CHAP. left by it the victims of their loyalty, without redress A.D. 1660, for the injuries which they had received, or relief from the poverty to which they had been reduced; while, in numerous instances, their more fortunate neighbours of the republican party continued to revel in the undisturbed enjoyment of their new-gotten wealth, the fruit and reward of rebellion and injustice. With truth, they exclaimed, may it be called an act of oblivion and indemnity; but of oblivion of loyalty, and indemnity for treason.

7. Their discontent received some alleviation from the tragedy which followed. For years it had been sedulously impressed on the mind of Charles, that, as a son, he could never pardon the murder of his father; as a sovereign, he ought not to connive at the public execution of a king. To punish the regicides was, in his opinion, a sacred and indispensable duty; and the exceptions established by the late act afforded him ample scope for the exercise of justice, or the gratification of revenge. Five-and-twenty out of the original number had indeed been already removed by death beyond the reach of any earthly tribunal, and nineteen had crossed the sea to escape the fate which awaited them in their native country. Still twenty

1 Three of these, Whaley, Goff, and Dixwell, secreted themselves in New England, where they passed their lives in the constant fear of being discovered by the officers of government. There is an interesting account of their adventures in Hutchinson's History of Massachuset's Bay, and in the history of these "Most Illustrious "and Heroic Defenders of Liberty," published by Ezra Styles, S.T.D. LL.D., President of the Yale College, Hartford, U.S., 1794 Three others, Corbet, Okey, and Berkstead, were apprehended in Holland, at the instance of Downing, and given up by the States, as an atonement for their former treatment of the king during his exile. They suffered under the act of attainder, on the 19th of April, 1662.— Ludlow, iii. 82. State Trials, v. 1301-35. Pepys, i. 252, 258. Others sought refuge in Switzerland, where they believed themselves

nine remained, all in custody, and several of them as I. deeply tinged with the blood of the late king, and as A.D. 1660. criminal in the eyes of the royal party, as the most obnoxious of their fellows. The fugitives were attainted by act of parliament; the prisoners were arraigned before a court of thirty-four commissioners.

There was much in the composition of this court to interest the curiosity of the spectators, and to agitate the feelings of the unhappy men at the bar. That Cavaliers should sit in judgment on those who had brought the king to the block, might have been expected; but by the side of the chancellor, and Southampton, and Nicholas, were seated Manchester and Robartes, two of the parliamentary commanders; Say and Holles, the parliamentary leaders; Atkins and Tyrrel, parliamentary judges; Monk and Montague, two of Cromwell's lords; and Cooper, one of his most trusty advisers. These men, if they had not actually dipped their hands in the king's blood, had been deeply engaged in the transactions which led to his death, or had powerfully supported the several revolutionary governments which excluded his son and successor from the throne. For such offences they might, in other circumstances, have had to plead for their lives; but they had made professions of repentance, and had been selected to discharge this ungracious task, that they might display both the extent of the royal clemency, and the sincerity of their own conversion.

Most of the prisoners sought to deserve mercy by the ingenuous and sorrowful acknowledgment of their crime; the others alleged in their justification, that

to be in constant danger of assassination from emissaries hired by the English court.-Ludlow, iii. 113-134

Oct. 9.

I.

CHAP. they bore no personal malice to the royal victim; that A.D. 1660. they looked on his death as a solemn act of national justice, and that they proceeded under the sanction of that authority which then exercised the supreme power in the nation. To the second of these pleas the court refused to listen; to the first it was replied, that in law the fact afforded sufficient evidence of the malice; and, to the last, that an irregular and unlawful meeting of twenty-six persons, pretending to represent the commons of England, could not be considered as the supreme authority in the nation.

Oct. 13.

All were found guilty, and received judgment of death; but the execution of those who had voluntarily surrendered themselves was respited, according to the act of indemnity, for the subsequent consideration of parliament. The ten selected to suffer were Harrison, Scot, Carew, Jones, Clements, and Scroop, who had subscribed the fatal warrant; Cook, who acted as solicitor on the trial; Axtele and Hacker, two military officers who guarded the royal prisoner; and Peters, the minister, whose fervid and intemperate eloquence had been so often employed to prepare and support the actors in that remarkable tragedy. The language of these men, both in the court and after their condemnation, exhibited traits of the wildest fanaticism. For the justice of their cause they appealed to the victories which the Lord had given to their swords; to their bibles, which inculcated the duty of shedding the blood of him who had shed the blood of his fellow-men; and to the Spirit of God, which had testified to their spirit that the execution of Charles Stuart was a necessary act of justice, a glorious deed, the sound of which had gone into most nations, and a solemn recognition of that high

EXHUMATION OF THE DEAD.

15

supremacy which the King of Heaven holds over the CHAP. kings of the earth.

I. A.D. 1660.

Oct. 14, 16,

Similar sentiments supported and cheered them on the scaffold. When they were told to repent, they 17, 19. replied that of their sins they had repented, and of forgiveness they were assured. But they dared not repent of their share in the death of the late king; for to repent of a good deed was to offend God. They were proud to suffer for such a cause. Their martyrdom would be the most glorious spectacle which the world had ever witnessed since the death of Christ. But let the prosecutors tremble: the hand of the Lord was already raised to avenge their innocent blood; and in a short time the cause of royalty would crouch before that of independence. They uttered the prediction with the confidence of prophets,' and submitted to their fate with the constancy of martyrs. Peters alone appeared to shrink from the approach of death. The exhortation of his fellow-sufferers revived his courage; a strong cordial braced his nerves; and he mustered sufficient resolution to say that he gloried in the cause, and defied the executioner to do his worst.2

These examples did not satisfy the resentment of the royalists, who lamented, as a misfortune, that the most odious of the regicides had by a natural death escaped the fate of their associates. It was true that

1 And the prediction was believed. From the Diary of Whaley, Goff, and Dixwell, it appears that they looked on the execution of the regicides as the slaying of the witnesses foretold in the Book of Revelation, and that the prediction of a revolution in their favour was to be fulfilled in the mysterious year 1666. The year passed, and their hopes were disappointed; but they consoled themselves with the persuasion that there was an error in the date of the Christian era, and that the accomplishment of the prophecy would speedily arrive. See Howell's State Trials, v. 1362.

2 Ibid. 947-1301.

CHAP. they were attainted; but the attainder affected all A.D. 1660. alike; while the greater guilt of some called for

I.

1661.

Jan. 30.

more particular proofs of public reprobation. Revenge is ingenious; history could furnish instances of punishment inflicted on the remains of the dead; and in Dec. 8. obedience to an order of the two houses, approved by the king, the bodies of Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Ireton, having been removed from their graves, were drawn on hurdles to Tyburn, taken out of their coffins, and hung at the three corners of the gallows, on the anniversary of the death of Charles I., the day chosen for this expiatory ceremony. In the evening they were cut down and decapitated; the heads fixed on the front of Westminster Hall, and the trunks thrown into a pit at the place of execution. To the Cavaliers this revolting exhibition afforded a subject of merriment and pleasantry; but it met with the deserved reprobation of every man of sensibility and judgment. It was an outrage against the common feelings of humanity, and could contribute nothing to the only real end of public punishment-the prevention of crime. The man who dares to stake his life on the pursuit of his object, will not be deterred by the fear of mutilation or suspension after death.1

8. Since the year 1642, a considerable portion of the landed property in every county had passed from

'Lords' Journals, xi. 205. Kennet's Reg. 367. Though Pride was included in the order, his body was not disturbed. Afterwards (1661, Sept. 12, 14) about twenty bodies of persons buried in Henry VII.'s chapel, and the church of Westminster, were disinterred by the king's order, and buried again in the churchyard. Among these there were the remains of Cromwell's mother, of his daughter Elizabeth Claypole, of Admiral Blake, and of Colonel Mackworth, who had been interred in the chapel, and of Pym, Dorislaus, Stroud, May the historian, Twiss and Marshall, divines, and of several others buried in the church.-Kennet, 534. Neal, 619.