alls of the palace. [423]

Both the demeanour of Monmouth and that of Grey, during the journey,
filled all observers with surprise. Monmouth was altogether unnerved.
Grey was not only calm but cheerful, talked pleasantly of horses,
dogs, and field sports, and even made jocose allusions to the perilous
situation in which he stood.

The King cannot be blamed for determining that Monmouth should suffer
death. Every man who heads a rebellion against an established government
stakes his life on the event; and rebellion was the smallest part
of Monmouth's crime. He had declared against his uncle a war without
quarter. In the manifesto put forth at Lyme, James had been held up
to execration as an incendiary, as an assassin who had strangled one
innocent man and cut the throat of another, and, lastly, as the poisoner
of his own brother. To spare an enemy who had not scrupled to resort
to such extremities would have been an act of rare, perhaps of blamable
generosity. But to see him and not to spare him was an outrage on
humanity and decency. [424] This outrage the King resolved to commit.
The arms of the prisoner were bound behind him with a silken cord; and,
thus secured, he was ushered into the presence of the implacable kinsman
whom he had wronged.

Then Monmouth threw himself on the ground, and crawled to the King's
feet. He wept. He tried to embrace his uncle's knees with his pinioned
arms. He begged for life, only life, life at any price. He owned that
he had been guilty of a greet crime, but tried to throw the blame on
others, particularly on Argyle, who would rather have put his legs into
the boots than have saved his own life by such baseness. By the ties
of kindred, by the memory of the late King, who had been the best and
truest of brothers, the unhappy man adjured James to show some mercy.
James gravely replied that this repentance was of the latest, that he
was sorry for the misery which the prisoner had brought on himself,
but that the case was not one for lenity. A Declaration, filled with
atrocious calumnies, had been put forth. The regal title had been
assumed. For treasons so aggravated there could be no pardon on this
side of the grave. The poor terrified Duke vowed that he had never
wished to take the crown, but had been led into that fatal error by
others. As to the Declaration, he had not written it: he had not read
it: he had signed it without looking at it: it was all the work of
Ferguson, that bloody