This fact—for it is not merely an opinion—seems to answer a question that is often asked: Did the coolness of Charles on that last day at Westminster Hall, and again on the scaffold at Whitehall, betray any feeling, any certainty that he would be respited or rescued? A moment’s thought dispels the idea. Charles was manly, dignified, truthful before Bradshaw and before the crowds which had assembled to see him die, because he recognised that all the finessing, the double meanings, the secret understandings, and the thousand miserable subterfuges which he imagined to be “statesmanship,” and with which he had endeavoured to impose on the Scots and on the authorities of Carisbrooke and of Hampton Court, had done nothing for him, and if renewed now would have ensured that the fate which he foresaw had at last overtaken him would be justified by a large section of his contemporaries. He rose to the occasion. During those few hours at St. James’s he saw that all he could do would be to save the throne for his son, and he succeeded, but it was by a line of conduct wholly different from that by which he had lost it for himself. The place of execution was most carefully chosen. Though called “the open street of Whitehall,” it was far from being really open. On the south were buildings pierced by the narrow archway of Holbein’s Gate. On the west were the walled tilt-yard and the barracks and other buildings, ending with Wallingford House. On the north was the comparatively open roadway to Charing Cross. On the eastern side were long rows of gabled buildings already described, with, just south of an archway into the old courts of the palace, the Banqueting House. It was sworn at the trials of the Regicides, a few years later, that Oliver Cromwell superintended the arrangements. The evidence is not well supported, but, owing to Cromwell’s great military reputation and to his subsequent elevation to the Protectorate, everything at this conjuncture was attributed to him. It is not very easy to reconcile the conflicting details of different stories. It neither adds to nor detracts from Oliver’s guilt, neither adds to nor detracts from his fame, whether he was at Westminster or at Whitehall on that fatal day.