On arriving at the prison, Montrose was asked whether he had anything to say before receiving his sentence. He refused to reply; he did not know whether the king had concluded any arrangement with Parliament. The treaty was signed, and Charles II. was upon the point of proceeding to Scotland. This was made known to Montrose, who appeared somewhat moved, while persisting in his silence, notwithstanding the solicitations of the commissioners. Two days afterwards, at the bar of Parliament, where he appeared magnificently attired, defending himself from the cruelties which had been imputed to him during the war, he heard his sentence kneeling. "I kneel to render honor to the king my master, in whose name you sit," he said, "and not to Parliament." The execution was fixed for the morrow. The soldiers and citizens were under arms; some attempt in favor of the condemned man was feared. "What!" said Montrose, "do these good people, who were so greatly in fear of me when I was alive, still fear me when I am about to die? Let them beware! When I am dead I shall haunt their consciences, and be far more formidable than when alive." {217} He refused the services of the Presbyterian ministers, and spent the entire night alone in prayer save when he was composing verses of a beautiful and noble kind notwithstanding their subtlety. "I wish," he said, "I had limbs enough to be dispersed into all the cities of Christendom, there to remain as testimonies in favor of the cause for which I suffer." Proud and calm, he thus marched to the scaffold; the executioner wept on placing the rope round his neck. A sorrowful murmur arose among the crowd. Argyle himself was agitated and sad, as though smitten with some regret or with a presentiment of his own fate. The commissioners of Parliament had not deceived Montrose when they told him that they had negotiated with the king, and that he was about to come back among them. At the moment when the news of the defeat of Montrose arrived at Breda, Charles II., hitherto hesitating, decided to accept the Covenant and to promise to govern in all civil matters according to the advice of Parliament, in all religious matters according to the advice of the Presbyterian Church. To give to his promises the sanction of a brilliant falsehood, he wrote to Parliament that, having forbidden Montrose to undertake his expedition, he could not regret the defeat of a man who had disobeyed him.