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left leg. On the day of his execution, he limped to the scaffold and even this appeared heroic as it was the same leg he had injured when fighting the Spanish. Raleigh made a long and moving speech, forgiving his enemies and refuting all the charges brought against him. He asked for divine forgiveness, admitting that he was 'a man full of vanity' and that he had lived 'a sinful life, in all sinful callings, having been a soldier, a captain, a sea captain, and a courtier, which are all places of wickedness and vice'. He then turned to the kneeling, hooded axeman, put his hands on the man's shoulders, forgave him, and unexpectedly said: 'Show me thine axe'. The executioner was confused: he did not think it proper to show a man the weapon that was going to kill him but Raleigh asked again. The executioner held out the axe. Raleigh ran his finger down the blade and said, 'This blade give me no fear. It is a sharp medicine...a physician for all my diseases'.
    Sir Walter Raleigh meets his end with typical composure, remarking to the executioner that his axe was 'a sharp medicine...a physician for all my disease'
    Echoing the story that Sir Walter Raleigh had spread his cloak over a puddle to keep Elizabeth I's feet dry, the executioner now spread his cloak on the scaffold for the nobleman to kneel on. The executioner asked the condemned whether he wished to face the east and Raleigh answered: 'If the heart be straight, it is no matter which way the head lieth'. He knelt, briefly prayed, and said to the executioner, 'When I stretch forth my hands, despatch me', but when he did, the headsman hesitated. 'What dost thou fear?' said Raleigh. 'Strike man, strike.' The executioner did so – twice. Even so, it was noticed that the body never moved or twitched though the lips continued to move in prayer.
    The head was shown from both sides of the scaffold and put in a red leather bag. It was later given to Lady Raleigh who kept it with her until she died twenty-nine years later. Her son, Carew, then took it and was said to be buried with it. Sir Walter's body was buried at St Margaret's in Westminster.

To Kill a King
    The most momentous beheading in British history was the execution of Charles I at Whitehall on 30 January 1649. After losing the English Civil War, he was tried by a parliamentary court and found guilty of treason for having declared war on his people. A scaffold was built outside the Banqueting Hall so thousands could witness his death. The execution should have taken place early in the morning, but was delayed until an ordinance could be rushed through Parliament at the last minute, declaring it treason for anyone to be proclaimed as the dead king's successor. Charles did not appear on the scaffold until two o'clock that afternoon, famously wearing two shirts so he would not be seen shivering in the winter cold and so give the impression that he was afraid.
    People thronged the streets, leaned through windows, and perched on roofs and chimneys for a good view. From the scaffold, Charles proclaimed himself a 'martyr for the people'. Some of the spectators agreed with him while others came to celebrate the death of a tyrant. 'There is but one stage more,' said William Juxon, Archbishop of Canterbury, 'which, though turbulent and troublesome, yet is very short... It will carry you from earth to heaven... to a crown of glory.' Charles gave Juxon a gold £5 or £6 piece bearing the head that he was about to lose and presented his jailer, Sir Thomas Herbert, with his silver alarm watch. This was a private joke between the two men: Charles had complained that Herbert needed an alarm clock so he could rise early enough to wake the king and had one ordered from a London watchmaker. At the time of the beheading, it had not yet arrived.
    The execution of King Charles I, a momentous event in English history that would see the nation governed as a republic for a decade
    There were two black-clad figures on the scaffold. One was