Long manuscript of an early Victorian poem entitled 'The last of the Hohen Stauffens', divided into three sections: 'Italy', 'The Morning of the Execution' and 'The Execution'. With a number of emendations and deletions.

Folio, 11 pp. On the rectos of eleven leaves of Britannia paper watermarked 'W H FELLOWS | 1841'. Held together with string. Text clear and complete. In ink, with deletions and emendations in pencil. Good, on aged paper. Docketed on reverse of last leaf. The subject of the poem is the execution of Conradine in the market square in Naples, 29 October 1268. The first section (3 pp) begins 'Italia fair Italia unto thee, | Was beauty given twice with misery, | At once the loveliest and the loveliest clime, | Thou wert the seat of Empire, and of crime; [...]'. An alternative to the last line has been written in, and deleted: 'Thy charms were only equalled by thy crime'. The second section (4 pp, originally titled 'The Morning immediately before the Execution') begins At that sweet hour when twilight into day, | Dips her dark wing, and mistlike fades away, [...]'. It contains another poem (deleted by the author), entitled 'Good Bye & Farewell', beginning 'The thrilling whisper of "Good Bye", | Thou not unmix'd with pain, | Seems to anticipate the joy, | Of meeting once again.' The third section (4 pp) begins 'Close to the castle walls, and just beneath, | A solemn scaffold rear'd its form of death, | While close around a dense and bristling mass, | Of soldiers, occupied the meanest place; [...]'. The author is not named. It may be a coincidence, but a review of M. E. Jeffreys 'Hoel the Hostage and other Poems' in the Metropolitan Magazine for June 1842 mentions that the volume contains a poem by this title, one of a number of historical narratives, 'replete with animation and descriptive spirit'.