King Charles I’s scaffold speech:
“For the people. And truly I desire their Liberty and Freedom as much as any Body whomsoever. But I must tell you, That their Liberty and Freedom, consists in having of Government; those Laws, by which their Life and their goods may be most their own. It is not for having share in government, Sir, that is nothing pertaining to them. A subject and a soveraign are clean different things, and therefore until they do that, I mean, that you do put the people in that liberty as I say, certainly they will never enjoy themselves.
Sirs, It was for this that now I Am come here. If I would have given way to an Arbitrary way, for to have all Laws changed according to the power of the Sword, I needed not to have come here; and therefore, I tell you, (and I pray God it be not laid to your charge) That I Am the Martyr of the People.”
JKB
Royalist sentiment from the time
“I thank God, we have not free schools nor printing;
and I hope we shall not have these hundred years.
For learning has brought disobedience,
and heresy and sects into the world;
and printing has divulged them
and libels against the government.
God keep us from both!”
by:
Sir William Berkeley (1606-1677)
Royal Governor of Virginia
Date: 1642
JKB
BTW, an interesting fictional book set in the period between Charles I’s beheading and the restoration of Charles II is
King Noanett – a story of old Virginia and the Massachusetts Bay by Frederic J. Stimson (1896)
The book traverses from the English countryside through the Virginia and Massachusetts colonies.
https://archive.org/details/kingnoanettasto02stimgoog
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