Hampton Court ... Illustrated with forty-three drawings by Herbert ...

78
HAMPTON COURT
At last Charles prepared toescape, for his life seemed
to be in danger. Royalist writers have no doubt that
there were designs to murder him, and behind all
the plots, in the imagination of some, lay the subtle
intrigues of the man who was to rise to a sole and uncontrolled
despotism by the murder of the King.
" Twining subtle fear with hope,
He wovea net of such a scope,
That Charles himselfmight trace
To Carisbrook'snarrow case,
That thence theroyal actorborne,
The tragic scaffoldmight adorn."
This theory may be rejected by modern criticism,
but none the lessbehind all the intrigues of this tragic
episode in the history of Hampton Court does the
figure of Cromwell stand as the one which should have
the arbitration of the King's fate.
These months at Hampton Court, the last Charles
ever spent there, have a peculiar and pathetic interest.
He was able to have two of his children with him in
his loneliness: he was able to live with some of the
state and dignity of a king: he was able to take
pleasure in his own pictures and his own gardens, and
in the faithful service of honest men; and he could
say, as he too seldom could have said in times past,
that " he would rather die than break his faith."
The rooms Charles occupied at the time were probably
those that looked out on the private garden.
He lived in public in his state apartments, and it was
only the opportunity of a Thursday evening, when it