Twenty-nine
of these were condemned to death. The king was singularly free
from desires of revenge; but many of his council were strangers
to clemency, and, under the guise of loyalty to the crown, sought
satisfaction for private wrongs by urging severest measures. The
monarch, however, shrank from staining the commencement of his
reign with bloodshed and advocated mercy. In a speech delivered
to the House of Lords he insisted that, as a point of honour, he
was bound to make good the assurances given in his proclamation
of Breda, "which if I had not made," he continued, "I am
persuaded that neither I nor you had now been here. I pray,
therefore, let us not deceive those who brought or permitted us
to come together; and I earnestly desire you to depart from all
particular animosities and revenge or memory of past
provocations." Accordingly, but ten of those on whom sentence of
death had been passed were executed, the remainder being
committed to the Tower. That they were not also hung was,
according to the mild and merciful Dr. Reeves, Dean of
Westminster, "a main cause of God's punishing the land" in the
future time. For those destined to suffer, a gibbet was erected
at Charing Cross, that the traitors might in their last moments
see the spot where the late king had been executed. Having been
half hung, they were taken down, when their heads were severed
from their trunks and set up on poles at the south-east end of
Westminster Hall, whilst their bodies were quartered and exposed
upon the city gates.
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