So here is the secret revealed at length to the dumb and innocent paper; God knoweth it is, as Lawrence Hyde saith, a great while ago; for the rest, the world knows how the Duke rode out to Sedgemoor with such a look in his face the very children knew he was marked for doom, and how he fled, leaving his men to gain great honour after he had forsaken them. Also how he was found in peasant’s dress, so changed they did not know him till the George of diamonds flashed out on his tattered garments as he fainted in his captor’s clutch. Lord Grey was taken with him; they stayed at Ringwood two days and from there his Grace wrote frantically to the King and to Lord Rochester. It is very clear he meant to buy his life with his wretched secret, though I think my lord Grey must have been ever urging him to die with a decent carriage. So they brought him to London and he was taken before his Majesty, swordless and with his hands tied behind him. What passed no man knoweth but James Stewart; he has spoken often of it, and I know those to whom he has told of Monmouth’s ignoble desperate pleadings for life at any cost, of his casting himself down and imploring mercy. Yet he must have been spurred by something in the demeanour of his ancient enemy, for he never told his secret, and he left the presence with anger and dignity, resolving, it must be, to cheat the King of that last satisfaction. Yet afterwards he fell again into unmanly misery that was the wonder of all, and then into a strange mood that was neither the apathy of despair, or, as some said, an exalted enthusiasm. I wondered then and now where his proofs were: not found on him with the other poor trifles I had seen at Bridgewater Castle–destroyed, perhaps. And so he died, hurried reluctant from life, without either religion or repentance, sorry for the blood shed in the West, firm in his love for Lady Harriet, indifferent to the clergyman who cried out on the scaffold: “God accept your imperfect repentance!” He would not join in the prayer for the King; when they goaded him he said “Amen” with a careless air. Knowing as I do what bitter terror he felt, what ghastly anticipations he had, what agony he had endured at the thought of the sheer moment of death, with what shivering sickness he felt the axe, with what horror he eyed the headsman, I cannot bear to write or think how they mangled him.… And so he died; he brought much misery on the innocent and he was maybe a worthless man, yet I could weep for him even now. I am glad he did not speak; Lord Grey has been ever silent and no one else knows. * * * * * Among all those who watched that fair-haired head held up it is strange there is not one to think it showed little likeness to the dark-browed Stewart Kings.… Here the paper is endorsed in another hand: