the chief authority of the nation; and that the judges of England, who ought to be the eye and guide of the people, had acted under that authority, divers of them publicly declaring that it was lawful to obey it. But the jury returned a hasty verdict of guilty against them.

The first that suffered was Major-General Harrison,Harrison, whose honest, soldier-like appearance and gallant bearing had removed the suspicions and excited the involuntary admiration of the captive Charles.* On the 13th of October he was drawn upon a hurdle from Newgate to Charing Cross, within sight of Whitehall, where the late king had suffered. His most sincere enthusiasm, political as well as religious, glowed more warmly than ever at the close approach of torture and death. As he was dragged along, his countenance being placid and even cheerful, a low wretch in the crowd called after him in derision, and said, "Where is your good old cause now?" Harrison, with a smile, clapped his hand on his heart, and said, "Here it is; and I am going to seal it with my blood!" and several times on his way he said aloud, “I go to suffer upon the account of the most glorious cause that ever was in the world." He ascended the scaffold under the tall gibbet with an undaunted countenance; and thence he made a speech of some length to the multitude, telling them that they themselves had been witnesses of the finger of God in the deliverance of the people from their oppressors, and in bringing to judgment those that were guilty of blood; that many of the enemies of the commonwealth were forced to confess that God was with it. The courtly crew that gained most by the event, that were inconceivably vain of a few insignificant graces they had borrowed from the French during their compulsory travels, made it their boast that the Restoration was the bright dawn of civilization to this gross and benighted island; but in truth the best parts of civilization were darkened and not brightened, and humanity and decency, which had been advancing, were made to retrograde with giant strides. The revolt

* See ante, vol. xii. p. 172.

ing indecencies, the atrocious cruelties which had been awarded in the dark ages in cases of treason, but from which the commonwealth-men and Cromwell had turned with horror and disgust, were all revived; the sentence was executed upon Harrison to the very letter; and the second Charles, whose vices have been varnished by certain writers till they look almost like virtues, and till he appears in the light of an easy, good-natured, and debonnair prince, a little dissipated and nothing worse, witnessed at a short distance the detestable scene. Harrison was cut down alive, and saw his own bowels thrown into the fire, and then he was quartered, and his heart, yet palpitating, was torn out and shown to the people. The following day was a Sunday, but on the day after, the 15th of October, John Carew suffered the same pains in the like manner, declaring with his last breath, that if it were to be done again he would do it, and that the blessed cause would not be lost. The day following, Coke and Hugh Peters were drawn to the same shambles. In the hurdle which carried Coke was placed the ghastly head of Harrison, with the face uncovered and turned towards Coke, who was, however, animated by the sight with fresh courage instead of being overpowered with fear and horror. The people expressed their detestation of such usage. On the scaffold Coke declared, among other things, that he had been earnest for the reform of the laws and for the expeditious and cheap administration of justice ;* and that, as for the part he had borne in the action with which he was charged, he was far from repenting what he had done, and most ready to seal it with his blood. Hugh Peters was made to witness all the horrible details of Coke's execution, sitting within the rails which surrounded the scaffold. While there, a man upbraided him with the king's death, using opprobrious language. "Friend," said Peters, "you do not well to trample upon a dying man; you are greatly mis

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"For which," adds Ludlow, "he had suffered a more than ordinary persecution from those of his own profession.” -Memoirs.

taken; I had nothing to do in the death of the king." And the old preacher, who had lived in storms and whirlwinds, died with a quiet smile on his countenance. On the next day Scott, Clement, Scrope, and Jones suffered; and, on the day after that, Hacker and Axtell. Some of these ten men were oppressed with age and sickness, but there was not one of them that betrayed either fear or repentance. Notwithstanding the great pains taken at different periods to brutalize them, the English people have never been able to tolerate any very prolonged exhibition of this kind. "Though the regicides," says Burnet, 66 were at that time odious beyond all expression, and the trials and executions of the first that suffered were run to by vast crowds, and all people seemed pleased with the sight, yet the odiousness of the crime grew at last to be so much flattened by the frequent executions, and by most of those who suffered dying with much firmness and show of piety, justifying all they had done, not without a seeming joy for their suffering on that account, that the king was advised not to proceed farther; or, at least, not to have the scene so near the court as Charing Cross."* The processes of hanging, drawing, and quartering were therefore suspended for the present, but with the evident intention of renewing them at some future time; and though in the end none of the other nineteen victims now condemned suffered death, other victims did, and the fate of nearly all of the nineteen that were sentenced and spared was as hard as perpetual imprisonment, dungeons, and beggary could make it. Harry Marten lay in prison expecting death, but some of the royalists visited him and advised him to petition parliament. In his petition the witty republican said that he had surrendered in reliance upon the king's declaration of Breda, and that he hoped that he who had never obeyed any royal proclamation before should not be hanged for taking the king's word now. The Commons took no step on the side of mercy, and those members who prided themselves on their gravity and godliness opined that the wit ought

* Own Time.

to die. But the Lords were more merciful; the Lord Falkland and other peers spoke warmly in his behalf, and, after four months of doubt, Marten got the sentence of death remitted.*

About a month before the execution of Harrison the Duke of Gloucester died of the small-pox. And about a fortnight after the executions, the queen-mother, Henrietta Maria, with the princess royal and a numerous train of French nobles, arrived and was received with great state and triumph. To prepare the way for the widow of the "glorious martyr," a lying life of her had been published; † but the Londoners could not altogether forget facts or overcome their old antipathies, and, in spite of the pageant got up by authority, they showed rather plainly that her coming was not welcome. A few days before her arrival Lord Chancellor Clarendon's daughter, Anne Hyde, had been delivered of a son, only about six weeks after her marriage to the Duke of York; who, however, was said to have owned a private marriage, or contract of marriage, with her about a year before. The pride of the queen-mother was greatly irritated by the thought of this "debasing alliance;" and her daughters, the Princess of Orange and the Princess

* State Trials.-An Exact and most Impartial Account, &c.-Noble, Lives of the Regicides.-Diaries of Pepys and Evelyn. Memoirs of Ludlow and Mrs. Hutchinson.-Burnet, History of His Own Time.-Trials of Charles I. and of some of the Regicides.-Forster, Lives of Eminent British Statesmen; Memoir of Marten.

+ Pepys says, sarcastically, that this "sillily writ" book was "dedicated to that paragon of virtue and beauty, the Duchess of Albemarle"-i. e. Monk's wife.

Pepys, Diary.-Clarendon says that the queen-mother was furious that her friend, Sir Charles Berkley, then captain of the duke's guard, in order to prevent the marriage, solemnly swore that he "had lain with her," i. e. with Anne Hyde. In the end Berkley ate his words, and said that he had only lied for the good and honour of the royal family. Such a scoundrel was sure of promotion in a court like this; -he became privy purse and Earl of Falmouth!

Henrietta, were equally violent against it. The king had also felt, or pretended, strong objections; but from various accounts, we are disposed to believe that he was all along jealous of his brother, and not very sorry to see him take a step which would lessen him in the eyes of the world. Clarendon, the father of the stray ladythe model and idol of politicians of a certain class-professed the greatest horror and abhorrence of the mischiefs which such a mésalliance would produce on royalty; and he informs us himself that he told his master Charles "that he had much rather his daughter should be the duke's whore than his wife;" that if the marriage had really taken place, he would give a positive judgment that the king should immediately cause the woman to be sent to the Tower, and to be cast into a dungeon, under so strict a guard that no person living should be permitted to come to her, and then, that an act of parliament should be immediately passed for the cutting off her head, to which he would not only give his consent, but would very willingly be the first man to propose it." But, notwithstanding this mock Virginiusism, on the wrong side, the great chancellor is said by others to have laboured in secret to promote the marriage, and to have at last removed the queen-mother's strong objections by engaging to get parliament to pay her great debts. And about six weeks after Henrietta Maria's arrival at court the marriage was publicly owned, and the nobility and gentry paid their respects to her Highness the Duchess of York, who was still at her father's, in Worcester House, in the Strand, where the marriage had been performed, and all kissed her hand. A few

*

* Continuation of the life of Edward earl of Clarendon, written by himself.

"The queen would fain have undone it, but it seems matters were reconciled on great offers of the chancellor's to befriend the queen, who was much in debt, and was now to have the settlement of her affairs go through his hands.”Evelyn.

"This," continues Evelyn, who had just been performing the ceremony, "was a strange change;-can it succeed well?"