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
demeanour that dignified calmness, which had characterized, in the hall of
Fotheringay, his royal grandmother, Mary Stuart. It was his wish to address
the people; but they were kept beyond the reach of his voice by the swords
of the military; and therefore confining his discourse to the few persons
standing with him on the scaffold, he took, he said, that opportunity of
denying in the presence of his God the crimes of which he had been accused.
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