isked the experiment. I
think that there is some improbability here. Unlikely as it is that
queens should disgrace themselves, history contains unfortunately more
than one instance that it is not impossible. That queens in that very
age were capable of profligacy was proved, but a few years later, by the
confessions of Catherine Howard. I believe history will be ransacked
vainly to find a parallel for conduct at once so dastardly, so
audacious, and so foolishly wicked as that which the popular hypothesis
attributes to Henry VIII.

[Sidenote: The facts in favour of the queen.]

[Sidenote: The facts against her.]

This is a fair statement of the probabilities; not, I believe,
exaggerated on either side. Turning to the positive facts which are
known to us, we have amongst those which make for the queen her own
denial of her guilt; her supposed letter to the king, which wears the
complexion of innocence; the assertions of three out of the five other
persons who were accused, up to the moment of their execution; and the
sympathizing story of a Flemish gentleman who believed her innocent, and
who says that many other people in England believed the same. On the
other side, we have the judicial verdict of more than seventy noblemen
and gentlemen,[595] no one of whom had any interest in the deaths of the
accused, and some of whom had interests the most tender in their
acquittal; we have the assent of the judges who sat on the commission,
and who passed sentence, after full opportunities of examination, with
all the evidence before their eyes; the partial confession of one of the
prisoners, though afterwards withdrawn; and the complete confession of
another, maintained till the end, and not withdrawn upon the scaffold.
Mr. Hallam must pardon me for saying that this is not a matter in which
doubt is unpermitted.

[Sidenote: Wednesday, May 17. The execution of the five gentlemen.]

A brief interval only was allowed between the judgment and the final
close. On Wednesday, the 17th, the five gentlemen were taken to
execution. Smeton was hanged; the others were beheaded. Smeton and
Brereton acknowledged the justice of their sentence. Brereton said that
if he had to die a thousand deaths, he deserved them all; and Brereton
was the only one of the five whose guilt at the time was doubted.[596]
Norris died silent; Weston, with a few general lamentations on the
wickedness of his past life. None denied the crime for which they
suffere