listened to him
with respect and attention. I think all those Catholic deaths and the
speeches that the prisoners make will by and by begin to affect public
opinion, and lead men to reflect that those who stand in the immediate
presence of God, are not likely, one after another, to go before Him
with lies upon their lips.

When he was done he distributed the copies of his speech, and then
presently kneeled down, and read a prayer or two. They were in Latin,
but I could not hear the words distinctly.

When he rose up again, all observing him, he went to the rail and spoke
aloud.

"God bless you, gentlemen!" he said. "God preserve His Majesty; he is as
good a prince as ever governed you; obey him as faithfully as I have
done, and God bless you all, gentlemen!"

It was very affecting to hear him speak so, for he did it very
emphatically; but even then one of their ministers that was on the
scaffold would not let him be.

"Sir," he asked, speaking loud all across the scaffold, "do you disown
the indulgences of the Romish Church?"

My Lord turned round suddenly in a great passion.

"Sir!" he cried. "What have you to do with my religion? However, I do
say that the Church of Rome allows no indulgences for murder, lying and
the like; and whatever I have said is true."

"What!" cried the minister. "Have you received no absolution?"

"I have received none at all," said my Lord, more quietly; meaning of
the kind that the minister meant, for I have no doubt at all that he
made his confession in the Tower.

"You said that you never saw those witnesses?" asked the minister, who,
I think, must have been a little uneasy.

"I never saw any of them," said my Lord, "but Dugdale; and that was at a
time when I spoke to him about a foot-boy." (This was at Tixall, when
Dugdale was bailiff there to my Lord Aston.)

They let him alone after that; and he immediately began to prepare
himself for death. First he took off his watch and his rings, and gave
them to two or three of his friends who were on the scaffold with him.
Then he took his staff which was against the rail, and gave that too;
and last his crucifix, which he took, with its chain, from around his
neck.

His man then came up to him, and very respectfully helped him off with
his peruke first, and then his coat, laying them one on the other in a
corner. My Lord's head looked very thin and shrunken when that was done,
as it were a bird's head. Then his man came up again