old, a
small treatise on fortification, an album filled with songs, receipts,
prayers, and charms, and the George with which, many years before, King
Charles the Second had decorated his favourite son. Messengers were
instantly despatched to Whitehall with the good news, and with the
George as a token that the news was true. The prisoner was conveyed
under a strong guard to Ringwood. [420]

And all was lost; and nothing remained but that he should prepare to
meet death as became one who had thought himself not unworthy to wear
the crown of William the Conqueror and of Richard the Lionhearted,
of the hero of Cressy and of the hero of Agincourt. The captive might
easily have called to mind other domestic examples, still better suited
to his condition. Within a hundred years, two sovereigns whose blood ran
in his veins, one of them a delicate woman, had been placed in the same
situation in which he now stood. They had shown, in the prison and on
the scaffold, virtue of which, in the season of prosperity, they had
seemed incapable, and had half redeemed great crimes and errors
by enduring with Christian meekness and princely dignity all that
victorious enemies could inflict. Of cowardice Monmouth had never been
accused; and, even had he been wanting in constitutional courage, it
might have been expected that the defect would be supplied by pride
and by despair. The eyes of the whole world were upon him. The latest
generations would know how, in that extremity, he had borne himself.
To the brave peasants of the West he owed it to show that they had not
poured forth their blood for a leader unworthy of their attachment. To
her who had sacrificed everything for his sake he owed it so to bear
himself that, though she might weep for him, she should not blush for
him. It was not for him to lament and supplicate. His reason, too,
should have told him that lamentation and supplication would be
unavailing. He had done that which could never be forgiven. He was in
the grasp of one who never forgave.

But the fortitude of Monmouth was not that highest sort of fortitude
which is derived from reflection and from selfrespect; nor had nature
given him one of those stout hearts from which neither adversity nor
peril can extort any sign of weakness. His courage rose and fell with
his animal spirits. It was sustained on the field of battle by the
excitement of action. By the hope of victory, by the strange influence
of sympathy. All such a