Clarendon was evidently of opinion that he had been previously informed of the position he would be asked to fill, and the “pride” spoken of in the administration of the office was only in accord with that fondness for display to which allusion has already been made. Suddenly raised to a position of pre-eminence as the head of a tribunal wholly unprecedented in the extent and nature of its assumed authority, he was not the man to dispense with any of those outward manifestations which might give dignity and impressiveness to his dread office. He had 20 officers or other gentlemen appointed to attend him as a guard going and returning from Westminster Hall; lodgings were provided for him in New Palace Yard during the sittings of the court; and Sir Henry Mildmay, Mr. Holland, and Mr. Edwards were deputed to see that everything necessary was provided for him. A sword and mace were carried before him by two gentlemen, 21 gentlemen that were near carried each a partizan, and he had in the court 200 soldiers as an additional guard. A chair of crimson velvet was placed for him in the middle of the court, and a desk on which was laid a velvet cushion; many of the commissioners, as Whitelocke says, donned “their best habits,” and the President himself appeared in a scarlet robe, and wearing his celebrated peaked hat, remaining covered when the King was brought before him, though he expressed himself as greatly offended that his Sovereign did not remove his hat while in his presence. Into the particulars of the trial we do not desire to enter—they are matters which history has made known; nor do we wish to dwell upon the incidents attendant upon it—the calm and dignified demeanour of the ill-starred King; his denial of the authority of the court, and consistent refusal to recognise a power founded on usurpation; the ill-concealed vanity of the judge; the imposing pomp and glitter of the regicidal court; the intrepid loyalty of Lady Fairfax, who startled the commission by her vehement protest when the charge was made, and the scarcely less courageous conduct of her companion, Mrs. Nelson; the rancorous hatred displayed by the King’s accusers; the mockery of proof; the refusal to hear the fallen monarch’s appeal; the revilings of the excited soldiery; the expressions of sympathy of the people; or the brutal blow bestowed upon the poor soldier who ventured to implore a blessing on his Sovereign’s head—all these are recorded and are embalmed in the hearts of the English people. The bloody episode which will for ever darken our national annals was an event without precedent in the world’s history. For the constitution of the court no authority could be found in English law, it was illegal, unconstitutional, and, in its immediate results, dangerous to liberty. Whatever might be the faults of Charles—and they were many—his death was not a political necessity, nor can it be justly said to have been the act