D. 1649. Jan. 3.]
loyalty will soon challenge the attention of the reader.[1]
Before this the king, in anticipation of his subsequent trial, had
been removed to the palace of St.[a] James's. In the third week of his
confinement in Hurst Castle, he was suddenly roused out of his sleep at
midnight by the fall of the drawbridge and the trampling of horses. A
thousand frightful ideas rushed on his mind, and at an early hour in the
morning, he desired his servant Herbert to ascertain the cause; but every
mouth was closed, and Herbert returned with the scanty information that a
Colonel Harrison had arrived. At the name the king turned pale, hastened
into the closet, and sought to relieve his terrors by private devotion. In
a letter which he had received at Newport, Harrison had been pointed out to
him as a man engaged to take his life. His alarm, however, was unfounded.
Harrison was a fanatic, but no murderer: he sought, indeed, the blood of
the king, but it was his wish that it should be shed by the axe of the
executioner, not by the dagger of the assassin. He had been appointed to
superintend the removal of the royal captive, and had come to arrange
matters with the governor, of whose fidelity some suspicion existed.
Keeping himself private during the days he departed in the night; and two
days later Charles was conducted with a numerous[b] escort to the royal
palace of Windsor.
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