uld blush to shed the blood of their sovereign; and that
their revenge would be appeased, and their ambition sufficiently gratified,
by the substitution in his place of one of his younger children on the
throne.[1]

But these were the dreams of a man who sought to allay his fears by
voluntary delusions. The princes of Europe looked with cold indifference
on his fate. The king of Spain during the whole contest had maintained a
friendly correspondence with the parliament. Frederic III. king of Denmark,
though he was his

[Footnote 1: Herbert, 155, 157. Whitelock, 365. Sir John Temple attributed
his tranquillity "to a strange conceit of Ormond's working for him in
Ireland. He still hangs upon that twigg; and by the enquireys he made after
his and Inchiquin's conjunction, I see he will not be beaten off it."--In
Leicester's Journal, 48.]

cousin-german, made no effort to save his life; and Henrietta could obtain
for him no interposition from France, where the infant king had been
driven from his capital by civil dissension, and she herself depended for
subsistence on the charity of the Cardinal de Retz, the leader of the
Fronde.[1] The Scottish parliament, indeed, made a feeble effort in his
favour. The commissioners subscribed a protest against the proceedings
of the Commons, by whom it was never answered; and argued the case with
Cromwell, who referred them to the covenant, and maintained, that if it was
their duty to punish the malignants in general, it was still more so to
punish him who was the chief of the malignants.[2]

As the day of trial approached, Charles resigned the hopes which he had
hitherto indulged; and his removal to Whitehall admonished him to
prepare for that important scene on which he was soon to appear. Without
information or advice, he could only resolve to maintain the port and
dignity of a king, to refuse the authority of his judges, and to commit no
act unworthy of his exalted rank and that of his ancestors.[a] On the 20th
of January the commissioners appointed by the act assembled in the painted
chamber, and proceeded in state to the upper end of Westminster Hall.[b]
A chair of crimson velvet had been placed for the lord president, John
Bradshaw, serjeant-at-law; the others, to the number of sixty-six, ranged
themselves on either side, on benches covered with scarlet; at the feet
of the president sat two clerks at a table on which lay the sword and the
mace; and directly opposite stood a chai