h his own
masterly account, pp. 98, 99, 100? Even Cromwell, though he might have
prevented, could not have effected, the sentence. The regicidal judges
were not his creatures. Consult the Life of Colonel Hutchinson upon this.

Ib. p. 374.

Since this, Dr. Peter Moulin hath, in his Answer to 'Philanax
Anglicus', declared that he is ready to prove, when authority will
Call him to it, that the King's death, and the change of the
government, was first proposed both to the Sorbonne, and to the Pope
with his Conclave, and consented to and concluded for by both.

The Pope in his Conclave had about the same influence in Charles's fate
as the Pope's eye in a leg of mutton. The letter intercepted by Cromwell
was Charles's death-warrant. Charles knew his power; and Cromwell and
Ireton knew it likewise, and knew that it was the power of a man who was
within a yard's length of a talisman, only not within an arm's length,
but which in that state of the public mind, could he but have once
grasped it, would have enabled him to blow up Presbyterian and
Independent both. If ever a lawless act was defensible on the principle
of self-preservation, the murder of Charles might be defended. I suspect
that the fatal delay in the publication of the 'Icon Basilike' is
susceptible of no other satisfactory explanation. In short it is absurd
to burthen this act on Cromwell and his party, in any special sense. The
guilt, if guilt it was, was consummated at the gates of Hull; that is,
the first moment that Charles was treated as an individual, man against
man. Whatever right Hampden had to defend his life against the King in
battle, Cromwell and Ireton had in yet more imminent danger against the
King's plotting. Milton's reasoning on this point is unanswerable: and
what a wretched hand does Baxter make of it!

Ib. p. 375.

But if the laws of the land appoint the nobles, as next the King, to
assist him in doing right, and withhold him from doing wrong, then be
they licensed by man's law, and so not prohibited by God's, to
interpose themselves for the safety of equity and innocency, and by
all lawful and needful means to procure the Prince to be reformed, but
in no case deprived, where the sceptre is inherited! So far Bishop
Bilson.

Excellent! O, by all means preserve for him the benefit of his rightful
heir-loom, the regal sceptre; only lay it about his shoulders, till he
promises to handle it, as he ought! But what