ut protection, without council,
without assistance; exposed to all the injustice which her enemies were
pleased to impose upon her: that she had quitted her native country
without other resource than her connections with him and his family, and
had expected that, instead of suffering thence any violence or iniquity,
she was assured in them of a safeguard against every misfortune: that
she had been his wife during twenty years, and would here appeal to
himself, whether her affectionate submission to his will had not merited
better treatment, than to be thus, after so long a time, thrown from
him with so much indignity: that she was conscious--he himself was
assured--that her virgin honor was yet unstained when he received her
into his bed and that her connections with his brother had been carried
no further than the ceremony of marriage: that their parents, the kings
of England and Spain, were esteemed the wisest princes of their time,
and had undoubtedly acted by the best advice, when they formed the
agreement for that marriage, which was now represented as so criminal
and unnatural: and that she acquiesced in their judgment, and would not
submit her cause to be tried by a court, whose dependence on her enemies
was too visible, ever to allow her any hopes of obtaining from them an
equitable or impartial decision.[*] Having spoken these words, she rose,
and making the king a low reverence, she departed from the court, and
never would again appear in it.

After her departure, the king did her the justice to acknowledge, that
she had ever been a dutiful and affectionate wife, and that the whole
tenor of her behavior had been conformable to the strictest rules of
probity and honor. He only insisted on his own scruples with regard
to the lawfulness of their marriage; and he explained the origin, the
progress, and the foundation of those doubts, by which he had been so
long and so violently agitated. He acquitted Cardinal Wolsey from having
any hand in encouraging his scruples; and he craved a sentence of the
court agreeable to the justice of his cause.

The legates, after citing the queen anew, declared her contumacious,
notwithstanding her appeal to Rome; and then proceeded to the
examination of the cause. The first point which came before them
was, the proof of Prince Arthur's consummation of his marriage with
Catharine; and it must be confessed, that no stronger arguments could
reasonably be expected of such a fact after