Page:The Queens of England.djvu/348

 308 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. acknowledge myself adjudged by law, how justly I will not say; I intend not an accusation of any one. I beseech the Almighty to preserve his Majesty long to reign over you. A more gentle or mild prince never swayed scepter ; his bounty toward me hath been special. If any one intend an inquisitive survey of my actions, I entreat them to judge favorably of me, and not rashly to admit any censorious act ; and so I bid the world farewell, beseeching you to commend me in your prayers to God." This address has been very properly doubted. Mr. Secre- tary Cromwell, whose son and heir was married to the sister of Jane Seymour, who had supplanted Anne in Henry's affec- tion, and who, though he owed his present greatness to her, was too much of a courtier to give her the least succor in her troubles, was present, and probably introduced the words about a gentle and mild prince to please his tyrant master. At all events those declarations are not more opposed to nature and honesty, than they are to her own words in her letter to the king of the 6th of May, that "he must hereafter expect to be called to a strict account for his treatment of her, if he took away her life on false and slanderous pretences." She spoke with an unfaltering voice and a calm countenance ; and then, uncovering her neck, she knelt down and prayed aloud, "To Jesus Christ I commend my soul!" She laid her head on the block, but is said by one account to have refused to have her eyes bandaged ; and that such was, the effect which their saint-like expression produced on her executioner, that he could not strike the fatal blow, until, by inducing some of his attendants to approach on her right side, he, taking off his shoes, noiselessly advanced on the left ; and Anne, hearing the steps on her right, turned her glance on that side, when the ax fell on that fair neck, and severed the head from it. A Portuguese gentleman, however, who was present, relates that her eyes were bandaged with a handkerchief by one of her ladies. A cry of grief and horror burst from the specta- tors when the head of the victim fell ; but it was hushed by the discharge of artillery, which made known the tragical catastrophe, and was the signal to Henry that he was free to wed Jane Seymour.