The Earl of Derwentwater, after all hope of mercy had left him, repudiated the principles he had affected while he was seeking for mercy. He had called the judgment of the Lords a ‘just judgment,’ and he acknowledged a difficulty in advancing anything that could extenuate his guilt. When the hour of execution was approaching, he expressed a desire that the inscription on his coffin-plate should intimate that he had died in the cause of his lawful and legitimate sovereign. With this desire the prudent undertaker declined to comply. On the scaffold, where the earl did not allow his sensible terror of death to mar his manly dignity, he read a paper, in which he denied the guilt he had formerly admitted, and also the authority of the peers who had pronounced a judgment which he had acknowledged to be just! He protested that the only lawful king was King James; and he asserted that the country would not be free from disturbances and distractions till that most praiseworthy king should be restored. Yet, he remarked that he himself would have lived in peace, if King George had only granted him his life! That Lord Derwentwater should have been allowed to read such a paper to a multitude witnessing his execution, is a proof of the indifference of the Government to the consequences of such an appeal. As far as the author of it was concerned, it was in bad taste. In every other respect, the unfortunate earl met his fate with becomingness. At a single stroke of the axe, he passed from life unto death; but the plaintive spirit of his last words lives in that stanza of ‘Lord Derwentwater’s Last Good Night,’ in which, referring to his countess, he says,―― Farewell, farewell, my lady dear, Ill, Ill, thou counseled’st me, I never more may see the babe, That smiles upon thy knee. [Sidenote: _LORD KENMURE._]