ed Whitehall on a masque night," as an intelligent
observer described. The King looked towards St. James's and smiled.
Curious eyes were watchful of his slightest motions; and the
Commonwealth papers of the day express their surprise, perhaps their
vexation, at the unaltered aspect and the firm step of the Monarch.
These mean spirits had flattered themselves that he who had been
cradled in royalty, who had lived years in the fields of honor, and
was now, they presumed, a recreant in imprisonment,--"the grand
Delinquent of England,"--as they called him, would start in horror at
the block.

This last triumph at least was not reserved for them,--it was for the
King. Charles, dauntless, strode "the floor of Death," to use Fuller's
peculiar but expressive phraseology. He looked on the block with the
axe lying upon it, with attention; his only anxiety was that the block
seemed not sufficiently raised, and that the edge of the axe might be
turned by being swept by the flappings of cloaks, or blunted by the
feet of some moving about the scaffold. "Take care they do not put me
to pain!--Take heed of the axe! take heed of the axe!" exclaimed the
King to a gentleman passing by. "Hurt not the axe; that may hurt me!"
His continued anxiety concerning these _circumstances_ proves that he
felt not the terror of death, solely anxious to avoid the pain, for he
had an idea of their cruelty. With that sedate thoughtfulness which
was in all his actions, he only looked at the business of the hour.
One circumstance Charles observed with a smile. They had a notion that
the King would resist the executioner; on the suggestion of Hugh
Peters, it is said, they had driven iron staples and ropes into the
scaffold, that their victim, if necessary, might be bound down upon
the block.

The King's speech has many remarkable points, but certainly nothing so
remarkable as the place where it was delivered. This was the first
"King's Speech" spoken from a scaffold. Time shall confirm, as history
has demonstrated, his principle that "They mistook the nature of
government; for people are free under a government, not by being
sharers in it, but by the due administration of the laws." "It was for
this," said Charles, "that now I am come here. If I could have given
way to an arbitrary sway, for to have all laws changed according to
the power of the sword, I need not have come here; and therefore I
tell you that I am _the Martyr of the People_!"

SYDNE