his examination he refused to give any information, and suffered death upon a sentence of outlawry, which had passed in the former reign.  It is recorded that James interrogated him personally, and finding him sullen, and unwilling to speak, said:  “Mr. Ayloff, you know it is in my power to pardon you, therefore say that which may deserve it:”  to which Ayloff replied:  “Though it is in your power, it is not in your nature to pardon.”  This, however, is one of those anecdotes which are believed rather on account of the air of nature that belongs to them, than upon any very good traditional authority, and which ought, therefore when any very material inference with respect either to fact or character, is to be drawn from them, to be received with great caution.

Rumbold, covered with wounds, and defending himself with uncommon exertions of strength and courage, was at last taken.  However desirable it might have been thought to execute in England a man so deeply implicated in the Rye House Plot, the state of Rumbold’s health made such a project impracticable.  Had it been attempted he would probably, by a natural death, have disappointed the views of a government who were eager to see brought to the block a man whom they thought, or pretended to think, guilty of having projected the assassination of the late and present king.  Weakened as he was in body, his mind was firm, his constancy unshaken; and notwithstanding some endeavours that were made by drums and other instruments, to drown his voice when he was addressing the people from the scaffold, enough has been preserved of what he then uttered to satisfy us that his personal courage, the praise of which has not been denied him, was not of the vulgar or constitutional kind, but was accompanied with a proportionable vigour of mind.  Upon hearing his sentence, whether in imitation of Montrose, or from that congeniality of character which causes men in similar circumstances to conceive similar sentiments, he expressed the same wish which that gallant nobleman had done; he wished he had a limb for every town in Christendom.  With respect to the intended assassination imputed to him, he protested his innocence, and desired to be believed upon the faith of a dying man; adding, in terms as natural as they are forcibly descriptive of a conscious dignity of character, that he was too well known for any to have had the imprudence to make such a proposition to him.  He concluded with plain, and apparently sincere, declarations of his undiminished attachment to the principles of liberty, civil and religious; denied that he was an enemy to monarchy, affirming, on the contrary, that he considered it, when properly limited, as the most eligible form of government; but that he never could believe that any man was born marked by God above another, “for none comes into the world with a saddle on his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him.”