of other royalists before, and after, Charles' execution—including William Laud and Lord Capel. Despite this, Brandon denied being the executioner throughout his life, and a contemporary letter claims that he refused a parliamentarian offer of £200 to perform the execution. A tract published shortly after Brandon's death, The Confession of Richard Brandon, claims to contain a deathbed confession of Brandon to the execution of Charles, though it attracted little attention in its time and is now regarded as a forgery. Of the other suggested candidates: Peter had prominently advocated for Charles' death but was absent from his execution, though he was reported to have been kept at home through illness. Joyce was a loyal fanatic of Cromwell and had, earlier in the war, captured the king from Holdenby House. William Walker was a parliamentarian soldier who, according to local tradition, had confessed to the regicide several times. Bigg was a clerk of the regicide Simon Mayne and later hermit who, according to local tradition, became a hermit shortly after the Restoration out of fear for being tried as the executioner. Reaction In Britain {{quotebox|right|width=260px|source=From Andrew Marvell's "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland", written 1650. |text=<poem>That thence the Royal actor borne The tragic scaffold might adorn: While round the armèd bands Did clap their bloody hands. He nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable scene, But with his keener eye The axe's edge did try;</poem>}} On his execution day, the reports of Charles' last actions were fitting for his later portrayal as a martyr – as biographer Geoffrey Robertson put it, he "played the martyr's part almost to perfection". This was certainly no accident, a flurry of royalist reports overstated the horror of the crowd and the biblical innocence of Charles in his execution. Even Charles showed planning for his future martyrdom: apparently delighted that the biblical passage to be read upon the day of his execution was Matthew's account of the Crucifixion. He had hinted to his cousin, the Duke of Hamilton, in 1642: In the opinion of Daniel P. Klein: "Charles was a defeated and humiliated king in 1649. Yet by tying his trial to Christ's, the King was able to lay claim to martyrdom, connecting his defeated political cause with religious truth." Almost immediately after Charles was executed, the supposed meditations and autobiography of Charles, , began to circulate in England. The book gained massive