And such a sacrifice they really made him, upon the Tuesday following (which was the thirtieth of January) having (the more to affront and deject him) built a scaffold for his murther, before the Great Gate at Whitehall, whereunto they fixed several staples of iron, and prepared cords, to tye him down to the block, had he made any resistance to that cruel and bloody stroke..

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This indicates that the scaffold was fairly near the Great Gate, but is not precise enough, so that we must turn to the decision in the record of the regicides' proceedings in the Painted Chamber and follow it up in the newsbooks amongst the Thomason tracts. The original MS. of the Journal of the proceedings of the high court of justice' states that, on Jan. 29, the regicides ordered the King to be beheaded "in the open streete before Whitehall," and, as is well known, the war=rant, now at the House of Lords, repeats these words. But Gilbert Mabbot, the Leveller, licenser of the Press, and, therefore, in touch with the regicides, varies this a little. In The Moderate, written by him, he explains their purpose by saying that they voted that the place of execution should

be

Hollar's drawing is the only illustration in existence capable of supplying an answer to the question of where those rails were placed. On the posts, of course, and in order to fence off the scaffold, which was placed." in the middle" of the enclosure thus made.

over against the Banqueting House of Whitehall."

Any contention that the railings were not placed upon these posts would involve the assumption that the posts were uprooted, in order to avoid accidents to the horse posted round the enclosure. Thus, the windows of the << are again excluded, for they were outside the line of posts. Next in point of time follow two passages

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The Perfect Weekly Account, corroborates: There are rails making at Whitehall Gate amount to a scaffold, which may suddenly be and something else which is thought will finished, and it's probable that is the placedesigned for execution.

An account of all

of the first importance. that happened on the 30th was issued by the regicides, and was probably written by Mabbot at their behest. Thomason has not dated his copy of the first edition of this pamphlet, so that it probably appeared on the 30th, and certainly not later than the 31st. The titlepage of this account runs :

King Charls [sic] His | Speech | made upon the Scaffold at Whitehall Gate Immediately before his execution | On Tuesday the 30th of Jan., 1648. With a relation of the Maner [sic] of his going to Execution Published by special Authority | London Printed by Peter Cole at the sign of the

But Dillingham's lengthy account is perhaps the most valuable narrative of the tragedy we possess. Up to the date of Jan. 30, 1926, when The Times re-printed it, it was unknown save by specialists like Sir Charles H. Firth and Miss Strickland. Sir Charles quoted it, in the passage set out in my last article. And Miss Strickland, in her Life of Queen Henrietta Maria ('Lives of the Queens of England,' vol. v, 1851) alluded to the passage "Hacker I am about to quote as follows:led the King through his former Banqueting Hall, one of the windows of which had originally been contrived to support stands for public pageantries. The footnote to this gives an incorrect reference, "The Moderate Intelligencer, January 1648/9," and proceeds "which adds that a show of fencers had been

It is not surprising, therefore, to find that the passage I am about to cite has never before entered into this discussion, I cannot imagine how MR. THOMPSON missed it, if he saw this number of the Moderate Intelligencer, for he certainly quotes a passage to be found later on in that same number:

This 30 of Jan., 1648 (9) was Charles, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, put to death by beheading, over against the Banqueting House of Whitehall, the place where formerly King James had all the fencers of London encountered each other in their school way for content of the King of Denmark, who came out of his kingdom to visit him, the scaffold being made from the same window, and in the same manner, only larger. This is fatal to the little window of the hypothesis.

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(c

John Dillingham, of course, knew all these facts. Why, then, did he say that the scaffold was made "from the same window "? No other conclusion is possible but that he meant one of the seven great windows." Why he used the singular instead of the plural I am unable to state, but it is noticeable that Lambert van den Bos and Sir William Sanderson, both of whom wrote in 1658, also use the singular, the former writing of the great window," and the latter of "the great window enlarged." Perhaps the reason is to be found in the fact that the scaffold ran along practically the whole front of the Banqueting House.

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I do not think that I shall be far wrong in thinking that Sir Charles H. Firth's opinion that the King's window was the centre window was chiefly founded upon the very evident fact that the centre of the scaffold was opposite this centre window.

But this very fact excludes the centre window. In the centre of the scaffold was the block, with the axe lying upon it. Round the block were four staples driven into the scaf fold and hauling-tackle-hooks, pulleys and ropes-with which to drag the King down to the block, which was only six inches high. The King's repeated injunction to Take

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heed of the axe "" should be recalled in this connexion. He was anxious that people should not trip up over the staples or tackle and tread or fall upon the axe, and thus either blunt its edge or hurt themselves.

was

About the staples I have some conclusive evidence, corroborating Dugdale. Hammond, the master carpenter at Whitehall, ordered to provide the scaffold, and employed Robert Lockier to build it. Owing to an accusation brought against another man after the Restoration, the Privy Council ordered Sir Richard Everard, a Justice of the Peace for Westminster, to take Lockier's deposition about these staples. The deposition taken by Everard is entered into the Privy Council's Register Books under the date of 15 March, 1661. In it Lockier testified that he was ordered to provide the staples by Deane, the regicide, and accordingly purchased them from an ironmonger in King Street, driving them into the scaffold by Deane's direction. Lockier also remained upon the scaffold, with his tools, until all was over.

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All this renders it very improbable that the centre, or fourth, window from the north was the King's window. Access to the scaffold is much more likely to have been by the traditional window marked by a blue lozenge shaped stone in the pavement below (see clii. 117), that is the second from the north, and at the north end of the scaffold. As this was one of the four windows walled up in the eighteenth century, Chantreau's statement that in 1798 "Cette croisée est actuellement murée " (see clii. 210) assumes great importance. So also Herbert's statement that His Maty past' to ye scaffold through ye wall yt was purposely broken down at ye north end of ye roome, excludes the centre window and refers to the second window. And that this statement referred to a passage, out of the Banqueting House only, is rendered clear by Heylin, who, in his Short View of the Life and Reign of King Charles' (1658) states that the King Was hurried to Whitehall, out of the Banqueting House, whereof a way was forced to a scaffold, on which he was to act the last part of his tragedy in the sight of his people.' J. G. MUDDIMAN.

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WEL ELLINGTON'S HUMANITY (cliii. 289, s.v. Memorabilia ').—It has occurred to me that the story of Wellington's humanity, narrated at the reference, from the Quarterly, may have been based on a letter which appears

on p. 454 of The Illustrated London News of Nov. 20, 1852, by a correspondent who signs himself "J. H." I think the letter worthy of reproduction in its entirety; it is as follows:

Sir, The English mind is so deeply imbued with admiration of the great qualities of the great Duke, that all anecdotes of him tending fluous, but, sensible as I am of the existence to strengthen that admiration seem superof that feeling, I beg your notice of an anecdote which was narrated to me in Martinique, by the late Lieut. J. A. Eyma, of the Royal Waggon Train, an officer who had served as a subaltern in the Peninsula during the from the service to cultivate his patrimonial hottest period of the war, and who had retired estate in that beautiful island, where I was his guest in the year 1833.

Shortly," said he, "after one of our severe battles, Captain and myself, with some half-dozen surgeons, had charge of an oid Spanish château, which had been converted into a hospital for the wounded.

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One afternoon we had just sat down to dinner, when the door suddenly opened, and, to our great surprise, in walked the Duke, dressed as usual in his blue cloak, and attended by a single orderly. After the first salutations, addressing Captain he said, 'Captain I will thank you to take me to your the Captain; and supposing the Duke wished chamber.' 'By all means, my Lord,' replied to wash himself after a ride of sixteen miles from head-quarters, he added aside to me, clean towel, Eyma. With equal devotion and alacrity I snatched a towel from the linenchest, and followed them into the Captain's apartment. We had no sooner entered it than with a sternness of manner I shall never forthe Duke turned round to my comrade and get, said to him, Captain I am greatly displeased to find that you, an English officer, entrusted with the care of the wounded in this hospital, should have appropriated to your own use the most airy and spacious apartment in the whole building. I desire, Sir, that you give it up to the invalids this very night, and remember, if, on any future occasion, I shall come to know of your discharging your duty in this inconsiderate manfit to serve his Majesty.' ner. I shall send vou home to England, as unThe Duke then visited, with the surgeon, all the wards; he spoke kindly to several of the sufferers, inquired into, and made notes on the state of the for about an hour, he sat down with us to our medicine chest; and, after being thus engaged rough repast. I recollect sitting on a cask, myself, at that very dinner; and. after what had happened, did not care to improve my seat. Soon after he left us, to join the camp; so that he rode 32 miles that day with anparently no other object than to see after the sick and wounded. hy friend, the Captain, recovered his wonted It was some time before spirits, so deeply did he feel the rebuke of his noble and ever thoughtful commander."