"The fiercest furies that do daily tread Upon my grief, my grey discrowned head, Are those that owe my bounty for their bread."
Once in the month of March, 1648, and again in the May following, he made attempts at escape abortively. The first time he found the window through which he tried to pass too narrow for his head, and the second time, though the obstructing bars had been sawn through, it was of no avail, for the plot had been revealed, and guards were waiting below. The small window which was the scene of both attempts is one of the principal details of interest for visitors.
Towards the end of the same year the King had a long conference with the representatives of the Parliament at Newport, but the issue had been predetermined, and the commission might have borne as its motto the celebrated words of the tyrant to his victim: "You will be tried and convicted." Eventually the King was seized and carried over to the mainland, there, on the last day of January, 1649, to meet his death at Whitehall.
In the following August there arrived at Carisbrooke two pathetic little figures, the Princess Elizabeth, then fifteen years old, and her brother Henry, Duke of Gloucester, aged ten. The Princess was described as "a lady of excellent parts, great observation, and an early understanding." Already she was delicate in health, and deformed in figure, owing to the complaint of "rickets"; no doubt the shock of her father's terrible death had preyed upon her mind, and she was in a state to succumb rapidly to any malady. The opportunity soon came: she caught a chill at a game of bowls, which acted quickly on her enfeebled constitution, and less than a month after her arrival she was found lying dead with her face resting on an open Bible, a gift from that beloved father she had so soon followed. Thus, sculptured by Baron Marochetti, the tender attitude in which death found her remains fixed in marble in Newport Church, where she was buried. Her little brother Henry was kept two years longer at Carisbrooke before being sent abroad to join the elder members of the family. He died of smallpox at the age of twenty. The children seem both to have been well treated during their imprisonment--a fact which is to the credit of the Parliamentarians. Among other prisoners the castle has held are two especially well known, Sir William Davenant and Sir Harry Vane.