[Born, 1542. Died, 1587. Aged 45.]
A queen whose calamities fill our eyes with tears, so that we can hardly
see the frailties of the woman. Her loveliness, her learning, her
misfortunes, her wit, and fascinating manners, have attached to her
memory an interest and affection which even the deeply-founded suspicion
of her crimes cannot efface. Various judgments have been pronounced upon
her conduct. But one report has come down to us of her perfect beauty of
countenance, her winning manners, and her elegance of form. Grave
historians speak with admiration of her jet black hair, her exquisite
complexion, her delicate white arm and hand, her stature that rose to a
majestic height. Her treatment of Darnley, brutal though he was, and her
marriage with Bothwell after Darnley’s assassination, are blots that
still cling to her character. But even these offences would seem more
than expiated by her eighteen years’ imprisonment, and her unwarranted
execution, that foulest stain upon the reign of our own Elizabeth. Mary
Stuart was violent in her attachments, vivacious, indiscreet, fond of
flattery, and conscious of the power of her charms. It is said that her
heart was warm and unsuspicious. It may be questioned whether she was
always sincere. One of her recent biographers in France has styled her
the “eternal enigma of history,” “the most problematical of all
historical personages.” Disastrous as was her own story, the fate of her
immediate descendants was even worse. A curse was upon the line. Yet her
lineage flourishes now. It is found in England, Prussia, Denmark, and
Hanover; in Spain, Portugal, Austria, Naples, Sardinia, and Modena.
[From the Effigy.]
490.* CHARLES THE FIRST. _King of England._
[Born 1600. Beheaded 30th January, 1649. Aged 49.]
Grandson of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, whose misfortunes and drear
fate he inherited, if he did not invite. A monarch whose exaggerated
notions of prerogative, whose obstinacy, wilfulness, untruthfulness, and
double-dealing, justified the resistance of a people awakened to a sense
of their rights, and roused to the vindication of their liberties; yet a
man whose sorrows, whose dignified bearing in misfortune, whose private
virtues, love of literature and art, and gentle demeanour, render him an
object of the deepest commiseration, and the most plaintive interest.
His death was deliberate murder; and there is too much reason to fear
that they who thought least of defending liberty, were the most thirsty
of his blood. Yet some palliation for the guilt is found in the
circumstance that in the public dealings of Charles with his Parliament
his plighted word was not worth the paper upon which it was given.
Irresolute and double-minded, he had never kept faith with his people.
It was the misfortune of Charles to be born at a period when the
conflicting elements of Royalty and Democracy were seething into tumult.
Had he lived a little earlier, or a little later he would not have lost
his head upon the block. A little earlier, the “divinity that doth hedge
a king” would have shielded him in England from the sacrilege. A little
later, he would have been hunted from English soil, as his son was. The
catastrophe of his unhappy reign can never be re-enacted. His blood
purchased that security. Never had the character of Englishmen, in many
respects, looked so fair to the world as during the civil wars of
Charles the First. The true-hearted loyal gentlemen who, knowing by
experience the character of their master, yet clung to his cause and to
his person until the last extremity, counting all sacrifice as
delightful service, were not surpassed by the professed knights of
chivalry. The devoted Republicans, who for the sake of man’s rights and
God’s blessing seized arms for the first time in their lives, and became
great Generals and Admirals--the glory of their country, and the terror
of the world--take rank in the estimation of history, side by side with
her most splendid heroes. We receive from them our cherished charters,
and the liberty which finds no harm even when Europe is in
conflagration. Terrible indeed must have been the state of the
atmosphere in 1649, when the thunderbolt fell that struck down Charles,
but purified the air for ever afterwards.
[The statue of Charles the First, which is in the South Transept, is
from the bronze equestrian statue by Hubert le Sueur, which was
erected at Charing Cross in the year 1674. It had been cast in 1633,
near the church in Covent Garden, but never placed: and during the
wars it was sold by Parliament to a brazier “living at the Dial, near
Holborn Conduit,” with strict orders that he should break it up. The
brazier concealed the statue and horse underground until after the
Restoration. Le Sueur was a Frenchman, and pupil of John of Bologna.
He arrived in England about 1630, and died here. The pedestal is by
Grinling Gibbons, who was born about the middle of the 17th century.]