Digby was hanged, drawn and quartered early on Thursday 30 January. Throngs of spectators lined the streets as he was strapped to a wattled hurdle, and alongside Robert Wintour and John Grant was dragged by horse to the western end of Old St Paul's Cathedral churchyard. Thomas Bates was delivered in a similar fashion, but from the Gatehouse Prison. Armed guards interspersed along the route were there to defend against any possible rescue, but did not keep the miscreants' families from witnessing the fate of the four men. Cold and grubby, Digby was the first of the four to face the executioner. He mounted the scaffold and addressed the audience, telling them that he knew he had broken the law, but that morally, and in the eyes of his religion, he had committed no offence. He asked for God's forgiveness, and the country's, and protested the Jesuits' and Father Gerard's innocence. He refused the attentions of a Protestant clergyman, speaking to himself in Latin, before saying goodbye to his friends.