Queen Elizabeth; the sole
advantage to Henry was that his infidelities to Anne ceased to be
breaches of the seventh commandment. The justice of her sentence to
death is also open to doubt. Anne herself went to the block boldly
proclaiming her innocence.[966] Death she regarded as a relief from an
intolerable situation, and she "laughed heartily," writes the Lieutenant
of the Tower as she put her hands round her "little neck," and thought
how easy the executioner's task would be.[967] She complained when the
day of her release from this world was deferred, and regretted that so
many innocent persons should suffer through her. Of her accomplices,
none confessed but Smeaton, though Henry is said, before Anne's
arrest, to have offered Norris a pardon if he would admit his crime.
On the other hand, her conduct must have made the charges plausible.
Even in those days, when justice to individuals was regarded as dust
if weighed in the balance against the real or supposed interests of
the State, it is not credible that the juries should have found her
accomplices guilty, that twenty-six peers, including her uncle, (p. 346)
should have condemned Anne herself, without some colourable justification.
If the charges were merely invented to ruin the Queen, one culprit
besides herself would have been enough. To assume that Henry sent four
needless victims to the block is to accuse him of a lust for
superfluous butchery, of which even he, in his most bloodthirsty
moments, was not capable.[968]

[Footnote 965: This Act indirectly made Elizabeth a
bastard and Henry's marriage with Anne invalid,
(_cf._ Chapuys to Granvelle _L. and P._, x., 909).
The Antinomian theory of marital relations, which
Chapuys ascribes to Anne, was an Anabaptist
doctrine of the time. Chapuys calls Anne a
Messalina, but he of course was not an impartial
witness.]

[Footnote 966: According to some accounts, but a
Spaniard who writes as an eye-witness says she
cried "mercy to God and the King for the offence
she had done" (_L. and P._, x., 911).]

[Footnote 967: _Ibid._, x., 910.]

[Footnote 968: The execution of Anne was welcomed
by the Imperialists and Catholics, and it is