every step. But
it is to be remembered that if the improbability of crimes so revolting
is becoming greater, the opposite improbability increases with equal
strength--that English noblemen and gentlemen could have made themselves
a party to the invention of the story. For invention is unfortunately
the only word; would indeed that any other were admissible! The
discovery of the indictment disposes at once of Burnet's legend, that
the queen was condemned on hearsay evidence; or that her guilt was
conjectured from an exaggerated report of foolish conversations. It cuts
off all hope, too, of possible mistake. I have heard the name Leontes
mentioned as a parallel to Henry; and if the question lay only between
the king and his wife, we would gladly welcome the alternative. Charity
would persuade us that a husband had been madly blind, sooner far than
that a queen had been madly wicked. But this road for escape is closed.
The mistake of Leontes was transparent to every eye but his own. The
charges against Anne Boleyn were presented by two grand juries before
the highest judicial tribunal in the realm. There was nothing vague,
nothing conjectural. The detail was given of acts and conversations
stretching over a period of two years and more; and either there was
evidence for these things, or there was none. If there was evidence, it
must have been close, elaborate, and minute; if there was none, these
judges, these juries and noblemen, were the accomplices of the king in a
murder perhaps the most revolting which was ever committed.

[Sidenote: The difficulty in the way of supposing the accusations
forged.]

It may be thought that the evidence was pieced together in the secrets
of the cabinet; that the juries found their bills on a case presented to
them by the council. This would transfer the infamy to a higher stage;
but if we try to imagine how the council proceeded in such a business,
we shall not find it an easy task. The council, at least, could not have
been deceived. The evidence, whatever it was, must have been examined by
them; and though we stretch our belief in the complacency of statesmen
to the furthest limit of credulity, can we believe that Cromwell would
have invented that dark indictment,--Cromwell who was, and who remained
till his death, the dearest friend of Latimer? Or the Duke of Norfolk,
the veteran who had won his spurs at Flodden? Or the Duke of Suffolk and
Sir William Fitzwilliam, the Wellington and t