sked it, had he known what had taken place. To his assertion that
Fairfax was with the officers in Harrison's room, employed in "prayer or
discourse," it has been objected that his name does not occur among the
names of those who were proved to have been there at the trial of the
regicides. But that is no contradiction. The witnesses speak of what
happened before, Herbert of what happened during, the execution. See also
Ellis, 2nd series, iii. 345.]

appeared in arms several regiments of horse and foot; and beyond, as far
as the eye was permitted to reach, waved a dense and countless crowd of
spectators. The king stood collected and undismayed amidst the apparatus
of death. There was in his countenance that cheerful intrepidity, in his
demeanour that dignified calmness, which had characterized, in the hall of
Fotheringay, his royal grandmother, Mary Stuart. It was his wish to address
the people; but they were kept beyond the reach of his voice by the swords
of the military; and therefore confining his discourse to the few persons
standing with him on the scaffold, he took, he said, that opportunity of
denying in the presence of his God the crimes of which he had been accused.
It was not to him, but to the houses of parliament, that the war and all
its evils should be charged. The parliament had first invaded the rights of
the crown by claiming the command of the army; and had provoked hostilities
by issuing commissions for the levy of forces, before he had raised a
single man. But he had forgiven all, even those, whoever they were (for he
did not desire to know their names), who had brought him to his death. He
did more than forgive them, he prayed that they might repent. But for that
purpose they must do three things; they must render to God his due, by
settling the church according to the Scripture; they must restore to the
crown those rights which belonged to it by law; and they must teach the
people the distinction between the sovereign and the subject; those persons
could not be governors who were to be governed, _they_ could not rule,
whose duty it was to obey. Then, in allusion to the offers formerly made
to him by the army, he concluded with, these words:--"Sirs, it was for the
liberties of the people that I am come here. If I would have assented to an
arbitrary sway, to have all things changed according to the power of the
sword, I needed not to have come hither; and therefore, I tell you (and
I pray God it be no