the nation in a new war, and destroy the Parliament. The king was
removed to Hurst Castle after a vain attempt by Captain Burley to rescue
him.

A committee being appointed to prepare a charge of high treason against
the king, of which Bradshaw was made President, his majesty was brought
from Hurst Castle to St. James's, and it was concluded to have him
publicly tried. From the time of the king's arrival at St. James's, when
he was delivered into the custody of Colonel Tomlinson, he was treated
with much more rudeness and barbarity than ever before. No man was
suffered to see or speak to him but the soldiers who were his guard.

When he was first brought to Westminster Hall, on January 20, 1649,
before their high court of justice, he looked upon them and sat down
without any manifestation of trouble, never stirring his hat; all the
impudent judges sitting covered and fixing their eyes on him, without
the least show of respect. To the charges read out against him the king
replied that for his actions he was accountable to none but God, though
they had always been such as he need not be ashamed of before all the
world.

Several unheard-of insolences which this excellent prince was forced to
submit to before that odious judicatory, his majestic behaviour, the
pronouncing that horrible sentence upon the most innocent person in the
world, the execution of that sentence by the most execrable murder ever
committed since that of our blessed Saviour, and the circumstances
thereof, are all so well-known that the farther mentioning it would but
afflict and grieve the reader, and make the relation itself odious; and
therefore no more shall be said here of that lamentable tragedy, so much
to the dishonour of the nation and the religion professed by it.