The king turns away in silence, and the prisoner rises from his knees. The bitterness of death is past; his craven weakness has gone; he leaves the room with a firm step. In the Tower he takes farewell of his children and of the brave wife who has reclaimed him from a life of vice. Then he goes to the block, and his head is hacked off by an executioner whose nerve has failed him. Let the story of the ill-starred rising be told. Monmouth was the son of King Charles and Lucy Walters, the daughter of a Welsh Royalist. In his thirty-first year he was probably the most popular man in England, extremely handsome, and gifted with the most charming manners. His father had conferred all possible honours on him, and as there was a movement to exclude his Roman Catholic uncle James from the succession he had come to regard himself as heir to the throne. He had proved himself no mean soldier on battlefields in the Netherlands and in Scotland, where he had shown mercy to the vanquished. He neglected no opportunity of making himself popular with the people. “He stood godfather to the children of the peasantry, mingled in every rustic sport, wrestled, played at quarter-staff, and won foot races in his boots against fleet runners in shoes.” His great claim, however, to the sympathy of the people was his staunch Protestantism. As a matter of fact, he had no settled religious opinions. His private life was bad, and his Protestantism was but a means to an end. He had taken part in a reckless plot towards the close of his father’s reign, and had been obliged to take refuge in the Netherlands, with a sentence of death hanging over his head. On his deathbed, when Charles blessed his children, his eldest and best-loved son was an exile and a wanderer. The dying king never mentioned his name. James began his reign by promising to “preserve the government both in Church and State as by law established.” There was no opposition to him; men were ready to rely upon “the word of a king who was never worse than his word.” They remembered his good work at the Admiralty and praised his personal courage, while they hated and feared his religion. Really, James was a stronger and better man than Charles; but while the late king was witty, gracious, good-natured, and easy-going, James was dull, suspicious, sullen, and silent. A contemporary said, “Charles could have been a great king if he would, and James would have been a great king if he could.” While Charles cared nothing for religion, and would risk nothing for the Church which he favoured, James was a zealous Roman Catholic, and was prepared to risk his crown for the sake of his Church.