not run into these damnable excursions, or attempt to make God the author of the damnable treason committed. Yet Harrison sincerely believed-as many others did that in putting Charles to death he did that which was not only essential to the well-being of his country, but also acceptable to Heaven, which, according to his heated imagination, had not spared its special inspiration and command. And yet, at the moment of crisis, the natural tenderness of his heart had struggled hard with his fanaticism; and he had wept as well as prayed before he could bring himself to vote the king's death. He now heard his own sentence of death for treason without emotion, saying, as he was withdrawn from the bar, that he had no reason to be ashamed of the cause in which he had been engaged.

Colonel Carew, who entertained the same notions, both in politics and religion, as Harrison, made the same sort of defence, and displayed the same visionary enthusiasm, courage, and fortitude. He exclaimed, "I can say in the presence of the Lord, who is the searcher of all hearts, that what I did was in his fear; and that I did it in obedience to his holy and righteous laws!" He gave a striking epitome of the history of the late troubles from their beginning, showing the causes and provocations which had led to the civil war, and the unanimity which had for so long a time existed between Lords and Commons. "I say," he exclaimed, "that the Lords and Commons by their joint declaration. . "Hold! Hold!" shouted one of the judges who had repeatedly interrupted him before. "You go to raise up those differences which are asleep, to make new troubles, to revive those things which by the grace of God are extinct. . . . . The Commons tried the king. Did you ever hear of an act of parliament made by the House of Commons alone? You have no precedent."-To this Carew replied in two or three words which embraced the whole difficulty of the case:- "Neither was there ever such a war or such a precedent." Arthur Annesley, a Presbyterian member of the Long Parliament, who was created Earl of Anglesea soon after these state trials,

and who is described by Bishop Burnet as 66 a man of a grave deportment, but that stuck at nothing and was ashamed of nothing," reproached the prisoner with the forcible exclusion of all the Presbyterian members in 1648. "I was a stranger," said Carew, "to many of those things which you charge against me; but this is strange,--you give evidence as a witness, though sitting here as a judge!" When he attempted to address the jury he was brutally interrupted. "I have desired," said he, "to speak the words of truth and soberness, but have been hindered." Then with the air of a martyr glorying in his cause, he listened to the hurried verdict and the atrocious sentence. Colonel Scrope, an accomplished and amiable man, who had surrendered under the royal proclamation, and who had been regularly admitted to the king's pardon upon penalty of a year's value of his estate, as a fine to the crown, was condemned upon the evidence of the Presbyterian Major-General Brown, who deposed that in a private conversation, in the Speaker's chamber, Scrope had said to him that there would still be a difference of opinion among men touching the execution of the late king.

Harry Marten, the wit of the House of Commons, and one of the staunchest republicans that ever sate in it, demanded the benefit of the Act of Oblivion. He was told that he must plead guilty or not guilty. He attempted to speak as to his conception of that act; but he was again coarsely interrupted, and told that he must plead. 6. If I plead," said Marten, "I lose the benefit of the act." He was told that he was totally excepted out of the act. "No," said he, " my name is not in the act." "Show him the act of indemnity," said the Solicitor-General. The act was shown. Here,' ," said the droll," it is Henry Marten: my name is not so,-it is Harry Marten.' The court told him that the difference of the sound was very little. "I humbly conceive," rejoined he, "that all penal statutes ought to be correctly worded." As he was not permitted to stand on the misnomer, he pleaded not guilty. He said he did not decline a confession as to matter of fact, provided the malice were set aside, as

66

66

he had done nothing maliciously or murderously and traitorously. The counsel for the crown laughed in his face. The solicitor-general said sarcastically, "My lord, he does think a man may sit upon the death of a king, sentence him to death, sign a warrant for his execution, meekly, innocently, charitably, and honestly." "We shall prove," said the crown counsel, 66 we shall then prove against the prisoner,-because he would wipe off malice, that he did all very merrily, and was in great sport at the time of signing the warrant for the king's execution." "Then, surely, that does not imply malice," said the ready-witted Marten. Here a serving man of the name of Ewer, who had "some time served him " [the prisoner], was put into the witness-box. After being brow-beaten by the counsel this man said,'My lord, I did see a pen in Mr. Cromwell's hand, and he marked Mr. Marten in the face with it, and Mr. Marten did the like to him; but I did not see any one. set his hand [to the king's sentence], though I did see parchment there with a great many seals on it." [And this is all the evidence we possess for a story which is constantly quoted to prove the barbarous and rustical buffoonery of Oliver Cromwell.] After this Ewer had spoken to prove "how merry Marten was at the sport,' Sir Purbeck Temple spoke to prove "how serious he was at it," and how he had been the first to propose that the late king should be prosecuted in the name of the Commons in parliament assembled, and of all the good people of England. After a little consultation the jury returned a verdict of guilty: but the near prospect of a horrible death could not abate the courage of the witty Harry Marten, who left the court with a light heart and steady step.

The court had resolved to fix the act of beheading the late king upon William Hewlet. The evidence produced in this case for the prosecution ought not to have been considered sufficient to hang a dog. The greatest weight of testimony went to prove that it was not Captain Hewlet, but the common hangman, that cut off the king's head for a reward of thirty pounds. Yet a verdict of guilty was returned against Hewlet. There was, however, some

sense of shame left in this restored government; and, as people began to talk loudly of the insufficiency of the proofs against him, Hewlet was not executed.

Garland, another of the selected victims, said that he had come into court with the intention of submitting to the king's mercy, but that, having heard some fresh scandal cast upon him which he had never heard before, he must desire to be put upon his trial. The scandal was, that he, on the day of sentence, did spit in the king's face. "I am willing to confess this," said the prisoner. "I sat in the high court, and I signed the warrant for his execution." "And we will prove," said the solicitorgeneral," that he did spit in the king's face." "I pray you," said Garland earnestly, "I pray you let me hear that! But for that false scandal I would not have put you to any trouble at all." Here one Clench, a low and needy person, was produced to swear that he saw Garland spit, and the king put his hand in his left pocket, though whether his majesty wiped it off or not he could not say. "The king wiped it off," said the solicitor-general, pretending to know more than this the sole witness did "but he will never wipe it off so long as he lives." "I am afraid," said Garland, "this witness is an indigent person: if I was guilty of this inhumanity, I desire no favour from Almighty God. . . . . You cannot be satisfied that I did such an inhuman act. I dare appeal to all the gentlemen here, or any others, whether they ever heard of such a thing; nor was I ever accused of it till now." He appealed to all that knew him to say whether he had ever shown any malignity, any disrespect; whether, instead of ever doing any wrong to any of the king's party when in distress, he had not helped them as much as he was able. He was condemned with the rest, but sentence was never executed, a pretty plain proof that the story about the spitting was discredited even then. John Coke, the able lawyer who had conducted the prosecution against the king as solicitor for the commonwealth and people of England, pleaded that he could not be said to have contrived or counselled the death of Charles, because the proclamation for the trial, even by

the confession of his accusers, was published the day before he was appointed solicitor to the high court of justice; that he who had neither been accuser, witness, jury, judge, or executioner, could not be guilty of treason, &c. But this reasoning was not likely to be of any avail; and it was settled that Coke should be one of the first to suffer. Hugh Peters, the celebrated preacher, who was not so directly implicated in the king's death as many who were allowed to escape, was charged with encouraging the soldiery to cry out for justice—with comparing the king to Barabbas-with preaching upon the texts, "They shall bind their kings in chains," "Whosoever sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed," and the like. Peters, whose fanaticism has been exaggerated, and whose merits have been overlooked, pleaded that he had been living fourteen years out of England; that when he came home he found the civil wars begun; that he had begun no war, nor had been the trumpeter of any; that he had fled from the war into Ireland; that he was neither at Edge Hill nor Naseby; that he had looked after three things-that there might be sound religion, that learning and laws might be maintained, and that the suffering poor might be cared forand that he had spent most of his time in these things; that upon being summoned into England he considered it his duty to side with the parliament for the good of his country, and that in so doing he had acted without malice, avarice, or ambition, being respectful to his majesty, and kind and merciful to the royalist sufferers whenever he was able. The jury, after very little consultation, returned a verdict of guilty. Colonels Axtell and Hacker, who had assisted at the trial and execution, pleaded that, as military men, they were bound, under pain of death, by martial law, to obey the orders of their superiors; that the Earl of Essex, the Earl of Manchester, Sir Thomas Fairfax, and even Monk, who sat upon the bench as one of their judges, had set them an example; that whatever they had done had been by an authority that was not only owned and obeyed at home, but also acknowledged by princes and states abroad to be