The King,who never could be straightforward and plain,through one single day or through one single sheet of paper,wrote a letter to the Lords,and sent it by the young Prince of Wales,entreating them to prevail with the Commons that 'that unfortunate man should fulfil the natural course of his life in a close imprisonment.'In a post to the very same letter,he added,'If he must die,it were charity to reprieve him till Saturday.'If there had been any doubt of his fate,this weakness and meanness would have settled it.The very next day,which was the twelfth of May,he was brought out to be beheaded on Tower Hill.
Archbishop Laud,who had been so fond of having people's ears cropped off and their noses slit,was now confined in the Tower too;and when the Earl went by his window to his death,he was there,at his request,to give him his blessing.They had been great friends in the King's cause,and the Earl had written to him in the days of their power that he thought it would be an admirable thing to have Mr.Hampden publicly whipped for refusing to pay the ship money.However,those high and mighty doings were over now,and the Earl went his way to death with dignity and heroism.The governor wished him to get into a coach at the Tower gate,for fear the people should tear him to pieces;but he said it was all one to him whether he died by the axe or by the people's hands.So,he walked,with a firm tread and a stately look,and sometimes pulled off his hat to them as he passed along.They were profoundly quiet.He made a speech on the scaffold from some notes he had prepared (the paper was found lying there after his head was struck off),and one blow of the axe killed him,in the forty-ninth year of his age.
This bold and daring act,the Parliament accompanied by other famous measures,all originating (as even this did)in the King's having so grossly and so long abused his power.The name of DELINQUENTS was applied to all sheriffs and other officers who had been concerned in raising the ship money,or any other money,from the people,in an unlawful manner;the Hampden judgment was reversed;the judges who had decided against Hampden were called upon to give large securities that they would take such consequences as Parliament might impose upon them;and one was arrested as he sat in High Court,and carried off to prison.Laud was impeached;the unfortunate victims whose ears had been cropped and whose noses had been slit,were brought out of prison in triumph;and a bill was passed declaring that a Parliament should be called every third year,and that if the King and the King's officers did not call it,the people should assemble of themselves and summon it,as of their own right and power.Great illuminations and rejoicings took place over all these things,and the country was wildly excited.That the Parliament took advantage of this excitement and stirred them up by every means,there is no doubt;but you are always to remember those twelve long years,during which the King had tried so hard whether he really could do any wrong or not.
All this time there was a great religious outcry against the right of the Bishops to sit in Parliament;to which the Scottish people particularly objected.The English were divided on this subject,and,partly on this account and partly because they had had foolish expectations that the Parliament would be able to take off nearly all the taxes,numbers of them sometimes wavered and inclined towards the King.
I believe myself,that if,at this or almost any other period of his life,the King could have been trusted by any man not out of his senses,he might have saved himself and kept his throne.But,on the English army being disbanded,he plotted with the officers again,as he had done before,and established the fact beyond all doubt by putting his signature of approval to a petition against the Parliamentary leaders,which was drawn up by certain officers.
When the Scottish army was disbanded,he went to Edinburgh in four days-which was going very fast at that time-to plot again,and so darkly too,that it is difficult to decide what his whole object was.Some suppose that he wanted to gain over the Scottish Parliament,as he did in fact gain over,by presents and favours,many Scottish lords and men of power.Some think that he went to get proofs against the Parliamentary leaders in England of their having treasonably invited the Scottish people to come and help them.With whatever object he went to Scotland,he did little good by going.At the instigation of the EARL OF MONTROSE,a desperate man who was then in prison for plotting,he tried to kidnap three Scottish lords who escaped.A committee of the Parliament at home,who had followed to watch him,writing an account of this INCIDENT,as it was called,to the Parliament,the Parliament made a fresh stir about it;were,or feigned to be,much alarmed for themselves;
And wrote to the EARL OF ESSEX,the commander-in-chief,for a guard to protect them.
It is not absolutely proved that the King plotted in Ireland besides,but it is very probable that he did,and that the Queen did,and that he had some wild hope of gaining the Irish people over to his side by favouring a rise among them.Whether or no,they did rise in a most brutal and savage rebellion;in which,encouraged by their priests,they committed such atrocities upon numbers of the English,of both sexes and of all ages,as nobody could believe,but for their being related on oath by eye-witnesses.Whether one hundred thousand or two hundred thousand Protestants were murdered in this outbreak,is uncertain;but,that it was as ruthless and barbarous an outbreak as ever was known among any savage people,is certain.
