"You cannot," he said, "deprive me of the hopes which I owe to it." Some attempts were made to obtain a remission of the flogging.

A Roman Catholic priest offered to intercede in consideration of a bribe of two hundred pounds.

The money was raised; and the priest did his best, but in vain.
"Mr.Johnson," said the King, "has the spirit of a martyr; and it is fit that he should be one." William the Third said, a few years later, of one of the most acrimonious and intrepid Jacobites, "He has set his heart on being a martyr, and I have set mine on disappointing him." These two speeches would alone suffice to explain the widely different fates of the two princes.
The day appointed for the flogging came.

A whip of nine lashes was used.
Three hundred and seventeen stripes were inflicted; but the sufferer never winced.

He afterwards said that the pain was cruel, but that, as he was dragged at the tail of the cart, he remembered how patiently the cross had been borne up Mount Calvary, and was so much supported by the thought that, but for the fear of incurring the suspicion of vain glory, he would have sung a psalm with as firm and cheerful a voice as if he had been worshipping God in the congregation.