arges against Anne, accusing her of dreadful crimes which she had never
committed, and implicating in them her own brother and certain gentlemen
in her service: among whom one Norris, and Mark Smeaton a musician, are
best remembered. As the lords and councillors were as afraid of the King
and as subservient to him as the meanest peasant in England was, they
brought in Anne Boleyn guilty, and the other unfortunate persons accused
with her, guilty too. Those gentlemen died like men, with the exception
of Smeaton, who had been tempted by the King into telling lies, which he
called confessions, and who had expected to be pardoned; but who, I am
very glad to say, was not. There was then only the Queen to dispose of.
She had been surrounded in the Tower with women spies; had been
monstrously persecuted and foully slandered; and had received no justice.
But her spirit rose with her afflictions; and, after having in vain tried
to soften the King by writing an affecting letter to him which still
exists, 'from her doleful prison in the Tower,' she resigned herself to
death. She said to those about her, very cheerfully, that she had heard
say the executioner was a good one, and that she had a little neck (she
laughed and clasped it with her hands as she said that), and would soon
be out of her pain. And she _was_ soon out of her pain, poor creature,
on the Green inside the Tower, and her body was flung into an old box and
put away in the ground under the chapel.

There is a story that the King sat in his palace listening very anxiously
for the sound of the cannon which was to announce this new murder; and
that, when he heard it come booming on the air, he rose up in great
spirits and ordered out his dogs to go a-hunting. He was bad enough to
do it; but whether he did it or not, it is certain that he married Jane
Seymour the very next day.

I have not much pleasure in recording that she lived just long enough to
give birth to a son who was christened EDWARD, and then to die of a
fever: for, I cannot but think that any woman who married such a ruffian,
and knew what innocent blood was on his hands, deserved the axe that
would assuredly have fallen on the neck of Jane Seymour, if she had lived
much longer.

Cranmer had done what he could to save some of the Church property for
purposes of religion and education; but, the great families had been so
hungry to get hold of it, that very little could be rescued for such
objects.