the face, as far as they could be distinguished, bore a strong resemblance to the portraits of Charles I. To complete the proof, the head was found to have been separated from the trunk by some sharp instrument, which had cut through the fourth, vertebra of the neck.—­See “An Account of what appeared on opening the coffin of King Charles I. by Sir Henry Halford, bart.” 1813.  It was observed at the same time, that “the lead coffin of Henry VIII. had been beaten in about the middle, and a considerable opening in that part exposed a mere skeleton of the king.”  This may, perhaps, be accounted for from a passage in Herbert, who tells us that while the workmen were employed about the inscription, the chapel was cleared, but a soldier contrived to conceal himself, descended into the vault, cut off some of the velvet pall, and “wimbled a hole into the largest coffin.”  He was caught, and “a bone was found about him, which, he said, he would haft a knife with.”—­Herbert 204.  See note (C).]

Such was the end of the unfortunate Charles Stuart; an awful lesson to the possessors of royalty, to watch the growth of public opinion, and to moderate their pretensions in conformity with the reasonable desires of their subjects.  Had he lived at a more early period, when the sense of wrong was quickly subdued by the habit of submission, his reign would probably have been marked with fewer violations of the national liberties.  It was resistance that made him a tyrant.  The spirit of the people refused to yield to the encroachments of authority; and one act of oppression placed him under the necessity of committing another, till he had revived and enforced all those odious prerogatives, which, though usually claimed, were but sparingly exercised, by his predecessors.  For some years his efforts seemed successful; but the Scottish insurrection revealed the delusion; he had parted with the real authority of a king, when he forfeited the confidence and affection of his subjects.

But while we blame the illegal measures of Charles, we ought not to screen from censure the subsequent conduct of his principal opponents.  From the moment that war seemed inevitable, they acted as if they thought themselves absolved from all obligations of honour and honesty.  They never ceased to inflame the passions of the people by misrepresentation and calumny; they exercised a power far more arbitrary and formidable than had ever been claimed by the king; they punished summarily, on mere suspicion, and without attention to the forms of law; and by their committees they established in every county a knot of petty tyrants, who disposed at will of the liberty and property of the inhabitants.  Such anomalies may, perhaps, be inseparable from the jealousies, the resentments, and the heart-burnings, which are engendered in civil commotions; but certain it is that right and justice had seldom been more wantonly outraged, than they were by those who professed to have drawn the sword in the defence of right and justice.