On the 7th of December of this same year, Algernon Sidney was executed on Tower Hill, having been condemned to death by a picked jury and the infamous Chief-Justice Jeffreys, on the trumped-up charge of conspiring against the life of Charles; only one witness appeared against him, but he was condemned by his writings, which were certainly strongly republican; yet, considering what the rule of the second Charles had become, a man of Algernon Sidney’s lofty spirit, with his love of freedom, could not have written or thought otherwise. It has been well said of him that not only did he write from his judgment but also from his heart, and he informed his readers of that which he felt as well as that which he knew. He was condemned principally for the treatise in which he advocated the rights of subjects, under certain contingencies, to depose their king, and although this paper had never been published, or, in fact, printed, it was sufficient material for Jeffreys, who bullied the jury into a committal against Sidney. Algernon Sidney’s life had been as noble as was his name, but his unbending republican principles had made him the _bête noire_ of both Charles and James, and any evidence by which he could be entrapped into a charge of treason was welcome to them. When he came forth from the Tower to die in the cause of liberty, “Englishmen,” as Dalrymple has finely written, “wept not for him as they had done for Lord Russell, their pulses beat high, their hearts swelled, they felt an unusual grandeur and elevation of mind whilst they looked upon him.” One of the Sheriffs asked Sidney if it was his intention to make a speech upon the scaffold, to which he answered, “I have made my peace with God, and have nothing to say to man,” adding, “I am ready to die, and will give you no further trouble.” His last prayers were for “the good old cause.” When his head lay on the block, the executioner asked him if he would raise it again. “Not till the general resurrection; strike on!” And these were Algernon Sidney’s last words. [Illustration: _James, Duke of Monmouth._ (_From a Contemporary Engraving._)] CHAPTER XV JAMES II. During the four years in which James the Second misgoverned England, the most interesting events connected with the Tower were the tragedy of the Duke of Monmouth’s death, and the imprisonment of the Seven Bishops. James was the first of our sovereigns to omit passing the night previous to his coronation in the Tower, and the fortress now ceased entirely to be a royal residence, being given over to the uses which it still fulfils.