27 



tants, and Protestants hanging and behead- 

 ing Roman Catholics, each party declaring 

 what they did was for conscience sake and 

 a love of religion, and that they were only 

 barbarously cruel in order to be strictly 

 just. He saw a degraded, fawning, people 

 prostrating themselves at the feet of a cold- 

 blooded pedant, insensible alike to the les- 

 sons of virtue and to the voice of honour, 

 who, in return for their grovelling adulation, 

 set his foot upon their necks. He saw the 

 son of this imbecile monarch first loaded 

 with praises like a demi-god, then spurned 

 like a false idol, and finally executed like a 

 traitor. He saw Essex put to death by the 

 queen who loved him; Stafford abandoned 

 and sacrificed by the king whose views he 

 had too earnestly promoted; and Charles 

 himself executed amidst the cheers of a mob 

 who were loudest in their expressions of joy 

 at his coronation: a memorable warning, both 

 to those who court the smiles of princes, and 

 to those who are puffed up with the breath of 



