As it was with Lord Strafford and with Archbishop Laud, so it was with King Charles I. The noblest scene in his whole life was the last. He appeared to infinitely greater advantage at the bar, and on the scaffold, than he had ever done before. His religious demeanour, when he came to die, was all which his admirers could wish. Without refusing the prayers of Presbyterians and Independents, he availed himself of the counsels and devotions of Bishop Juxon; and he said to that prelate on his offering some expressions of condolence—"Leave off this, my Lord, we have no time for it. Let us think of our great work, and prepare to meet the great God to whom ere long I am to give an account of myself, and I hope I shall do it with peace, and that you will assist me therein. We will not talk of these rogues in whose hands I am. They thirst after my blood, and they will have it, and God's will be done. I thank God I heartily forgive them, and will talk of them no more." In a message to his son, he declared his faith in the apostolical institution of Episcopacy, and, as a last request, earnestly urged him to read the Bible, which in his own affliction, he remarked, "had been his best instructor and delight." He said to his attendant, on the morning of his execution, "Herbert, this is my second marriage day, I would be as trim to-day as may be, for before night I hope to be espoused to my blessed Jesus." "I fear not death, death is not terrible to me. I bless my God I am prepared."[659] On his way to the block he hastened his attendants, remarking that he now went before them to strive for a heavenly crown with less solicitude than he had often encouraged his soldiers to fight for an earthly diadem.

His words, as he stood with Juxon at his side,[660] before the axe of the masked executioner, were broken and confused; but he declared himself a Christian, and a member of the Church; that he had a good cause and a gracious God, and was going from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown.

The impression which the tragedy produced on two eminent persons has been fully recorded. Parr, in his Life of Ussher,[661] relates how the Irish primate came upon the leads of Lady Peterborough's house, "just over against Charing Cross," as the King made his final speech, and how, when his Majesty "had pulled off his cloak and doublet, and stood stripped in his waistcoat," and the men in vizards put up his hair, the good Bishop, unable to bear the dismal sight, grew pale and faint, and would have swooned away had not his servants removed him. He could vent his excitement only in prayers and tears; and ever afterwards he observed the 30th of January as a private fast. Matthew Henry states that his eminently-godly father witnessed the execution, and used to tell his children, at Broad Oak, of the dismal groan amongst the thousands of the people when the axe fell—a groan the like of which he had never heard before, and hoped he should never hear again; and he would also mention the circumstance of one troop of horse marching from Charing Cross to King Street, and another from King Street to Charing Cross, to disperse the crowd as soon as the awful deed was done.[662]

The execution of Charles, however it may be deplored as mischievous, criticised as impolitic, or condemned as unjust, was perhaps—looking at the natural resentments and fears of men under the circumstances—only such a sequel to the civil wars as became probable after long experience of the King's invincible duplicity. Like Strafford, he had become too dangerous to live; and now it was thought that, like Strafford, he must die. Moreover, visions of republican bliss dazzled the imagination of a few who believed that they would be nearer the attainment of their hopes when the head of Charles should have rolled in dust.[663] One result, it appears, they did not contemplate. They made a martyr of their victim, and thus so deeply stained their cause in the estimation of the largest portion of posterity, that all their patriotism and religious consistency in other respects have not sufficed to wipe out the blot.

The Presbyterians ought not to be reproached for the fate of Charles. Their statesmen did what they could to prevent it; and their Divines courageously protested against his being put to death, as a national crime. Nor should the Independents, as a religious sect, be made to bear the responsibility. It is true that some of them were members of the High Court of Justice—Bradshaw, the president, and Corbet, to mention no others, were in communion with Congregational Churches[664]—but there were also Independent ministers who openly declared against the sentence; and the silence of others upon the subject is no more to be construed into approval than is the silence of Episcopalians.[665] What extravagant things might be said by such a man as the notorious Hugh Peters, or even by John Goodwin—a different sort of person it is true—ought not to be charged upon the Independents in general. Yet some amongst the best of them, it must be acknowledged, approved of the deed. Lucy Hutchinson relates the conflicts of her husband, shewing how a sense of duty decided him in the part he took in the proceeding. Dr. Owen preached before Parliament the day after the King was beheaded; and though he does not allude to the event of the preceding morning, he preached in a strain not at all consistent with any reprobation of it, as an act of injustice. Although, in our opinion, it was a blunder, it has been vindicated even in the present day by writers of undoubted piety and honour: no wonder that good men, amidst a struggle which we can imperfectly imagine, were impelled to do what good men in the serener atmosphere of two centuries later deliberately justify.

The King was buried at Windsor on the 9th of February. Thither his remains were conveyed by Mr. Herbert and others; some of his faithful nobility, accompanied by Bishop Juxon, arriving at the Castle next day. They shewed the Governor-General, Whitchcot,[666] an authority from Parliament for their attendance at the funeral, and requested that the body might be interred according to the rites of the Church of England. The Governor refused, on the ground that the Common Prayer had been put down. To their solicitations and arguments he replied it was improbable that the Parliament would permit the use of what it had so solemnly abolished, and thus virtually contradict and destroy its own act. To which they rejoined: "There was a difference betwixt destroying their own act and dispensing with it, or suspending the exercise thereof; that no power so bindeth up its own hands as to disable itself in some cases to recede from the rigour of their own acts, if they should see just occasion." The plea proved unavailing. Whitchcot would not yield. As the funeral procession moved from the great hall in the Castle, and entered the open air, "the sky was serene and clear; but presently it began to snow, and the snow fell so fast that by that time the corpse came to the west end of the Royal Chapel, the black velvet pall was all white." The soldiers of the garrison carried the body to its resting-place under the choir. Over the coffin hung a black velvet hearse-cloth, "the four labels whereof the four Lords did support. The Bishop of London stood weeping by, to tender his service, which might not be accepted. Then was it deposited in silence and sorrow in the vacant place in the vault (the hearse-cloth being cast in after it) about three of the clock in the afternoon."[667]