66 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 happened." They prayed with him long and fervently; and he joined in their petitions. till they invoked a blessing on the king. He remained silent. 'Sir," said one of the assistants, "do you not pray for the king with us?" Monmouth paused some time, and, after an internal struggle, exclaimed, "Amen." But it was in vain that the prelates implored him to address to the soldiers and to the people a few words on the duty of obedience to the government. "I will make no speeches," he exclaimed. Only ten words, my lord." He turned away, called his servant, and put into the man's hand a toothpick case, the last token of ill-starred love. "Give it," he said, 66 to that person." He then accosted John Ketch, the executioner, a wretch who had butchered many brave and noble victims, and whose name has, during a century and a half, been vulgarly given to all who have succeeded him in his odious office.* 66 Here," said the duke," are six guineas for you. Do not hack me as you did my Lord Russell. I have heard that you struck him three or four times. My servant will give you some more gold if you do the work well." He then undressed, felt the edge of the axe, expressed some fear that it was not sharp enough, and laid his head on the block. The divines in the mean time continued to ejaculate with great energy; "God accept your repentance; God accept your imperfect repentance.' The hangman addressed himself to his office. But he had been disconcerted by what the duke had said. The first blow inflicted only a slight wound. The duke struggled, rose from the block, and looked reproachfully at the executioner. The * The name of Ketch was often associated with that of Jeffreys in the lampoons of those days. "While Jeffreys on the bench, Ketch on the gibbet sits," says one poet. In the year which followed Monmouth's execution Ketch was turned out of his office for insulting one of the sheriffs, and was succeeded by a butcher named Rose. But in four months Rose himself was hanged at Tyburn, and Ketch was reinstated. Luttrell's Diary, Jan. 20, and May 28, 1686. See a curious note by Dr. Grey, on Hudibras, part iii. canto ii. line 1534. head sank down once more. The stroke was repeated again and again; but still the neck was not severed, and the body continued to move. Yells of rage and horror rose from the crowd. Ketch flung down the axe with a curse. "I cannot 66 do it," he said; my heart fails me." "Take up the axe, man," cried the sheriff. 66 Fling him over the rails," roared the mob. At length the axe was taken up. Two more blows extinguished the last remains of life; but a knife was used to separate the head from the shoulders. The crowd was wrought up to such an ecstasy of rage that the executioner was in danger of being torn in pieces, and was conveyed away under a strong guard.* In the mean time many handkerchiefs were dipped in the duke's blood; for by a large part of the multitude he was regarded as a martyr who had died for the Protestant religion. The head and body were placed in a coffin covered with black velvet, and were laid privately under the communion table of St. Peter's Chapel in the Tower. Within four years the pave. ment of that chancel was again disturbed, and hard by the remains of Monmouth were laid the remains of Jeffreys. In truth there is no sadder spot on the earth than that little cemetery. Death is there associated, not, as in Westminster Abbey and Saint Paul's, with genius and virtue, with public veneration and with imperishable renown; not, as in our humblest churches and churchyards, with every thing that is most endearing in social and domestic charities; but with whatever is darkest in human nature and in human destiny, with the savage triumph of implacable enemies, with the inconstancy, the ingratitude, the cowardice of friends, with all the miseries of fallen greatness and of blighted fame. Thither have been carried, through successive ages, by the rude hands of jailers, without one mourner following, the bleeding relics of men who had been the captains of armies, the leaders of parties, the oracles of senates, and the ornaments of courts. Thither was borne, before the window where Jane Grey was praying, the mangled corpse of Guilford Dudley. Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and Protector of the realm, reposes there by the brother whom he murdered. There has mouldered away the headless trunk of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester and Car Account of the execution of Monmouth, signed by the divines who attended him. Buccleuch MS.; Burnet, i. 646; Citters, July 17, 1685; Luttrell's Diary; Evelyn's Diary, July 15; Barillon, July 18. dinal of Saint Vitalis, a man worthy to have lived in a better age, and to have died in a better cause. There are laid John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, Lord High Admiral, and Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, Lord High Treasurer. There, too, is another Essex, on whom nature and fortune had lavished all their bounties in vain, and whom valor, grace, genius, royal favor, popular applause, conducted to an early and ignominious doom. Not far off sleep two chiefs of the great house of Howard, Thomas, fourth Duke of Norfolk, and Philip, eleventh Earl of Arundel. Here and there, among the thick graves of unquiet and aspiring statesmen, lie more delicate sufferers; Margaret of Salisbury, the last of the proud name of Plantagenet, and those two fair queens who perished by the jealous rage of Henry. Such was the dust with which the dust of Monmouth mingled.* Yet a few months, and the quiet village of Toddington, in Bedfordshire, witnessed a still sadder funeral. Near that village stood an ancient and stately hall, the seat of the Wentworths. The transept of the parish church had long been their burial-place. To that burial-place, in the spring which fol lowed the death of Monmouth, was borne the coffin of the young Baroness Wentworth of Nettlestede. Her family reared a sumptuous mausoleum over her remains; but a less costly memorial of her was long contemplated with far deeper interHer name, carved by the hand of him whom she loved too well, was, a few years ago, still discernible on a tree in the adjoining park. est. It was not by Lady Wentworth alone that the memory of Monmouth was cherished with idolatrous fondness. His hold on the hearts of the people lasted till the generation which had seen him had passed away. Ribbons, buckles, and other trifling articles of apparel which he had worn, were treasured up as precious relics by those who had fought under him at Sedgemoor. Old men who long survived him desired, when they were dying, that these trinkets might be buried with them. One button of gold thread which narrowly escaped this fate may still be seen at a house which overlooks the field of battle. Nay, such was the devotion of the people to their unhappy favorite that, in the face of the strongest evidence by which * I cannot refrain from expressing my disgust at the barbarous stupidity which has transformed this most interesting little church into the likeness of a meeting-house in a manufacturing town. the fact of a death was ever verified, many continued to cher. ish a hope that he was still living, and that he would again appear in arms. A person, it was said, who was remarkably like Monmouth, had sacrificed himself to save the Protestant hero. The vulgar long continued, at every important crisis, to whisper that the time was at hand, and that King Monmouth would soon show himself. In 1686, a knave who had pretended to be the duke, and had levied contributions in several villages of Wiltshire, was apprehended and whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. In 1698, when England had long enjoyed constitutional freedom under a new dynasty, the son of an innkeeper passed himself on the yeomanry of Sussex as their beloved Monmouth, and defrauded many who were by no means of the lowest class. Five hundred pounds were collected for him. The farmers provided him with a horse. Their wives sent him baskets of chickens and ducks, and were lavish, it was said, of favors of a more tender kind; for, in gallantry at least, the counterfeit was a not unworthy representative of the origi nal. When this impostor was thrown into prison for his fraud, his followers maintained him in luxury. Several of them appeared at the bar to countenance him when he was tried at the Horsham assizes. So long did this delusion last, that, when George the Third had been some years on the English throne, Voltaire thought it necessary gravely to confute the hypothesis that the man in the iron mask was the Duke of Monmouth.* * Observator, August 1, 1685; Gazette de France, Nov. 2, 1686; Letter from Humphrey Wanley, dated August 25, 1698, in the Aubrey Collection; Voltaire, Dict. Phil. There are, in the Pepysian Collection, several ballads written after Monmouth's death, which represent him as living, and predict his speedy return. I will give two speci mens: Again : "Though this is a dismal story "Then shall Monmouth in his glories "They'll see I was not so degraded, What strange stories now are these!" It is, perhaps, a fact scarcely less remarkable that, to this day, the inhabitants of some parts of the west of England, when any bill affecting their interests is before the House of Lords, think themselves entitled to claim the help of the dukes of Buccleuch, the descendants of the unfortunate leader for whom their ancestors bled. The history of Monmouth would alone suffice to refute the imputation of inconstancy which is so frequently thrown on the common people. The common people are sometimes inconstant; for they are human beings. But that they are inconstant as compared with the educated classes, with aris. tocracies, or with princes, may be confidently denied. It would be easy to name demagogues whose popularity has remained undiminished while sovereigns and parliaments have withdrawn their confidence from a long succession of states men. When Swift had survived his faculties many years, the Irish populace still continued to light bonfires on his birthday, in commemoration of the services which they fancied that he had rendered to his country when his mind was in full vigor. While seven administrations were raised to power and hurled from it in consequence of court intrigues or of changes in the sentiments of the higher classes of society, the profligate Wilkes retained his hold on the affections of a rabble whom he pillaged and ridiculed. Politicians, who, in 1807, sought to curry favor with George the Third by defending Caroline of Brunswick, were not ashamed, in 1820, to curry favor with George the Fourth by persecuting her. But in 1820, as in 1807, the whole body of working men was fanatically devoted to her cause. So it was with Monmouth. In 1680 he had been adored alike by the gentry and by the peasantry of the west. In 1685 he came again. To the gentry he had become an object of aversion; but by the peasantry he was still loved with a love strong as death, with a love not to be extinguished by misfortunes or faults, by the flight from Sedgemoor, by the letter from Ringwood, or by the tears and abject supplications at Whitehall. The charge which may with justice be brought against the common people is, not that they are inconstant, but that they almost invariably choose their favorite so ill that their constancy is a vice and not a virtue. While the execution of Monmouth occupied the thoughts of the Londoners, the counties which had risen against the gove ernment were enduring all that a ferocious soldiery could inflict. Feversham had been summoned to the court, where honors and |