Death of a Man

THE DAY THEY KILLED THE KING (206 pp.)--Hugh Ross Williamson--Macmillan ($3.75).

Oliver Cromwell, Puritan man of iron, had his way, and on Jan. 30, 1649, Charles I of England was beheaded in London's Whitehall Palace. British Author Hugh Ross Williamson has joined the round-by-round school of writers who have lately described what happened on the night the Titanic went down, the day Christ died, and other fateful brief moments in world history. Like the others, he has brought nothing new to his main story, but his detailed preoccupation with dramatic incident has concocted in The Day They Killed the King a captivating capsule of history, one easy to take at a single gulp.

Men died well then, and few died better than Charles Stuart. "In the presence of death," writes Author Williamson, "the King recovered all his dignity, and fell back upon his noblest line of defence--his loyalty to the form of religion in which he had been nurtured. He was no longer driven by fate to conciliate Presbytery or coquet with Catholicism." It is hard now to say that he was a wise king, or even a good one, and his 24-year reign gave England some of its worst hours. Civil wars and wars of religion always produce the deepest horrors and fiercest indignities. Charles's England suffered them in abundance, and Cromwell reached the point in his opposition where only the King's head would satisfy him. But getting it was not easy. No English lawyer could be found to draw up the charge, nor would the House of Lords pass the necessary Ordinance. When the House of Commons, submissive to Cromwell, appointed 135 "safe" judges, 50 refused to sit. Among those who tried the King were many who were later to plead that they had been dragooned by Cromwell, who had signed the death warrant even before the verdict.

Take Care. For Charles there was nothing left but to show his subjects how a king could die. At the trial he pleaded the divine right of kings, denied the right of Commons to try him at all. All his life he had stammered, but on this occasion there was no trace of it. When he took leave of two of his children and intimates, his courtesy won the admiration of his jailers, and when the exiled Prince of Wales (Charles II of the Restoration) sent a signed blank sheet of paper to Parliament agreeing to anything that would save his father's life, and a similar document to Charles, the King tossed it into the fire. Always a religious man, he found comfort in the thought that he would soon be with Christ, and always a meticulous one, he dressed for his execution as if for an occasion of state. Instructing his barber, he said: "Though it has not long to stand on my shoulders, take all the care you can of my head."

Meanwhile, Cromwell was having his own troubles: as late as 10 a.m. on the day of execution, he could not find a qualified executioner. Thirty-eight army sergeants, offered -L-100 and rapid army advancement, turned down the job. Said one: "I would not do it for all the City of London." Even the common hangman refused, although he was first offered a -L-200 bonus and then threatened with death by burning. It is still not known who did the job, so heavily covered were the headsman and his assistant. To William Juxon, the Church of England's Bishop of London (and future Archbishop of Canterbury), Charles said: "I am going from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown, where no disturbance can be." And to his executioner: "I shall say but a short prayer and, when I hold out my hands thus, strike." The ax flashed and Cromwell's will was done--but so anxious was he to make sure, that he later went to the coffin and searched the wound with his fingers.

Chips off the Block. Later the soldiers sold the King's blood to those who wished to dip their handkerchiefs in it, sold bits of his hair and chips of the block. The embalmer, sewing the King's head to his body, remarked: "I have sewn on the head of a goose." Charles had died trying to forgive his enemies, and almost surely even these last indignities, could he have foreseen them, would not have led him to approve the revenge taken by followers of Charles II years later. The body of Lord Protector Cromwell was dug up after the Restoration, drawn through the streets, hanged and buried under the gallows at Tyburn. His head was stuck on a pike and exhibited at Westminster Hall. No fewer than ten Cromwellians were hanged, drawn and quartered at Charing Cross as regicides; they died well, too--so well that Author Williamson felt obliged to temper his story with an epilogue that concludes: "For posterity, the gibbet at Charing Cross towers above the scaffold at Whitehall and, in the opinion of some, dwarfs it a little."

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