with a cheerful countenance, that he was ready to accompany him. As he passed through the palace garden into the Park, he inquired of Herbert the hour of the day, and afterwards bade him keep the clock for his sake. The procession was a remarkable one. On each side of the King was arranged a line of soldiers, and before him and behind him were a guard of halberdiers, their drums beating, and colours flying. On his right hand was Bishop Juxon, and on his left hand Colonel Tomlinson, both bare-headed. There is a tradition that, during his walk, he pointed out a tree, not far from the entrance to Spring Gardens, (close to the spot which is now a well-known station for cows,) which he said had been planted by his brother Henry. He was subjected to more than one annoyance during his progress. One ruffianly fanatic officer, in particular, inquired of him, with insulting brutality, whether it were true that he had been cognizant of his father's murder. Another fanatic, a "mean citizen," as he is styled by Fuller, was perceived to walk close by his side, and keep his eyes constantly fixed on the King, with an expression of particular malignity. Charles merely turned away his face; and eventually the man was pushed away by the more feeling among the King's persecutors. The guards marching at a slow pace, the King desired them to proceed faster. "I go," he said, "to strive for a heavenly crown, with less solicitude than I have formerly encouraged my soldiers to fight for an earthly one." However, the noise of

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the drums rendered conversation extremely difficult. On reaching the spot where the Horse Guards now stands, Charles ascended a staircase which then opened into the Park, and passing along the famous gallery which at that time ran across the street, was conducted to his usual bedchamber at Whitehall, where he continued till summoned by Hacker to the scaffold.

With reference to the passage of Charles the First through St. James's Park on the morning of his execution, we are enabled to lay before the reader the following interesting extract from a letter preserved in the British Museum, which has not hitherto appeared in print: "This day his Majesty died upon a scaffold at Whitehall. His children were with him last night: to the Duke of Gloucester he gave his George; to the lady [the Princess Elizabeth], his ring off his finger: he told them his subjects had many things to give their children, but that was all he had to give them. This day, about one o'clock, he came from St. James's in a long black cloak and grey stockings. The Palsgrave came through the Park with him. He was faint, and was forced to sit down and rest him in the Park. He went into Whitehall the usual way out of the Park; and so came out of the Banqueting House upon planks, made purposely, to the scaffold. He was not long there, and what he spoke was to the two Bishops, Dr. Juxon and Dr. Morton. To Dr. Juxon he gave his hat and cloak. He prayed with them; walked twice or

thrice about the scaffold; and held out his hands to the people. His last words, as I am informed, were, To your power I must submit, but your authority I deny.' He pulled his doublet off himself, and kneeled down to the block himself. When some officer offered to help him to unbutton him, or some such like thing, he thrust him from him. Two men, in vizards and false hair, were appointed to be his executioners. Who they were is not known: some say he that did it was the common hangman; others, that it was one Captain Foxley, and that the hangman refused. The Bishop of London hath been constantly with him since sentence was given. Since he died, they have made proclamation that no man, upon pain of I know not what, shall presume to proclaim his son Prince Charles, King; and this is all I have yet heard of this sad day's work."

It is not a little curious to find, on more than one occasion, "the Lord Protector taking the air in St. James's Park in a sedan." It was here, too, -the day before it was agreed upon that the Parliament should make him the splendid offer of the crown of the Plantagenets,—that Cromwell led those bigoted and uncompromising Republicans, Fleetwood and Desborough, and, taking them into one of the retired walks of the Park, endeavoured by every argument to induce them to connive at his ambitious views. "He drolled with them," we are told," about monarchy; said that it was but a feather in a man's cap; and wondered

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that men would not please children, and permit them to enjoy their rattle." Fleetwood and Desborough were both the near connexions of the great Protector; the former having married his daughter, and the latter his sister. In vain, however, he appealed to their feelings, their prejudices, their ambition. The conversation terminated by both tendering him their commissions: they were resolved, they said, never to serve a King; they saw the evils which would follow the elevation of their illustrious kinsman to the throne; and they added, that, though they certainly would not bear arms against him, yet they felt it a duty hereafter to decline carrying them in his service. Cromwell, it seems, laughed off the affair; called them "a couple of precise, scrupulous fellows," and took his leave.

Cromwell was at this period in the pride and zenith of his greatness, but the Marquis of Ormond, in a letter dated the 13th of March, 1656, draws a very different picture of him as he appeared in St. James's Park at the close of his extraordinary career. It was when the threatened approach of death; the torments occasioned by a miserable disease; the failure of his fondest schemes, and the terrors of assassination, rendered life almost a burden. "Some say," writes Lord Ormond, "that the Protector is many times like one

distracted; and

in these fits he will run round about the house and into the garden, or else ride out with very little company, which he never doth when com

posed and free from disorder. Friday last a friend met him in St. James's Park, with only one man with him, and in a distempered carriage. If any people offered to deliver him petitions or the like, he refused, and told them he had other things to think of. Fleetwood was in the Park at the same time, but walked at a distance, not daring to approach him in his passion, which, they say, was occasioned by some carriage of Lambert's this you may give credit to."*

Cromwell expired in the neighbouring palace of Whitehall, and it was during the frightful storm which howled round his death-bed on the night that he died, that many of the ancient trees in St. James's Park were uprooted. It is to this memorable storm that Waller alludes in his fine monody on the death of Cromwell:

We must resign! Heaven his great soul doth claim,
In storms as loud as his immortal fame,

His dying groans; his last breath shakes our isle,

And trees uncut fall for his funeral pile:

About his palace their broad roots are tost

Into the air. So Romulus was lost!

And Rome in such a tempest lost her King,
And from obeying, fell to worshipping.

In the pages of Pepys will be found many curious notices of St. James's Park, from the time that Charles the Second commenced his improvements there under the direction of Le Notre, till the Mall became the established lounging-place of the merry monarch and his gay court. We will select

* Carte's "Collection of Orig. Letters."