With a simplicity and tenderness more persuasive than the greatest oratory, he still made protestations of his innocence; and could not forbear, every moment, expressing the most lively surprise and indignation at the audacious impudence of the witnesses.
It will appear astonishing to us, as it did to Stafford himself, that the peers, after a solemn trial of six days, should by a majority of twenty-four voices, give sentence against him.

He received, however, with resignation, the fatal verdict.

"God's holy name be praised," was the only exclamation which he uttered.

When the high steward told him, that the peers would intercede with the king for remitting the more cruel and ignominious parts of the sentence, hanging and quartering, he burst into tears; but he told the lords, that he was moved to this weakness by his sense of their goodness, not by any terror of that fate which he was doomed to suffer.
It is remarkable that, after Charles, as is usual in such cases, had remitted to Stafford the hanging and quartering, the two Sheriffs, Bethel and Cornish, indulging their own republican humor, and complying with the prevalent spirit of their party, over jealous of Monarchy, started a doubt with regard to the king's power of exercising even this small degree of lenity.

"Since he cannot pardon the whole," said they, "how can he have power to remit any part of the sentence ?" They proposed the doubt to both houses: the peers pronounced it superfluous; and even the commons, apprehensive lest a question of this nature might make way for Stafford's escape, gave this singular answer: "This house is content, that the sheriffs do execute William late Viscount Stafford by severing his head from his body only." Nothing can be a stronger proof of the fury of the times, than that Lord Russel, notwithstanding the virtue and humanity of his character, seconded in the house this barbarous scruple of the Sheriffs.
In the interval between the sentence and execution, many efforts were made to shake the resolution of the infirm and aged prisoner, and to bring him to some confession of the treason for which he was condemned.
It was even rumored that he had confessed; and the zealous partymen, who, no doubt, had secretly, notwithstanding their credulity, entertained some doubts with regard to the reality of the Popish conspiracy, expressed great triumph on the occasion.