Strafford, in passing from his apartment to Tower Hill, where the scaffold was erected, stopped under Laud’s windows, with whom he had long lived in intimate friendship, and entreated the assistance of his prayers in those awful moments which were approaching. The aged primate dissolved in tears; and having pronounced, with a broken voice, a tender blessing on his departing friend, sank into the arms of his attendants. Strafford, still superior to his fate, moved on with an elated countenance, and with an air even of greater dignity than what usually attended him. He wanted that consolation which commonly supports those who perish by the stroke of injustice and oppression; he was not buoyed up by glory, nor by the affectionate compassion of the spectators. Yet his mind, erect and undaunted, found resources within itself, and maintained its unbroken resolution amid the terrors of death and the triumphant exultations of his misguided enemies. His discourse on the scaffold was full of decency and courage. “He feared,” he said, “that the omen was bad for the intended reformation of the state, that it commenced with the shedding of innocent blood.” Having bid a last adieu to his brother and friends who attending him, and having sent a blessing to his nearer relations who were absent--“And now,” said he, “I have nigh done! One stroke will make my wife a widow, my dear children fatherless, deprive my poor servants of their indulgent master, and separate me from my affectionate brother and all my friends! But let God be to you and them all in all!” Going to disrobe and prepare himself for the block, “I thank God,” said he, “that I am nowise afraid of death, nor am daunted with any terrors; but do as cheerfully lay down my head at this time, as ever I did when going to repose!” With one blow was a period put to his life by the executioner. Thus perished, in the forty-ninth year of his age, the Earl of Strafford, one of the most eminent personages that has appeared in England. Though his death was loudly demanded as a satisfaction to justice, and an atonement for the many violations of the constitution, it may safely be affirmed that the sentence by which he fell was an enormity greater than the worst of those which his implacable enemies prosecuted with so much cruel industry. The people in their rage had totally mistaken the proper object of their resentment. All the necessities, or more properly speaking, the difficulties, by which the king had been induced to use violent expedients for raising supply were the result of measures previous to Strafford’s favor; and if they arose from ill conduct, he, at least, was entirely innocent.