some of his lordship's friends; and, lastly, a hearse and
six, provided for the conveyance of his lordship's corpse
from the place of execution to Surgeons' Hall.

"The procession moved so slowly that Lord Ferrers was two
hours and three-quarters in his landau but during the
whole time he appeared perfectly easy and composed,
though he often expressed his desire to have it over,
saying that the apparatus of death and the passing
through such crowds of people was ten times worse than
death itself. He told the Sheriff that he had written to
the King, begging that he might suffer where his
ancestor, the Earl of Essex, had suffered--namely, on
Tower Hill; that 'he had been in the greater hope of
obtaining this favour as he had the honour of quartering
part of the same arms and of being allied to his Majesty;
and that he thought it hard that he should have to die at
the place appointed for the execution of common felons.'
As to his crime, he declared that he did it 'under
particular circumstances, having met with so many crosses
and vexations that he scarcely knew what he did."

At the top of Drury Lane he paused to drink his last glass of wine,
handing a guinea to the man who presented it. On the scaffold not a
muscle moved as he surveyed the black crowd of onlookers with a calm and
amused eye. To the chaplain he confessed his belief in God; and he
exchanged a few pleasant words with the executioner as he placed a gold
coin in his hand.

Thus, cold, calm, without rancour or regret, perished Laurence, Earl
Ferrers, not even a struggle marking the moment when life left him.
After hanging for an hour, his body was taken down and removed to
Surgeons' Hall, where it was dissected; and, thus mutilated, it was
exposed to public derision and malediction before it found a final
resting-place, fourteen feet deep under the belfry of old St Pancras
Church.

Such is the stain which burns red on the Shirley shield, and such was
the man who placed it there. But, as we have seen, Laurence Shirley was
mad beyond all doubt, and "knew not what he did"; and in the eyes of all
charitable and right-thinking men the 'scutcheon of the Ferrers Earldom
remains as virtually unsullied to-day as when it was virginally fresh
two centuries ago.

CHAPTER V

A GHOSTLY VISITANT

There is scarcely a chapter in the story of the British Peer