a friend and schoolfellow of Brereton, said that at first he and all other
friends of the Gospel had been unable to believe that the Queen had
behaved so abominably. "As he might be saved before God, he could not
believe it, till he heard them speak at their death; but in a manner all
confessed but Mr. Norris, who said almost nothing at all."[419]

Dying men hesitate to leave the world with a lie on their lips. It appears
to me, therefore, that these five gentlemen did not deny their guilt,
because they knew that they were guilty. The unfortunate Anne was still
alive; and while there was life there was hope. A direct confession on
their part would have been a confession for her as well as themselves, and
they did not make it; but, if they were really innocent, that they should
have suffered as they did without an effort to clear themselves or her is
one more inexplicable mystery in this extraordinary story.

Something even more strange was to follow.

At her trial Anne had been "unmoved as a stone, and had carried herself as
if she was receiving some great honour." She had been allowed a chair, and
had bowed to the Peers as she took her seat. She said little, "but her
face spoke more than words, and no one to look on her would have thought
her guilty." "She protested that she had not misconducted herself." When
Norfolk delivered sentence her face did not change. She said merely that
she would not dispute the judgment, but appealed to God.[420] Smeton had
repeated his own confession on the scaffold. She turned pale when she was
told of it. "Did he not acquit me of the infamy he has laid on me?" she
said. "Alas, I fear his soul will suffer for it!"[421]

But she had asked for time to prepare her conscience and for spiritual
help; she called herself a Lutheran, and on the Tuesday, the day after her
trial, Cranmer went to the Tower to hear her confession. She then told the
Archbishop something which, if true, invalidated her marriage with the
King; if she had not been his wife, her intrigues were not technically
treason, and Cranmer perhaps gave her hope that this confession might save
her, for she said afterwards to Sir William Kingston that she expected to
be spared and would retire into a nunnery.[422] The confession, whatever
it might be, was produced on the following day by the Archbishop sitting
judicially at Lambeth,[423] and was there considered by three
ecclesiastical lawyers, who gave as their opinion that she ha