ew of the laws which had been enacted in the reign of Elizabeth
against recusants, priests, and the receivers of priests, specifying the
causes which gave rise to those enactments, and demonstrating that they
were necessary, mild, equal, moderate, and capable of being justified to
the whole world. Sentence was then pronounced in the usual form.

Sir Everard Digby bowing to the lords who were seated on the bench,
said, "If I may but hear any of your lordships say you forgive me, I
shall go more cheerfully to the gallows." The lords instantly replied,
"God forgive you, and we do."

On Thursday, January 30, 1605-6, Sir Everard Digby, Robert Winter, John
Grant, and Thomas Bates, were executed at the west end of St. Paul's
church; and on Friday, January 31st, the sentence of the law was carried
into effect on Thomas Winter, Ambrose Rookwood, Robert Keys, and Guy
Fawkes, in Old Palace-yard, Westminster, and at no great distance from
the House of Lords, the scene of their recent treason.

Most of these wretched men evinced much penitence, both in prison and on
the scaffold. It is remarkable that Fawkes, the most desperate of the
whole number, appeared to be the most penitent at the time of his
execution. They all declared their adherence to the church of Rome,
dying, as they had lived, in her communion. They requested that the
officers in attendance would communicate this their dying declaration to
the world.

After the execution, their bodies, being quartered, were hung up in
various parts of the city, as was the custom at that time with those who
were put to death for treason. The heads of Catesby and Percy were fixed
upon the House of Lords, where they remained some years after, when
Osborne wrote his _Memoirs of King James_; unless, as he intimates, they
had been removed, and others substituted in their room. It was reported
when he wrote, that the heads then fixed on the House of Lords were not
those of the two conspirators, but the heads of two other individuals
procured, probably, from some church-yard, by the friends of Catesby and
Percy, and fixed upon the poles for the purpose of preventing the
discovery of the theft[21].

[Footnote 21: OSBORNE'S _Works_, p. 434.]

James acted with great lenity towards the families of the conspirators.
By the statute respecting treason the property of the convicted traitor
is forfeited to the crown; but in the cases of these individuals the
children or heirs of those who we