Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/383

1536.] himself innocent. The result was unsatisfactory, and it was thought that it would 'much touch the King's honour' if the guilt of the accused was not proved more clearly. 'Only Mark,' Sir Edward Baynton said, would confess 'of any actual thing;' although he had no doubt 'the other two' were 'as fully culpable as ever was he.' They were, however, for the present, recommitted to the Tower; whither also in the afternoon the council conducted the Queen, and left her in the custody of Sir William Kingston.

She was brought up the river; the same river along which she sailed in splendour only three short years before. She landed at the same Tower Stairs; and, as if to complete the misery of the change, she was taken 'to her own lodgings in which she lay at her coronation.' She had feared that she was to go to a dungeon. When Kingston told her that these rooms had been prepared for her, 'It is too good for me,' she said, 'Jesu have mercy on me;' 'and kneeled down, weeping a great space; and in the same sorrow fell into a great laughing.' She then begged that she might have the sacrament in the closet by her chamber, that she might pray for mercy, declaring 'that she was free from the company of man as for sin,' and was 'the King's true wedded wife.'

She was aware that the other prisoners were in the Tower, or, at least, that Smeton, Weston, and Norris