By W. W. Ravenkill, Esq. 



67 



and further corporall payne and execution of ye bodies of ye persons aforesaid. 

 And for soe doeing this shalbe your Warrant. Given at Whitehall the 3 rd of 

 May 1655. 



To John Coppleston Esqr, High Sheriffe 

 of our Countie of Devo7i f or his Deputie." 



There was no drawing and quartering, such as was served out in 

 after days by the Royalists to their opponents. The Lord Protector 

 was ahead of his times in this, and we must admire him for it, when 

 we think of the sentence passed on Lord William Russell. 



Sir Richard Hoare, Mod. Wilts, Hund. Mere, 35, says the copy 

 he there gives is taken from the original in the custody of Ambrose 

 Steed, a relation of the then Sheriff at Exeter, August 11th, 1760 ; 

 and in Hund. Damerham, p. 85, the original is spoken of as " still ex- 

 tant in the Penruddock family." Between 1761 and the writing 

 of Hund. Damerham it had passed from Mr. Steed to the Penruddock 

 family ; and, so far as I can discover, there never was but one copy 

 of it, that given in Oliver's History of Exeter being an inaccurate 

 representation of the same document. Search was made in Sir R. 

 Hoare's time, for this supposed second copy of the warrant, it could 

 not be found, and never has been (Hund. Dunworth, p. 263, note) 

 so far as I know to this day. It is identical, except that Robert 

 Duke's name is interlineated and then erased, after Hugh Grove's 

 in both places. Here it shares the same fate, but is written in the 

 same line. How the story given in Oliver originated, it is not easy 

 now to discover, but I can find no foundation for it, and therefore do 

 not repeat it here. 



Poor Robert Duke escaped for the time; a very doubtful advantage ! 



(To be Continued.) 



