Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/392

372 than murder. Those who consider that he possessed the ordinary qualities of humanity, and that he was really convinced of her guilt, may explain his offer as the result of natural feeling. But in whatever motive his conduct originated, it was ineffectual. Anne, either knowing that she was innocent, or trusting that her guilt could not be proved, trusting, as Sir Edmund Baynton thought, to the constancy of Weston and Morris, declined to confess anything. If any man accuse me,' she said to Kingston, I can but say nay; and they can bring no witness.' Instead of acknowledging any guilt in herself, she perhaps retaliated upon the King in the celebrated letter which has been thought a proof both of her own innocence, and of the conspiracy by which she was destroyed. This letter also, although at once so well known and of so dubious authority, it is fair to give entire.

'Sir, Your Grace's displeasure and my are imprisonment are things so strange unto me,