—_— ee a 
By W. W. Ravenhill, Esq. 5 
die, as do nothing unworthy that virtue in which we have mutually supported 
each other, and for which I desire you not repine that I am first to be rewarded ; 
since you ever preferred me to yourself in all otber things, afford’me, with 
chearfulness, the precedence in this. * 
I desire your prayers in the articles of death, for my own will then be offered 
for you and yours. 
J. PENRUDDOCK.” 
Unfortunately he does not tell us whether he had ever seen the 
original, or what was his authority for this letter. We cannot feel 
certain whether either of the above letters was ever penned by Colonel 
Penruddock. The one has the weight which attaches to a publication 
made soon after the event. The other has no date at all, and there 
are not a sufficient number of the Colonel’s undoubted letters left 
to us to judge from the style. It may be there was a second letter 
from Mrs. Penruddock to her husband, during the thirteen days 
he still survived, and that the latter is an answer to that, but that 
is mere conjecture, so I pass on. 
The morning of Wednesday, the 16th of May, dawned on a 
scaffold set for the execution, in that noble amphitheatre the castle 
yard at Exeter. The bright green foliage of the fine old trees 
which surrounded it, then alive with the song and hum of young 
spring bird and insect, must have contrasted strangely with the 
black-clothed mournful groups, and the tolling bell. 
The executioner has made his preparations—the block is placed, 
the axe gleams in the sun, and the sawdust is thrown round—the 
hour of death has come ! 
We know not the friends who were present to support Penruddock 
and Grove on the occasion. But we may fairly presume that 
George Penruddock, the former’s eldest son, Mr. Bowman, who 
preserved the notes of Sergeant Glynne’s sentence of death, and 
Mr. Martin, the Vicar of Compton Chamberlain, were there, and 
some relations of Hugh Grove, together with Doctors Short and 
Flavell, apparently two clergymen of the Church of England, who 
assisted the condemned with ministrations during their last hours. 
The following accounts of what happened are from manuscripts 
now at Compton and Zeals, which have a genuine appearance, though 
* “Se invicem anteponendo” Tacitus.—Agricola, . 
