the King was limited by law, and that when he broke through those limits, his subjects might defend themselves and restrain him. He thought a violent death was a very desirable way of ending one's life; it was only the being exposed to be a little gazed at, and to suffer the pain of one minute, which, he was confident, was not equal to the pain of drawing a tooth. He said he felt none of those transports that some good people felt; but he had a full calm in his mind, no palpitation at heart, nor trembling at the thoughts of death. He was much concerned at the cloud that seemed to be now over his country; but he hoped his death would do more service than his life could have done. "This was the substance of the discourse between him and me. Tillotson was oft with him that last week. We thought the party had gone too quick in their consultations, and too far; and that resistance in the condition we were then in was not lawful. He said he had leisure to enter into discourses of politics; but he thought a government limited by law was only a name, if the subjects might not maintain those limitations by force; otherwise all was at the discretion of the Prince: that was contrary to all the notions he had lived in of our government.[210] But, he said, there was nothing among them but the embryos of things that were never like to have any effect, and they were now quite dissolved. He thought it was necessary for him to leave a paper behind him at his death: and, because he had not been accustomed to draw such papers, he desired me to give him a scheme of the heads fit to be spoken to, and of the order in which they should be laid; which I did. And he was three days employed for some time in the morning to write out his speech. He ordered four copies to be made of it, all which he signed; and gave the original with three of the copies to his lady, and kept the other to give to the sheriffs on the scaffold. He writ it with great ease, and the passages that were tender he writ in papers apart, and showed them to his lady and to myself, before he writ them out fair. He was very easy when this was ended. He also writ a letter to the King, in which he asked pardon for every thing he had said or done contrary to his duty, protesting he was innocent as to all designs against his person or government, and that his heart was ever devoted to that which he thought was his Majesty's true interest. He added that, though he thought he had met with hard measures, yet he forgave all concerned in it, from the highest to the lowest; and ended, hoping that his Majesty's displeasure at him would cease with his own life, and that no part of it should fall on his wife and children. The day before