to bring to condign punishment." That, one would think, was a fearful vote, but it passed unheeded on the besotted king On the 1st of January, 1649, the committee made the following report:—"That the said Charles Stuart, being admitted king of England, and therein trusted with a limited power to govern by and according to the laws of the land, and not otherwise; and by his trust, oath, and office, being obliged to use the power committed to him for the good and benefit of the people, and for the preservation of their rights and liberties; yet, nevertheless, out of a wicked design to erect and uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical power, to rule according to his will, and to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people; yea, to take away and make void the foundations thereof, and of all redress and remedy of misgovernment, which by the fundamental constitutions of this kingdom were reserved on the people's behalf, in the right and power of frequent and successive parliaments, or national meetings in council; he, the said Charles Stuart, for accomplishing of such his designs, and for the protecting of himself and his adherents in his and their wicked practices, to the same ends hath traitorously and maliciously levied war against the present parliament, and the people therein represented." The report, therefore, declared that he should be brought to judgment for his treason to the nation.
The next day the ordinance of the commons confirming the report was sent up to the lords, or at least to the few of them remaining, only amounting to about a dozen, who rejected it without a dissenting voice, and then adjourned. The commons immediately closed their doors, and passed a resolution that the commons of England in parliament assembled were, under God, the origin of all just power as the representatives of the people; that whatsoever they decreed was law, and did not require any concurrence from the lords.
But nothing was more notorious than that this junta of the commons was not the commons; was not the sole representatives of the people, but had forcibly turned out of doors the majority of those representatives; even if it were true, which it was not, that the consent of neither king nor lords was necessary to establish constitutional law. The whole was no longer a parliament or a constitution, but a revolution, and must be justified alone on the necessity of revolution, and of the national salvation no other way to be attained. The army, and not parliament, was the ruling power, and was seeking to introduce a form of government unknown to England through all past history, and by means equally unknown. Monarchs had been deposed, as Richard II., but that had been by a rival faction, and under the plea, though forced, of abdication. Bolingbroke had never presumed to try and execute a king as a traitor to the realm, and he remained an unquestionable usurper. The parliament was, therefore, now using means unknown to the constitution for an event equally unknown to it, and which, therefore, as we have said, could be justified by no constitutional principles or forms, but must stand on its own merits, appealing to the common sense of posterity for its justification. They had taken upon them to destroy the ancient constitution, and construct a new one, and its intrinsic merits could alone indemnify them to the world. The clinging to the old parliamentary power was but a concession to the prejudices of the public, and to abate somewhat the force of appearance in a violence, which, though they contended, and which we believe was an absolute necessity, was yet a violence beyond all historic precedent.
On the 6th of January the commons passed the ordinance for the trial of the king. By it they erected a high court of justice for trying him, and proceeding to judgment against him. It consisted of no less than a hundred and thirty-five commissioners, of whom twenty were to form a quorum. Amongst the commissioners named were Fairfax, Cromwell, Ireton, Harrison, Waller, Skippon, Walley, Pride, Ewer, Tomlinson, altogether three generals and thirty-four colonels of the army; there were three lords, Grey of Groby, Monson, and Lisle; most of the members of the Rump; aldermen Wilson, Pennington, Fawkes, and Andrews; Bradshaw, Thorpe, Nicholas, serjeants-at-law; twenty-two knights and baronets, besides some citizens and country gentlemen. Of these commissioners no more than eighty assembled. On the 8th, fifty assembled in the Painted Chamber, Fairfax at their head, and ordered that on the morrow the herald should proclaim the approaching trial, and invite all people to bring in what matters of fact they had against Charles Stuart. Accordingly that was done both at Westminster and in the city the same day, the 9th. The commons ordered the great seal in use to be broken up, and a new seal introduced, bearing the inscription, "The Great Seal of England," and on the reverse, "In the first year of Freedom, by God's blessing restored, 1648," i.e., 1649, new style.
The commissioners then appointed John Bradshaw, a native of Cheshire, and a barrister of Gray's Inn, who had practised much in Guildhall, and had lately been made a Serjeant, lord president of the High Court; Mr. Steel, attorney-general; Mr. Coke, solicitor-general; Messrs. Dorislaus and Aske, as counsel for the commonwealth; and appointing the old Courts of Chancery and King's Bench, at the upper end of Westminster Hall, as the place of trial, they fixed the day for the 19th of January.
Charles still could not realise the awful event that awaited him. He could not persuade himself that any body of men, however powerful, could dare to violate "the divinity that doth hedge about a king." Amid all the evils or ghastly fortunes of crowned heads, none had yet come in so questionable a shape. He relied on the sacred descent from a hundred monarchs, and on the interference of foreign potentates should any actual desecration menace him. But thee foreign potentates, though some of them were nearly allied in blood, and all had a common interest in preventing such a catastrophe and example, looked on with cold indifference. In France, Henrietta, so far from being able to obtain aid, saw the infant king driven from his capital by insurgents, and was herself only saved from starvation by cardinal de Retz, the leader of the Fronde. The king of Denmark, his cousin-german, made no effort in his favour; the states of Holland promised, but contented themselves with something short of a remonstrance; and the king of Spain had long been in friendly correspondence with the parliament. The Scottish estates alone expressed their decided dissent from the proceedings, and endeavoured to move
