In St James’s Palace, Charles realized he would never again see his eldest son, the prince of Wales, nor his second James, who had escaped parliamentary captivity in female dress. ‘I’d rather you be Charles le Bon than Charles de Grand,’ he wrote to the prince. ‘Farewell, till we meet, if not on earth, yet in heaven.’ But he asked to see his children, the thirteen-year-old Elizabeth and eight-year-old Henry. Their adieu was heartbreaking. As Elizabeth sobbed, Charles asked her ‘not to grieve and torment yourself … for it should be a glorious death’; he suggested she console herself in reading, and sent his love to Henrietta Maria. ‘His thoughts never strayed from her, his love should be the same to the last.’ Then he hugged the girl: ‘Sweetheart, you’ll forget this.’
‘I’ll never forget this,’ she replied, ‘while I live.’
Then he invited Henry on to his knee. ‘Sweetheart … they’ll cut off my head and perhaps make you a king,’ he said. ‘But you must not be a king while your brothers Charles and James do live.’
‘I’ll be torn in half first,’ replied the boy. Charles kissed both, crying with ‘joy and love’. As they were led away, Charles, watching from the window, ran after them and kissed them again, then fell on his bed.
On 30 January 1649, a freezing afternoon, as Cromwell worshipped at a prayer meeting, Charles, aged forty-eight, hair and beard now white, donned two shirts, so that he would not be seen to shiver in the freezing temperatures, and a garter band with 412 diamonds, divided up his belongings for his children (and a gold watch for the daughter of his never-forgotten friend, Buckingham).
‘Come, let us go,’ he said, before walking through St James’s Park, surrounded by troops, drums a-beating, into the rambling Whitehall Palace and then out through the Banqueting House, with its ceilings by his friend Rubens, on to the scaffold. There waited ‘Young Gregory’ Brandon, hereditary headman, and his assistant, both in wigs, sailors’ garb and fishnet masks, with the axe. As Charles addressed the crowd, a soldier twice knocked against the axe. ‘Hurt not the axe that may hurt me,’ Charles said, before concluding: ‘I go from a corruptible crown to an incorruptible crown where no disturbance can be. It’s a good exchange.’ Then he laid his head on the block and stretched out his hands to show he was ready. Brandon cut clean. The assistant raised the head: ‘Behold the head of a traitor!’ The soldiers cheered and clapped; others stood in respectful silence. The assistant – who may have been the American preacher Peter – dropped the head, bruising the face. Soldiers and spectators jostled to cut locks of royal hair, dip kerchiefs in the blue blood and chisel the scaffold for keepsakes.* Days later the news reached his family. At the Louvre in Paris, where the queen was dining, she sat ‘without words’ for a long time, while in The Hague their son Charles realized his father was dead when he was addressed as ‘Your Majesty’. He sobbed.
In Constantinople, Kösem ruled for her seven-year-old grandson, Mehmed IV. Presiding over the councils from behind a screen, in the presence of the boy padishah, the Magnificent Mother tore a strip off male viziers. ‘Have I made you vizier to spend your time in gardens and vineyards?’ came the voice from behind the curtain. ‘Devote yourself to the affairs of the empire and let me hear no more of your cavortings.’ But the sultan had his own mother Turhan, who had been trained by Kösem and then presented to Ibrahim. She aspired to be regent and plotted against Kösem, who in turn planned to depose the boy and enthrone another grandson with a less ambitious mother. But fatally Kösem had a spy in her own retinue, who informed Turhan of her mistress’s plan. Now it was a race to see which woman would kill the other first.
‘Thanks to God, I’ve lived through four reigns and I have governed for a long time,’ Kösem told the council. ‘The world will neither be improved nor destroyed by my death.’ Turhan moved first. On 2 September 1651, the sixty-three-year-old Kösem was hunted down through the palace as a loyal slave tried to save her by crying, ‘I am the
Kösem hid in a cupboard, but her dress was spotted. As she was strangled by a curtain, she fought so desperately that blood came out of her ears and nose. When the news got out, the people shut down Constantinople for three days to mourn the Magnificent Mother.
A new family were taking control in London – and they were not royal. The body of Charles I, its head sewn on to the neck, lay embalmed in St James’s Palace where it was shown to paying viewers. Cromwell was said to have gazed upon it, murmuring, ‘If he had not been king, he’d have lived longer.’
THE BOWELS OF CHRIST: PROTECTOR OLIVER AND PRINCE DICK
