University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.

Julius Cæsar.

The indignation of the parliament, who, after the
retreat of the eleven impeached members, had more
and more come into the strong measures of the
army, was fearfully inflamed by the king's absolute
refusal of the four acts; so much so that a bill
was passed forbidding all addresses for the future
to Charles Stuart, and all renewal of negotiations
with him for a settlement, though not till after two
or three debates, in which the military leaders, and,
above all, the lieutenant-general, took active part.
The last, indeed, on one occasion, ended a long and
strenuous harangue by raising his voice to its highest
pitch with these emphatic words, “Teach not
the army, by neglecting your own safety and that
of the kingdom, by which theirs also is involved, to

deem themselves betrayed, and their best interests
abandoned to the rage of an irreconcilable enemy,
whom, for your sake, they have dared to provoke.
Beware”—and, as he spoke, he laid his hand upon
his rapier's hilt—“beware, lest their despair cause
them to seek safety by some other means than by
adhering to you, who know not to consult for your
own safety.”

And now, although the peril from the army's insubordination
had subsided, not a day passed without
some riotous commotion indicative of the divided
state of public feeling. Continual tumults
between the London mob, now become once more
loyal to the king, and the detachments of the veterans
quartered in the metropolis, were not suppressed
without some bloodshed; and, in the early
spring, were followed by a general movement of
the royalists throughout the kingdom, which, had it
been planned with as much of concert and of wisdom
as it was executed with high bravery and
spirit, would have caused much perplexity to those
in power. As it was, however, so ill-timed and
unpremediated were the risings of the cavaliers,
that they were easily subdued in detail, although
their numbers, if united, would have been truly formidable,
and although they fought, as individual
bodies, with all the resolution of despair, and in no
case were vanquished without loss and difficulty by
the independent army. The men of Kent were
beaten, after a hard-fought and well-disputed battle,
at Maidstone, by the lord-general in person—
the royalists of Wales, under the gallant Colonel
Poyer, were defeated, and Pembroke, into which
they had retired, taken by Cromwell after a six
weeks' siege. This exploit over, that indefatigable
leader hurried northward with all his wonted energy
of movement, came on the Scottish army, now

united with the northern cavaliers of Langdale, at
Preston on the Ribbic; and, though with forces
vastly inferior, hesitated not to give them battle.
Having defeated them so utterly that their army
was, in truth, wholly disorganized and scattered, he
pursued them closely into Scotland, where he compelled
the citizens of Edinburgh, deeply averse and
hostile to his party, to put down the royalists, and
to replace the power of the state in Argyle's hands,
who had now joined the independent faction with
his whole heart and spirit. While there, the Earl
of Leven and Sir David Lesley so totally disclaimed
the covenant as to cannonade the royalist
troops from the castle, and to agree, at a convention
held in my Lady Home's house in the Cannongate,
with Oliver, that there was a necessity, now
fully obvious, for taking the king's life. Meanwhile
Lord Goring, who had advanced to Black-heath,
hoping that by his presence London would
be encouraged into action, being checked by Fairfax,
shut himself up in Colchester; but, after a
long and vigorous defence, was forced, when all
was over, to surrender at discretion; and had the
farther misery of seeing two of his bravest officers,
Sir George Liste and Sir Charles Lucas, shot by
the conquerors as rebels—a rigorous and cruel exercise
of power, for which the general did not escape
much obloquy, although it was alleged in his
defence, and probably with truth, that he was instigated
to such unwonted harshness solely by the
suggestions of the fierce and unrelenting Ireton.

This absolute suppression of the king's friends
by land was poorly compeusated by the defection
of the navy; Rainsborough, its commander for the
parliament, having been set on shore by his rebellious
crews, who bore away for Holland, and, casting
anchor at the Brill, after a short time took on

board the Prince of Wales, accompanied by Rupert,
as their admiral; not in compliance with the
wishes of the queen, who would have lavished that
high dignity on her unworthy paramour Lord Jermyn.
About the same time the young Duke of
York, afterward James the Second, by the assistance
and the skill of Colonel Bamfield, made
good his flight from London, and reached the Netherlands
in safety. And now, beyond all doubt,
was the atrocious infidelity and wickedness of Henrietta
proved, who—although the revolted fleet had
full and undisputed mastery of the channel, and
might, with ease and certainty, have forcibly delivered
Charles from the hard durance in which he
was now held, after an unsuccessful effort to break
forth at Carisbrook—prevailed upon the Prince of
Wales to waste his time in frivolous and uscless
enterprises up the Thames and on the coasts, until
the parliament had fitted out another fleet under
the Earl of Warwiek, when, after what a scaman
would term lubberly manœuvring, he sailed toward
Holland, closely pursued by Warwiek's navy,
and never performed any action serviceable to
his unhappy father's cause or creditable to his own
fame. During the progress of the futile struggle,
which had terminated in rendering obvious to all
the hopelessness of any effort at armed interposition
for the king, the parliament, while Cromwell
was in Scotland, had held fresh negotiations at
Newport, in the Isle of Wight, with Charles, who,
to the last, despite the urgent prayers both of his
friends and the more moderate of his opponents,
refused compliance with the conditions offered,
though he must now have apprehended this to be
the only means by which he could retain possession
of his crown. The temper of the commons—
after receiving tidings of the king's unconquered
obstinacy—evinced by the distaste of the majority
toward an angry speech of Vane, so much alarmed
the leaders of the army, that, finding Hammond
more disposed toward the parliament than they had
hoped, they caused by stratagem the custody of the
king's person to be transferred to Colonel Ewre, a
man entirely in their interests, and ordered him to
be removed at once to the strong solitary fortress
of Hurst Castle, on the coast of Hampshire. A
letter from the commons to the general, demanding
instant restitution of the royal person to his former
guardian and abode, was answered by a demand
for payment of arrears due to the army, and, after
a few days, by the march of the most zealous and
enthusiastic regiments to London; the general taking
up his quarters at Whitehall, and other officers
with their detachments at Durham House, the
King's Mews, Covent Garden, Westminster, and
St. James's Palace. Still, undeterred by this bold
step, the Presbyterian party, after a violent debate,
carried it, by a majority of thirty-six against the independents
and the army faction, that “the king's
answer was a ground upon which for the houses to
proceed for the settlement of the peace of the kingdom.”
A resolution which, had it been brought
into force, would have effectually undone all that
had been effected by the long and bloody strife
which had preceded it, and left the king as powerful
for good or evil as he had been at its commencement,
provided he should, as his true policy
would dictate, hold to the friendship of the parliament.
That afternoon a large committee of the
commons waited upon the general at his lodgings
of Whitehall, but met from him only a supercilious
and cold welcome, and no satisfaction. The following
morning, when the members went to take
their seats, a guard of musketeers was at the doors,
headed by Colonel Pride and the Lord Grey of
Groby, who held a list of those who should not be
permitted to go in to the debate, and these were kept
three days in custody in different inns of court,
while the remainder of the house, called afterward
by royalists “the Rump,” voted that the king's answer
to the propositions was not satisfactory. Sir
Edgar, in the earlier part of the late tumults, had
served with Fairfax, and, after the surrender of
Colchester, had resigned his commission, disgusted
by the fate of Lisle and Lucas. Meanwhile, however,
he had been re-elected to the house, the Presbyterians
considering his departure from the army
as an earnest of his accession to their party, while
the independents, wiser in this than their antagonists,
foresaw that, howsoever he might disapprove
their violence, he would, at the least, never join
their enemies. On this account, then, he was suffered
by the soldiers to assume his seat, his name
not being on the list of those excluded. The first
step which he took was to move instantly for an
inquiry into the causes of the present outrage, and
though, when overruled in this by a majority of
those remaining in the house, he coincided with
the opinion that the king's answer was unsatisfactory,
he refused peremptorily to give any vote on the
occasion. Then, after several vain attempts to find
out the devisers of the violence, Fairfax denying
any knowledge of it, and the guards merely stating
that they had their orders, he at the first resolved
to vacate his seat once again; but, after much reflection,
held it the manlier and more upright course
still to continue in the house, opposing, to the best
of his abilities, all inroads on the liberties of Englishmen,
in their most delicate and dearest point,
the privilege of parliament. Just at this juncture,
indeed, upon the very evening of the day which
had been signalized by the exclusion of the Presbyterian
members, Cromwell returned from Scotland,
and took up his abode in the king's palace of
Whitehall. To him, indeed, Ardenne's suspicions
had first pointed as the real mover of this outrageous
measure; yet, on his charging it directly to
him, he answered with so much of ready frankness,
that “he had not been acquainted with the design,
yet, since it was done, he was glad of it, and would
endeavour to maintain it,” and asked so warmly for
his presence and advice at a council to be held that
evening in the house of Ludlow, that he succeeded
almost in convincing him that his suspicions were
unfounded. An early hour of the evening found
Sir Edgar at the place appointed, where he was
shown into a large well-lighted chamber, filled with
about two score of gentlemen, for the most part
the leaders of the army; among whom, at the first
glance, he recognised Ireton, Harrison, and Lilburne,
afterward nicknamed Trouble-world, with
Hacker, Hutchinson resembling a cavalier in his
rich dress and flowing hair, and some of the most
eminent civilians, Sir Harry Vane the younger,
and some few of the Presbyterian party, besides the
master of the house, and Cromwell, who sat aloof,
as it would seem, engrossed in weighty meditation;
Fairfax was not among them. When Sir
Edgar entered Harrison was declaiming with much
vehemence, as well of gesture as of speech, and
not without a species of wild eloquence, against all
forms of monarchy, which he asserted neither to be
“good in itself, nor yet good for the people,” quoting
the whole eighth chapter of the first book of
Samuel, and argaing therefrom “that to be governed
by a king was in itself displeasing to the
King and Monarch of the universe, and absolutely
sinful; for that the Lord himself bade Samuel yet
solemnly protest unto them, and show the manner
of the king that should reign over them;' and
afterward foretold to them `that ye shall cry out
in that day because of the king ye have chosen
you, and the Lord shall not hear you in that day.
Wherefore,” he added, “let us put away from us
this sin and this abomination—let us wash from
our hands the stain of this iniquity—yea! let us
cleanse ourselves with myrrh, with aloes, and with
hyssop, ay, and with blood—even the blood of sacrifice!—from
this offence which stinketh in the nostrils
of Jehovah! And let this man—the firebrand
of eivil conflagration—the drawer of the slaughtering
sword against his people—the slayer of our
brethren and our sons—the spoilers of our vineyards
and our oliveyards—this faithless gentleman
and perjured prince—this tyrant, traitor, murderer,
Charles Stuart—let him be driven out, even as the
scapegoat sent into the wilderness to bear away
the sins and sufferings of the people—let him be
cut off utterly, and cast upon the dunghill, and let
the dogs lick his blood, as they licked that of
Ahab, when the Lord smote him by the arrow of the
Syrian—smote him at Ramoth Gilead that he died
—and let his name be never named in Israel from
thenceforth ever more! So let it be with him, and
let the people cry amen!” To Harrison succeeded
Ireton, and Ludlow after him, both urging the expediency
of the king's death no less strongly than
its justice—descanting loudly on the faithlessness
which he had shown in all his previous dealings
—“his often protestations and engagements in the
name of a king and gentleman which he hath so
often violated”—and the small probability that any
new bond or restraint of conscience should now be
found to fetter one, whom neither his own coronation
oath nor the laws which he had sworn to
honour, uphold, and obey, could hinder from endeavouring
to subvert his country's constitution,
and build an autocratic throne upon the ruin of his
people's freedom.

When these had finished speaking, Sir Edgar
ealmly but impressively addressed them, beseeching
them to ponder deeply and pause long ere they
should take a step irrevocable, and, if it should
prove evil, irretrievable and ruinous. Admitting,
as fully as the warmest advocates for the king's
death, his guilt in aiming at supreme unconstitutional
dominion—his guilt in plunging the whole
population intrusted to his care—even as children
to a father's charge—into the misery of civil slaughter,
merely to gratify his own ambition—his guilt
in violating every covenant and compact he had
made!—owning the utter hopelessness of any effort
to establish peace while he should be within
the realm, in how close custody soever—the folly
of imagining that England's liberties could be in
safety while he should hold the reins of government,
how limited soever in his sway!—declaring
that he believed him in all justice to be guilty even
unto death—“I yet conjure you,” he exclaimed,
“to pause before you shed his blood! If ye depose
him from the throne, and banish him the
realm, ye will gain all advantage that his death
could give you, and more also!—ye will disarm
the tongues of those who would cry out against his
execution as against a sacrilegious and accursed
parricide, and fill the very mouths that would be
open to revile you, with praises of your clemency
and grace. Ye will deprive him wholly of the
means to do you evil, and ye will have this farther
safeguard, that, while he lives, no other can lay
claim to England's crown, whereas, once dead, his
son will instantly succeed to all his father's rights,

and more than all his father's influence on the
minds of men maddened with loyal sorrow and
athirst for vengeance. It was a wise and politic
saw of the old Romans, `to spare the subject and
subdue the proud!' To slay Charles Stuart is but
to elevate a bad king to an honoured martyr!—to
depose and banish him is to degrade him from a
suffering prince into a scorned and abject beggar!
Men will compassionate, and honour, ay! and bleed
for royalty in chains, when they but jeer and scoff
at royalty in tatters! Banish this man, and he
may wander forth from court to court of Europe;
he may be treated with mock deference, may be
styled king and brother, and pensioned with the
crumbs that fall from royal tables—but 'twill be
hollow all and insincere! Scorned and despised,
he will drag out a life held by your sufferance,
weary and painful to himself, and innocent to you
even of momentary cause for apprehension! Slay
him, and ye will buckle harness on the back of
each legitimate hereditary prince of Christendom
against you!—ye will concentrate and renerve the
partisans of royalty now scattered, hopeless, and
undone!—ye will enkindle a consuming flame,
which, though for a brief space it may smoulder
or burn dimly, shall yet wax hourly more broad,
and bright, and high, till it shall soar in triumph
over the liberties of England, shrivelled again, and
blasted, perchance, never to revive!”

His views, shrewd and farsighted as they were,
and couched in language bold and perspicuous,
produced a great effect on the more moderate of
either party, and he was followed by several of the
Presbyterians on the same side, and even by one
or two of the milder officers; but the more zealous
held to their opinions, and urged them with
all their wonted force and ingenuity, and the debate

waxed warm, a strong majority, however, leaning
evidently toward the death of Charles and
the abolition of all royal power in Great Britain.
It was, moreover, brought into debate, and discussed
very earnestly, by what means—if it should
be decided that Charles Stuart must die—his death
should be effected—some hesitating not to advocate
his private taking off by poison or the dagger,
so to avoid the scandal and the odium of his public
execution—to whom the honest but fanatical
and visionary Harrison replied in words of fire, repudiating
the idea of such foul and midnight murder,
and declaring that, as their cause was just, so
should their vengeance be both bold and open!—
that, as his crimes were evident, so should their
punishment be manifest and in the face of day!
“What,” he exclaimed, with real eloquence, “shall
we, the workers of the grandest revolution earth
ever has beheld—the conscience-armed deliverers
of England—the champions of a nation's freedom
—the Christian warriors of an all-seeing God—
shall we take off our foe by ratsbane in the dark,
or slay him with a hireling knife, for a mere paltry
dread of what the world shall say? Not so!
not so! but we will point the world's voice by our
actions—fetter its opinion by our boldness! Let
Charles, I say, let Charles THE KING be brought
to trial in the presence of his peers—THE PEOPLE!
There, if he be found guilty, let him be led to execution
in the world's eye and the sun's! Let him
be slain as a deliberate and solemn sacrifice—offered
as a high victim at the shrines of freedom
and of God! With honour and respect to the
great station he has held, but with implacable and
stern resentment toward the crimes by which he
has defiled it, as he hath done to others so let us
do to him, not as vile stabbers and assassins, but as
elected judges, acting for men below, and answerable
to the Lord on high! Let him henceforth be
an ensample unto those who would enslave their
fellows. Let England be a precept to all nations,
that, when oppressed, they shall arise in the unconquerable
strength of purity, and honesty, and truth!
—that they shall battle boldly, and unto success!—
that they shall judge impartially!—and execute inflexibly
the high decrees of justice and of vengeance!”

Throughout this stirring scene, to Edgar's great
astonishment, Cromwell took no share in the argument,
nor did he even seem to pay the grave attention
which the subject merited to the opinions of
the speakers. Much of the time he was engaged
in whispering, and even jesting, with those who sat
beside him; and once or twice indulged in those
rude ebullitions of practical humour which had
made him such a favourite in the camp, but which
were most unsuitable and unbecoming in a grave
and sorrowful debate, involving, it might be, the life
and death of thousands, the fate of a most ancient
line of kings, the future government of a great and
glorious empire. Not a little astonished and disgusted
at this conduct, Sir Edgar watched him
closely, to detect, if possible, the causes of his mood
and the internal workings of his mind; but, after a
long survey, being still in doubt whether he had
brought to the council a mind predetermined and
unalterably fixed, or whether he had put on levity
of manner to conceal irresolution and a perturbed
spirit, he called openly on Cromwell to give his
opinion.

“Verily,” answered he, “verily I am yet unresolved.
Have at thee, Ludlow!” he continued,
springing to his feet, with a loud boisterous laugh,
and hurling at the head of the republican a cushion

of the sofa on which he was sitting, with such violence
as almost to overturn him, upsetting at the
same time several candles, and throwing the whole
council into confusion, under cover of which he
ran out of the room, and was already half way
down the stairs, when Ludlow, who had pursued
him, struck him between the shoulders with the
same missile, and drove him head-foremost down
the flight of steps and through the door, which had
been opened by a servant in expectation of his exit.
Thus ended the discussion and the council for that
evening; but, within a week, the House of Commons
appointed a committee “to prepare a charge
of high treason against the king, which should contain
the several crimes and misdemeanours of his
reign; which, being made, they would consider
the best way and manner of proceeding that he
might be brought to justice.” About the same
time some idle intercessions, at the request of the
prince, were made in the behalf of Charles by the
states-general of Holland, and a letter yet more
idle sent by the queen to be delivered to the parliament.
In a short time the charge of the committee
was prepared and approved by the commons.
The House of Lords, indeed, rejected it;
and, instantly adjourning for a week, on their return
found their doors locked by orders of the
lower house, and, being thus excluded, sat no more
for many years. Then a high court of justice was
appointed, of the most celebrated and influential
men, civil and military, in the realm. Bradshaw, a
lawyer of great talent and inflexible boldness, was
named lord president, invested with much state,
and having lodgings suitable to his high office assigned
to him at Westminster. The royal prisoner
was brought up from Hurst to Windsor under a
powerful guard of Harrison's command, and thence
to his own palace at St. James, where he was held
in rigorons custody, while every preparation was
made for the accomplishment of that great tragedy,
with the report of which “Europe was soon to ring
from side to side.”