sue of the king by Queen
Jane.]

[Sidenote: A reason for demurring to the popular judgment in this
matter.]

Thus was every step which had been taken in this great matter
deliberately sanctioned[622] by parliament. The criminality of the queen
was considered to have been proved; the sentence upon her to have been
just. The king was thanked in the name of the nation for having made
haste with the marriage which has been regarded as the temptation to his
crime. It is wholly impossible to dismiss facts like these with a few
contemptuous phrases; and when I remember that the purity of Elizabeth
is an open question among our historians, although the foulest kennels
must be swept to find the filth with which to defile it; while Anne
Boleyn is ruled to have been a saint, notwithstanding the solemn verdict
of the Lords and Commons, the clergy, the council, judges, and juries,
pronounced against her,--I feel that with such a judgment caprice has
had more to do than a just appreciation of evidence.

[Sidenote: The contingency to be provided for, of the last marriage
proving unfruitful.]

The parliament had not yet, however, completed their work. It was
possible, as the lord chancellor had said, that the last marriage might
prove unfruitful, and this contingency was still unprovided for. The
king had desired the Lords and Commons to name his successor; they
replied with an act which showed the highest confidence in his
patriotism; they conferred a privilege upon him unknown to the
constitution, yet a power which, if honestly exercised, offered by far
the happiest solution of the difficulty.

Henry had three children. The Duke of Richmond was illegitimate in the
strictest sense, but he had been bred as a prince; and I have shown
that, in default of a legitimate heir, the king had thought of him as
his possible successor. Mary and Elizabeth were illegitimate also,
according to law and form; but the illegitimacy of neither the one nor
the other could be pressed to its literal consequences. They were the
children, each of them, of connexions which were held legal at the
period of their birth. They had each received the rank of a princess;
and the instincts of justice demanded that they should be allowed a
place in the line of inheritance. Yet, while this feeling was distinctly
entertained, it was difficult to give effect to it by statute, without a
further complication of questions already too complicated, and without
provoking