that scaffold before Whitehall, Charles walked, surrounded by soldiers, through the leafless avenues of St. James's Park. It was a bitterly cold morning. ... His purposed address to the people was delivered only to the hearing of those upon the scaffold, but its purport was that the people mistook the nature of government; for people are free under a government, not by being sharers in it, but by due administration of the laws of it.' His theory of government was a consistent one. He had the misfortune not to understand that the time had been fast passing away for its assertion. The headsman did his office; and a deep groan went up from the surrounding multitude." _Charles Knight, Popular History of England, volume 4, chapter 7._ "In the death-warrant of 29th January 1649, next after the President and Lord Grey, stands the name of Oliver Cromwell. He accepted the responsibility of it, justified, defended it to his dying day. No man in England was more entirely answerable for the deed than he, 'I tell you,' he said to Algernon Sidney, 'we will cut off his head with the crown upon it.' ... Slowly he had come to know--not only that the man, Charles Stuart, was incurably treacherous, but that any settlement of Parliament with the old Feudal Monarchy was impossible. As the head of the king rolled on the scaffold the old Feudal Monarchy expired for ever. In January 1649 a great mark was set in the course of the national life--the Old Rule behind it, the New Rule before it. Parliamentary government, the consent of the nation, equality of rights, and equity in the law--all date from this great New Departure. The Stuarts indeed returned for one generation, but with the sting of the Old Monarchy gone, and only to disappear almost without a blow. The Church of England returned; but not the Church of Laud or of Charles. The peers returned, but as a meek House of Lords, with their castles razed, their feudal rights and their political power extinct. It is said that the regicides killed Charles I. only to make Charles II. king. It is not so, They killed the Old Monarchy; and the restored monarch was by no means its heir, but a royal Stadtholder or Hereditary President." _F. Harrison, Oliver Cromwell, chapter 7._