told they must die in the order of their rank, as though they were going in to dinner; and upon Lord Capel's offering to address the crowd without removing his hat, it was explained to him that this was incorrect. The scaffold was not the House of Parliament, and those who graced it were expected to uncover. On a later and very memorable occasion, the Earl of Kilmarnock, "with a most just mixture of dignity and submission," offered the melancholy precedence to Lord Balmerino. That gallant soldier—"a natural, brave old gentleman," says Horace Walpole, though he was but fifty-eight—would have mounted first, but the headsman interfered. Even upon the scaffold, a belted earl enjoyed the privileges of his rank.
All this formality must have damped the spirits of the condemned; but it seems to have been borne with admirable gayety and good temper. Lord Balmerino, "decently unmoved," was ready to die first or last, and he gave the punctilious executioner three guineas, to prove that he was not impatient. "He looked quite unconcerned," says an eye-witness, "and like some one going on a party of pleasure, or upon
