The efforts made by Mary Love to save the life of her husband, and the correspondence which passed between them, form an affecting episode. With that courage which is inspired by a wife's affection, and which not unfrequently converts a timid and commonplace woman into a heroine, she laid a petition before Parliament, imploring pardon for the condemned, pledging his friends as security for his peaceable behaviour in time to come, and begging that the God of heaven would bow the hearts of England's rulers to shew mercy. Yet, fearing the worst, this admirable woman wrote to her husband in strains of ardent tenderness, telling him to be comforted; that death was but a little stroke, and that he would soon be where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. "Remember," she said, "though thou mayest eat thy dinner with bitter herbs, yet thou shalt have a sweet supper with Christ that night." He responded in the same spirit of resignation and triumph, assuring her that, as there was "little between him and death," so "there was little between him and heaven." A second prayer from Mrs. Love entreated that, if her husband might not be thought worthy to breathe English air, he might at least have leave to sigh out his sorrows in the utmost parts of the earth. Fifty-four ministers signed a petition, in which they besought the Parliament earnestly, and "in the bowels of Jesus Christ, who, when we were sinners, died for us, if not totally to spare the life of their dear brother, yet that they would say of him as Solomon of Abiathar, that at this time he should not be put to death." A reprieve for one month followed, at the end of which period the suspense of wife and friends settled into blank agony. A third petition produced no effect; nor a fourth, though in that the broken-hearted woman cried, "Your desolate handmaid waiteth with all humility and earnest expectation at your doors, beseeching you not to forget to shew mercy to your poor petitioner and her tender babes." "Be graciously pleased to prevent this dreadful blow." "Whilst you are propagating the Gospel in New England, let my dying husband, as a prophet from the dead, be sent to endeavour the conversion of the poor Indians." [Sidenote: 1651, August.] The last words of Christopher Love to his brave, loving Mary were: "Farewell, I will call thee wife no more--I shall see thy face no more; yet I am not much troubled, for I am going to meet the bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom I shall be eternally married."[42] [Sidenote: _Love's Execution._]