There was no delay in the work of slaughter¹. That very night the great gallows² was erected³ outside the White Hart inn. Hour after hour we could hear the blows of mallets and the sawing of beams, mingled⁵ with the shoutings and the ribald choruses of the Chief Justice’s suite⁶, who were carousing⁷ with the officers of the Tangiers regiment⁸ in the front room, which overlooked the gibbet. Amongst the prisoners the night was passed in prayer and meditation⁹, the stout¹⁰-hearted holding forth¹¹ to their weaker brethren, and exhorting¹² them to play the man, and to go to their death in a fashion which should be an example to true Protestants throughout the world. The Puritan divines had been mostly strung up off-hand immediately after the battle, but a few were left to sustain the courage of their flocks, and to show them the way upon the scaffold. Never have I seen anything so admirable as the cool and cheerful bravery wherewith these poor clowns faced their fate. Their courage on the battlefield paled before that which they showed in the shambles¹⁵ of the law. So amid the low murmur¹⁶ of prayer and appeals for mercy to God from tongues which never yet asked mercy from man, the morning broke, the last morning which many of us were to spend upon earth.

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