The next illustrious name that one comes to in the portentous annals of the Tower is that of Sir Harry Vane, whose death was a monstrous injustice, Charles confessing as much when he himself said of Vane that “he was too dangerous a man to let live, if we can honestly put him out of the way.” Although Vane had much to do in bringing Strafford to his death, he was not in any way concerned with the execution of Charles I., and had, on the contrary, always been opposed to that great mistake. However, in the month of July 1660, he was sent to the Tower, whence he was taken to be imprisoned in the Scilly Isles, then brought back to the Tower in March 1662, and beheaded on Tower Hill in that same year. At his trial he had pleaded Charles’s promise of a “merciful indemnity to all those not immediately concerned in his father’s death,” which should, at any rate, have saved Sir Harry from the scaffold. But Vane was too good a man for Charles to tolerate, and his execution was a judicial murder of the basest kind. Both Houses of Parliament had voted for an Act of Indemnity in Vane’s favour, but they were overruled by the King and his creatures. Pepys took the trouble to rise early on the morning of the 14th of June to see Vane’s execution. “Up by four o’clock in the morning and upon business in my office. Then we sat down to business, and about eleven o’clock, having a room got ready for us, we all went out to the Tower Hill; and there, over against the scaffold, made on purpose this day, saw Sir Harry Vane brought. A very great press of people. He made a long speech, many times interrupted by the Sheriffs and others there, and they would have taken his paper out of his hand, but he would not let it go. But they caused all the books of those that writ after him (reporters?) to be given to the Sheriffe, and the trumpets were brought under the scaffold that he might not be heard. Then he prayed, and so fitted himself, and received the blow; but the scaffold was so crowded that we could not see it done.” Sir Harry had been a thorn in Cromwell’s flesh, and the Protector’s exclamation, “The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!” is historical. To return to the year 1660, Colonels Axten and Hacker, the latter of whom had commanded the guard at the King’s trial and at his execution, together with one of his judges, Thomas Scott, were hanged at Charing Cross.