Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/396

376 further honours upon her on earth, for purposing by martyrdom to make her a saint in heaven. This answer also was unwise in point of worldly prudence; and I am obliged to add, that the tone which was assumed, both in this and in her first letter, was unbecoming (even if she was innocent of actual sin) in a wife who, on her own showing, was so gravely to blame. It is to be remembered that she had betrayed from the first the King's confidence; and she knew at the moment at which she was writing that she had never been legally married to him.

Her spirits meanwhile had something rallied, though still violently fluctuating. 'One hour,' wrote Kingston, 'she is determined to die, and the next hour much contrary to that.' Sometimes she talked in a wild, wandering way, wondering whether any one made the prisoners' beds, with other of those light trifles which women's minds dwell upon so strangely, when strained beyond their strength. 'There would be no rain,' she said, 'till she was out of the Tower; and if she died, they would see the greatest punishment for her that ever came to England.' 'And then,' she added, 'I shall be a saint in heaven, for I have done many good deeds in my days; but I think it much unkindness in the King to put such about me as I never loved.' Kingston was a hard chronicler, too convinced of the Queen's guilt to feel compassion for her; and yet these rambling fancies