The sentence was death--a sentence that gave pause to many. Fairfax, and others such, would have declared against it; even crop-eared Prynne, who had suffered so much for his truculent Puritanism, protested against it; two-thirds of the population of England would have done the same; but London and England and the army were all in the grip of an iron man whose name was Cromwell. Time sped; the King had only two days to live; his son Charles was over seas, never believing such catastrophe could happen; only two royal children--a princess of thirteen and a boy of eight--came to say adieu to the royal prisoner. “He sat with them some time at the window, taking them on his knees, and kissing them, and talking with them of their duty to their mother, and to their elder brother, the Prince of Wales.” He carried his habitual dignity and calmness with him on the very morning, going between files of soldiers through St. James’s Park--pointing out a tree which his brother Henry had planted--and on, across to Whitehall, where had come off many a gay, rollicking masque of Ben Jonson’s, in presence of his father, James I. He was led through the window of the banqueting-hall--the guides show it now--where he had danced many a night, and so to the scaffold, just without the window, whence he could see up and down the vast court of Whitehall, from gate to gate,[61] paved with a great throng of heads. Even then and there rested on him the same kingly composure; the fine oval face, pale but unmoved; the peaked beard carefully trimmed, as you see it in the well-known pictures by Vandyke, at Windsor or at Blenheim. He has a word with old Bishop Juxon, who totters beside him; a few words for others who are within hearing; examines the block, the axe; gives some brief cautions to the executioner; then, laying down his head, lifts his own hand for signal, and with a crunching thud of sound it is over. And poet Milton--has he shown any relenting? Not one whit; he is austere among the most austere; in this very week he is engaged upon his defence of regicide, with its stinging, biting sentences. He is a friend and party to the new Commonwealth; two months only after the execution of the King, he is appointed Secretary to the State Council, and under it is conducting the Latin correspondence. He demolishes, by order of the same Council, the _Eikon Basilike_ (supposed in that day to be the king’s work) with his fierce onslaught of the _Eikonoklastes_. His words are bitter as gall; he even alludes, in no amiable tone--with acrid emphasis, indeed--to the absurd rumor, current with some, that the King, through his confidential instrument, Buckingham, had poisoned his own father.