Second had decorated his favorite son. Messengers were instantly dispatched to Whitehall with the good news, and with the George as a token that the news was true. The prisoner was conveyed under a strong guard to Ringwood.

And all was lost; and nothing remained but that he should. prepare to meet death as became one who had thought himself not unworthy to wear the crown of William the Conqueror and of Richard the Lion-hearted, of the hero of Cressy and of the hero of Agincourt. The captive might easily have called to mind other domestic examples, still better suited to his condition. Within a hundred years, two sovereigns whose blood ran in his veins, one of them a delicate woman, had been placed in the same situation in which he now stood. They had shown, in the prison and on the scaffold, virtue of which, in the season of prosperity, they had seemed incapable, and had half redeemed great crimes and errors by enduring with Christian meekness and princely dignity all that victorious enemies could inflict. Of cowardice Monmouth had never been accused; and, even had he been wanting in constitutional courage, it might have been expected that the defect would be supplied by pride and by despair. The eyes of the whole world were upon him. The latest generations would know how, in that extremity, he had borne himself. To the brave peasants of the West he owed it to show that they had not poured forth their blood for a leader unworthy of their attachment. To her who had sacrificed every thing for his sake he owed it so to bear himself that, though she might weep for him, she should not blush for him. It was not for him to lament and supplicate. His reason, too, should have told him that lamentation and supplication would be unavailing. He had done that which could never be forgiven. He was in the grasp of one who never forgave.

But the fortitude of Monmouth was not that highest sort of fortitude which is derived from reflection and from self-respect; nor had nature given him one of those stout hearts from which neither adversity nor peril can extort any sign of weakness. His courage rose and fell with his animal spirits. It was sustained on the field of battle by the excitement of

action, by the hope of victory, by the strange influence of sympathy. All such aids were now taken away. The spoiled darling of the court and of the populace, accustomed to be loved and worshiped wherever he appeared, was now surrounded by stern jailers in whose eyes he read his doom. Yet a few hours of gloomy seclusion, and he must die a violent and shameful death. His heart sunk within him. Life seemed worth purchasing by any humiliation; nor could his mind, always feeble, and now distracted by terror, perceive that humiliation must degrade, but could not save him.

As soon as he reached Ringwood he wrote to the king. The letter was that of a man whom a craven fear had made insensible to shame. He professed in vehement terms his remorse for his treason. He affirmed that, when he promised his cousins at the Hague not to raise troubles in England, he had fully meant to keep his word. Unhappily he had afterward been seduced from his allegiance by some horrid people who had heated his mind by calumnies and misled him by sophistry but now he abhorred them: he abhorred himself. He begged in piteous terms that he might be admitted to the royal presence. There was a secret which he could not trust to paper, a secret which lay in a single word, and which, if he spoke that word, would secure the throne against all danger. On the following day he dispatched letters, imploring the queen-dowager and the lord treasurer to intercede in his behalf.

When it was known in London how he had abased himself the general surprise was great; and no man was more amazed than Barillon,(') who had resided in England during two bloody proscriptions, and had seen numerous victims, both of the opposition and of the court, submit to their fate without womanish entreaties and lamentations.

Monmouth and Grey remained at Ringwood two days. They were then carried up to London, under the guard of a large body of regular troops and militia. In the coach with the duke was an officer whose orders were to stab the prisoner

(') Barillon was French embassador at the English court. He had witnessed the persecution of the Catholics at the time of the Popish Plot, and the persecution of the Whigs that followed upon the Rye House Plot.

if a rescue were attempted. At every town along the road. the train-bands of the neighborhood had been mustered under the command of the principal gentry. The march lasted three days, and terminated at Vauxhall, where a regiment, commanded by George Legge, Lord Dartmouth, was in readiness to receive the prisoners. They were put on board of a state barge, and carried down the river to Whitehall Stairs. Lumley and Portman had alternately watched the duke day and night till they had brought him within the walls of the palace.

Both the demeanor of Monmouth and that of Grey, during the journey, filled all observers with surprise. Monmouth was altogether unnerved. Grey was not only calm, but cheerful, talked pleasantly of horses, dogs, and field-sports, and even made jocose allusions to the perilous situation in which he stood.

The king can not be blamed for determining that Monmouth should suffer death. Every man who heads a rebellion against an established government stakes his life on the event; and rebellion was the smallest part of Monmouth's crime. He had declared against his uncle a war without quarter. In the manifesto put forth at Lyme, James had been held up to execration as an incendiary, as an assassin who had strangled one innocent man and cut the throat of another, and, lastly, as the poisoner of his own brother. To spare an enemy who had not scrupled to resort to such extremities would have been an act of rare, perhaps of blamable, generosity. But to see him and not to spare him was an outrage on humanity and decency. This outrage the king resolved to commit. The arms of the prisoner were bound behind him. with a silken cord; and, thus secured, he was ushered into the presence of the implacable kinsman whom he had wronged.

Then Monmouth threw himself on the ground, and crawled to the king's feet. He wept. He tried to embrace his uncle's knees with his pinioned arms. IIe begged for life, only life, life at any price. He owned that he had been guilty of a great crime, but tried to throw the blame on others, particularly on Argyle, who would rather have put his legs into the

boots than have saved his own life by such baseness.(') By the ties of kindred, by the memory of the late king, who had been the best and truest of brothers, the unhappy man adjured James to show some mercy. James gravely replied that this repentance was of the latest; that he was sorry for the misery which the prisoner had brought on himself; but that the case was not one for lenity. A declaration, filled with atrocious calumnies, had been put forth. The regal title had been assumed. For treasons so aggravated there could be no pardon on this side of the grave. The poor terrified duke vowed that he had never wished to take the crown, but had been led into that fatal error by others. As to the declaration, he had not written it; he had not read it; he had signed it without looking at it: it was all the work of Ferguson, that bloody villain Ferguson. "Do you expect me to believe,” said James, with contempt but too well merited, "that you set your hand to a paper of such moment without knowing what it contained?" One depth of infamy only remained, and even to that the prisoner descended. He was pre-eminently the champion of the Protestant religion. The interest of that religion had been his plea for conspiring against the government of his father, and for bringing on his country the miseries of civil war: yet he was not ashamed to hint that he was inclined to be reconciled to the Church of Rome. The king eagerly offered him spiritual assistance, but said nothing of pardon or respite. "Is there, then, no hope?" asked Monmouth. James turned away in silence. Then Monmouth strove to rally his courage, rose from his knees, and retired with a firmness which he had not shown since his overthrow.

The hour drew near: all hope was over; and Monmouth had passed from pusillanimous fear to the apathy of despair. His children were brought to his room that he might take leave of them, and were followed by his wife. He spoke to

(') The Duke of Argyle had invaded Scotland a few weeks previously to Monmouth's attempt. The expedition failed. The duke was captured and executed. He died with fortitude, and the description of his last hours is generally allowed to be one of Macaulay's masterpieces. It has afforded the subject for a fresco in the Houses of Parliament.

her kindly, but without emotion. Though she was a woman of great strength of mind, and had little cause to love him, her misery was such that none of the by-standers could refrain from weeping. He alone was unmoved.

It was ten o'clock. The coach of the Lieutenant of the Tower was ready. Monmouth requested his spiritual advisers to accompany him to the place of execution, and they consented: but they told him that, in their judgment, he was about to die in a perilous state of mind, and that, if they attended him, it would be their duty to exhort him to the last. As he passed along the ranks of the guards, he saluted them with a smile; and he mounted the scaffold with a firm tread. Tower Hill was covered up to the chimney-tops with an innumerable multitude of gazers, who, in awful silence, broken only by sighs and the noise of weeping, listened for the last accents of the darling of the people. "I shall say little," he began. "I come here not to speak but to die. I die a Protestant of the Church of England." The bishops interrupted him, and told him that, unless he acknowledged resistance to be sinful, he was no member of their Church. He went on to speak of his Ilenrietta.(') She was, he said, a young lady of virtue and honor. He loved her to the last, and he could not die without giving utterance to his feelings. The bishops again interfered, and begged him not to use such language. Some altercation followed. The divines have been accused of dealing harshly with the dying man. But they appear to have only discharged what, in their view, was a sacred duty. Monmouth knew their principles, and, if he wished to avoid their importunity, should have dispensed with their attendance. Their general arguments against resistance had no effect on him. But when they reminded him of the ruin which he had brought on his brave and loving followers, of the blood which had been shed, of the souls which had been sent unprepared to the great account, he was touched, and said, in a softened voice, "I do own that. I am sorry that it ever hap

(') Henrietta, Baroness Wentworth, had followed Monmouth into his exile in Holland, and had sacrificed her jewels to provide funds for his expedition.