The crowd coming into the narrow court from Charing Cross saw an empty space in front of the hall. The palace and the barracks, and the innumerable passages and lodgings, were lined with “the sour-visaged saints” of the various Roundhead regiments—men to whom the death of Charles would be a latter-day miracle, a sign from Heaven that their cause was won—that the Millennium, the Fifth Monarchy, was about to begin. Even when their own turn came such men believed, till they were actually “dancing on air,” that they would be supernaturally rescued. The crowd which swarmed into the street saw only a few soldiers round the black scaffold which, at the height of the first floor, stood in front of the hall, a little to the northward. The better sort of spectators were on the roof of Wallingford House, not directly fronting the scaffold, but near enough to see. Here was stationed the venerable Archbishop Ussher of Armagh, who is reported to have fainted as he saw the King led forth. Below was a man whose account of the scene would have been invaluable now. He only alludes to it in a note written in October, 1660, This was Samuel Pepys; and he remarks, after witnessing the death of General Harrison, “thus it was my chance to see the King beheaded at White Hall, and to see the first blood shed in revenge for the blood of the King at Charing Cross.” The Banqueting House is clearly described for us in a note, probably by Inigo Jones, which was printed a few pages back. It answers most of the questions raised in a long correspondence in the papers a few years ago. The situation, the problem to be solved, was briefly this. The scaffold was before the two windows next to Charing Cross. A hole was broken through the wall to admit of a passage to the platform direct from the interior. The regicides saw that there would be great danger in taking the King out by the only door, which was at the back or east side of the hall. They would have had to conduct him by a narrow open-air passage northward to the palace gate. After passing through the gate he would have had to go several yards through the crowd before he could reach the scaffold, wherever it was placed.