God's Fury, England's Fire_ A New History of the English Civil Wars - Michael J. Braddick [28]
While in prison awaiting trial Felton became something of a celebrity and was frequently visited by people anxious to ‘see the man who had committed so bold a murder’ and others wishing ‘to understand what were the motives and inducements thereunto’. His captors in fact were a little concerned that he was becoming ‘puffed up with the vain applause of the multitude’. Felton admitted that he had committed the murder and that he was wrong to have done it, but he told his visitors that ‘he had long looked upon the Duke as an evil Instrument in the Commonwealth and that he was convinced there for by the Remonstrance of Parliament’. Such considerations, ‘together with the instigation of the Evil One’, had led him to his action. Under examination before the council he expanded on some of these comments, saying that he had killed the duke, ‘partly for private displeasure, and partly by reason of a Remonstrance in Parliament, having also read some books which he said defended that it was lawful to kill an enemy to the republic’.7
The Privy Council was anxious to discover who had incited him to commit the murder, suspecting the ‘Puritans’, but Felton insisted that he had acted alone and had not told anyone of his intentions. In the face of this insistence William Laud, then Bishop of London and emerging as an influential anti-Puritan, threatened him with the rack. But Felton was clearly made of stern stuff, and even though he was a ‘person of little stature’ he had ‘a stout and revengeful spirit’.8 In these tense moments he demonstrated considerable sang froid, replying that if he were put to the rack:
he could not tell whom he might nominate in the extremity of torture, and if what he should say then must go for truth, he could not tell whether his Lordship (meaning the Bishop of London) or which of their Lordships he might name, for torture might draw unexpected things from him.
After this there were no more questions for the prisoner.9
Legal proprieties were observed throughout. Charles wanted to put Felton on the rack but respected the judges” unanimous opinion that it would not be lawful.10 At his trial, on 27 November, Felton offered ‘that hand to be cut off that did the fact’, but even though the offer was made by him the court found that it could not inflict this further punishment. Once again this decision was made despite the evident wishes of the King, who had ‘sent to the judges to intimate his desire that his hand be cut off before execution’.11
On the scaffold Felton would have been expected to make a good end. Felons often made, or were said to have done, ‘last dying speeches’ which affirmed the validity of social and political order and the rightness of their own execution. The drama on the scaffold was a crucial demonstration of the power of the state, and its claims to legitimacy.12 Felton seems to have done his part. A pamphlet recounted his ‘prayer and confession’ on the scaffold, ‘word for word’. According to this account he asked several times for the forgiveness of God, acknowledging the punishments that he deserved and admitting that he had been driven by the Devil. He also sought the pardon of the Duchess of Buckingham and her household, including ‘the veriest scullion of her kitchen’. Better still, from an official point of view, he told his auditors: ‘That which drew me to this horrid sinful fact, was some foul reports, which though they had been true it was damnable in me, in committing so foul a sin’. He wished the King long life and hoped that ‘the parliament may agree, and be united in one’. He went further, expressing gratitude for official mercy: ‘I did not think but that I