nd so
home and to bed.

14th. Up by four o'clock in the morning and upon business at my office.
Then we sat down to business, and about 11 o'clock, having a room got
ready for us, we all went out to the Tower-hill; and there, over against
the scaffold, made on purpose this day, saw Sir Henry Vane brought.

[Sir Harry Vane the younger was born 1612. Charles signed on June
12th a warrant for the execution of Vane by hanging at Tyburn on the
14th, which sentence on the following day "upon humble suit made" to
him, Charles was "graciously pleased to mitigate," as the warrant
terms it, for the less ignominious punishment of beheading on Tower
Hill, and with permission that the head and body should be given to
the relations to be by them decently and privately interred.--
Lister's Life of Clarendon, ii, 123.]

A very great press of people. He made a long speech, many times
interrupted by the Sheriff and others there; and they would have taken
his paper out of his hand, but he would not let it go. But they caused
all the books of those that writ after him to be given the Sheriff; and
the trumpets were brought under the scaffold that he might not be heard.
Then he prayed, and so fitted himself, and received the blow; but the
scaffold was so crowded that we could not see it done. But Boreman, who
had been upon the scaffold, came to us and told us, that first he began
to speak of the irregular proceeding against him; that he was, against
Magna Charta, denied to have his exceptions against the indictment
allowed; and that there he was stopped by the Sheriff. Then he drew out
his, paper of notes, and begun to tell them first his life; that he
was born a gentleman, that he was bred up and had the quality of a
gentleman, and to make him in the opinion of the world more a gentleman,
he had been, till he was seventeen years old, a good fellow, but then it
pleased God to lay a foundation of grace in his heart, by which he was
persuaded, against his worldly interest, to leave all preferment and go
abroad, where he might serve God with more freedom. Then he was called
home, and made a member of the Long Parliament; where he never did, to
this day, any thing against his conscience, but all for the glory of
God. Here he would have given them an account of the proceedings of the
Long Parliament, but they so often interrupted him, that at last he was
forced to give over: and so fell into prayer for E