On the hurdle which carried Coke was placed the head of Harrison, who had been executed the day before--a piece of needless brutality, which the people who lined the streets indignantly resented. On the scaffold Coke declared that for the part he had borne in the trial of Charles I he in no way repented of what he had done. Hugh Peters was made to witness all the horrible details of Coke's execution, the hanging, the disembowelling. He sat within the rails which surrounded the scaffold. According to Ludlow: "When this victim (Coke) was cut down and brought to be quartered, one Colonel Turner called to the sheriff's men to bring Mr. Peters to see what was doing; which being done, the executioner came to him, and rubbing his bloody hands together, asked him how he liked that work. He told him he was not at all terrified, and that he might do his worst, and when he was on the ladder he said to the sheriff, 'Sir, you have butchered one of the servants of God before my eyes, and have forced me to see it, in order to terrify and discourage me; but God has permitted it for my support and encouragement.'" A man upbraided Peters with the King's death. "Friend," said Peters, "you do not well to trample upon a dying man: you are greatly mistaken; I had nothing to do in the death of the King." As he was going to the gallows, he looked about him and espied a man with whom he was acquainted, and to him he gave a piece of money, having first bent it; and he desired the man to carry that piece of gold to his daughter as a token, and to assure her that his heart was full of comfort, and that before that piece would reach her hand he would be with God in glory. Then the old preacher, who had lived in storms and whirlwinds, died with a quiet smile on his countenance. That a considerable portion of the community regarded the execution of the regicides as a crime, and those who suffered as martyrs, would appear from the pains taken to vilify their memory when dead, and attempts made to justify their execution. The authorities for the life of Hugh Peters are mainly: _Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow_, 1771; B. Whitelocke's _Memorials of English Affairs_, 1732; Rushworth's _Collections_, 1692; Bishop Burnet's _History of His Own Time_, 1724; John Thurloe's _Collection of State Papers_, 1742; J. B. Felt's _Ecclesiastical History of New England_, 1855; Benjamin Brooke's _Puritans_, 1813, Vol. III; _The Trial of Charles I and of Some of the Regicides_, in Murray's Family Library, 1832; the Rev. Samuel Peters' _A History of the Rev. Hugh Peters_, New York, 1807; _An Historical and Critical Account of Hugh Peters_ (with portrait), London, 1751, reprinted 1818; Felt (Joseph B.), _Memoir, a Defence of Hugh Peters_, Boston, 1857; Colomb (Colonel), _The Prince of Army Chaplains_, London, 1899; also Gardiner's (S. R.) _History of the Commonwealth_, and the _Dictionary of National Biography, passim_. FOOTNOTES: [2] Froude, _Hist. of England_, X, p. 410. [3] _Ibid._, XI, 471-2.