Micah Clarke by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — Read

There was no delay in the work of slaughter. That very night the great / gallows was erected outside the White Hart inn. Hour after hour we could / hear the blows of mallets and the sawing of beams, mingled with the / shoutings and the ribald choruses of the Chief Justice's suite, who were / carousing with the officers of the Tangiers regiment in the front room, / which overlooked the gibbet. Amongst the prisoners the night was passed / in prayer and meditation, the stout-hearted holding forth to their / weaker brethren, and exhorting them to play the man, and to go to / their death in a fashion which should be an example to true Protestants / throughout the world. The Puritan divines had been mostly strung up / off-hand immediately after the battle, but a few were left to sustain / the courage of their flocks, and to show them the way upon the scaffold. / Never have I seen anything so admirable as the cool and cheerful bravery / wherewith these poor clowns faced their fate. Their courage on the / battlefield paled before that which they showed in the shambles of the / law. So amid the low murmur of prayer and appeals for mercy to God from / tongues which never yet asked mercy from man, the morning broke, the / last morning which many of us were to spend upon earth.

The court should have opened at nine, but my Lord Chief Justice was / indisposed, having sat up somewhat late with Colonel Kirke. It was / nearly eleven before the trumpeters and criers announced that he had / taken his seat. One by one my fellow-prisoners were called out by name, / the more prominent being chosen first. They went out from amongst us / amid hand-shakings and blessings, but we saw and heard no more of them, / save that a sudden fierce rattle of kettledrums would rise up now and / again, which was, as our guards told us, to drown any dying words which / might fall from the sufferers and bear fruit in the breasts of those who / heard them. With firm steps and smiling faces the roll of martyrs went / forth to their fate during the whole of that long autumn day, until the / rough soldiers of the guard stood silent and awed in the presence of / a courage which they could not but recognise as higher and nobler than / their own. Folk may call it a trial that they received, and a trial it / really was, but not in the sense that we Englishmen use it. It was but / being haled before a Judge, and insulted before being dragged to the / gibbet. The court-house was the thorny path which led to the scaffold. / What use to put a witness up, when he was shouted down, cursed at, / and threatened by the Chief Justice, who bellowed and swore until the / frightened burghers in Fore Street could hear him? I have heard from / those who were there that day that he raved like a demoniac, and that / his black eyes shone with a vivid vindictive brightness which was scarce / human. The jury shrank from him as from a venomous thing when he / turned his baleful glance upon them. At times, as I have been told, his / sternness gave place to a still more terrible merriment, and he would / lean back in his seat of justice and laugh until the tears hopped down / upon his ermine. Nearly a hundred were either executed or condemned to / death upon that opening day.