TRIAL OF CHARLES FOR HIGH TREASON.-1649.

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lived in the daily expectation of a violent death, it had not occurred to his mind that he, a king, could be accused and brought to trial as a criminal, by his own subjects; an indignity which royalty till then had never suffered. He was not prepared, therefore, for the information, that, on the 6th of January, 1649, an accusation, or, as it is called, an impeachment, of high treason had been brought against him, for having presumed to appear in arms against the parliament. 4. On the 18th of January, Charles was removed from Windsor to the royal palace in London, called St. James' Palace. This was, until quite recently, the residence of the sovereigns of Great Britain, and is still made use of upon state occasions; whence the name, Court of St. James, frequently applied to the British_government. Charles was now treated with more severity; his guards and attendants were ordered to conduct towards him as being no longer a sovereign, and to call him merely Charles Stuart. His own servants were not permitted to wait on him at table, and common soldiers, in their armor, were appointed to bring him his meals.

5. Charles was much shocked at this disrespect, but, soon recovering his composure, said, "Nothing is so contemptible as a despised king;" and, to avoid the disagreeable attendance of the soldiers, ate alone in his bed-chamber. The preparations for the trial were soon made, and on the 20th of January, 1649, the judges assembled in Westminster Hall for that purpose. The names were called over, and on the name of Fairfax being spoken, a voice from among the spectators called out, He has more wit than to be here;" and when, in the articles of impeachment, the king was said to be accused "in the name of the people of England," the same voice exclaimed, "Not a tenth part of them!"

6. The soldiers were ordered to fire at the spot from whence the voice had proceeded; but on its being discovered that Lady Fairfax was the speaker, they, in consideration of her sex and rank, did not fire. Lady Fairfax had been a warm politician, and had urged her husband to oppose the king; but now, seeing that the struggle was likely to end in his sacrifice, and the exaltation of Cromwell, they both heartily repented of the part they had taken. On the 27th of January, Charles was declared guilty of having appeared in arms against the parliament, and sentenced to be beheaded on the third day after.

7. As he passed along the streets, the soldiers uttered the most insulting and unfeeling cries. Some even spit upon him; but one uttered a blessing, for which his officer struck him to the ground. The king, observing it, said, "The punishment, methinks, exceeds the offence." On the day preceding that fixed for his execution, he was permitted to see his son Henry and daughter Elizabeth; of the rest of his children, two were in Holland, and one, Henrietta, in France.

8. Henry was only seven years old, and his father said to him, as he sat upon his knee, "Mark, my child, what I say: they will cut

next step adopted by his enemies? 4. What treatment did he now receive? 5. How did he bear it? What occurred at his trial? & What occurred at his interview with

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EXECUTION OF THE KING.—164”.

off my head, and will want, perhaps, to make thee king; but thou must not be king, so long as thy brothers Charles and James are alive: therefore, I charge thee, do not be made a king by them.” The child looked earnestly in his father's face, and exclaimed, “I will be torn in pieces first"-an answer that made the king shed tears.

CHARLES I. TAKING LEAVE OF HIS FAMILY.

9. On the 30th of January, 1649, Charles was led, through an opening made in the wall of the banqueting-room of the palace of Whitehall, to a scaffold erected in front of that building. He addressed a few words to those about him; he declared himself innocent towards his people; but acknowledged that the execution of an unjust sentence was now deservedly punished by an unjust sentence inflicted on himself; so heavily did the death of Strafford still press upon his heart. Turning to Bishop Juxon, who attended him, he said, "Remember," and then laid his head upon the block. One blow severed it from the body, and the executioner, holding it up, said, "This is the head of a traitor!"

10. Those present were curious, as the reader may be, to know what the king meant by the word "Remember," and called upon Juxon to explain it. He said that it was meant to enforce the king's earnest injunction, that he would exhort the prince, his son, to forgive his father's murderers. Charles was in the forty-ninth year of his age, and the twenty-fifth of his reign. It will be less interruption to our story to state at once what became of his family. The queen lived in France, uncomfortably enough, on a pension allowed her by Louis XIV., who was her nephew.

11. This pension must have been very small, or ill paid, as her daughter, Henrietta, was at one time obliged to remain in bed

his children? 9. When was he executed? Relate the particulars of his execution.

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for want of fuel to make a fire. When Prince Charles, her son, became King of England, as you shall hear presei tly, the queen returned to England; but she interfered so much in public affairs, that her son was obliged to send her back to France, where she died in 1669. Prince Charles was eighteen years old when his father died, and of him, and his brother James and sister Mary, we shall hereafter have more to say.

EXECUTION OF CHARLES I.

12. The parliament wished to bring Prince Henry up to some mechanical trade; but Cromwell sent him abroad to his mother. He died at an early age, leaving an excellent character behind him. The Princess Elizabeth was to have been apprenticed to a buttonmaker; but her death, caused, it is said, by grief for her father's fate, prevented the execution of the intention. The Princess Henrietta was unfortunate from the beginning to the end of her life.

13. She was born after the commencement of the civil war, and brought up at the dissipated court of Louis XIV., of France. She married that king's brother, the Duke of Orleans, and behaved in such a manner as to give him just displeasure; she died suddenly, in the pride of youth and beauty, and is supposed to have been poisoned by her husband. How enviable was the fate of a little sister compared with hers!

10. How old was he' What became of the queen? 12, 13, 14. What became of the king's children?

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ANECDOTES OF CHARLES I.

14. This little princess, being only four years old, lay upon her death-bed. One of her attendants desired her to pray. She said she could not say her long prayer, meaning the Lord's prayer, but that she would try to say her short one: Lighten my darkness, O Lord! and let me not sleep the sleep of death." She then laid her little head on the pillow and expired.

FAMILY OF CHARLES I.

WIFE.

Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV., called the Great, King of France.

}

CHILDREN,

1. Charles, Prince of Wales, afterwards Kings of England in succession. 3. James, Duke of York,

6. Henry, Duke of Gloucester.

2. Mary, who married the Prince of Orange.

4. Elizabeth, who died young.

5. Anna, who died before her father's death.

7. Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans.

CHAPTER CLXXIII.

Anecdotes of Charles I.-The Icon Basilike.—Inigo Jones.—The Public Buildings mutilated by the Puritans.— William Harvey.—The Sect of Quakers rises.

1. THE late king had many well-wishers and warm friends, but these were, in general, helpless people, or persons who had already exhausted all their means in his cause. But they took various methods of making known the sympathy which they felt for him in his misfortunes, and, at the risk of being punished by the parliament, showed him many little acts of kindness.

2. As he was on his way to his prison at Carisbrook Castle, one day in November, a lady presented him with a damask rose, which had blown in her garden at that unusual season. The gift, to be sure, was nothing in itself, but, as showing the feelings of the giver, was of great value to the poor prisoner. The day before his execution, one of his old servants sent his humble duty to him, and begged he would read the second chapter of Ecclesiastes. The king sent his thanks to the good old man for his kind remembrance of him, and immediately read the chapter with much satisfaction. He was in the habit of reading the Bible every day, and found in it his best support and consolation in his afflictions.

3. A few days after the death of Charles, a book was published called Icon Basilike, or, as these words have been rendered, "The king's portraiture in his solitudes and his sufferings." This book purports to have been written by the king, and so general was the belief

CLXXIII.-1. 2. What of the king's friends? What of the Icon Basilike? What

MUTILATION OF THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS.-1619.

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that it passed through fifty editions in one year. The authorship of this book is still a matter of dispute; but most persons suppose the real author to have been Dr. Gauden, afterwards Bishop of Exeter.

4. Charles was fond of literature, and was found fault with by some for paying more attention to style in writing than was proper for a great monarch. He was also a lover of pictures, and sometimes handled the pencil himself. The pieces of foreign masters were bought up at a vast price; and the value of pictures doubled in Europe in consequence of the rivalry of Charles and Philip IV. of Spain to possess themselves of the best. All the king's pictures were sold by order of parliament, who carried their hatred of royalty to such a length as to cause some of the royal palaces to be pulled in pieces, and the materials to be sold.

5. Many of these palaces had been built or improved by Inigo Jones, a celebrated architect, much favored by Charles and by his father. Jones incurred the displeasure of parliament by his fidelity to his royal master, and for having, in rebuilding the great church of St. Paul's in London, pulled down some houses to make room for it, in obedience to the orders of the government. The Puritans considered these great churches and cathedrals as remnants of Popery, and took especial delight in destroying and disfiguring them.

6. The beautiful painted glass in the windows, the statues of the saints on the outside, and even the monuments of the dead, were destroyed. The lead was stripped from the roofs, and the brass plates from the tombs, and used for making bullets and cannon. Many of the cathedrals were used as barracks. In Chichester Cathedral, the place is pointed out where Cromwell's soldiers littered down their horses. The king's library at St. James' palace was saved by the prudence of John Selden, a distinguished scholar and philosopher, one of the liberal party in politics, though opposed to the extreme measures of his friends.

7. Most of the men of genius and ability who lived at this time were on the side of the parliament. But William Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood and the proper office of the heart in animals, was the king's physician, and the king took much interest in his investigations. This important discovery occasioned a great loss of practice to its author. So absurd did the doctrine appear, which now seems so clear that it is absurd to doubt its truth.

8. The patience and resignation with which Charles bore his misfortunes excite our sympathy, but should not prevent our doing justice to the motives and character of his opponents. Many, if not most, of the leaders were actuated by the most conscientious regard for the public good, without any personal feelings of selfishness or ambition. In private life, the members of this party were, on the whole, far more estimable in their conduct than the royalists.

9. There is one sect of Christians which arose about this time, whose pure morals and peaceful lives make them worthy of regard.

of Charles' taste for learning and the arts? 5. What of Inigo Jones? 6. How were the public edifices treated by the puritans? Who saved the royal library? 7. What of William Harvey? 9. What of the Quakers?