lness as he had passed to
it; and observing the lords seated at a distance, some at windows, he
requested they would approach him, as he wished that they should all
witness what he had to say. The request was complied with by several.
His speech is well known; but some copies contain matters not in others.
When he finished, he requested Lord Arundel that the king would not
suffer any libels to defame him after death.--"And now I have a long
journey to go, and must take my leave." "He embraced all the lords and
other friends with such courtly compliments, as if he had met them at
some feast," says a letter-writer. Having taken off his gown, he called
to the headsman to show him the axe, which not being instantly done, he
repeated, "I prithee let me see it, dost thou think that I am afraid of
it?" He passed the edge lightly over his finger, and smiling, observed
to the sheriff, "This is a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all
diseases," and kissing it laid it down. Another writer has, "This is
that that will cure all sorrows." After this he went to three several
corners of the scaffold, and kneeling down, desired all the people to
pray for him, and recited a long prayer to himself. When he began to fit
himself for the block, he first laid himself down to try how the block
fitted him; after rising up, the executioner kneeled down to ask his
forgiveness, which Rawleigh with an embrace gave, but entreated him not
to strike till he gave a token by lifting up his hand, "_and then, fear
not, but strike home!_" When he laid his head down to receive the
stroke, the executioner desired him to lay his face towards the east.
"It was no great matter which way a man's head stood, so that the heart
lay right," said Rawleigh; but these were not his last words. He was
once more to speak in this world with the same intrepidity he had lived
in it--for, having lain some minutes on the block in prayer, he gave the
signal; but the executioner, either unmindful, or in fear, failed to
strike, and Rawleigh, after once or twice putting forth his hands, was
compelled to ask him, "Why dost thou not strike? Strike! man!" In two
blows he was beheaded; but from the first his body never shrunk from the
spot by any discomposure of his posture, which, like his mind, was
immovable.

"In all the time he was upon the scaffold, and before," says one of the
manuscript letter-writers, "there appeared not the least alteration in
him, either in his voice or c