The Works of Thomas Carlyle/Volume 6/Death-Warrant
The Trial of Charles Stuart falls not to be described in this place; the deep meanings that lie in it cannot be so much as glanced at here. Oliver Cromwell attends in the High Court of Justice at every session except one; Fairfax sits only in the first. Ludlow, Whalley, Walton, names known to us, are also constant attendants in that High Court, during that long-memorable Month of January 1649. The King is thrice brought to the Bar; refuses to plead, comports himself with royal dignity, with royal haughtiness, strong in his divine right; ‘smiles’ contemptuously, ‘looks with an austere countenance’;—does not seem, till the very last, to have fairly believed that they would dare to sentence him. But they were men sufficiently provided with daring; men, we are bound to see, who sat there as in the Presence of the Maker of all men, as executing the judgments of Heaven above, and had not the fear of any man or thing on the Earth below. Bradshaw said to the King, ‘Sir, you are not permitted to issue out in these discoursings. This Court is satisfied of its authority. No Court will bear to hear its authority questioned in that manner.’—‘Clerk, read the Sentence!’—
And so, under date Monday 29th January 1648-9, there is this stern Document to be introduced; not specifically of Oliver’s composition; but expressing in every letter of it the conviction of Oliver’s heart, in this, one of his most important appearances on the stage of earthly life.
‘TO COLONEL FRANCIS HACKER, COLONEL HUNCKS, AND LIEUTENANT-COLONEL PHAYR, AND TO EVERY OF THEM
and Judging of Charles Stuart, King of
England, 29th January 1648.
‘Whereas Charles Stuart, King of England, is and standeth convicted, attainted and condemned of High Treason and other high Crimes; and Sentence upon Saturday last was pronounced against him by this Court, To be put to death by the severing of his head from his body; of which Sentence execution yet remaineth to be done:
‘These are therefore to will and require you to see the said Sentence executed, in the open Street before Whitehall, upon the morrow, being the Thirtieth day of this instant month of January, between the hours of Ten in the morning and Five in the afternoon, with full effect. And for so doing, this shall be your warrant.
‘And these are to require all Officers and Soldiers, and others the good People of this Nation of England, to be assisting unto you in this service.
‘Given under our hands and seals,
‘Joun Bradshaw.
‘Thomas Grey, “Lord Groby.”
‘Oliver Cromwell.’
(“and Fifty-six others.”)[1]
‘Tetræ belluæ, ac molossis suis ferociores, Hideous monsters, more ferocious than their own mastiffs!’ shrieks Saumaise;[2] shrieks all the world, in unmelodious soul-confusing diapason of distraction,—happily at length grown very faint in our day. The truth is, no modern reader can conceive the then atrocity, ferocity, unspeakability of this fact. First, after long reading in the old dead Pamphlets does one see the magnitude of it. To be equalled, nay to be preferred think some, in point of horror, to ‘the Crucifixion of Christ.’ Alas, in these irreverent times of ours, if all the Kings of Europe were cut in pieces at one swoop, and flung in heaps in St. Margaret’s Churchyard on the same day, the emotion would, in strict arithmetical truth, be small in comparison! We know it not, this atrocity of the English Regicides; shall never know it. I reckon it perhaps the most daring action any Body of Men to be met with in History ever, with clear consciousness, deliberately set themselves to do. Dread Phantoms, glaring supernal on you,—when once they are quelled and their light snuffed out, none knows the terror of the Phantom! The Phantom is a poor paper-lantern with a candle-end in it, which any whipster dare now beard.
A certain Queen in some South-Sea Island, I have read in Missionary Books, had been converted to Christianity; did not any longer believe in the old gods. She assembled her people; said to them, ‘My faithful People, the gods do not dwell in that burning-mountain in the centre of our Isle. That is not God; no, that is a common burning-mountain,—mere culinary fire burning under peculiar circumstances. See, I will walk before you to that burning-mountain; will empty my wash-bowl into it, cast my slipper over it, defy it to the uttermost, and stand the consequences!’—She walked accordingly, this South-Sea Heroine, nerved to the sticking-place; her people following in pale horror and expectancy: she did her experiment;—and, I am told, they have truer notions of the gods in that Island ever since! Experiment which it is now very easy to repeat, and very needless. Honour to the Brave who deliver us from Phantom-dynasties, in South-Sea Islands and in North!
This action of the English Regicides did in effect strike a damp like death through the heart of Flunkyism universally in this world. Whereof Flunkyism, Cant, Cloth-worship, or whatever ugly name it have, has gone about incurably sick ever since; and is now at length, in these generations, very rapidly dying. ‘The like of which action will not be needed for a thousand years again. Needed, alas—not till a new genuine Hero-worship has arisen, has perfected itself; and had time to degenerate into a Flunkyism and Cloth-worship again! Which I take to be a very long date indeed.
Thus ends the Second Civil War. In Regicide, in a Commonwealth and Keepers of the Liberties of England. In punishment of Delinquents, in abolition of Cobwebs;—if it be possible, in a Government of Heroism and Veracity; at lowest, of Anti-Flunkyism, Anti-Cant, and the endeavour after Heroism and Veracity.
END OF VOL. I.