To Colonel Francis Hacker, Colonel Huncks, and Lieutenant-Colonel Phayr, and to every of them. At the High Court of Justice for the Trying and Judging of Charles Stuart, King of England, 29th January, 1648. WHEREAS Charles Stuart, King of England, is and standeth convicted, attainted and condemned of High Treason and other high Crimes; and Sentence upon Saturday last was pronounced against him by this Court, To be put to death by the severing of his head from his body; of which Sentence execution yet remaineth to be done : These are therefore to will and require you to see the said Sentence executed, in the open Street before Whitehall, upon the morrow, being the Thirtieth day of this instant month of January, between the hours of Ten in the morning and Five in the afternoon, with full effect. And for so doing, this shall be your warrant. And these are to require all Officers and Soldiers, and others the good People of this Nation of England, to be assisting unto you in this service. " Given under our hands and seals, JOHN BRADSHAW. THOMAS GREY, 'LORD GROBY.' (and Fifty-six others.')* Ipsis molossis ferociores, More savage than their own mastiffs !" shrieks Saumaise ;† shrieks all the world, in unmelodious soul-confusing diapason of distraction, happily at length grown very faint in our day. The truth is, no modern reader can conceive the then atrocity, ferocity, unspeakability of this fact. First, after long reading in the old dead Pamphlets does one see the magnitude of it. To be equalled, nay to be preferred think some, in point of horror, to the Crucifixion of Christ.' Alas, in these irreverent times of ours, if all the Kings of Europe were to be cut in pieces at one swoop, and flung in heaps in St. Mar * Rushworth, vii., 1426: Nalson's Trial of King Charles (London, 1684): Phelpes's Trial of, &c., &c. † Salmasii Clamor Regii Sanguinis. garet's Churchyard on the same day, the emotion would, in strict arithmetical truth, be small in comparison ! We know it not, this atrocity of the English Regicides; shall never know it. I reckon it perhaps the most daring action any Body of Men to be met with in History ever, with clear consciousness, deliberately set themselves to do. Dread Phantoms, glaring supernal on you -when once they are quelled and their light snuffed out, none knows the terror of the Phantom! The Phantom is a poor paper-lantern with a candle-end in it, which any whipster dare now beard. A certain Queen in some South-Sea Island, I have read in Missionary Books, had been converted to Christianity; did not any longer believe in the old gods. She assembled her people; said to them, My faithful People, the gods do not dwell in that burning-mountain in the centre of our Isle. That is not God; no, that is a common burning-mountain,―mere culinary fire burning under peculiar circumstances. See, I will walk before you to that burning-mountain; will empty my washbowl into it, cast my slipper over it, defy it to the uttermost, and stand the consequences!"-She walked accordingly, this South-Sea Heroine, nerved to the sticking-place; her people following in pale horror and expectancy: she did her experiment; and, I am told, they have truer notions of the gods in that Island ever since. Experiment which it is now very easy to repeat, and very needless. Honor to the Brave who deliver us from Phantomdynasties, in South-Sea Islands and in North! This action of the English Regicides did in effect strike a damp like death though the heart of Flunkeyism universally in this world. Whereof Flunkeyism, Cant, Cloth-worship, or whatever ugly name it have, has gone about incurably sick ever since; and is now at length, in these generations, very rapidly dying. The like of which action will not be needed for a thousand years again. Needed, alas-not till a new genuine Hero-worship nas arisen, has perfected itself; and had time to degenerate into a Flunkeyism and Cloth-worship again! Which I take to be a very long date indeed. Thus ends the Second Civil War. In Regicide, in a Common, wealth and Keepers of the Liberties of England. In punishment of Delinquents, in abolition of Cobwebs ;-if it be possible, in a Government of Heroism and Veracity; at lowest, of AntiFlunkeyism, Anti-Cant, and the endeavor after Heroism and Veracity, |
