On the 19th of July, two days before the day fixed for his execution, Russell wrote a letter to the King that was not to be delivered to Charles until after the writer’s death. In that letter he assured the monarch that “he had always acted for the best interests of the Crown, and that if he had been mistaken he hoped the King’s displeasure would be satisfied with his death, and would not extend to his widow and children.” The following day he received the Blessed Sacrament from Tillotson. “Do you believe all the Articles of the Christian Faith as taught by the Church of England?” asked the Dean; and Russell assenting, “Do you,” continued the Dean, “forgive all your enemies?” “With all my heart,” answered Russell. Then after reading and signing the paper which he intended to give to the Sheriff on the scaffold—his farewell to his country—Russell sent for his wife, who came at once, bringing with her their three children. “Stay and sup with me,” he said to her, “let us eat our last earthly food together.” At ten o’clock that night the parting between these two took place. “Both,” writes Burnet, “were silent and trembling, their eyes full of tears which did not overflow. When she had left, ‘Now,’ said he, ‘the bitterness of death is past.’ Then he broke down: ‘What a blessing she has been to me, and what a misery it would have been if she had been crying to me to turn informer and to be a Lord Howard.’ And then he praised his devoted wife to the good Bishop as she deserved to be praised, for a nobler, more loyal or devoted wife than Rachel, Lady Russell, is not to be found in all history.” Some of the things Russell said to Burnet on that last evening of his life are well worth recording. Speaking of death he said, “What a great change death made, and how wonderfully those new scenes would strike on a soul.” He had heard, he told Burnet, “how some persons who had been born blind were struck when, by the couching of their cataracts, they obtained their sight; but what,” said he, “if the first thing they saw were the rising sun?” Lincoln’s Inn Fields was the place chosen for his execution, the scaffold being erected not far from his own house. This was on the 29th of July, and when the Sheriffs arrived to take him they found Russell quietly winding up his watch. “Now,” he said, “I have done with time, and must think henceforward of Eternity.” He then gave the watch as a souvenir to Burnet, that good old Bishop of Salisbury who had clung so closely to his friend in his trials as to a beloved brother, and to whom we owe the touching account of that friend’s last days upon earth.