inister
significance, allegations unsupported, and not included in the indictment,
were dragged in to prejudice the accused; and loose statements incapable
of proof or disproof were liberally introduced for the same purpose. The
charge of incest with Rochford depended entirely upon the assertion that
he once remained in his sister's room a long time; and in his case also
loose gossip was alleged as a proof of crime: that Anne had said that the
King was impotent,[161] that Rochford had thrown doubts upon the King
being the father of Anne's child, and similar hearsay ribaldry. Both Anne
and her brother defended themselves, unaided, with ability and dignity.
They pointed out the absence of evidence against them, and the inherent
improbability of the charges. But it was of no avail, for her death had
already been settled between Henry and Cromwell: and the Duke of Norfolk,
with his sinister squint, condemned his niece, Anne Queen of England, to
be burnt or beheaded at the King's pleasure; and Viscount Rochford to a
similar death. Both denied their guilt after sentence, but acknowledged,
as was the custom of the time, that they deserved death, this being the
only way in which mercy might be gained, so far as forfeiture of property
was concerned.

Anne had been cordially hated by the people. Her rise had meant the
destruction of the ancient religious foundations, the shaking of the
ecclesiastical bases of English society; but the sense of justice was not
dead, and the procedure at the trial shocked the public conscience.
Already men and women murmured that the King's goings on with Mistress
Seymour whilst his wife was under trial for adultery were a scandal, and
Anne in her death had more friends than in her life. On all sides in
London now, from the Lord Mayor downwards, it was said that Anne had been
condemned, not because she was guilty, but because the King was tired of
her: at all events, wrote Chapuys to Granvelle, there was surely never a
man who wore the horns so gaily as he.[162] On the 17th May the five
condemned men were led to their death upon Tower Hill, all of them,
including Smeaton, being beheaded.[163] As usual in such cases, they
acknowledged general guilt, but not one (except perhaps Smeaton) admitted
the particular crimes for which they died, for their kin might have
suffered in property, if not in person, if the King's justice had been
too strongly impugned.

Anne, in alternate hope and despair, still re