_Whitehall._--"King Charles I. was executed on a scaffold erected in front of the Banqueting House, towards the park. The warrant directs that he should be executed 'in the open street before Whitehall.' Lord Leicester tells us in his Journal, that he was 'beheaded at Whitehall Gate.' Dugdale, in his _Diary_, that he was 'beheaded at the gate of Whitehall;' and a single sheet of the time reserved in the British Museum, that 'the King was beheaded at Whitehall Gate.' There cannot, therefore, be a doubt that the scaffold was erected in front of the building facing the present Horse Guards. We now come to the next point which has excited some discussion. It appears from Herbert's minute account of the King's last moments, that 'the King was led all along the galleries and Banqueting House, and there was a passage _broken through the wall_, by which the king passed unto the scaffold.' This seems particular enough, and leads, it is said, to a conclusion that the scaffold was erected on the north side. Where the passage was broken through, one thing is certain, the scaffold was erected on the west side, or, in other words, 'in the open street,' now called Whitehall; and that the King, as Ludlow relates in his Memoirs, 'was conducted to the scaffold out of the window of the Banqueting House.' Ludlow, who tells us this, was one of the regicides, and what he states, simply and straightforwardly, is confirmed by any engraving of the execution, published at Amsterdam in the same year, and by the following memorandum of Vertue's on the copy of Terasson's large engraving of the Banqueting House, preserved in the library of the Society of Antiquaries:--'It is, according to the truest reports, said that out of this window King Charles went upon the scaffold to be beheaded, the window-frame being taken out purposely to make the passage on to the scaffold, which is equal to the landing-place of the hall within side.' The window marked by Vertue belonged to a small building abutting from the north side of the present Banqueting House. From this window, then the King stept upon the scaffold." We shall probably next week indulge in a few QUERIES which have suggested themselves to us, and to which Mr. Cunningham will perhaps be good enough to reply. * * * * * {437} ANECDOTE OF CHARLES I.