with regard to these engagements.
Northumberland took an oath before the two archbishops, that no contract
or promise of marriage had ever passed between them: he received the
sacrament upon it, before the duke of Norfolk and others of the privy
council; and this solemn act he accompanied with the most solemn
protestations of veracity.[*] The queen, however, was shaken by menaces
of executing the sentence against her in its greatest rigor, and was
prevailed on to confess in court some lawful impediment to her marriage
with the king.[**] The afflicted primate, who sat as judge, thought
himself obliged by this confession to pronounce the marriage null and
invalid. Henry, in the transports of his fury, did not perceive that
his proceedings were totally inconsistent, and that if her marriage
were from the beginning invalid, she could not possibly be guilty of
adultery.

* Herbert, p. 384*[**missing period]

** Heylin, p. 94.

The queen now prepared for suffering the death to which she was
sentenced. She sent her last message to the king, and acknowledged
the obligations which she owed him, in thus uniformly continuing his
endeavors for her advancement: from a private gentlewoman, she said, he
had first made her a marchioness, then a queen, and now, since he could
raise her no higher in this world, he was sending her to be a saint
in heaven. She then renewed the protestations of her innocence, and
recommended her daughter to his care. Before the lieutenant of the
Tower, and all who approached her, she made the like declarations;
and continued to behave herself with her usual serenity, and even with
cheerfulness. "The executioner," she said to the lieutenant, "is, I
hear, very expert; and my neck is very slender:" upon which she grasped
it in her hand, and smiled. When brought, however, to the scaffold,
she softened her tone a little with regard to her protestations
of innocence. She probably reflected, that the obstinacy of Queen
Catharine, and her opposition to the king's will, had much alienated him
from the lady Mary: her own maternal concern, therefore, for Elizabeth
prevailed in these last moments over that indignation which the unjust
sentence by which she suffered naturally excited in her. She said that
she was come to die, as she was sentenced, by the law: she would accuse
none, nor say any thing of the ground upon which she was judged. She
prayed heartily for the king; called him a most merciful and ge