ligion is mentioned by him, but
no authority quoted; and no hint of the kind appears either in James's
Letters, or in the extract from his "Memoirs."

From Whitehall Monmouth was at night carried to the Tower, where, no
longer uncertain as to his fate, he seems to have collected his mind, and
to have resumed his wonted fortitude. The bill of attainder that had
lately passed having superseded the necessity of a legal trial, his
execution was fixed for the next day but one after his commitment. This
interval appeared too short even for the worldly business which he wished
to transact, and he wrote again to the king on the 14th, desiring some
short respite, which was peremptorily refused. The difficulty of
obtaining any certainty concerning facts, even in instances where there
has not been any apparent motive for disguising them, is nowhere more
striking than in the few remaining hours of this unfortunate man's life.
According to King James's statement in his "Memoirs," he refused to see
his wife, while other accounts assert positively that she refused to see
him, unless in presence of witnesses. Burnet, who was not likely to be
mistaken in a fact of this kind, says they did meet, and parted very
coldly, a circumstance which, if true, gives us no very favourable idea
of the lady's character. There is also mention of a third letter written
by him to the king, which being entrusted to a perfidious officer of the
name of Scott, never reached its destination; but for this there is no
foundation. What seems most certain is, that in the Tower, and not in
the closet, he signed a paper, renouncing his pretensions to the crown,
the same which he afterwards delivered on the scaffold; and that he was
inclined to make this declaration, not by any vain hope of life, but by
his affection for his children, whose situation he rightly judged would
be safer and better under the reigning monarch and his successors, when
it should be evident that they could no longer be competitors for the
throne.

Monmouth was very sincere in his religious professions, and it is
probable that a great portion of this sad day was passed in devotion and
religious discourse with the two prelates who had been sent by his
majesty to assist him in his spiritual concerns. Turner, bishop of Ely,
had been with him early in the morning, and Kenn, bishop of Bath and
Wells, was sent, upon the refusal of a respite, to prepare him for the
stroke, which it was now i