Pamela’s prayer represents, in the Arcadia, the Zenith of the character Pamela’s character arc. She represents the pinnacle of virtue being stoic in the face of injustice, and accepting her fate with the knowledge that virtue will overcome injustice and even death. Because of Pamela representing otherworldly grace, and specifically in the context of being faced with an unjust death, it was later used and adapted to fit the very real and historical death of King Charles I. Interestingly, the two death’s occupy two very different contexts in relation to the power dynamic at play. While King Charles believed himself to be divinely endowed with a right to rule from heaven, Pamela in her case is essentially a powerless figure. It is interesting that King Charles supposedly read aloud the passage before his execution, with it almost feeling like a political act to cement his legacy, drawing on romantic fiction to evoke an emotional response to his execution. The most interesting and relevant section to the discussion of grace comes at the middle of page 464, where Pamela talks about how virtue is tested, and should be welcomed by virtuous grace. The passage reads “Let calamity be the exercise, but not the overthrow of my virtue: let their power prevail, but prevail not to destruction: let my greatness be their prey: Let my pain be the sweetness of their revenge: let them (If so it seem good unto thee) vex me with more and more punishment).” It’s interesting the choice of words that Pamela uses when she talks about “calamity” being an exercise of virtue. In many readings this year, virtue being something that is trained is a repeated theme, and emphasized by some of the early medieval scholars which would have influenced the writings of Arcadia. Pamela, in this instance, is actually welcoming or even encouraging the misfortunes that have been wrought upon her. This contains obvious Chistian undertones, with the power dynamic between her and her captors being an important point of emphasis. The passage directly following Pamela’s Prayer also contains interesting vocabulary and descriptions of her prayer. The text describes the way in which Pamela in many ways had transcended the material world, and is in a sense has become so filled with virtue that it is no longer solely human in her prayer. The text tells us how it seemed that devotion had “borrowed her body” in order to make a perfect representation of itself in human form. There is also a reference to her eyes looking up so gracefully in prayer that they might have been lifted to the sky to join the stars. All of these commentaries imply that Pamela had already in some sense transcended her bodily form. It is again interesting to read this commentary on Pamela’s prayer and relate it to the later execution of King Charles. Given his impending execution, it would seem as if King Charles might have even seen himself as already in some way having left the material world, and perhaps wanted people to view that as being true.