At one side a pair of stairs led up to it, and the fresh wood of the scaffolding had everywhere been decently covered in black velvet. On the platform in line with the stairs stood a single high-backed chair, also draped in black, and three or four feet in front of it a black cushion. Next to the cushion and rising above it something like a little low bench showed where the velvet imperfectly concealed an ordinary wooden chopping-block.

Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish A…, loc. 30