and his son Henry VIII., with their queens; on another wall there was a Dance of Death by Holbein; in the bedchamber of Charles II. were scenes in the life of that gracious monarch, with an especial representation by Wright of that providential deliverance in the Boscobel oak-tree which preserved the noble specimen of divine right to spread peace and happiness through England, Ireland, and Scotland, to reëstablish the reign of virtue and to diffuse true religion over a grateful country. The execution of that faithless, weak, and promise-breaking King, Charles I., was the greatest tragedy that Whitehall ever witnessed, and it took place in front of the banqueting-house, the building still existing. The unhappy King spent his last night at St. James's, and enjoyed a sound sleep of more than four hours. There had been a wax-light burning in the room in a silver basin, and about two hours before daybreak the King drew aside the curtains of his attendant's bed, and seeing him disturbed in his sleep, awoke him. Herbert had dreamt that he saw Archbishop Laud enter the room, confer with the King, leave, heaving a sigh, and then swoon. "It is very remarkable," said Charles; "but he is dead; yet had we conferred together in life, 'tis very likely (albeit I loved him well), I should have said something to him might have occasioned his sigh." Charles dressed himself with unusual care, and it being cold (30th January) he put on a second shirt. About ten o'clock Colonel Hacker tapped softly at the chamberdoor to say they were ready. Herbert turned pale at this, his voice faltered, and he could hardly open the door. Charles walked through the Park erect and very fast, Bishop Juxon on one side and Colonel Tomlinson on the other. He was followed by a company of halberdiers and a few of his own gentlemen and servants bareheaded. In the Park several companies of foot were drawn up, drums beating and colours flying; but there was no shouting or vituperation: all were silent as the grave. Arriving at Whitehall, Charles passed through the Long Gallery into his own old cabinet chamber. There he was detained, as the scaffold was not quite ready. Two or three dishes of meat had been prepared for the King's dinner. He refused to touch them after having taken the sacrament; but the Bishop reasoned with him, that having long fasted and the weather being sharp, he might grow faint upon the scaffold. The King then yielded, and about noon drank a glass of claret and ate half a manchet (roll) of bread. The rest of his time he spent in prayer with the Bishop. "Now let the rogues come," he said, as he rose from his knees; "I have heartily forgiven them, and am prepared for all I undergo." On Colonel Hacker's coming to the chamber-door to summon him, he passed with Hacker, Juxon, and Tomlinson through the banquetinghouse window (or a hole broken in the wall of a low building to the north of it; it is disputed which) to the scaffold, which was hung with black, the floor also being black. Companies of foot and horse sur rounded Whitehall on every side, and beyond stretched a great sea of anxious upturned faces. Many cavaliers were praying for the misguided gentleman, and the Puritan soldiers, grave and silent, did not rebuke or chide any of them. Charles, fixing his eye earnestly on the block, asked Colonel Hacker if there was no place higher, and then began addressing the gentlemen on the scaffold. He said he felt it to be his duty as an honest man, good king, and good Christian to declare his innocency; and he called God to witness that he never did begin a war with the two Houses of Parliament, but they had begun it upon him by claiming the militia. He regretted having given his consent to the unjust sentence upon Strafford, and he appealed to Dr. Juxon that he had forgiven all who had caused his death; but he told them that they would never have peace, and God would never prosper them, until they gave his son and successor his due. Lastly, true to his old false doctrine which the age had run its sword through for ever, he assured those within hearing that the people ought never to have a share in the government, that being a thing nothing pertaining to them; and that he died a martyr of the people. He then, at Juxon's suggestion, declared that he died a Christian according to the profession of the Church of England. He several times cautioned his gentleman not to blunt the axe. To Colonel Hacker he said, "Take care that they do not put me to pain." Two men in disguises and masks stood by the block; one of these was said to be Brandon, a private soldier, and the other Colonel Joyce. Charles said to them: "I shall say but a very short prayer, and then thrust out my hands for the signal." He now put on his nightcap, and, with the help of the Bishop and the headsman, tucked his long hair under the cap. His eye was as quick and lively as usual, and he was as calm and majestic as when entering the banqueting-house on a masque-night. The King to Juxon: "I have a good cause and a gracious God in my sight." Juzon. "You have now" (we give the conversation in full) "but one stage more; the stage is turbulent and troublesome. It will soon carry you a very great way; it will carry you from earth to heaven.” Charles. "I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown, where no disturbance can be." Juxon. "You are exchanged from a temporal to an eternal crown— a good exchange." The King drew off his cloak, and gave his George to the Bishop with the one mysterious word "Remember;" then stooped, laid his neck on the block, and stretched out his hands. The man in the mask raised his axe, swung it with full force, and the King's head rolled off upon the black carpet. The second executioner then held up the dripping head, and shouted, "This is the head of a traitor!" A deep groan of pity and horror arose from the crowd. A pearl ear-ring was afterwards taken from the King's ear. From the quiet burial at Windsor taking place in snowy weather, and the snow covering the pall, the King afterwards went among many of his admirers by the name of "the White King." The George which the King gave the faithful Bishop contained a portrait of Charles's mischievous wife Henrietta Maria, who was generally believed to have been already unfaithful to him, and who soon after the execution married Jermyn, her lover. BAYNARD'S CASTLE. This bygone palace stood immediately below St. Paul's, and on the banks of the Thames, to the east of Montfiquet Castle, a tower which derived its name from one of the rapacious Norman barons who followed the standard of William the Conqueror. Its neighbour borrowed its appellation from Baynard, another swordsman in the same hungry army. The fortress on the Thames side was forfeited by the founder or some treasonable descendant in 1111, and granted to Robert Fitzgerald, the son of Gilbert earl of Clare, whose family kept their gauntleted grip on it for three centuries. In 1428, having lapsed again to the crown, probably by treason, it was accidentally burnt, but the site was soon after granted by Henry V. to Humphrey duke of Gloucester. In 1447 the marriage of that weak and irresolute young King, Henry VI. (then only twenty-four), with Margaret of Anjou, the beautiful and highspirited daughter of Réné count of Provence, had thrown the power almost entirely into the hands of the ambitious Cardinal Beaufort, the great promoter of the marriage, and the young King's uncle and favourite counsellor. In 1447, the second year of her marriage, the King and Queen called their parliament together at Bury, and, as if apprehensive of treason, summoned the commonalty of Suffolk to attend them, armed with bills and bows. The second day of the session the royal wrath fell like a thunderbolt on Duke Humphrey, who was arrested by John viscount Beaumont, the Queen's seneschal. The Cardinal had at last struck the blow that revenged six-and-twenty years of hatred. State prisoners are apt to fall sick, and in seventeen days after his arrest the Duke of Gloucester was found dead in his bed. Some said he was murdered;' but his body, produced in both Houses of Parliament, and exposed to public view for several days, showed no wound. The Cardinal followed his enemy to the grave within a few weeks. There is no reason, ambitious and daring as Margaret was, to connect her with the removal of Duke Humphrey. On the attainder of Humphrey, Castle Baynard passed into the hands of Richard duke of York; and here it was that that desperate and evil spirit at first refused the crown when his unlucky confederate, Stafford duke of Buckingham, offered it him at the head of the Corporation of London. Baynard's Castle remained the hunchback usurper's till that day when he was struck off his horse at the foot of the Leicestershire hill near Aymon Lays, and his crown was cast into a hawthorn-bush. In the reign of Elizabeth the Earls of Pem broke became tenants-at-will of the old castle; and here in 1641 Philip earl of Pembroke and Montgomery was installed Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. His second Countess, the proud "Anne Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery," resided at Baynard's Castle while her husband lived at the cockpit at Whitehall, to be nearer the court round which his fortunes revolved. She described it in her memoirs as "a house full of riches, and more secure by my lying there." The month after his restoration, King Charles II. went to supper at Baynard Castle, which was soon afterwards swept away in the red deluge of the Great Fire. CROSBY HALL. Crosby Hall, Bishopsgate-street-formerly a literary institution, now we believe feeding the body more than the mind, in the shape of a cooperative dining-room-was built by Sir John Crosby in 1466. It is a fine perpendicular building, and as a specimen of well-preserved domestic architecture is only equalled by the celebrated Hall of John Halle at Salisbury-a merchant's house of the fifteenth century or a little later. Sir John Crosby was a rich grocer and woolstapler, and bought the land. of the Prioress of St. Helen's. He was sheriff and alderman in 1470, he was knighted by Edward IV. in 1471, and after a brief tenure of his stately house-the highest at that time, Stow says, in London-died in 1475. The house is immortalised by Shakespeare, who frequently mentions it in his Richard III. When the usurper is suing for the love of Anne of Warwick, after the murder of her young husband at Tewkesbury, and the death (probably murder) of her husband's father, Henry VI., the wretch, who had discovered the Princess disguised as a cookmaid in some humble citizen's family, says to the weeping lady in one of the few repulsive and unnatural scenes that Shakespeare wrote: "That it may please you leave these sad designs Now Shakespeare's father had been a soldier of Henry VII.'s, and his historical facts in this play are less erroneous than those in Henry VI., where he mixes up Jack Cade's deeds with Wat Tyler's, and makes Margaret of Anjou (then a child) effect the ruin of the persecuted Duchess of Gloucester. It is to Crosby-place Richard III. bids the murderers of Clarence come for their reward. In 1542 King Henry VIII., who gave away palaces and manors as lavishly as if they had been comfits, bestowed Crosby Hall on Antony Bonvice (Bonofacio), an Italian merchant; and in 1576 Alderman Bond, the then tenant, added to it a Belvidere turret. TYRO O RIVER, Shining River, winding River, golden River! A cradle, holy Stream, for thee. O River, trackless River, changeful River, endless River! Where the dark reeds grow tall and rank, O River, wondrous River, magic River, sacred River! O River, fatal River, darkling River, deadly River! I grow to hate my mortal race; The bitter-sweet of his salt kiss. O River, sighing River, moaning River, wailing River! Dark are my dreams of coming days; Dimly I see the hideous ways That lie before these weary feet, The dreadful noontide's tropic heat, The lonely night, the galling chain, A cycle of despair and pain. O River, dancing River, gleaming River, joyous River! Love keeps no count of days to come; |