The speech which he had prepared for delivery at the scaffold is worthy of record, and may be read in Dodd, vol. iii. p. 359. The following is the substance of it:
"I am immediately to appear before God's tribunal … I hope therefore yon will believe a dying man … and believe that it is no ways lawful for me or any Roman Catholic to sin that good may proceed from it … I am not to be executed for refusing any allegiance to my gracious King. I have professed that fully by the oaths before his Majesty's Justice of the Peace … I have professed that neither the Pope nor any foreign person hath right to exercise any external power … without his Majesty's authority, upon his subjects. I do not mean that the King can exercise any power of the Keys or any act of jurisdiction purely spiritual or internal … I am not to be executed for the plot … Nay I am cleared by one of his Majesty's Secretaries of State … I am absolutely innocent of the plot … and detest from my heart all such bloody and damnable designs … I beseech God to discover the truth … But if there be no plot, but innocent blood hath been and now is to be spilt, Domine averte iram tuam, and impute it not to the nation … I am not to be executed for teaching sedition or treason, or any fact or doctrine which is not consistent with Monarchy, but for the only crime of Priesthood … Anne Robinson was the only positive witness against me, whom I never wronged in my life, I pray God that malice and avarice did not more move her to it, than truth. The other two witnesses, poor old people, were forced, being severely treated, to accuse me, yet they declared they did not know me … I beseech God my life may not be laid to any man's charge. Every one, the very worst of my enemies … I forgive them from my heart … I humbly beseech God to bless the King's Majesty … God bless the whole nation, and not lay my blood to the charge of it, or to any person in particular, and bring all persons to the true Church, by Faith, Hope and Charity."
An incident of his captivity is mentioned in his
