The Palace and Park by Phillips, Forbes, Latham, Owen, Scharf, and Shenton

[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.]