Charles I Is Executed

Today’s installment concludes The English Civil War,
the name of our combined selection from Lord Thomas Macaulay and Charles Knight. The concluding installment, by Charles Knight from Popular History of England, was published in 1860.

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Previously in The English Civil War.

Time: 1649
Place: England

The King knew his fate. He resigned himself to it with calmness and dignity; with one exceptional touch of natural human passion, when he said to Bishop Juxon, although resigning himself to meet his God: “We will not talk of these rogues, in whose hands I am; they thirst for my blood, and they will have it, and God’s will be done. I thank God, I heartily forgive them, and I will talk of them no more.” He took an affectionate leave of his daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, twelve years old; and of his son, the Duke of Gloucester, of the age of eight. To him he said: “Mark, child, what I say: they will cut off my head, and perhaps make thee king; but thou must not be king so long as thy brothers Charles and James live.” And the child said, “I will be torn in pieces first.”

There were some attempts to save him. The Dutch ambassador made vigorous efforts to procure a reprieve, while the French and Spanish ambassadors were inert. The ambassadors from the states nevertheless persevered, and early in the day of the 30th obtained some glimmering of hope from Fairfax. “But we found,” they say in their dispatch, “in front of the house in which we had just spoken with the general, about two hundred horsemen; and we learned, as well on our way as on reaching home, that all the streets, passages, and squares of London were occupied by troops, so that no one could pass, and that the approaches of the city were covered with cavalry, so as to prevent anyone from coming in or going out. The same day, between two and three o’clock, the King was taken to a scaffold covered with black, erected before Whitehall.”

To that scaffold before Whitehall Charles walked, surrounded by soldiers, through the leafless avenues of St. James’ Park. It was a bitterly cold morning. Evelyn records that the Thames was frozen over. The season was so sharp that the King asked to have a shirt more than ordinary when he carefully dressed himself. He left St. James’ at ten o’clock. He remained in his chamber at Whitehall for about three hours in prayer, and then received the sacrament. He was pressed to dine, but refused, taking a piece of bread and a glass of wine. His purposed address to the people was delivered only to the hearing of those upon the scaffold, but its purport was that the people “mistook the nature of government; for people are free under a government, not by being sharers in it, but by due administration of the laws of it.” His theory of government was a consistent one. He had the misfortune not to understand that the time had been fast passing away for its assertion. The headsman did his office; and a deep groan went up from the surrounding multitude.

It is scarcely necessary that we should offer any opinion upon this tremendous event. The world had never before seen an act so daring conducted with such a calm determination; and the few moderate men of that time balanced the illegality and also the impolicy of the execution of Charles, by the fact that “it was not done in a corner,” and that those who directed or sanctioned the act offered no apology, but maintained its absolute necessity and justice. “That horrible sentence upon the most innocent person in the world; the execution of that sentence by the most execrable murder that was ever committed since that of our blessed Savior,” forms the text which Clarendon gave for the rhapsodies of party during two centuries. On the other hand, the eloquent address of Milton to the people of England has been in the hearts and mouths of many who have known that the establishment of the liberties of their country, duly subordinated by the laws of a free monarchy, may be dated from this event: “God has endued you with greatness of mind to be the first of mankind, who, after having conquered their own king, and having had him delivered into their hands, have not scrupled to condemn him judicially, and, pursuant to that sentence of condemnation, to put him to death.”

In these times in England, when the welfare of the throne and the people are identical, we can, on the one hand, afford to refuse our assent to the blasphemous comparison of Clarendon — blasphemy more offensively repeated in the church service for January 30th; and at the same time affirm that the judicial condemnation which Milton so admires was illegal, unconstitutional, and in its immediate results dangerous to liberty. But feeling that far greater dangers would have been incurred if “the caged tiger had been let loose,” and knowing that out of the errors and anomalies of those times a wiser revolution grew, for which the first more terrible revolution was a preparation, we may cease to examine this great historical question in any bitterness of spirit, and even acknowledge that the death of Charles, a bad king, though in some respects a good man, was necessary for the life of England, and for her “teaching other nations how to live.”

We must accept as just and true Milton’s admonition to his countrymen in reference to this event, which he terms “so glorious an action,” with many reasonable qualifications as to its glory; and yet apply even to ourselves his majestic words:

After the performing so glorious an action as this, you ought to do nothing that is mean and little, not so much as to think of, much less to do, anything but what is great and sublime. Which to attain to, this is your only way: as you have subdued your enemies in the field, so to make appear, that unarmed, and in the highest outward peace and tranquility, you of all mankind are best able to subdue ambition, avarice, the love of riches, and can best avoid the corruptions that prosperity is apt to introduce–which generally subdue and triumph over other nations–to show as great justice, temperance, and moderation in the maintaining your liberty, as you have shown courage in freeing yourselves from slavery.”

This ends our selections on The English Civil War by two of the most important authorities of this topic:

• History of England by Lord Thomas Macaulay published in 1848.
• Popular History of England by Charles Knight published in 1860.

Lord Thomas Macaulay began here. Charles Knight began here.

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