One thing, and one alone, could make Charles dangerous—­a violent death.  His tyranny could not break the high spirit of the English people.  His arms could not conquer, his arts could not deceive them; but his humiliation and his execution melted them into a generous compassion.  Men who die on a scaffold for political offences almost always die well.  The eyes of thousands are fixed upon them.  Enemies and admirers are watching their demeanour.  Every tone of voice, every change of colour, is to go down to posterity.  Escape is impossible.  Supplication is vain.  In such a situation pride and despair have often been known to nerve the weakest minds with fortitude adequate to the occasion.  Charles died patiently and bravely; not more patiently or bravely, indeed, than many other victims of political rage; not more patiently or bravely than his own judges, who were not only killed, but tortured; or than Vane, who had always been considered as a timid man.  However, the king’s conduct during his trial and at his execution made a prodigious impression.  His subjects began to love his memory as heartily as they had hated his person; and posterity has estimated his character from his death rather than from his life.

To represent Charles as a martyr in the cause of Episcopacy is absurd.  Those who put him to death cared as little for the Assembly of Divines, as for the Convocation, and would, in all probability, only have hated him the more if he had agreed to set up the Presbyterian discipline.  Indeed, in spite of the opinion of Mr. Hallam, we are inclined to think that the attachment of Charles to the Church of England was altogether political.  Human nature is, we admit, so capricious that there may be a single, sensitive point, in a conscience which everywhere else is callous.  A man without truth or humanity may have some strange scruples about a trifle.  There was one devout warrior in the royal camp whose piety bore a great resemblance to that which is ascribed to the King.  We mean Colonel Turner.  That gallant Cavalier was hanged, after the Restoration, for a flagitious burglary.  At the gallows he told the crowd that his mind received great consolation from one reflection:  he had always taken off his hat when he went into a church.  The character of Charles would scarcely rise in our estimation, if we believed that he was pricked in conscience after the manner of this worthy loyalist, and that while violating all the first rules of Christian morality, he was sincerely scrupulous about church-government.  But we acquit him of such weakness.  In 1641 he deliberately confirmed the Scotch Declaration which stated that the government of the church by archbishops and bishops was contrary to the word of God.  In 1645, he appears to have offered to set up Popery in Ireland.  That a King who had established the Presbyterian religion in one kingdom, and who was willing to establish the Catholic religion in another, should have insurmountable scruples