sequence of their revolution, a privy seal came to
the King's-Bench, commanding that court to proceed against Sir Walter
according to law, who next day received notice of the council to
prepare himself for death; and on Wednesday the 28th of that month, at
8 o'clock in the morning, was taken out of bed in the hot fit of an
ague, and carried to the King's-Bench, Westminster, where execution
was awarded against him. The next morning, the 29th of October, the
day of the lord-mayor's inauguration, a solemnity never perhaps
attended before with a public execution, Sir Walter was conducted by
the sheriffs of Middlesex to the Old Palace Yard in Westminster, where
mounting the scaffold, he behaved with the most undaunted spirit, and
seeming cheerfulness. The bishop of Salisbury (Tohon) being surprized
at the hero's contempt of death, and expostulating with him upon it;
he told him plainly that he never feared death, and much less then,
for which he blessed God, and as to the manner of it, tho' to others
it might seem grievous, yet for himself he had rather die so than in a
burning fever. This verifies the noble observation of Shakespear, that
all heroes have a contempt of death; which he puts in the mouth
of Julius Caesar when his friends dissuaded him from going to the
Senate-House.

Cowards die many a time before their deaths,
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders, I have heard of yet,
It seems to me most strange, that men should fear,
Seeing that death, the necessary end,
Will come, when it will come.----

Sir Walter eat his breakfast that morning, smoaked his pipe, and
made no more of death, than if he had been to take a journey. On the
scaffold he conversed freely with the Earl of Arundel and others of
the nobility, and vindicated himself from two suspicions; the first,
of entering into a confederacy with France; the second, of speaking
disloyally of his Majesty. He cleared himself likewise of the
suspicion of having persecuted the Earl of Essex, or of insulting him
at his death. He concluded with desiring the good people to join with
him in prayer, to that great God of Heaven, "whom (says he) I have
grievously offended, being a man full of vanity, who has lived a
sinful life, in such callings as have been most inducing to it: For I
have been a soldier, a sailor, and a courtier; which are courses of
wickedness and vice." The proclamation being made that all men should
depart the scaf