h suspicion, the
entire case of the Privy Council. But, on the contrary, the shocking
monstrosity of the charge strengthens the anti-Boleyn impeachment. As
a means for getting rid of Anne, the Rochford case was not at all
needed. If it could even in dreams be represented as false, the injury
offered to the Boleyns, whilst quite superfluous for any purpose of
Henry's, would be too atrocious an outrage upon truth and natural
justice for human nature to tolerate. The very stones would mutiny
against such a calumny coming as a crown or crest to other injuries
separately unendurable, if they could once be regarded as injuries at
all. Under these circumstances, what should we think of a call upon
Lord Berkshire, the very father of Anne Boleyn, to sit as one of the
judges upon the cases. Not, indeed, upon the cases of his son and his
daughter; from such Roman trials of fortitude he was excused; but on
the other cases he was required to officiate as one of the judges.
And, in fact, the array of rank and splendour, as exhibited in the
persons of those who composed the court, surpassed anything previously
known in England. On the part of the crown, it was too keenly felt
that the deep personal interest of the king, in obtaining liberty to
form a new marriage connection with Jane Seymour, would triumphantly
outweigh all the justice that ever could be arrayed against the two
Boleyns. Nothing could win a moment's audience for the royal cause,
except an unparalleled and matchless splendour in the composition of
the court. This, therefore, was secured. Pretty nearly the whole
peerage of that period was embattled upon the bench of judges.

Meantime, the tragedy, so far as the queen is concerned, took a turn
which convicts all parties of a blunder; of a blunder the most
needless and superfluous. This blunder was exposed by Bishop Burnet
about a hundred and fifty years later, but most insufficiently
exposed; and to this hour it has not been satisfactorily cleared up.
Let us pursue the arrears of the case. The four gentlemen, together
with Mark Smeton, were executed (as we have seen) on Wednesday, the
17th of May, 1536. Two days later Queen Anne Boleyn was brought out at
noonday upon the verdant lawn within the Tower, and with very slight
ceremonies she suffered decapitation. A single cannon-shot proclaimed
to London and Westminster the final catastrophe of this unhappy
romance. Anne had offered not one word of self-vindication on this
m