" A general gloom and
consternation pervaded London on the day of this atrocious perpetration;
many of the chief inhabitants either shut themselves up in their houses,
or absented themselves from the city. On that day none of the courts of
justice sat; and on the next, Whitelocke, one of the commissioners of
the Great Seal, says, "The commissioners met, but did not think fit to
do any business, or seal any writs, because of the King's death."
Whitelocke says, "I went not to the House, but stayed all day at home in
my study, and at my prayers, that this day's work might not so displease
God as to bring prejudice to this poor afflicted nation."[8] Evelyn, in
his Diary, writes, "I kept the day of this martyrdom as a fast, and
would not be present at that execrable wickedness, receiving the sad
account of it from my brother George and Mr. Owen, who came to visit me
this afternoon, and recounted all the circumstances." Archbishop Usher
came out to witness the scene from his house at Whitehall; but he
fainted when the King was led out on the scaffold.
[8] There is, I am informed, a tradition in Westminster School,
that South, the celebrated divine, was the boy whose turn it was
to read prayers on the day of Charles's death; and that he read
the prayer for the king as usual. South at that time must have
been about fourteen years of age.
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