two other blows, which hit him successively on the leg, threw him down again. Twice more he stands up; but a fourth time he receives a thrust from a lance, he staggers, and, sinking beneath so many wounds, falls on his knees. Does not the darkness that is spreading around him announce a still thicker darkness that is about to cover the Church? Zwingle turns away from such sad thoughts; once more he uplifts that head which had been so bold, and gazing with calm eye upon the trickling blood, exclaims: "What matters this misfortune? They may indeed kill the body, but they cannot kill the soul!" These were his last words. He had scarcely uttered them ere he fell backwards. There, under a tree (Zwingle's Pear-tree), in a meadow, he remained lying on his back, with clasped hands, and eyes upturned to Heaven. * * * * Two of the soldiers, who were prowling over the field of battle, having come near the reformer without recognising him, "Do you wish for a priest to confess yourself?" asked they. Zwingle, without speaking (for he had not strength), made signs in the negative. "If you cannot speak," replied the soldiers, "at least think in thy heart of the mother of God, and call upon the saints!" Zwingle again shook his head, and kept his eyes still fixed on heaven. Upon this the irri tated soldiers began to curse him. "No doubt," said they, "you are one of the heretics of the city!" One of them, being curious to know who it was, stooped down and turned Zwingle's head in the direction of a fire that had been lighted near the spot. The soldier immediately let him fall to the ground. "I think," said he, surprised and amazed, "I think it is Zwingle !" At this moment Captain Fockinger of Unterwalden, a veteran and a pensioner, drew near: he had heard the last words of the soldier. "Zwingle!" exclaimed he, "that vile heretic, Zwingle! that rascal, that traitor!" Then raising his sword, so long sold to the stranger, he struck the dying Christian on the throat, exclaiming in a violent passion, "Die, obstinate heretic !" Yielding under this last blow, the reformer gave up the ghost: he was doomed to perish by the sword of a mercenary. "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." The soldiers ran to other victims. All did not show the same barbarity. The night was cold; a thick hoar-frost covered the fields and the bodies of the dying. The Protestant historian, Bullinger, informs us that some Waldstettes gently raised the wounded in their arms, bound up their wounds, and carried them to the fires lighted on the field of battle. "Ah!" cried they, "why have the Swiss thus slaughtered one another?" G كنة THE END OF ANNE BOLEYN. (Hume's History of England.) A.D. 1536. issue being thus for the present disappointed, his temper, equally violent and superstitious, was disposed to make the innocent mother answerable for the misfortune. But the chief means which Anne's enemies employed to inflame the king against her, was his jealousy. BUT while the retainers to the | Henry's extreme fondness for male new religion were exulting in their prosperity, they met with a mortification which seemed to blast all their hopes. Their patroness, Anne Boleyn, possessed no longer the king's favour; and soon after lost her life by the rage of that furious monarch. Henry had persevered in his love to this lady during six years that his prosecution of the divorce lasted; and the more obstacles he met with to the gratification of his passion, the more determined zeal did he exert in pursuing his purpose. But the affection which had subsisted, and still increased under difficulties, had not long attained secure possession of its object, when it languished from satiety; and the king's heart was apparently estranged from his consort. Anne's enemies soon perceived the fatal change; and they were forward to widen the breach, when they found that they incurred no danger by interposing in those delicate concerns. She had been delivered of a dead son; and Anne, although she appears to have been entirely innocent, and even virtuous in her conduct, had a certain gaiety, if not levity of character, which threw her off her guard, and made her less circumspect than her situation required. Her education in France rendered her the more prone to those freedoms; and it was with difficulty she conformed herself to that strict ceremonial practised in the court of England. More vain than haughty, she was pleased to see the influence of her beauty on all around her, and she indulged herself in an easy familiarity with persons who were formerly her equals, and who might then have pretended to her friendship and good one that came within the verge of its fury. Had Henry's jealousy been derived from love, though it might on a sudden have proceeded to the most violent extremities, it would have been subject to many remorses and contrarieties; and might at last have served only to augment that affection on which it was founded. But it was a more stern jealousy, fostered en graces. Henry's dignity was offended with these popular manners; and though the lover had been entirely blind, the husband possessed but too quick discernment and penetration. Ill instruments interposed, and put a malignant interpretation on the harmless liberties of the queen: the Viscountess of Rocheford, in particular, who was married to the queen's brother, but who lived on bad terms with her sister-in-tirely by pride; his love was law, insinuated the most cruel suspicions into the king's mind; and as she was a woman of profligate character, she paid no regard either to truth or humanity in those calumnies which she suggested. She pretended that her own husband was engaged in a criminal correspondence with his sister; and not content with this imputation, she poisoned every action of the queen's, and represented each instance of favour which she conferred on any one as a token of affection. Henry Norris, groom of the stole, Weston and Brereton, | gentlemen of the king's chamber, together with Mark Smeton, groom of the chamber, were observed to possess much of the queen's friendship; and they served her with a zeal and attachment which, though chiefly derived from gratitude, might not improbably be seasoned with some mixture of tenderness for so amiable a princess. The king's jealousy laid hold of the slightest circumstance, and finding no particular object on which it could fasten, it vented itself equally on every transferred to another object. Jane, daughter of Sir John Seymour, and maid of honour to the queen, a young lady of singular beauty and merit, had obtained an entire ascendant over him; and he was determined to sacrifice everything to the gratification of this new appetite. Unlike to most monarchs, who judge lightly of the crime of gallantry, and who deem the young damsels of their court rather honoured than disgraced by their passion, he seldom thought of any other attachment than that of marriage, and in order to attain this end, he underwent more difficulties, and committed greater crimes, than those which he sought to avoid by forming that legal connection. And having thus entertained the design of raising his new mistress to his bed and throne, he more willingly hearkened to every suggestion which threw any imputation of guilt on the unfortunate Anne Boleyn. The king's jealousy first appeared openly in a tilting at Greenwich (1st May), where the queen happened to drop her hand kerchief; an incident probably casual, but interpreted by him as an instance of gallantry to some of her paramours. He immediately retired from the place; sent orders to confine her to her chamber; arrested Norris, Brereton, Weston, and Smeton, together with her brother Rocheford; and threw them into prison. The queen, astonished at these instances of his fury, thought that he meant only to try her; but finding him in earnest, she reflected on his obstinate, unrelenting spirit, and she prepared herself for that melancholy doom which was awaiting her. Next day she was sent to the Tower; and on her way thither she was informed of her supposed offences, of which she had hitherto been ignorant; she made earnest protestations of her innocence; and when she entered the prison she fell on her knees, and prayed God so to help her, as she was not guilty of the crime imputed to her. Her surprise and confusion threw her into hysterical disorders; and in that situation she thought that the best proof of her innocence was to make an entire confession, and she revealed some indiscretions and levities which her simplicity had equally betrayed her to commit and to avow. She owned that she had once rallied Norris on his delaying his marriage, and had told him that he probably expected her when she should be a widow; she had reproved Weston, she said, for his affection to a kinswoman of hers, and his indifference towards his wife; but he told her that she had mistaken the object of his affection, for it was herself; upon which she defied him. She affirmed that Smeton had never been in her chamber but twice, when he played on the harpsichord; but she acknowledged that he had once had the boldness to tell her that a look sufficed him. The king, instead of being satisfied with the candour and sincerity of her confession, regarded these indiscretions only as preludes to greater and more criminal intimacies. Of all those multitudes whom the beneficence of the queen's temper had obliged during her prosperous fortune, no one durst interpose between her and the king's fury; and the person whose advancement every breath had favoured, and every countenance had smiled upon, was now left neglected and abandoned. Even her uncle the Duke of Norfolk, preferring the connections of party to the ties of blood, was become her most dangerous enemy; and all the retainers to the Catholic religion hoped that her death would terminate the king's quarrel with Rome, and leave him again to his natural and early bent, which had inclined him to maintain the most intimate union with the apostolic see. Cranmer alone, of all the queen's adherents, still retained his friendship for her; and as far as the king's impetuosity permitted him, he endeavoured to moderate the violent prejudices entertained against her. The queen herself wrote Henry a letter from the Tower, full of the most tender expostulations, and of the warmest protestations of innocence.1 1 "Sir, your grace's displeasure and my imprisonment are things so strange unto me, as what to write or what to excuse I am altogether ignorant. Whereas you send unto me (willing me to confess a truth, and so obtain your favour) by such an one whom you know to be mine ancient professed enemy, I no sooner received this message by him than I rightly conceived your meaning; and if, as you say, confessing a truth indeed may procure my safety, I shall with all willingness and duty perform your command. "But let not your grace ever imagine that your poor wife will ever be brought to acknowledge a fault where not so much as a thought thereof preceded. And, to speak a truth, never prince had wife more loyal in all duty, and in all true affection, than you have ever found in Anne Boleyn with which name and place I could willingly have contented myself, if God and your grace's pleasure had been so pleased. Neither did I at any time so far forget myself in my exaltation or received queenship, but that I always looked for such an alteration as I now find; for the ground of my preferment being on no surer foundation than your grace's fancy, the least alteration, I knew, was fit and sufficient to draw that fancy to some other object. You have chosen me from a low estate to be your queen and companion, far beyond my desert or desire. If, then, you found me worthy of such honour, good your grace let not any light fancy, or bad counsel of mine enemies, withdraw your princely favour from me, neither let that stain, that unworthy stain, of a disloyal heart towards your good grace, ever cast so foul a blot on your most dutiful wife, and the infant princess, your daughter. Try me, good king, but let me have a lawful trial, and let not my sworn enemies sit as my accusers and judges; yea, let me receive an open trial, for my truth shall fear no open shame; then shall you see either mine This letter had no influence on the unrelenting mind of Henry, who was determined to pave the way for his new marriage by the innocence cleared, your suspicion and conscience satisfied, the ignominy and slander of the world stopped, or my guilt openly declared. So that, whatsoever God or you may determine of me, your grace may be freed from an open censure; and mine offence being so lawfully proved, your grace is at liberty, both before God and man, not only to execute worthy punishment on me as an unlawful wife, but to follow your affection already settled on that party for whose sake I am now as I am, whose name I could some good while since have pointed unto, your grace not being ignorant of my suspicion therein. "But if you have already determined of me, and that not only my death, but an infamous slander, must bring you the enjoying of your desired happiness, then I desire of God that He will pardon your great sin therein, and likewise mine enemies, the instruments thereof, and that He will not call you to a strict account for your unprincely and cruel usage of me, at His general judgment-seat, where both you and myself must shortly appear, and in whose judgment I doubt not (whatsoever the world may think of me) mine innocence shall be openly known and sufficiently cleared. 66 My last and only request shall be, that myself may only bear the burden of your grace's displeasure, and that it may not touch the innocent souls of those poor gentlemen who (as I understand) are likewise in strait imprisonment for my sake. If ever I have found favour in your sight, if ever the name of Anne Boleyn hath been pleasing in your ears, then let me obtain this request, and I will so leave to trouble your grace any farther, with mine earnest prayers to the Trinity to have your grace in His good keeping, and to direct you in all your actions. From my doleful prison in the Tower, the 6th of May.-Your most loyal and ever faithful wife, "ANNE BOLEYN." |