PERSON AND CHARACTER.

He was of middle stature, robust, and well proportioned, his features were regular, his face handsome, but his countenance was naturally of a melancholy cast, yet expressive of a benevolent mind. His intellectual powers were naturally good, and so improved by continual exercise, that though in the beginning of his reign he spoke with hesitation, towards the close of his life he discovered in his discourse elocution and quickness of conception. He was undeniably possessed, not only of good natural talents, but also of many excellent qualities, such as temperence, fortitude, and per

therefore, to will and require you to see the said sentence executed in the open street before Whitehall, upon the morrow, between the hours of ten in the morning and five in the afternoon of the same day, with full effect; and for so doing this shall be your sufficent warrant. And these are to require all officers, soldiers, and others, the good people of this nation of England, to be assisting you in this service. "TO COLONEL FRANCIS HACKER,

COLONEL HUNKS.

LIEUTENANT-COLONEL PHRAY,

and to every of them.

Given under our hands and seals."

Here follow the signatures of fifty-nine commissioners, headed by John Bradshaw, Oliver Cromwell, &c., &c., &c.

It is mentioned in Spencer's anecdotes, that a few nights after the execution of the king, a man covered with a cloak, and with his face muffled, supposed to have been Cromwell, marched slowly round the coffin covered with a pall, which contained the body of Charles, and exclaimed, "Dreadful necessity!" Having done this two or three times, he marched out of the room, in the same slow and solemn manner in which he came into it. Cromwell and Ireton saw the execution of Charles from a small window of the banquetting house at Whitehall. Hugh Peters, who was truly and really Charles's jailor, bore a colonel's commission in the civil war, and was strongly suspected of being one of the masked executioners; one Hulet, the other. Note to Raymond's Metrical History, p. 135.

After the king's head was struck off, his body was put in a coffin covered with black velvet, and removed to the lodging-room in Whitehall. Being embalmed, it was delivered to four of his servants, who conveyed it to Windsor, where it was silently interred without the burial service, on the 7th of February. The place of Interment is in a vault about the middle of the choir, over against the eleventh stall, near Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour, with this in capitals on a fillet of lead, KING CHARLES, 1648. The whole funeral charges came but to 2291. 5s.

The coffin was opened in 1813, in the presence of the Prince Regent, and the remains examined by Sir Henry Halford, who states that the Vandyke portraits greatly resemble the unfortunate monarch; his hair was dark brown (it is generally sup posed to have been quite grey), about two inches long in the neck, being probably so cut by the executioner, or by his friends who wished for a remembrance; the beard was perfect, pointed, as in the poi traits, of a redder brown than the hair. The back of the head, and the place where it had rested in the coffin, was wet, with what Sir Henry, from the tests he applied, supposed to be blood.

A few days after the king's execution a work appeared in the king's name, called the Icon Basilike. Much controversy has prevailed whether it was the production of the king, or of some other individual. Hume seems to think, from the internal evidence of these meditations, the elegance, purity, neatness, and simplicity of the style, and the general resemblance it bore to some of those performances which were known to have proceeded from Charles, that it was the king's composition: appearing at such a critical juncture, and being full of tenderness, meekness, and humanity, it caused a great re-action in public feeling. Some have even ascribed to this book the subsequent restoration of the royal family. The Icon passed through fifty editions in a twelvemonth; and Milton compares its effects to those wrought on the tumultuous Romans by Anthony reading to them the will of Cæsar.

sonal bravery; but his dissimulation or want of integrity is manifested in every trait of his conduct; and thus losing him the fairest opportunities of reinstating him on the throne, appears to have been the principal vice for which he paid the tribute of his life.

CHRONICLE.

Spencer, p. 465.

1625, May 1. Charles's marriage with the Princess Henrietta Maria, youngest daughter of Henry IV., of France, was solemnised on a platform before the great door of the cathedral of Paris, the Duke of Chevereux acting as the king's proxy. June 13. The queen landed at Dover, when she was met by the king, and conducted the same day to Canterbury. They next proceeded to Hampton Court, their public entry into London being prevented by the plague, which swept off 35,417 persons. 1626. All persons of forty pounds a year, or more, were ordered to receive the order of knighthood. 1626. Charles crowned at Westminster ; he chose to be clad in white rather than purple, as his predecessors usually wore at a coronation; and the unction, that it might not be seen, was performed behind a traverse by Archbishop Abbot. To prevent the increase of the plague, he omitted riding in state from the Tower to Whitehall. 1628. The Duke of Buckingham assassinated by Felton, at Portsmouth. Charles caused the thirtynine articles of the Church of England to be published. Nov 19. Felton executed at Tyburn, and hanged in chains, for the murder of Buckingham. It was suggested by Charles that Felton might be put to the rack, in order to make him discover his accomplices; but the judges unanimously declared that the law of England did not allow the use of torture. It was the first adjudication on the illegality of this mode of extorting confession.*

*Notwithstanding the formal opinion of the judges in the case of Felton, there is no doubt that the practice continued during the whole reign of Charles I., as a warrant for applying the torture to one Archer, in 1640, is to be seen at the state paper office. This, however, appears to have been the last occasion on which this odious practice was resorted to. There is no trace of it during the Commonwealth ; and in the reign of Charles II., where we might have expected to find it, there is not a single well-authenticated instance of the application of the torture. The following is an account of the kinds of torture chiefly employed in the Tower:-The rack was a large open frame of oak, raised three feet from the ground. The prisoner was laid under it on his back on the floor; his wrists and ancles were attached by cords to two collars at the ends of the frame; these were moved by levers in opposite directions, till the body rose to a level with the frame, questions were then put, and if the answers did not prove satisfactory the sufferer was stretched more and more, till the bones started from their sockets. The scavenger's daughter was a broad hoop of iron, so called, consisting of two parts, fastened to cach other by a hinge. The prisoner was made to kneel on the pavement, and to con. tract himself into as small a compass as he could. Then the executioner, kneeling on his shoulders, and having introduced the hcop under his legs, compressed the victim close together, till he was able to fasten the extremities over the small of the back. The time allotted to this kind of torture was an hour and a half, during which time it commonly happened that from excess of compression the blood started from the nostrils; sometimes, it was believed, from the extremities of the hands and feet. Iron gauntlets, which could be contracted by the aid of a screw; these were also called manacles. They served to compress the wrists, and to suspend the prisoner

1630, May 29. Prince Charles, afterwards Charles II., King of England born. A bright star, is recorded by Carte, shone in the east at noon-day. 1632, Nov. 6th. Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, killed at the battle of Lutzen. 1634. Mr. Prynne, a lawyer of uncommon erudition, and a zealous Puritan, prosecuted in the star-chamber, for publishing his book called "Histriomastix," being an attack on the adminstration for countenancing plays, masquerades, &c.; he was adjudged to stand twice in the pillory, to be branded in the forehead, to lose both his ears, to pay a fine of £5,000, and to suffer perpetual imprisonment: he employed the leisure of gaol in writing a fresh libel against hierarchy. Prynne lost the remainder of his ears in the pillory. When thus brought up again before the star-chamber, some of the lords turned up his hair, and expressed their great in lignation that his ears had not been better cropped. 1635. Old Parr was presented to the king, being 152 years of age, and in perfect health; he died in London on the 15th November. He was born in the reign of King Edward IV., had lived in the reigns of eight kings and queens of England. His age was exceeded seventeen years by Henry Jenkins, a native of Bolton-upon-Swale, who died in 1670. Born when the Catholic religion was established, Jenkins saw the supremacy of the pope overturned, the dissolution of the monasteries, Popery re-established, and at last the Protestant religion securely fixed on a rock of adamant. In his time the invincible armada was destroyed, the Republic of Holland was formed, three queens were beheaded, Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Mary Queen of Scots; a King of Spain was seated on the throne of England (Phrimp, husband of Queen Mary), a King of Scotland was crowned King of England at Westminster, and his son and successor was beheaded before his

in the air, from two distant points of a beam. He was placed on three pieces of wood piled one on the other, which, when his hands had been made fast, were successively withdrawn from under his feet. "I felt," said F. Gerard, one of the sufferers for the gupowder plot," the chief pain in my breast, belly, arms, and hands. I thought that all the blood in my body had run into my arms, and began to burst out at my finger's ends. This was a mistake; but the arms swelled till the gauntlets were buried within the flesh. After being thus suspended an hour I fainted, and when I came to myself I found the executioners supporting me in their arms; they replaced the pieces of wood under my feet, but as soon as I was recovered they removed them again. Thus I continued hanging for the space of five hours. during which I fainted eight or nine times." A fourth kind of torture was a cell called "little ease." It was of so small dimensions, and so constructed, that the prisoner could neither stand, walk, sit, nor lie in it at full length; he was compelled to draw himself up in a squatting posture, and so remain during several days. Lingard: Note to vol. vii.

It would lead us into too wide a field to point out the various considerations which suggest themselves upon a review of this subject. The facts above collected are, however, well worthy the attention of the student of our constitutional history; for the long continuance, under the authority of the royal prerogative alone, of a practice directly opposed to the fundamental principles of reason, justice, and law, condemned and denounced by the opinions of the wisest lawyers and statesmen, at the very time they were compelled to act upon it, furnishes a very remarkable instance of the existence in former times of a power above the law controlling and subverting the law, and rendering its practical application altogether inconsistent with its theoretical excellence, Criminal Trials: Penny Magazine, p. 55.

own palace; and lastly, the great fire of London, happening in 1666, at the latter end of his wonderfully-long life (see "Hone's Every-day Book," p. 1602). 1640, Nov. 3. The famous Long Parliament met this day. 1641, May 10. Charles, after having in a private letter to Strafford, assured him, " on the word of a king," that he should not suffer in life, honour, or fortune, signed by commission the bill of attainder. May 12. The Earl of Strafford, then in his forty-ninth year, beheaded on Tower-hill: 100,000 persons were present at the execution. The Earl had offered Balfour, Lieutenant of the Tower, £22,000, the marriage of Balfour's son to his daughter, and the king's warrant of indemnity, for his escape. August 4. An order of the Commons for removing scandalous pictures, crosses, and figures within churches and without: whereupon the crosses in Cheapside, Charing-cross, and at several other places, were taken down. September 23. The Irish rebellion and massacre; they were headed by O'Neil, and the number of Protestant victims has been variously stated at from 10,000 to 200,000. The origin of this terrible slaughter has been ascribed to the king or to the intrigues of the Scots. December 28. Daring tumult of the London apprentices at Whitehall and Westminster. The name of "Roundheads" first introduced by Captain Hyde drawing his sword amidst the mob at Westminster, and saying he would crop the ears of those round-headed dogs that bawled against the bishops; the apprentices wore their hair cut round and short. December 30. Twelve bishops committed to custody for declaring all legislative acts in their absence from the lords were invalid. 1642. The king left London for Hampton Court on the 10th Jan., and on the 11th removed to Windsor, and did not return to his capital till he was brought to it a captive. October 23. The battle of Edge Hill. December 4. Cardinal Richelieu died. 1643, February 1. Prince Rupert took Ciren.. cester by storm. 1643, December 8. John Pym, the great parliamentarian dies. July 3. The battle of Marston Moor. 1645, Jan. 10. Archbishop Laud beheaded on Tower-hill. June 14. The battle of Naseby. 1649, January 20. The king tried in Westminster Hall, and on the 27th condemned to the block.*

*The queen, Henrietta Maria, was in Paris at the time of her husband's execution; and Hume relates that she was at one time in such pecuniary distress, from the non-payment of her small pension, that one morning when Cardinal de Retz waited, he was informed that "the princess was obliged to lie a bed for want of a fire to warm her. To such a condition was reduced, in the midst of Paris, a queen of England, and daughter of Henry IV. of France.

THE COMMONWEALTH.

ELEVEN YEARS--FOUR MONTHS.

[The Commonwealth began with the death of Charles I., in 1649. Cromwell was made Protector, 1653. The monarchy was restored in 1660.]

OLIVER CROMWELL.

FROM 1653 TO 1658-4 YEARS, 8 MONTHS.

BATTLE OF WORCESTER.

The battle of Worcester, gained by Cromwell, September 3, 1651, is one of those points in English history from which may be conveniently taken a view, both retrospective and prospective, of a period of the very highest interest and importance. Looking on the events anterior to but connected with the battle of Worcester, we find Charles I., who succeeded his father in 1625, attempting to govern without the aid of parliaments; and in 1634 he issued writs, directing the sheriffs of the different counties to collect from each of the inhabitants, according to their means, a sum of money for the equipment of ships for the king's service. This tax, known by the name of "ship money," was at first generally paid, though known to be illegal. John Hampden, a gentleman of fortune and good family in Buckinghamshire, an earnest lover of liberty and a true patriot, he alone brought the question before the courts of law. The judges were weak enough to assert that the king could, by his own royal authority, levy that or any other tax. The question was henceforth to be decided in the field. The royalists were beaten at Edge Hill, in 1642; at Marston Moor, in 1644; and lastly, at Naseby, in 1645. In England they never rallied in the field after the flight from Naseby; and in less than five years, namely, on the 30th January, 1649, the king was beheaded at Whitehall.

Charles II. was residing at the Hague at the period of his father's execution. His friends in England were suffering under confiscations and imprisonment, and the royalist party, which had engaged with such high spirit in the cause of the late king, was broken and subdued. Many an ancient family which had lived peacefully in the enjoyment of its broad possessions since the Wars of the Roses, was now glad to compound for one half of their estates by giving up the other half. The young king was proclaimed in Scotland and in Ireland immediately after his father's death, but did not land in Scotland until June, 1650. After being defeated by Cromwell at Dunbar, Charles was forced to withdraw into the Highlands, but Cromwell laid siege to Perth, intending to prevent the highlanders from sending supplies either of men or provisions to Sterling. The king, by the advice of his council, now formed the bold step of marching into England, which he effected with such secrecy and expedition, that Cromwell was almost sur