law by the commons in parliament is valid, though the consent of the king and the house of peers be not had thereto. The house of lords, which was reduced to sixteen peers, having unanimously rejected the ordinance of the commons for the king's trial, and adjourned for a fortnight, the commons resolved to act without them, and having named a committee of thirty-eight

Vol. Pamp. 108.

Each. Hist. p. 654, Elench. Cot. Narr. 1, p. 118.
Rapin, vol. ii. p. 568, folio.

persons to receive informations, and draw up a charge against the king, they constituted a high court of justice for his trial, consisting of one hundred forty-five persons, of whom twenty or more might proceed to business; but not above one half would act under this authority; Mr. serjeant Bradshaw was president; Mr. Cook, solicitor-general; and Mr. Steel, Mr. Dorislaus, and Mr. Aske, were to support the charge. The form of process being settled by the commissioners, the king, who had been conducted to St. James's, Jan. 15, appeared before his judges in Westminster-Hall, the first time on Saturday Jan. 20, 1648, when being seated at the bar in a chair of crimson velvet, and covered, as were all his judges, Mr. Cook the solicitor exhibited a charge of high-treason against him; which being read, the king, instead of pleading to the charge, excepted to the jurisdiction of the court, which was overruled, the president replying, that they would not suffer their authority to be disputed, and therefore required the king to think better of it against Monday; but his majesty persisting in his refusal to plead both on Monday and Tuesday, the clerk was ordered to record the default; Wednesday the court sat in the painted chamber, and examined witnesses

The reader may be amused by the relation of an accident which befel the king at Oxford, which appeared to affect his spirits, and may be deemed, by superstition, a prognostic of the calamities that befel him and were now thickening on him. On visiting the public library, he was shewed among other books a Virgil, nobly printed, and exquisitely bound. Lord Falkland, to divert him, would have his majesty make trial of his fortune by the Sortes Virgiliana, a kind of augury in use for some ages. On the king's opening the book, the period which presented itself, was Dido's imprecation on Eneas, thus translated by Mr. Dryden:

"Yet let a race untam❜d and haughty foes
His peaceful entrance with dire arms oppose;
Oppress'd with numbers in th' unequal field,
His men discouraged, and himself expell'd,
Let him for succour sue from place to place,
Torn from his subjects, and his son's embrace.
First let him see his friends in battle slain,
And their untimely fate lament in vain:
And when at length the cruel war shall cease,
On hard conditions may he buy his peace.
Nor let him then enjoy supreme command,
But fall untimely by some hostile hand,
And lie unburied on the barran land.”

Welwood's Memoirs, p. 90, 4. Ed.

against the king ;* Thursday and Friday they consulted how to proceed; and on Saturday his majesty was brought the last time to the bar, when, persisting to disown the jurisdiction of the court, be desired to be heard in the painted chamber by the lords and commons, but his request was denied, and the president pronounced sentence of death against him as a traitor, fifty-nine being present, and signifying their concurrence by standing up, as had been agreed. Sundry indignities and insults were offered to the king by the soldiers, as he passed along Westminster-Hall, but the far greater number of people deplored his unhappy condition. Tuesday Jan. 30, being appointed for his execution, his majesty was offered the assistance of Mr. Calamy. Vines, Caryl, Dell, and Goodwin, but he refused them, and chose Dr. Juxon, bishop of London, who, according to bishop Burnet, performed his office with such a dry coldness as could not raise the king's devotion. On the fatal day he was conducted on foot by a strong guard through St. James's park, to a scaffold erected in the open street before the banqueting-house at Whitehall, where he made a short speech to the people, in which he made no acknowledgement of the mistakes of his government, but declared himself a martyr for the laws and liberties of the people; after which he laid down his head on the block, which was severed from his body at one blow† by some bold execu

*The evidence of Henry Goode, on this examination, proved the king's insincerity in the treaty of Newport: for he deposed, that on observing to his majesty, to whom he had access, that he had justified the parliament's taking up arms, the king replied, that though he was contented to give the parliament leave to call their own war what they pleased, yet he neither did then, nor should, decline the justice of his own cause. Rushworth in Macaulay's History, vol. iv. p. 388, note. Ed.

† Mr. Philip Henry was a spectator of this event, and noticed two remarkable circumstances which attended it. One was, that at the instant when the blow was given, there was such a dismal universal groan among the thousands of people that were within sight of it, (as it were with one consent) as he never heard before, and desired he might never hear the like again. The other was, that immediately after the stroke was struck. there was, according to order, one troop marching from Charing Cross towards King street, and another from King-street towards Charing Cross. purposely to disperse and scatter the people, and to divert the dismal thoughts which they could not but be filled with, by driving them to shift every one for his own safety. P. Henry's Life p. 26. Ed.

tioner in a mask, in the forty-ninth year of his age, and twenty-fourth of his reign. His body was interred privately at Windsor, February28th, following, without ceremony, and with no other inscription on the coffin, than KING CHARLES, 1648.

The reader will collect the character of this unfortunate prince rather from the preceding facts, than from the keen reflections of his determined enemies, or the flattering encomiums of his friends and admirers, which latter, in their anniversary sermons,* have almost equalled his sufferings with those of our blessed Saviour. It must be admitted,that king Charles I. was sober, temperate, chaste, an enemy to debauchery and lewdness, and very regular in his devotions. But these excellent qualities were balanced with some of a very different nature; his temper was distant and reserved to a fault; he was far from being generous, and when he bestowed any favor did it in a very disagreeable and uncourtly manner; his judgment in affairs of government was weak and unsteady, and generally under the direction of a favorite. In his treaties with the parliament, he was chargeable with great insincerity, making use of evasive and ambiguous terms, the explication of which he reserved for a proper place and season. He had lofty notions of the absolute power of princes, and the unlimited obedience of subjects; and though he was very scrupulous about his coronation oath in regard to the church, he seems to have paid little attention to it as it respected the laws and liberties of his subjects, which he lived in the constant violation of for fifteen years. He was a perfect dupe to his queen, who had too much the direction of public affairs both in church and state; no wonder therefore that he had a determined aversion to the puritans, and leaned

*It is the remark of bishop Warburton, that " blackened characters on the one hand, and impious comparisons on the other, equally of'fensive to charity and religion, in the early days of this returning solemnity, turned an act of worship into a day of contention. But these," he adds, "were the unruly workings of a storm just then subsided Time, which so commonly corrupts other religious institutions, hath given a sobriety and a purity to the returning celebrations of this." Sermon on the 30th of January, 1760, to the house of lords, p. 7, 8. Ed.

Clarendon's Hist. p. 430.

so much to the pomp and ceremony of the church of Rome, that though a protestant in judgment he was for meeting the papists half way, and for establishing one motley religion throughout Great-Britian, in which both parties might unite. He told Dr. Sanderson, that if God ever restored him to his crown, he would go bare-foot from the tower of London, or Whitehall, to St. Paul's, by way of penance, for consenting to the earl of Strafford's death, and to the abolishing of episcopacy in Scotland, and desire the people to intercede with God for his pardon.* Such was his majesty's superstition! Upon the whole, though king Charles I. had virtues that might have rendered him aimable as a private gentleman, his foibles were so many as entitle him to the character of a very weak and impolitic prince; far from appearing truly great in any one scene of his whole life except the last. Mr. Coke says, he was wilful, and impatient of contradiction; his actions sudden and inconsiderate, and his councils without secrecy. He would nev er confess any of his irregularities in government, but justified them all to his death. If any gave him advice contrary to his inclination, he would never be friends with him again. He was unaffable and difficult of address, requiring such strained submissions as were not usual to his predecessors. The sincerity of his promises and declarations were suspected by his friends as well as enemies,|| so that he fell a sacrifice to his arbitrary principles, the best friends of the constitution being afraid to trust him. Bishop Burnets adds, "that he affected in his behavior the 'solemn gravity of the court of Spain, which was sullen ' even to moroseness; this led him to a grave reserved de'portment, in which he forgot the civilities and affabilities which the nation naturally loved; uor did he, in his out 'ward deportment, take any pains to oblige any persons whatsoever. He had such an ungracious way of shewing a favor, that the manner of bestowing it was almost as

† Detect. p. 336.

* Life of Sanderson, p. 79. Bishop Warburton grants, that "the king made his concessions with so ill a grace, that they only served to remind the public of his former breaches of faith, and to revive their diffidence in the royal word." Sermon before the house of lords, 30th Jan. 1760, p. 16. Ed. § His Life, vol. i. p. 23, 64, Edin. Ed.