At last there was a mingled murmur of awe, commiseration and sullen hatred, and my husband put away his book. The King appeared at the middle window of the Banqueting Hall, from which the glass had been removed, and walked upon the scaffold. He wore the ribbon of the Order of the Garter, and also the jewelled Order of St. George. He looked earnestly upon the block and complained, as we thought, that it was too low, being only six inches high. Then he came up to the edge of the scaffold, with a proud, glooming countenance, to make a speech; but, seeing the vastness of the crowd, he thought better of it and addressed only the persons assembled on the scaffold. However, we could hear the greater part of what he said, for the crowd kept silent, except for coughing.
His Majesty’s speech lasted for about ten minutes, and was very much below what might have been expected of a King about to die, being both disputatious and incoherent. He did not think fit either to rail against his murderers, or to ask God’s forgiveness for them; but read us a lecture, declaring that a subject and a sovereign are clean different things and that the people have no share in Government, though he desired their liberty and freedom as much as did anybody else. He styled himself “The Martyr of the People”.
Twice he saw a gentleman go near the axe, and each time he broke off his discourse with “Take heed of the axe; pray, take heed of the axe, for that may hurt me!” He feared, as some supposed, that the axe might be overset and the edge spoilt, so that the blow struck would be a ragged one; but, as I thought, he rather reverenced in the axe a power mightier than his own. What was best in this speech was a confession of his base behaviour in the matter of the Earl of Strafford’s trial, yet this might have been Englished more precisely and honestly: for he did not speak the Earl’s name, saying no more than that an unjust sentence that he had suffered to take effect was now punished by an unjust sentence upon himself.
Then when he had finished speaking, old Bishop Juxon, who had once been Lord Treasurer15 and was no longer even a bishop, but only the King’s chaplain—he looked astonished and came forward a pace and reminded His Majesty that he had spoken nothing of religion. The King thanked him most heartily for the reminder, but said no more than that, in truth, all men knew that he died a Christian according to the profession of the Church of England as he found it left him by his father. When he had done, he took a white satin cap from the Bishop and pushed his hair all within it, the chief executioner helping him. Then he unclasped his dark cloak and gave it to the Bishop and also the George from about his neck, and took off his doublet and laid his head down upon the block. There went a buzzing whisper among the soldiers that it was the very same bright execution axe, brought from the Tower, that had served to behead the Earl of Strafford. The crowd was silent.
I could not espy His Majesty’s face as he lay there, because the corner of the scaffold was interposed; but through a chink in the hangings I saw him give the signal with stretching out his hands, and then the axe swooped down with a true aim and I saw the head leap past the chink.
The executioner’s assistant took the head and showed it to the crowd, which gave a single sighing gasp and stood silent again, for as long as one might say the Lord’s Prayer slowly over.
This silence was first broken by my husband, who declaimed in a high voice these words which he had himself translated from a play of Seneca:
…There can be slain
No sacrifice to God more ácceptáble
Than an unjust and wicked King.
“Silence, you brawling fart-bag!” cried the sailor, raising his great fists at him, the tears rolling down his cheeks. “No more of that; lay off, or, by God, I’ll ram you into the roadway! Have you no bowels, Master, have you no bowels? It troubled David that he cut but the lap of King Saul’s garment; how much the more should we not be distressed and troubled? We have lost our King; he is beheaded, do you not see?”
The broom-seller and the old coachman threatened my husband also in their own manners; but he looked contemptuously at them and answered: “Why, rogues, if you loved your King so much, why, then, did you hold back? Why did none of you raise a finger to rescue him? Why did you let him die, without protest uttered? Did you fear these few soldiers?” And to the women who wept he said scornfully: “Aye, ‘you daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in scarlet with other delights!’ For this King Saul bathed your gowns in the blood of your husbands and your brothers!”
Then came two troops of horse to disperse the crowd, the one from Westminster, and the other from the Strand, and caused a general affright. We were swept along the streets by the press, and some persons who fell were trampled and smothered. My husband and I were driven apart, but the kind serving-wench kept me close company, and we took refuge at last in a little entry by the Church of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, and waited there while I suckled my babe, waiting for the streets to be a little thinned.
In this entry stood nine or ten other people, not remarkable, and one sturdy blue-eyed fellow, with a crooked nose and mouth, who wept. He seemed to be a merchant, but that he wept inconsolably, his thumb stuck into his mouth, like a two-year-old child. After a while I knew him through his disguise, and “Oh, Mr. Archie Armstrong,” I cried, “do not lament so sorely, I beg. It cuts my heart; and yet I cannot help but laugh.”
He only bawled the louder, with thick Scottish words intermingled with his cries, of which the sense was a pitiful forgiveness of his poor Master—who upon the scaffold had plainly confessed to the unjust sentence that he had suffered to be carried out upon his Fool, who was kicked from Court only for speaking truth! Then he began to rail vehemently against Archbishop Laud; but another Scot who stood by him cried: “Whist, man, for wee Laudie has paid the piper, ye ken!” So he said no more, yet continued weeping.
I had shed no tears while I stood under the scaffold, nor did I afterwards as I betook myself home; but that night when I was a-bed I wept sore. I had indeed neither loved the King for his virtues, nor commiserated him during his captivity; but now I wept for the loneliness that overcame me when I considered that an ancient lofty pillar, the golden pillar of monarchy, was rudely knocked to the ground. What daughter is so undutiful that she grieves not when her father dies, be he never so besotted, tyrannical or fraudulent in his ways? He is dead, and he was her father. So, when a King dies, the nation mourns; yet ordinarily when a King dies, a King is born and the nation again rejoices. Now there could be no rejoicing; for Kingship was wholly abolished, and a foolish King had died a knave’s death.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Evil News from Ireland
My husband’s pamphlet was set on sale about two weeks after this, at three shillings a copy, and enjoyed a pretty sale, though it scandalized many. In one diurnal that was shown me these words were written against it: “There is lately come forth a book of John Melton’s, a libertine that thinks his wife a manacle, and his very garters to be shackles and fetters to him; one that, after the Independent fashion, will be tied to no obligation to God or man,” etc., etc. This railing accusation, and others like it, did no harm to the book, but rather caused more men to buy it, from curiosity. However, another book, which had the start of it by four days or so, spoilt its market, selling in prodigious fashion at fifteen shillings a copy.
This rival book was first published by one Royston, for whom my brother James was a corrector of proofs, and was named Eikon Basilike, The Portraiture of His Sacred Majesty in His Solitudes and Sufferings. It became a sort of Third, or Newest, Testament in the hands of the Royalists. My brother James, when I went to his lodgings with my mother on the day following the King’s death, had told me something of this book, which purported to be written by the King himself. But James, though he had seen notes written in His Majesty’s own hand upon the copy sent for printing, judged it to be a forgery made by some chaplain or other; for this was a flowery pulpit style, not the King’s own crabbed, nervous one. When I told my husband what I had heard, he pricked up his ears and asked me whether I knew at
what printing-house the book was set up.
I answered that I believed that it was at Mr. Dugard’s.
Then he said: “Good, good. I believe that Mr. Dugard also does jobs for my friend Mr. Simmons, next the Gilded Lion in Aldersgate Street, who is to publish my new work. I shall desire Mr. Simmons to look into the matter and make a report to me upon it.”
Well, it is not yet discovered who was the true author of this book. Some have accused a chaplain, the Reverend Symmons; some Dr. Gauden, Bishop of Exeter; some Bishop Hall’s younger son. But at least it is agreed by all save Royalist zealots that the author was not His Majesty.
Mr. Simmons came smiling to our house a day or two later with some manuscript pages of the book, which were supposedly prayers written by the King in his captivity. My husband read these and scoffed, saying that they were well enough botched, but written only to catch the worthless approbation of an inconstant, irrational and image-doting rabble.
He mused awhile to himself and then suddenly, with a chuckle, he said to Johnny Phillips: “Johnny, take down from the shelf the third book of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and bring it to me quickly.”
Johnny brought him the book, whereof my husband turned the pages over until he found what was required, namely the prayer of the afflicted Pamela, overheard by one Cecropia who listens at the door. He told Johnny merrily: “Here is a holiday task for you, Boy—to convert this maiden’s prayer into one for the use of a devout King.”
Johnny took away the book to another room, while my husband made us an harangue upon the pious forgery of writings, how it was endemial among the clergy since the most ancient times. Presently Johnny returned with the prayer, decently made over, only a few slight changes having been needed for its conversion, such as the omission of the name of the virtuous Musidorus, beloved of Pamela. Then, when it was solemnly read out, my husband and Mr. Simmons laughed heartily and Mr. Simmons took the reformed prayer without a word said, but winked and huddled it among the other prayers, and put on his hat again and went out in haste.
When the book was printed, those copies that came from Mr. Dugard’s house, though not the others, contained the intruded prayer. My brother James was rated for this oversight by Mr. Royston, and would have lost his employment, but that Mr. Simmons, when I told him what was doing, called upon Mr. Royston and took the whole blame upon himself. Mr. Royston was good-humoured enough to laugh at the trick, and presently Mr. Simmons and he did business together with this very book: for Mr. Royston feared that it would soon be forbidden by the new Government, as indeed happened in the middle of March, and Mr. Simmons, confident of the favour of the Government, for which he was become chief printer, agreed to buy from him a moiety of the right to publish the book. Printers are thick as thieves, and care not a button what they print, so long as it will not lose them their ears or set a brand upon cheek or brow. Mr. Simmons was not molested, as it proved, and of the fifty editions of the book that were cast off from the presses within a year, twenty or thirty brought money into his till.
My husband was vexed that the counterfeit Eikon Basilike engrossed the whole attention of an innumerable of readers. He himself was almost the only writer of note to stand up boldly in defence of the Regicides; for throughout England there crept a palsy of guilt for what had been done, with a dread for the ensuing punishment. What the King had been in his natural person was clean forgot: now, for regret of his person politic, he was remorsefully cried up as perfect man, perfect King, Saint, Martyr, all but Christ. Then it began to be asked whether this execution of the King, after sentence by an arbitrary Court of Justice, would not prove a most dangerous inlet to the absolute tyranny of the Army Grandees? For if they might take away the King’s head against all the rules of Law, how much the more easily might they not in like manner chop off the head of any nobleman, gentleman or inferior subject? It would be “the longest sword take all” and we should presently fall to murdering and butchering one another until we were all destroyed.
There was also great roaring heard from all the Kingdoms of Europe, where it was thought that the English had gone stark mad; and passionate tears were shed by the Scots who had sold him, when they considered that the same stroke of the axe had beheaded at once a King of England and a King of Scotland. In February, at the Cross of Edinburgh, they proclaimed the exiled Prince of Wales as Charles II, and not by the title of King of Scotland only, but impertinently made him King also of England and Ireland. As for Ireland, to the incongruous League forged by the Marquis of Ormonde, between fugitive Cavaliers (most of them Arminians of the Church of England), and the Confederate Irish Papists, were now added Scottish Presbyterians of Ulster whose fearful sufferings at the hands of the Irish Papists (“those bloody Tories” as my husband called them) had been a prelude to the war. In Ireland also the Prince was proclaimed Charles II.
My husband by the writing of this new book, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, estranged from him his brother Christopher, and the old Earl of Bridgewater, and many other of his former friends. Yet the friends that the book made were more useful and powerful than any of these, as will appear.
In the Republic of England, Kingship was abolished, and the House of Lords with it; and Government was by a Council of State, composed of noblemen, knights and gentlemen, to whom the stump of Parliament yielded advisers and comforters. But how long this Government would prevail against its internal and external enemies was doubtful, though the Lord General Fairfax, General Skippon, Alderman Pennington and other notable men had consented to serve in the Council under the Presidency of Mr. Serjeant Bradshaw.16 The two leading spirits in this business were Generals Cromwell and Ireton. General Ireton is dead in Ireland of a fever, not long since, but General Cromwell lives yet: that bustling, busy, fierce, red-nosed, loud-voiced sloven, who can read men better than he can read books; who cants with godly ministers, jests with ribald soldiers, can be solemn and reserved with men of quality—and all this without hypocrisy; who weeps often, does cruel deeds, plays the buffoon at table, goes to Church like a turkey cock, with red flannel about his neck, humbles himself before God, is a most loving father and friend and commander, never looks ahead more than three steps, yet has these three measured out to the one-hundredth part of an inch.
General Cromwell is said to have perused my husband’s book, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, and to have admired it exceedingly; but it is more likely that only General Ireton read it through, and marked a passage or two for his father-in-law’s reading. However that may be, very soon after the Council was in session, namely on March 14th, which was a. Wednesday, two cloaked gentlemen came to the door with a guard of two halberdiers, and inquired after my husband. They put me into a fright, because I took them to be officers sent to arrest my husband, but I bade them be seated while I fetched him from upstairs, where he was at work upon his History of England. He came down with his sword in his hand, for he had declared that he would rather die than be confined in prison; but he soon thrust the blade back into its scabbard when he recognized the two gentlemen. They were members of the Council of State, namely, Mr. Bulstrode Whitlocke, an eminent lawyer, and Sir Harry Vane the Younger.
Sir Harry was a man of extraordinary parts, whom my husband about this time had honoured with a commendatory sonnet. His face had something in it beyond the natural: every feature gave the lie to the rest, yet he was not by any means unhandsome. Were I a witch, there stood the man I would choose to be the Devil of my coven; who had soot for marrow, as was said. He had resided for some time in America where, at the age of but five-and-twenty, he was elected Governor of Massachusetts Colony; which appointment he had lost by his favour to a woman preacher, Mrs. Hutchinson, whom the Colonists hated for her usurpation of the priestly function. I would have stayed, from curiosity, but was sent out of the way, this being business of importance.
When the two Councillors were gone again, my husband, trying to cloak the excitement of his spirit, told me that I must begin dismantling the rooms
and packing our coffers, for we were to change house.
“What again, Husband?” cried I. “This will be the third time in three years that you have changed your house.”
“Aye, Wife,” he answered in rare good humour, “you and I will grow expert in the business of removal. Each time less platters will be broken, less books lose their covers, less hats and scarves will be left hanging on nails behind the chamber doors.”
“Where is our new house?” I asked.
“That I know not yet exactly,” he answered, “but it will be somewhere conveniently near to Whitehall Palace. Perhaps Mr. Thomson, brother to the gentlewoman who managed for me in your absence, will receive us in his house next the Bull Tavern by Charing Cross.”
“You have accepted an appointment under the Government?” I asked again. And I thought, but did not say: “The Fiend sent two affable emissaries, Belial and Demogorgon, to tempt you; and you fell.”
“Why, yes,” he answered, “I am to be Secretary for the Foreign Tongues. It came upon a motion of Lieutenant-General Oliver Cromwell, who praised my book to the Council.”
He even disclosed to me what salary he would be paid, which was fifteen shillings and tenpence halfpenny a day; but I knew that he would never alter his mode of life, whatever increase of wealth accrued to him, except perhaps to buy more books. If he had been paid £10,000 per annum, and sugar had risen to 1s. 8d. a lb. (where it stood now), he would have declared that sugar at 1s. 8d. was not worth the eating. Yet upon books and music and perhaps a choice marble statue or two, he would have grudged no expense.
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