en authentic, Throgmorton
would naturally have appealed to Cromwell's recollection. But Mr. Brewer
accepts the version of a confessed boaster as if it was a complete and
trustworthy account of what had actually passed. He does not ask himself
whether if the King or Cromwell had given their version it might not have
borne another complexion. Henry was not a safe person to take liberties
with. Is it likely that if one of his subjects, who was actively opposing
him in Parliament, had taxed him with an enormous crime, he would have
made a confession which Throgmorton had only to repeat in the House of
Commons to ruin him and his cause? Mr. Brewer should have added also that
the authority which he gave for the story was no better than Father Peto,
afterwards Cardinal Peto, as bitter an enemy of the Reformation as Pole
himself. Most serious of all, Mr. Brewer omits to mention that Throgmorton
was submitted afterwards to a severe cross-examination before a Committee
of Council, the effect of which, if he had spoken truly, could only be to
establish the authenticity of a disgraceful charge.[28]

The last evidence alleged is the confession made by Anne Boleyn, after her
condemnation, of some mystery which had invalidated her marriage with the
King and had been made the ground of an Act of Parliament. The confession
was not published, and Catholic opinion concluded, and concludes still,
that it must have been the Mary Boleyn intrigue. Catholic opinion does not
pause to inquire whether Anne could have been said to confess an offence
of the King and her sister. The cross-examination of Throgmorton turns the
conjecture into an absurdity. When asked, in 1537, whom he ever heard say
such a thing, he would have had but to appeal to the proceedings in
Parliament in the year immediately preceding.

Is it likely finally that if Throgmorton's examination proves what Mr.
Brewer thinks it proves, a record of it would have been preserved among
the official State Papers?

If all the stories current about Henry VIII. were to be discussed with as
much detail as I have allowed to this, the world would not contain the
books which should be written. An Irish lawyer told me in my youth to
believe nothing which I heard in that country which had not been sifted in
a court of justice, and only half of that. Legend is as the air
invulnerable, and blows aimed at it, if not "malicious mockery" are waste
of effort. Charges of scandalous immorality are pre