ioner with a single blow struck off her head. A white
handkerchief was thrown over it as it fell, and one of the ladies took
it up and carried it away. The other women lifted the body and bore it
into the Chapel of the Tower, where it was buried in the choir.[607]

Thus she too died without denying the crime for which she suffered.
Smeton confessed from the first. Brereton, Weston, Rochfort, virtually
confessed on the scaffold. Norris said nothing. Of all the sufferers not
one ventured to declare that he or she was innocent,--and that six human
beings should leave the world with the undeserved stain of so odious a
charge on them, without attempting to clear themselves, is credible only
to those who form opinions by their wills, and believe or disbelieve as
they choose.

To this end the queen had come at last, and silence is the best comment
which charity has to offer upon it. Better far it would have been if the
dust had been allowed to settle down over the grave of Anne Boleyn, and
her remembrance buried in forgetfulness. Strange it is that a spot which
ought to have been sacred to pity, should have been made the arena for
the blind wrestling of controversial duellists. Blind, I call it; for
there has been little clearness of judgment, little even of common
prudence in the choice of sides. If the Catholics could have fastened
the stain of murder on the king and the statesmen of England, they would
have struck the faith of the establishment a harder blow than by a poor
tale of scandal against a weak, erring, suffering woman: and the
Protestants, in mistaken generosity, have courted an infamy for the
names of those to whom they owe their being, which, staining the
fountain, must stain for ever the stream which flows from it. It has
been no pleasure to me to rake among the evil memories of the past, to
prove a human being sinful whom the world has ruled to have been
innocent. Let the blame rest with those who have forced upon our history
the alternative of a reassertion of the truth, or the shame of noble
names which have not deserved it at our hands.

[Sidenote: Fresh perplexity in the succession.]

[Sidenote: Elizabeth now illegitimate.]

[Sidenote: Lord Thomas Howard and Lady Margaret Douglas.]

No sooner had the result of the trial appeared to be certain, than the
prospects of the succession to the throne were seen to be more perplexed
than ever. The prince so earnestly longed for had not been born. The
disgrace