After the passing of the Act of 6 January, a new era could be said to be begun when the sole actions of the Commons had a dubious legality of their own – that is if their ability to pass the Act in the first place without consent of Lords or King was admitted. The temper of the new era was set by the long preamble to the Act. It was an endless brief of accusation against Charles Stuart, who having conceived the wicked design of introducing arbitrary and tyrannical government, had to that end levied and maintained a cruel war in the land against Parliament and the kingdom as a whole, whereby the country had been miserably wasted. Despite such evil doings, Parliament might have been content merely to imprison this monster, “but found by sad experience that such their remissness only served to encourage him and his companions in the continuance of their evil practices”.23
Yet for all the Commons’ bold words, and reckless determination, there were others close to the centre of things who were still inspired by a strange mixture of doubt and faith. The uncertainty still prevalent even in the Army Council was demonstrated by the weird incident of the woman who appeared out of the blue at the end of December to communicate to them the substance of her visions concerning “the presence of God with the Army”. Elizabeth Poole, as she turned out to be called, had had the Army appear to her in the shape of a man and the country as a whole as a woman “full of imperfection, crooked, weak, sickly …” The man it seemed was destined to heal the woman. This revelation was treated with great seriousness. Elizabeth Poole was asked if she had any direction to give the Council, and her vision, termed by Colonel Rich “that testimony which God hath manifested here by an unexpected Providence”, was much discussed. On 5 January God directed the good lady to return to the Council; first she handed in a paper arguing against the execution of the King; then, after the paper had been formally debated in her absence, she was called in for further talks. She repeated her view that although the King should be judged and “you may bind his hands and hold him fast under”, he should not be put to death. Once more, she was treated with great respect and subjected to a long cross-examination. Ireton, for example, questioned her at great length about her revelations. If this King was not to die, did it mean that no King was ever to die, no matter what filthy crimes he had committed? The precise nature of what she had seen was discussed. Did she see an angel or a vision? The answer was a vision.24
Later a Royalist pamphlet accused Cromwell with Ireton of having stage-managed the whole incident, coaching the woman beforehand in her answers in order to sway the Army Council. But the record of the debates shows that the suggestion was manifestly absurd; the real significance of the incident lay in the real respect accorded this unlooked-for visitor. When Elizabeth Poole employed the Scriptures to plead against execution – “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay” she quoted at one point – or described the King as the husband or head of the people, who could be restrained but not cut down by his “wife”, citing the Biblical precedent of Nabal among the Israelites, she was speaking language the “Saints” could understand. Even Lady Fairfax was supposed to have seen a vision – a man coming into her room with her husband’s head in his hand – and this it was, according to Mercurius Pragmaticus, which led her to beseech Sir Thomas to have nothing to do with the trial of the King.25 As in Julius Caesar’s Rome, the Ides of March were come but not gone: many clung to the supernatural in such a tenebral period, as being at least outside the common round which was being so woefully disturbed and therefore not subject to the same rules. Like Caesar himself, in this deranged time many were “superstitious grown of late”.
The main preoccupation of the Army was still with the terms of its new Agreement of the People, initiated in December. Cromwell continued to attend the Councils only sporadically, his absence probably explained by his problems in the Commons (although the Council had now moved more conveniently to Whitehall). But at least once he gave in debate a glimpse of the way his mind was tending when he argued with Ireton over the article which set a terminal date for the existing Parliament. Ireton believed that it was important that such a date – not later than the end of April – should be written in, and it was at this point that Cromwell made his remark referred to earlier, that “it will be more honourable and convenient to put a period to themselves”. Ireton then pointed out the advantages of linking this Agreement with the ending of an unpopular Parliament – “The people may think if they oppose this Agreement, they oppose the ending of this Parliament.” To this Cromwell put in: “Then you are afraid they will do so?” So the clause stood.26 The Agreement was completed on 15 January, and presented to the Commons on the 20th, at which point it was put aside until the great matter of the King was concluded. But in the meantime Lilburne had withdrawn moodily from the whole affair, having desired that the Agreement should be circulated more democratically among the ordinary people.
It was clear that the actions of the Commons were not only inimicable to the large majority of the population of England – not one in twenty supported it said Lord Northumberland – but the slender nature of their support was well known to the men concerned. But matters continued to move forward with the headlong momentum of a runaway coach on a short sharp hill. Cromwell showed much industry in his preparations, and as much resolution as if he were planning a cavalry charge. Ultimately he might rely on divine approval as indicated by outward dispensations, rather than popular agreement, but he was nevertheless fully cognizant of the need to canvas the cause. There is evidence that he brought pressure to bear on the Presbyterian ministers of the City of London, largely hostile to proceedings, in contrast to men like Hugh Peter and Stephen Marshall; the City itself was subjected to propaganda. At the first meeting of the High Court of Justice on 8 January, and in the ensuing week when procedural details for the impending trial were discussed, it was Cromwell who made a speech in favour of allowing the public to listen to the discussions, but he was overruled.27
Cromwell also displayed some sense of the paramount need for unity, placing it above revolutionary doctrine, by supporting the cause of the House of Lords. The Commons’ resolution of 4 January, while arrogating all power to themselves and emphatically denying any right of the Lords to disagree, had nevertheless not specifically abolished the Lords. The Lords, under the Speakership of Denbigh, countered with a milder ordinance of their own, which simply said that any future King levying war against Parliament would be guilty of treason and tried. At the same time they passed certain small ordinances, in order to assert their continued right to do so, and passed them on to the Commons according to standard procedure. In the general atmosphere of flux, the Commons were by no means certain what attitude to take to these unbidden ordinances from another place. Marten and his group suggested they should not be received, but in the end their party was defeated.
In the course of debate many theories were put forward concerning the future of the Lords, ranging from their abolition to a joint sitting with the Commons (Whitelocke rejected this as too dangerous: the Lords might dominate the Commons). It was typical of Oliver’s eternally pragmatic attitude to this institution that, in answer to a motion for suppression, he sprang to the defence of the Lords, seeming to his hearers “very violent”. Gone were those equally violent outbursts repeated by Manchester at the time of their quarrel in 1645. At Putney he had shown himself more interested in the general safety of the kingdom than in theoretical considerations of the Lords’ powers. Now he asked his fellows if they were all mad to “take such courses to incense the Peers against them, at such a time when they had more need to study a near union with them”. The whole question of the Lords was left in abeyance till after the King’s trial should be completed.28
Further proof of communal reluctance for this enterprise was seen in the fact that out of 135 Commissioners nominated as judges-cum-jurymen, only fifty-two turned up in the first instance. Fairfax was there – his first and last appearance. At the meeting on the roth the Chief Justice of Cheshire, named John
Bradshaw, was chosen as President of the court. Later Milton was to write grandly how Bradshaw surpassed in glory “all former Tyrannicides in the precise degree in which it is more manly, just and majestic to judge a Tyrant, than to kill him Misjudged”.29 At the time it was not so much Bradshaw’s distinction as a lawyer that rendered him suitable for the post – he had by no means reached the heights of his profession – as his sheer willingness to serve and thus add some dubious measure of legal authenticity to the trial. Bradshaw certainly brought some practical wisdom to his approach to the task, for although endowed with the old deanery at Westminster, well guarded, as an official residence, and granted a magnificent scarlet robe of office, he wore armour beneath it to ward off possible assassination, and his high-crowned beaver hat was prudently lined with steel.* ( * Both hat and armour can still be inspected today, the hat in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and the armour in the Guildhall, Stafford.)
The next necessity was to draft the charge against the King: for this two committees were set up, one under Ireton to advise counsel on the subject, and the other under Ludlow to prepare for the trial itself. Two days later it was decided that matters were now sufficiently advanced to bring their intended victim to the capital. The house of Sir Robert Cotton, that great antiquary of Charles’s father’s reign, was felt to be an appropriate lodging: with its spacious gardens down to the river, it lay in the heart of the maze of buildings of the complex Palace of Westminster, adjacent to St Stephen’s Chapel. Between the House of Commons and the House of Lords and flanked by other parliamentary chambers it presented little possibility of escape.* ( * Today roughly the site of a blind courtyard between the House of Commons and the House of Lords, or St Stephen’s Court as it is termed in the guidebooks, known more informally as the Boiler House Court and used appropriately enough for storing scaffolding. It must be remembered that the river was then considerably wider, and the present terraces of the Houses of Parliament nonexistent.) Having been taken first to St James’s Palace, Charles was then carried secretly to Whitehall in a sedan chair for fear of a popular demonstration in his favour: his final journey to Westminster took place by water.
As Charles was conducted through the Cotton Gardens, it seems that this melancholy procession was actually witnessed by Cromwell. One of those who later testified against Henry Marten at his trial told the story of Cromwell hastening to the window when he heard of the King’s presence; watching him as he came up through the gardens, he was seen to go “white as the wall”. Turning away, he drew together Bradshaw, Sir Henry Mildmay and Sir William Brereton and said: “My Masters, he is come, he is come, and now we are doing that great work that the whole nation will be full of.” There was much of Cromwell’s inspiration in the days to come in that evocative phrase, even if his next words pinpointed the doubts of others: “Therefore I desire ye to let us resolve here what answer we shall give the King when he comes before us, for the first question that he will ask us will be by what authority and commission do we try him.” Silence fell. It was the quick-witted Marten who broke it: “In the name of the Commons and Parliament assembled and all the good people of England.”30
The scene was now set for the formal trial of the King of England, which opened on 20 January. The High Court adjourned from the Painted Chamber to Westminster Hall, that great oblong edifice lying like a coffin athwart the Palace of Westminster, at an angle north and south to the Abbey. Originally built in the time of William Rufus just after the Conquest, it was an exceptionally large chamber by any standards, nearly three hundred feet long, and its famous roof, hammer-beamed in oak under Richard n, rising to a hundred feet. The tragedies of English Kings were not new to it: here Edward n had abdicated and Richard n had been deposed. Here heroes, patriots galore, and villains too had been tried from Sir William Wallace in the early fourteenth century to Sir Thomas More, Guy Fawkes and, only seven years before, the ill-fated Strafford.* ( * Today a brass plate marking the spot where he sat commemorates the trial of King Charles I. Hastings was kter impeached in Westminster Hall, but it stopped being used for such judicial trials in 1806. The remaining law courts were moved in 1822. The more modern brass plates commemorate merely the peaceful lyings-in-state of British sovereigns and their consorts, as well as a few notabilities including Mr Gladstone and Sir Winston Churchill) But apart from these showpieces of its history, Westminster Hall had a recognized place in the judicial system of the time: law courts including the Court of Common Pleas, the King’s Bench, Chancery and Court of Exchequer were actually held in or near the Hall itself, the wooden structures which contained them being light and moveable, and capable of being covered over by galleries erected by scaffolding for a great occasion such as this. With the law courts had come other social accretions – shops to sell stationery necessary to lawyers, taverns and coffee-houses for the essential peripheral discussions. In contrast to its icy austerity today, Westminster Hall was then a hub of many committed lives.
In contrast to the length of its history, Westminster Hall now witnessed a procedure which was short and not particularly edifying, 31 * ( * See C. V. Wedgwood, The Trial of Charles I, bibliographical note p. 227 for a useful summary and consideration of the various texts of the trial.) In a way it was tragic that it was to this sort of expedient that the once high ideals of “godly rule” had come – an unlawful trial, with the most significant decorations of Westminster Hall, those symbols of military might, on permanent display, the Royalist colours captured in battle, the flags of Marston, Naseby and Preston. Charles himself displayed inestimable courage and dignity throughout his trial; as Burnet wrote afterwards and as many other commentators were to note, the Stuarts were better in misfortune than in prosperity. Perhaps there was some justice in this; in that their personal qualities so often brought misfortune upon them, it was only fitting that they should be well equipped to endure the slights of adversity. Certainly it was Charles’s bearing, the staunchness of his answers, which alone touched the proceedings of the trial with a kind of glory, and showed up the proceedings for what they were – a series of squalid and hasty botched-up expedients.
He entered the hall, showing his usual elegance in matters of personal taste in his dress, all in black relieved only by the Star of the Garter and the bejewelled George and blue ribbon round his neck. Charles immediately gave the court “a stern looking”, and from the first showed his opinion of their legality by failing to remove his hat. He himself was given a chair upholstered in red velvet at the south end of the Hall. There were guards behind him and further troops in the court. Facing him were his judges in three rows, with Bradshaw as President in the centre, confronted by a table covered in a handsome turkey carpet. Cromwell’s exact position is uncertain, for although an artist’s impression shows him sitting in the middle of the row, other evidence – and the balance of probabilities points to a more prominent place. He was certainly not one of those to hang back. Two days earlier he had made his feelings clear to Algernon Sidney, who on being chosen as a judge, had objected to the court for two good reasons: “First, the King can be tried by no court; secondly no man can be tried by this court.” Cromwell replied without hesitation: “I tell you we will cut offhis head with the Crown upon it.” Sidney fired a Parthian shot as he left in disgust: “You may take your own course, I cannot stop you, but I will keep myself clean from having any hand in this business.”32
But Cromwell no longer suffered from any such ambivalences, although many of his old allies were falling away. Sir Henry Vane had not been seen in the Commons since the aftermath of Pride’s Purge, and was not a member of the court (although the fact that he returned to his work at the Admiralty on 30 January, the day of the King’s death, was enough to condemn him as part of the regicide crew after the Restoration). When Fairfax’s name was called from the roll of judges, there was no answer. A masked woman, among the “great press” of spectators in the galleries, cried out that he had more wit than to be there.33 It subsequently transpired that she was Lady Fa
irfax, a keen Presbyterian to whose influence many attributed Fairfax’s waning enthusiasm for the proceedings of his associates, but already this piece of defiance had caused much disorder in the court; indeed throughout the trial the spectators were uncomfortably unruly rather than docile, as the judges must have hoped. Fairfax and Vane had each in their way worked closely with Cromwell in the recent years; he respected both; neither was prepared to follow him in what was now afoot. It was two greater forces, Providence and necessity, that urged him on.
The charge against the King was then read by John Cook, a man of no particular reputation, who had been appointed Solicitor for the Commonwealth after William Steele the Attorney-General pleaded illness (but it was typical of the suspicions of the times, that Steele’s excuse was not accepted until the committee concerned had caused a personal investigation of his condition). Cook was flanked by another nonentity, John Asked, and a man of somewhat greater interest, Dr Dorislaus, lately Parliament’s envoy to the Netherlands, a scholar and personal friend of Cromwell who had lately recommended him for a position at Cambridge.34 The text of Cook’s charge produced a reaction from the King. He tried to interrupt, touching Cook’s arm with his silver-headed cane. As he did so, the knob fell off; Charles waited – perhaps for someone to pick it up – and after a pause bent down and picked it up himself. A man who since childhood had been served and waited upon, he was after all now quite alone.