from the very commencement of the civil wars, he had, through
many dangers, difficulties, and losses, still maintained his
loyalty: and was it credible, that now, in his old age, easy in his
circumstances, but dispirited by infirmities, he would belie the whole
course of his life, and engage against his royal master, from whom he
had ever received kind treatment, in the most desperate and most bloody
of all conspiracies? He remarked the infamy of the witnesses; the
contradictions and absurdities of their testimony; the extreme indigence
in which they had lived, though engaged, as they pretended, in a
conspiracy with kings, princes, and nobles; the credit and opulence to
which they were at present raised. With a simplicity and tenderness more
persuasive than the greatest oratory, he still made protestations of
his innocence; and could not forbear, every moment, expressing the
most lively surprise and indignation at the audacious impudence of the
witnesses.

It will appear astonishing to us, as it did to Stafford himself, that
the peers, after a solemn trial of six days, should by a majority of
twenty-four voices, give sentence against him. He received, however,
with resignation, the fatal verdict. "God's holy name be praised," was
the only exclamation which he uttered. When the high steward told him,
that the peers would intercede with the king for remitting the more
cruel and ignominious parts of the sentence, hanging and quartering,
he burst into tears; but he told the lords, that he was moved to this
weakness by his sense of their goodness, not by any terror of that fate
which he was doomed to suffer.

It is remarkable that, after Charles, as is usual in such cases, had
remitted to Stafford the hanging and quartering, the two Sheriffs,
Bethel and Cornish, indulging their own republican humor, and complying
with the prevalent spirit of their party, over jealous of Monarchy,
started a doubt with regard to the king's power of exercising even this
small degree of lenity. "Since he cannot pardon the whole," said they,
"how can he have power to remit any part of the sentence?" They proposed
the doubt to both houses: the peers pronounced it superfluous; and even
the commons, apprehensive lest a question of this nature might make
way for Stafford's escape, gave this singular answer: "This house is
content, that the sheriffs do execute William late Viscount Stafford by
severing his head from his body only." Nothing can be a