Free The King's Revenge by Michael Walsh, Don Jordan Page B

cloakand also on a ribbon around his neck. Against his funereal clothing, their symbolic brilliance made it clear that he saw himself
     as England’s martyr.
    Less than a mile away across St James’s Park, muffled masses were already making their way towards Whitehall Palace to witness
     the execution. From Charing Cross they pressed under the palace’s massive red-brick Tudor gate towers and gathered around
     the scaffold erected against the Palladian façade of the royal Banqueting House. At ten o’clock a company of halberdiers commanded
     by Colonel Francis Hacker arrived at the palace to take Charles on his final journey. At this point, Colonel Tomlinson relinquished
     his role as the king’s jailer; Charles was now in the care of Colonel Hacker.
    The procession left the palace for the short journey to Whitehall. Their route took them through St James’s Park. Unlike today,
     the park was enclosed and forbidden to the public. When Charles was a boy, it had been a zoo, set up by his father. There
     had been camels and even an elephant. In the lake, crocodiles had lurked. Now the lake was frozen over. All the animals had
     long since gone. A regiment of infantry now lined the route. The royal procession made a grand, if melancholy, sight. It was
     led by Colonel Hacker. The king was flanked by Bishop Juxon and Colonel Tomlinson, while immediately before and behind him
     walked his gentlemen-in-waiting, escorted by a company of halberdiers. Bright regimental banners fluttered incongruously against
     the skeletal trees. Drummers beat a rhythm like a dying heart.
    When the entourage arrived at Whitehall Palace it became clear there was a hitch in the arrangements: death was not to be
     so swift. The king was placed under guard in the ornate cabinet-chamber which in happier times had been an anteroom to his
     bedroom. There was a fire burning in the grate and on the walls hung some of the finest paintings from Charles’s peerless
     art collection, which included masterpieces by Rembrandt, Caravaggio and his favourite, Titian. There were portraits of Charles,
     among them those by theincomparable wizard Anthony Van Dyck, who had done more than anyone to give Charles the appearance of a divine king.
    Among Van Dyck’s portraits, the famous triple-head is interesting in the present context. It was produced to be sent to Italy
     so that the finest sculptor of the age, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, could carve a bust of the king. When he saw the painting, Bernini
     said the sitter was the saddest person he had ever seen and must surely die a violent death. Not only did the sculptor’s prophecy
     come true but his marble bust also had a violent end, perishing in the accidental fire that destroyed Whitehall Palace in
     1698.
    While Charles lingered among his paintings, Parliament had urgent business. Legal minds had discovered a problem. It had dawned
     on them that with the king’s death there was nothing to stop the Prince of Wales inheriting the throne. So, as the doomed
     king toasted his all too mortal toes by the fire, the judges hurried to pass a law stating there could be no successor. They
     made it illegal for anyone to declare the prince as king.
    There was an even more pressing problem: the appointment of an executioner. Given the nature of the prisoner, the executioner
     could not be called for until the morning when the sentence was to be carried out. At the order of Colonel Hewson, troops
     went to the house of the public executioner, Richard Brandon, and found him at home; but his assistant Ralph Jones could not
     be found. So a very reluctant Brandon was taken alone under arrest with what equipment he could carry, and someone still had
     to be found to fill in for the headsman’s assistant. It was to remain a matter of conjecture whether Brandon, who brought
     the axe, was the man who wielded it.
    Poised between life and death, the king prayed with Bishop Juxon. He pledged to God his forgiveness of those who were