ISAAC NEWTON - LIVES AND LEGACIES - AT A LITTLE BEFORE TEN O’CLOCK THE DRUM ROLL BEGAN, FIRST distant and then ever louder as the thousands gathering to see the king die wound their way through London’s choked streets to the palace of Whitehall. It was January 30, 1649. The weather was exceedingly cold, the sky gray with scattered patches of sunshine, the frost so sharp that great chunks of ice clogged the arches of London Bridge spanning the river Thames. The previous day fifty-nine judges had signed the death warrant of King Charles I, many of them badgered and bullied by the rebel leader Oliver Cromwell, who was about to assume the title of Lord Protector and rule as a king in everything but name. It was Cromwell and his Roundheads, who cut their hair short in defiance of the wigged nobility and practiced the Puritan religion, who most wanted the king’s head. They had fought Charles and his supporters, many of whom were sympathetic to the outlawed Catholic religion, ever since 1642, when civil war erupted in the north of England and spread ross the land like a great plague. Now the leader of the defeated forces had to pay.
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