Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/166

152 represented that freedom of manner which Anne had acquired in France as improper levity: they indirectly accused her of a criminal dissoluteness of life, and extolled the virtues of Jane Seymour. Henry believed all, because he wished to be convinced. The queen was committed te the Tower; impeached; brought to trial; condemned without evidence, and executed without remorse. History affords no reason to call her innocence in question; and the king, by marrying her known rival the day after her execution, made the motives of his conduct sufficiently evident, and left the world in little doubt of the iniquity of her sentence.

If farther arguments should be thought necessary, in support of the innocence of the unfortunate Anne Boleyn, her serenity, and even cheerfulness, while under confinement and sentence of death, ought to have its weight, as it is perhaps unexampled, and could not well be the associate of guilt. "Never prince," says she, in a letter to Henry, "had wife more loyal in all duty, and in all true affection, than you have ever found in Anne Boleyn; with which name and place I could willingly have contented myself, if God and your grace had been so pleased; neither did I at any time, so forget myself in my exaltation, or received queenship, but that I always looked for such an alteration as I now find; for the ground of my preferment being no surer foundation than your grace's fancy, the least alteration, I knew, was fit and sufficient to draw that fancy to some other object."

In another letter, she says; "you have raised me from a private gentlewoman to a marchioness; from a marchioness to a queen; and since you can exalt me no higher in this world, you are resolved to send me to heaven, that I may become a saint!" This gaiety continued