At four accordingly on the second day of October 1780, Major André was executed upon an eminence near Tappan village, in the presence of a vast concourse of people. He was dressed in full military costume and white top-boots. A large procession of officers preceded him to the gallows—a cross-piece between two trees. The prisoner's step was firm nor did he falter until he saw the gallows, realising then that, despite his appeal to Washington, he was to die as a felon and not as a soldier. His hesitation was only momentary, however. A baggage-wagon, in which was laid a plain pine coffin, had been driven under the gallows, a grave being dug near by. Into this wagon the prisoner stepped, and taking the rope from the hangman adjusted it to his neck, tying also a white silk handkerchief over his eyes. The Major was then told that he might speak if he wished. Lifting the fold lightly from his eyes and bowing courteously, André replied in a firm voice: "All I request of you, gentlemen, is that while I acknowledge the propriety of my sentence, you will bear me witness that I die like a brave man." And taking his last look at the sky, he replaced the bandage on his eyes. The wagon was driven swiftly from under him, and in a few minutes he was no more.
Under the euphemism Secret Service, we describe in England our system of espionage. In common with other countries, espionage has always prevailed in England as essential in some degree to most conditions of our political, social, diplomatic and commercial life, all of which are conducted on the most comprehensive and complex lines. The story of England has, however, revealed but little of the spy in any class and, indeed, next to nothing at all when considered in proportion to the vastness of its national and international relations and commitments, a happy state of affairs which is attributable to the fact that our constitutional liberties represent the nearest approach to the ideal in respect of the completeness of their guarantees. Going back to early periods, it is only in the case of prominent figures like Alfred—who did his own spying, it will be remembered—or the seventh Henry, or Wolsey, that we find there was anything like the beginnings of an organised secret service system. The father of King Harry, through the agency of his lawyers Empson and Dudley, undoubtedly spied out the financial conditions of the territorial nobles as well as the monastic properties, and by doing so, certainly facilitated the seizure of the Abbey possessions when the Reformation took place in the next reign. The agents employed in the case of the wealthy landowners were usually chaplains who also exercised secretarial functions for their patrons, while in the monasteries renegade monks were always to be found willing at a price to put Henry's financial sleuths in the way of obtaining correct information. The Lord Cardinal, there is no doubt, spied on the goings and comings of Campeggio when that legate was in England, and neither is there any doubt of his having spied successfully, and much to the irritation of the monarch, on King Henry himself who retaliated, however, more than once by informing the Chancellor as to certain romantic but very unpriestly trysts of the Cardinal which had come within the royal cognisance. In royal circles, of course, we may be sure that spying has always been the custom, all the more so since household officers justify their persistent attentions on the ground that the safety of the royal person requires that it should be perennially shadowed. Did not Fouché once surprise Napoleon, who was boasting of the superiority of service rendered by his own _corps d'espions_, when he informed the Emperor regarding every detail of a nocturnal outing which Majesty had made through Paris in company with Murat, and in the course of which visits were paid, in turn, to a low music-hall, a lower night-house and a cheap restaurant?