ce; and, as she knew at the moment at which she was writing, she
had never been legally married to him.

[Sidenote: Her wild words in the Tower.]

Her spirits meanwhile had something rallied, though still violently
fluctuating. "One hour," wrote Kingston,[581] "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."[582] Kingston was a hard
chronicler, too convinced of the queen's guilt to feel compassion for
her; and yet these rambling fancies are as touching as Ophelia's; and,
unlike hers, are no creation of a poet's imagination, but words once
truly uttered by a poor human being in her hour of agony. Yet they
proved nothing. And if her wanderings seem to breathe of innocence, they
are yet compatible with the absence of it. We must remind ourselves that
two of the prisoners had already confessed both their own guilt and
hers.

[Sidenote: Preparations for the trial. Necessity of entering into
offensive details.]

The queen demanded a trial; it was not necessary to ask for it. Both
she and her supposed accomplices were tried with a scrupulousness
without a parallel, so far as I am aware, in the criminal records of the
time. The substance of the proceedings is preserved in an official
summary;[583] and distressing as it is to read of such sad matters, the
importance of arriving at a fair judgment must excuse the details which
will be entered into. The crime was alike hideous, whether it was the
crime of the queen or of Henry; we may not attempt to hide from
ourselves the full deformity of it.

On the 24th of April, then, a special commission was appointed, to try
certain persons for offences committed at London, at Hampton Court, and
at the palace at Greenwich. The offences in question having been
committed in Middlesex and in Kent, bills were first to be returned by
the grand juries of both counties.

[Sidenote: The names of the commissioners appointed to