royal instructions for the prince. He was hardly gone, when Hacker arrived
with the fatal summons. About two o'clock the king proceeded through the
long gallery, lined on each side with soldiers, who, far from insulting the
fallen monarch, appeared by their sorrowful looks to sympathize with his
fate. At the end an aperture had been made in the wall, through which he
stepped at once upon the scaffold. It was hung with black; at the farther
end were seen the two executioners, the block, and the axe; below

[Footnote 1: For the arrival of the ambassadors see the Journals of the
House of Commons on the 26th. A fac-simile of the carte-blanche, with the
signature of the prince, graces the title-page of the third volume of the
Original Letters, published by Mr. Ellis.]

[Footnote 2: "Mean time they went into the long gallery, where, chancing to
meet the general, he ask'd Mr. Herbert how the king did? Which he
thought strange.... His question being answered, the general seem'd much
surprised."--Herbert, 194. It is difficult to believe that Herbert could
have mistaken or fabricated such a question, or that Fairfax would have
asked 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