CHARLES I. OF ENGLAND 179 menaced both church and state. Pym's "Grand Remonstrance" justified their fears, and Charles seemed to justify the "Grand Remonstrance" by his attempt to arrest the five members (January 4, 1642) ; but that ill-stricken blow was dic- tated by the knowledge of an impending impeachment of the queen herself. On August 22d he raised the royal standard at Nottingham ; and the four years civil war commenced, in which, as at Naseby, he showed no lack of physical courage, and which resulted at Naseby in the utter annihilation of his cause (June 14, 1645). No need here to track him through plot and counterplot with Catholics, Presbyterians, and Sectaries, with the Scots and the Irish, with the Parliament and the Army ; enough that, quitting his last refuge, Oxford, he surrendered him- self on May 5, 1646, to the Scots at Newark, and by them, in the following Janu- ary, was handed over to the Parliament. His four months captivity at Holmby House near Northampton ; his seizure on June 3d by Cornet Joyce ; the three months at Hampton Court ; the fight on November nth ; the fresh captivity at Carisbrooke Castle, in the Isle of Wight these lead up to the trial at Westmin- ster of the tyrant, traitor, and murderer, Charles Stuart. He had drawn the sword, and by the sword he perished, for it was the Army, not Parliament, that stood at the back of the judges. Charles faced them bravely and with dig- nity. Thrice he refused to plead, denying the competence of such a court ; and his refusal being treated as a confession, on the third day fifty-five out of seventy- one judges sixty-four more never were present affixed their names and seals to his death-warrant ; four days later, sentence was pronounced. No need here to tell the well-known story of his meekness toward his perse- cutors, of the pathetic parting from two of his younger children, of his prepara- tion for a holy death ; or how, on the morning of January 30, 1649, he passed to that death on the scaffold in front of Whitehall, with a courage worthy of a very martyr. On the snowy ;th of February they bore the " white king" to his grave at Windsor in Henry VIII. 's vault ; in 1813 the Prince Regent had his leaden coffin opened. Six children survived him Charles and James, his successors ; Mary, Princess of Orange (1631-60); Elizabeth (1635-50); Henry, Duke of Gloucester (1639-60) ; and Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans (1644-70), the last born ten weeks after Charles's final parting from his queen. At the Restoration Charles II. appointed, on his sole authority, a form of prayer, with fasting, for the day of the martyrdom of the Blessed King Charles I., to be annexed to the Com- mon Prayer Book, with the other state services ; it kept its place there till 1859. A far stronger man than Charles might scarcely have extricated himself from the difficulties that beset him ; true, those difficulties were largely of his own creating. But was he right in abandoning Stafford ? should he also have sacri- ficed wife, faith, and crown ? If yes, then was he wholly in the wrong ; if no, he was partly for once at least in the right. Vices, other than duplicity, he had none, as we use the word. He was vague, vacillating, obstinate, unable to lead or to be led ; superstitious, heedful of omens ; unsympathetic and reserved where he did not love ; intolerant of opposition to his will. But he was a good husband.
