"Nectare clausa suo,
Dignum tantorum pretium tulit illa laborum."
Servetus (Michael. He calls himself Serveto alias Revès, adding his family name to his own, in the title of his earliest book. For twenty years of his life, during his residence in France, he was known only as Michael de Villanovanus, from the assumed name of his birthplace), 1509 or 1511-1553. "Jesus, Son of the eternal God, have mercy on me!"
The sentence was drawn out at great length on the 26th of October. Servetus did not know it till the next day, Friday, two hours before the execution. On a rising ground near the lake, a little to the eastward of the city, he was chained to a stake, and, the oldest account (that in Sandius) says, for more than two hours, while stifling in the fumes of straw and brimstone, suffered the torture of a fire of "green oak fagots, with the leaves still on," the wind blowing the flame so that it would only scorch, not kill, till the crowd, in horror, heaped the fuel closer. His last cry was, "Jesus, Son of the eternal God, have mercy on me!" Farel's retort was, "Call rather on the Eternal Son of God!" "I know well," he had written not long before, "that for this thing I must die, but not for that does my heart fail me that I may be a disciple like the Master."
Joseph Henry Allen in the New World, Dec. 1892.
Seton (Elizabeth Ann, philanthropist, foundress and first Superior of the Sisters of Charity in the United States), 1774-1821. "Soul of Christ, sanctify me; Body of Christ, save me; Blood of Christ, inebriate me; Water out of the side of Christ, strengthen me." A few moments after she had spoken these words she murmured, "Jesus, Mary, Joseph," and expired.
Severus (Bishop of Ravenna),—390. "My dear one, with whom I lived in love so long, make room for me, for this is my grave, and in death we shall not be divided." The last words of Severus are purely traditional.
Severus, Bishop of Ravenna, prepared a tomb for himself in his church. In it he placed the bodies of his wife, Vincentia, and of his daughter, Innocentia. After some years he was premonished that his time to die had come. He held service with the people, dismissed them and closed the cathedral doors. Then, clothed in his episcopal robes, with one attendant, he went to the sepulchre of his family. They raised the stone from the tomb, and Severus, looking in, said: "My dear one, with whom I lived in love so long, make room for me, for this is my grave, and in death we shall not be divided." Immediately he descended into the tomb, laid himself down beside his wife and daughter, crossed his hands upon his breast, looked up to heaven in prayer, gave one sigh and fell asleep.
Sheppard (Jack, the noted highwayman, the hero of many a chap-book of his day, and the hero and title of a novel by Defoe, and one by Ainsworth), 1701-1724. "I have ever cherished an honest pride; never have I stooped to friendship with Jonathan Wild, or with any of his detestable thief-takers; and though an undutiful son I never damned my mother's eyes."
Jack Sheppard was a popular idol followed by praise and applause even to the gallows. "There was scarce a beautiful woman in London who did not solace him during his prison hours with her condescension, and enrich him with her gifts. Not only did the President of the Royal Academy deign to paint his portrait, but (a far greater honor) Hogarth made him immortal. Even the King displayed a proper interest, demanding a full and precise account of his escapes. The hero himself was drunk with flattery; he bubbled with ribaldry; he touched off the most valiant of his contemporaries in a ludicrous phrase. But his chief delight was to illustrate his prowess to his distinguished visitors, and nothing pleased him better than to slip in and out of his chains."
Not a few of the highwaymen of the day were "gentlemen" and "coxcombs." We have from Swift a picture of one such in his sketch of "Clever Tom Clinch," who