The executioner now struck the blow, but so feebly or unskilfully, that Monmouth, being but slightly wounded, lifted up his head, and looked him in the face as if to upbraid him, but said nothing.  The two following strokes were as ineffectual as the first, and the headsman, in a fit of horror, declared he could not finish his work.  The sheriffs threatened him; he was forced again to make a further trial, and in two more strokes separated the head from the body.

Thus fell, in the thirty-sixth year of his age, James, Duke of Monmouth, a man against whom all that has been said by the most inveterate enemies both to him and his party amounts to little more than this, that he had not a mind equal to the situations in which his ambition, at different times, engaged him to place himself.  But to judge him with candour, we must make great allowances, not only for the temptations into which he was led by the splendid prosperity of the earlier parts of his life, but also for the adverse prejudices with which he was regarded by almost all the contemporary writers, from whom his actions and character are described.  The Tories, of course, are unfavourable to him; and even among the Whigs, there seems, in many, a strong inclination to disparage him; some to excuse themselves for not having joined him, others to make a display of their exclusive attachment to their more successful leader, King William.  Burnet says of Monmouth, that he was gentle, brave, and sincere:  to these praises, from the united testimony of all who knew him, we may add that of generosity; and surely those qualities go a great way in making up the catalogue of all that is amiable and estimable in human nature.  One of the most conspicuous features in his character seems to have been a remarkable, and, as some think, a culpable degree of flexibility.  That such a disposition is preferable to its opposite extreme, will be admitted by all who think that modesty, even in excess, is more nearly allied to wisdom than conceit and self-sufficiency.  He who has attentively considered the political, or, indeed, the general concerns of life, may possibly go still further, and rank a willingness to be convinced, or in some cases even without conviction, to concede our own opinion to that of other men, among the principal ingredients in the composition of practical wisdom.  Monmouth had suffered this flexibility, so laudable in many cases, to degenerate into a habit which made him often follow the advice, or yield to the entreaties, of persons whose characters by no means entitled them to such deference.  The sagacity of Shaftesbury, the honour of Russell, the genius of Sydney, might, in the opinion of a modest man, be safe and eligible guides.  The partiality of friendship, and the conviction of his firm attachment, might be some excuse for his listening so much to Grey; but he never could, at any period of his life, have mistaken Ferguson for an honest man.  There is reason to believe