So hated was Buckingham by the people, that Felton passed into the Tower amid blessings and prayers. He was placed in the prison lately occupied by Sir John Eliot in the Bloody Tower, and before his death made two requests—one, that he might be permitted to take the Holy Communion, and the other that he might be executed with a halter round his neck, ashes on his head, and sackcloth round his loins. On being threatened with the rack in order to induce him to give the names of his accomplices, Felton said to Lord Dorset that, in the first place, he would not believe that it was the King’s wish that he should be tortured, it being illegal; and, secondly, that if he were racked, he would name Dorset, and none but him—a capital answer. When he was asked why sentence of death should not be passed upon him, he answered: “I am sorry both that I have shed the blood of a man who is the image of God, and taken away the life of so near a subject of the King.” As a last favour, he begged that his right hand might be struck off before he was hanged. He suffered at Tyburn, and his body was gibbeted in chains at Portsmouth. “His dead body,” writes Evelyn, “is carried down to Portsmouth, hangs high there. I hear it creak in the wind.” An eye-witness describes Felton as showing much courage and calm during his trial and at his death, and Philip, Earl of Exeter, who attended the execution, declared that he had never seen such valour and piety, “more temperately mixed,” as in Felton’s demeanour. This is surely one of the strangest mysteries in our history.