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232. Servilely submissive as were all about him, the tyrant had yet his fears of the effect of this execution, for it was a piece of brutality which no king before him had attempted. There had not yet existed in England a monarch so debased, so unmanly as to send his queen to the block under any circumstances, however aggravated. He therefore had apprehensions whether the public would tolerate such an outrage on the queen. To make all sure, he therefore not only ordered the execution to take place on the green, within the Tower walls, and all strangers to be excluded, but kept the hour unknown. The poor victim, worn out with suspense, sent for Kingston, and said, "Mr. Kingston, I hear that I shall not die before noon, and I am very sorry therefore, for I thought to be dead by this time, and past my pain." Kingston assured her that "the pain would be little, it was so subtle." She then said, "I have heard say the executioner is very good, and I have a little neck," putting her hands about it, and laughing heartily. Kingston, in his report to Cromwell, said that he had seen both men and women executed, and they had been in great sorrow; but that the queen, to his knowledge, "had much joy and pleasure in death."

A few minutes before twelve o'clock she was led forth by the Lieutenant of the Tower to the scaffold. There she saw amongst the few spectators admitted, the Duke of Suffolk, one of her most spiteful enemies, come to feast his eyes on her blood, with the Duke of Richmond, Henry's natural son, and Cromwell, who, though he had risen chiefly by her means, was one of the most willing instruments of her death. Probably the consciousness that the manner in which she met her death would be carried by those courtiers to the king, might have given Anne additional power to go off the stage with the dignity becoming a queen. She had a rich colour in her cheeks, and a bright splendour of the eyes, which astonished the spectators. "Never," said a foreign gentleman present, "had the queen looked so beautiful before." Her composure was equal to her beauty. She removed her hat and collar herself, and put a small linen cap upon her head, saying, "Alas! poor head, in a very brief space thou wilt roll in the dust on the scaffold; and as in life thou didst not merit to wear a crown, so in death thou deserved not better doom than this." She then took a very affectionate farewell of her ladies. The speech which she is said to have addressed to the spectators is differently related, and probably was reported so as to suit the ears of the tyrant who was to hear it. In the shortest, she is made to say:—"Masters, I here humbly submit me to the law, as the law hath judged me; and as for my offences (I here accuse no man), God knoweth them. I remit them to God, beseeching him to I have mercy on my soul; and I beseech Jesu save my sovereign and master, the king, the most goodliest, noblest, and gentlest prince that is, and make him long to reign over you." The latter part of this speech was clearly got up by Cromwell, or some other of the sycophant spectators, or in Anne is a severe irony. It is certain that she sent the king a very cutting message before her death, for it was enclosed in her letter which we have given, by Cromwell, in whose possession it was found. "Commend me to His Majesty, and tell him he hath over been constant in his cause of advancing me. From a private gentlewoman he made me a marchioness, from a marchioness a queen; and now he hath left no higher degree of honour, he gives my innocency the crown of martyrdom."

Having given to Mary Wyatt, the sister of Sir Thomas Wyatt, who attended her through all her trouble, the little book of devotions which she held in her hand, and whispered to her some parting words, she laid her head on the block, one of the ladies covered her eyes with a bandage, and saying, "O Lord, have mercy on my soul," the executioner, who had been sent for from Calais, severed her head from her body at one stroke with a sword. Her body was thrust into a chest used for keeping arrows in, and buried in the same grave with that of her brother, Lord Rochford, no coffin being provided.

We have been necessarily led to observe the weak and defective side of Anne Boleyn's character, in tracing her progress. Her ambition, her levity, her little regard for the feelings and patience of her Royal mistress, her regardlessness of her good fame by living so openly with the king before their marriage, and her great culpability in marrying him whilst the real queen was not only still living, but undivorced, exhibit her but as a worldly woman of a conduct most censurable. But we should do violence to historic impartiality if we did not also bear witness that she had a better side to her character, better feelings in her heart. Though she never was a Protestant, however much a certain party may labour to represent her as such, but conformed to all the rites and maintained all the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church to the last, yet she was at the same time kindly disposed towards the Reformers, and was not only a reader of the Bible in Tyndal's translation, but is said to have recommended its perusal to the king—to very little purpose, it must be confessed. She rescued the good and simple Hugh Latimer from the persecuting clutches of Stokesley, the Bishop of London, received him, and listened to his preaching, made him her chaplain, and, it is said, became much more serious and considerate of others under his faithful guidance. She got him promoted to the see of Worcester, and showed the effect of his more enlightened Christian philosophy upon her, by setting aside a certain portion of privy-purse allowance to establish manufactures for the permanent support of the people, and for relieving those she could not employ in every parish in the kingdom. In alms alone, within the last nine months of her life, she distributed £14,000, and selected young men of talent, and sent them to college at her own expense, that they might become able ministers in the Church.

The Royal rank for which she sacrificed her conscience and her life she possessed but three years, for it was on the 28th of May, 1533, that Cranmer declared her marriage lawful, and on the 19th of May, 1536, she perished on the scaffold, being only thirty-six years of age. The scandalous haste with which Henry pushed on her final tragedy has been well expressed by Bishop Godwin. "The Court of England was now like a stage, whereon are represented the vicissitudes of ever-various fortune; for within one and the same month, it saw Queen Anne flourishing, accused, condemned, executed, and another assumed into her place, both of bed and