prove that he was insane when he committed the murder, he was, without a
dissentient voice, pronounced "Guilty," and sentenced to be "hanged by
the neck until he was dead," when his body should be handed over to the
surgeons for dissection. One concession he claimed--pitiful salve to his
pride--that he should be hanged by a cord of silk, the privilege due to
his rank as a Peer of the realm; and this was granted as a matter of
course.

One day in early May the scaffold was reared at Tyburn, where so many
other malefactors had looked their last on the world; and at nine
o'clock in the morning Lord Ferrers started on his last journey--the
most splendid and most tragic of his chequered life. He was allowed, as
a last favour, to travel to his death, not in the common hangman's cart
as an ordinary criminal, but in his own landau, drawn by 'six beautiful
horses; and thus he made his stately progress to Tyburn.

Probably no man ever journeyed to the scaffold under such circumstances
of pomp and splendour. It might well, indeed, have been the bridal
procession of a great nobleman that the black avenues of curious
spectators in London's streets had come to see, and not the last grim
journey of a malefactor to the hangman's rope. His very dress was that
of a bridegroom, consisting, as it did, to quote again from the
_Gentleman's Magazine_,

"of a suit of light-coloured clothes, embroidered with
silver, said to have been his wedding-suit; and soon
after the Sheriff entered the landau, he said, 'You may,
perhaps, sir, think it strange to see me in this dress,
but I have my particular reasons for it.' The procession
then began in the following order: A very large body of