VIII. exempted from high treason any one acting under a king de facto, though he should not be king de jure, that the parliament at that time was the supreme power, including the functions of both king and parliament; that it was, in fact, the only authority there was in the country; and that it had from age to age been contended and admitted that God indicated the rightful power by giving it victory. Such was the authority that God at the time had set over them, and under that they had acted. His arguments were thrown away, and it was on this occasion that the story was first given in evidence by a soldier, of he and Cromwell, on the signing of the death warrant of the king, wiping their pens on each other's faces.
After a trial in which every ingenious and valid plea was advanced by the prisoners to deaf ears, all were condemned to death, but ten only were at present executed—Harrison, Scott, Carer,', Jones, Clement, Scrope, Coke, Axtell, Hacker, and Hugh Peters, Cromwell's chaplain. Peters, by his enthusiasm and wild eloquence, had undoubtedly roused the spirit of the parliamentarians, and especially of the army, but he had had no particular concern in the king's death, and had often exerted himself to obtain mercy and kind treatment not only for the king, but for suffering royalists. He declared on the trial that he had never been influenced by interest or malice in all that he had done. That he never received a farthing from Cromwell for his services, and that he had no hand in exciting the war, for he was abroad fourteen years, and found the war in full action on his return. Peters, whose character has been greatly maligned by the cavaliers And their historians, appears really to have been a sincere and upright patriot; but his pleas were as useless as those of all the others.
"No saint or confessor ever went to martyrdom," says Hume, "with more assured confidence of heaven, than was expressed by these criminals, even when the terrors of immediate death, joined to many indignities, were set before them." In fact, they had done a great deed on principle, and they felt sure of the approval of God and of posterity. They declared, when called on to repent of their act, that they dared not repent of the death of the king; that to repent of a good deed was offence to God; that they were proud to suffer for such a cause, and they confidently proclaimed that their martyrdom would be the most glorious spectacle that the world had seen since the death of Christ; and that their blood would be assuredly avenged, and the cause of monarchy crouch before advancing independence. Little did their judges dream how soon their words were to be verified.
Harrison was drawn first to Charing Cross on a hurdle. His conduct was cheerful and even animated, as with triumph he declared that many a time he had begged the Lord, if he had any hard, any reproachful, or contemptible service to be done by his people, that he might be employed in it; and that now his prayers were answered. Several times he cried out as he was drawn along, that he suffered in the most glorious cause in the world; and when a low wretch asked him, "Where's your good old cause now?" he replied, "Here it is!" clapping his hand on his heart, "and I am going to seal it with my blood." He was put to death with all the horrors of the most barbarous times, cut down
alive, his bowels torn out whilst ho was alive, and then his quivering heart held up to the people. Charles witnessed this revolting scene at a little distance, and yet that heartless man let the whole of the condemned suffer the same bloody barbarities. They all wont to their hideous death with the same heroic spirit, and in order to daunt the old preacher, Hugh Peters, he was taken to see the hanging, drawing, and quartering of Coke, but it only seemed to animate him all the more. The effect of tins and of the addresses of the undaunted regicides from the scaffold was such, that the people began to show evident disgust of these cruelties; and when Scott's turn cam.e, they endeavoured to drown his words, so that he said it must be a very bad cause that could not hear the words of a dying man. But the words and noble courage of these dying men. Bishop Burnet observes, "their show of piety, their justifying all they had done, not without a seeming joy for their suffering on that account, caused the king to be advised not to proceed further, or at least not to have the scene so near the court as Charing Cross."
Whilst these butcheries of some of the most heroic men which this country has produced, who had counselled, fought, and now died for the liberties of England, illustrated the real spirit of the so-called merry monarch, and of these much admired fine gentlemen, his cavalier court, they were making the British public sensible in another way of the precious golden calf of royalty that they had been so rapturously bowing down to, by the display of the most undisguised riot and licentiousness. Whitehall was crowded with pimps, panders, loose women, and still looser men, clamouring for titles and fortunes, and, amid the sanguinary exhibitions of Charing Cross, the wildest wickedness disgraced the court. As Nero fiddled whilst Rome was burning, so the modern Nero earned his title of "merry" and "debonair," by laughing whilst the truest men of the country were perishing under his hands. Not even some striking instances of mortality within its own circle could long check its lascivious orgies.
About a month before Harrison's execution, the duke of Gloucester died of small pox; and scarcely were the royal shambles closed for awhile when the princess of Orange, who had come over to congratulate her brother, the king, died of small pox, too. "At court," says Pepys, "things are in very ill-condition, there being so much emulation,poverty, and the vices of drinking, swearing, and loose amours, that I know not what will be the end of it but confusion; and the clergy are so high that all people that I meet with do protest against their practice." Sober people must have looked back with a strange feeling to the sober and manly times of the protectorate.
But death and marriage merriments were oddly mingled in this bacchanalian court. The daughter of old Clarendon, Ann Hyde, was married to the duke of York, and was delivered of a son just six weeks afterwards. The queen-mother, Henrietta Maria, and the princess of Orange, and the princess Henrietta, were violently opposed to so unroyal a marriage, but the old chancellor had the influence with Charles to carry it through, and, instead of a disgrace, to convert it into a triumph. The wily old politician pretended himself to have been not only grossly deceived in the matter..
