of the issue begotten between the king and her. By this strained interpretation her guilt was brought under the statute of the 25th of this reign; in which it was declared criminal to throw any slander upon the king, queen, or their issue. Such palpable absurdities were at that time admitted; and they were regarded by the peers of England as a sufficient reason for sacrificing an innocent queen to the cruelty of their tyrant. Though unassisted by counsel, she defended herself with presence of mind; and the spectators could not forbear pronouncing her entirely innocent. Judgment, however, was given by the court, both against the queen and Lord Rocheford; and her verdict contained, that she should be burned or beheaded at the king's pleasure. When this dreadful sentence was pronounced she was not terrified, but lifting up her hands to Heaven said, "O Father! O Creator! Thou who art the way, the truth, and the life, Thou knowest that I have not deserved this fate." And then turning to the judges, made the most pathetic declarations of her innocence. death of Anne Boleyn. Norris, | loved him better than any person Weston, Brereton, and Smeton, whatsoever : which was to the slander were tried; but no legal evidence was produced against them. The chief proof of their guilt consisted in a hearsay from one Lady Wingfield, who was dead. Smeton was prevailed on, by the vain hopes of life, to confess a criminal correspondence with the queen; but even her enemies expected little advantage from this confession; for they never dared to confront him with her; and he was immediately executed; as were also Brereton and Weston. Norris had been much in the king's favour; and an offer of life was made him, if he would confess his crime, and accuse the queen; but he generously rejected the proposal, and said that in his conscience he believed her entirely guiltless: but for his part he could accuse her of nothing, and he would rather die a thousand deaths than calumniate an innocent person. The queen and her brother were tried by a jury of peers, consisting of the Duke of Suffolk, the Marquis of Exeter, the Earl of Arundel, and twenty-three more: their uncle the Duke of Norfolk presided as high steward. Upon what proof or pretence the crime of incest was imputed to them is unknown: the chief evidence, it is said, amounted to no more than that Rocheford had been seen to lean on her bed before some company. Part of the charge against her was, that she had affirmed to her minions that the king never had her heart; and had said to each of them apart, that she Henry, not satisfied with this cruel vengeance, was resolved entirely to annul his marriage with Anne Boleyn, and to declare her issue illegitimate: he recalled to his memory, that a little after her appearance in the English court some attachment had been acknowledged between her and the Earl of Northumberland, then Lord Percy; and he now questioned the care. Before the lieutenant of the Tower, and all who approached her, she made the like declarations; and continued to behave herself with her usual serenity, and even ever passed between | with cheerfulness. “The executioner," she said to the lieutenant, ❝is, I hear, very expert; and my neck is very slender :" upon which she grasped it in her hand and smiled. When brought, however, to the scaffold, she softened her tone a little with regard to her protestations of innocence. She probably reflected that the obstinacy of Queen Catherine, and her opposition to the king's will, had much alienated him from the Lady Mary: her own maternal concern, therefore, for Elizabeth, prevailed in these last moments over that indignation which the unjust sentence by which she suffered naturally excited in her. She said that she was come to die as she was sentenced by the law: she would accuse none, nor say anything of the ground upon which she was judged. She prayed The queen now prepared for heartily for the king; called him suffering the death to which she a most merciful and gentle prince; was sentenced. She sent her last and acknowledged that he had message to the king, and acknow- always been to her a good and ledged the obligations which she gracious sovereign; and if any one owed him, in thus uniformly con- should think proper to canvass her tinuing his endeavours for her cause, she desired him to judge the advancement: from a private best. She was beheaded by the gentlewoman, she said, he had executioner of Calais (19th May), first made her a marchioness, then who was sent for as more expert a queen, and now, since he could than any in England. Her body raise her no higher in this world, was negligently thrown into a comhe was sending her to be a saint mon chest of elm-tree, made to hold in heaven. She then renewed the arrows, and was buried in the Tower. protestations of her innocence, and The innocence of this unforturecommended her daughter to his | nate queen cannot reasonably b called in question. Henry himself, in the violence of his rage, knew not whom to accuse as her lover, and though he imputed guilt to her brother, and four persons more, he was able to bring proof against none of them. The whole tenor of her conduct forbids us to ascribe to her an abandoned character, such as is implied in the king's accusation had she been so lost to all prudence and sense of shame, she must have exposed herself to detec tion, and afforded her enemies some evidence against her. But the king, made the most effectual apology for her, by marrying Jane Seymour the very day after her execution. His impatience to gratify this new passion caused him to forget all regard to decency; and his cruel heart was not softened a moment by the bloody catastrophe of a person who had so long been the object of his most tender affections. THE NINE DAYS' QUEEN. (Hepworth Dixon's "Her Majesty's Tower.") A.D. 1553. KING EDWARD died on the summer night of Thursday, July 6, at Greenwich Palace, so calmly, that the fact could be kept a secret all that night and all next day, while Dudley matured his plans. The council were of his advice, the fleet and army at his back. On the city he could count for passive assent; but passive assent was not enough. On Saturday morning he sent for Sir Thomas White, lord mayor, six aldermen, and a score of the richest merchants from Lombard Street, to whom he showed the king's body, and papers which he called the king's letters patent, fixing the order of succession to the Crown. These papers, which gave the sceptre to Lady Jane, Dudley got the lord mayor and citizens to sign. The Londoners were told to keep the king's death and the contents of these letters patent secret, until the lords should make them known. Dudley's plan was, that Edward's death should not be noised abroad until Mary had been lodged in the Tower, and Jane was ready to announce herself as queen. When Edward was dying, Mary had been called to his bedside by the council, and she had come so near to Greenwich as the royal lodge of Hunsdon, twenty-five miles distant. So soon as the king was dead, Lord Robert was sent off by Dudley with a party of mounted guards to bring her in. Once in the Tower, the unpopular princess would have found few knights to strike in her behalf. Dudley himself rode down to Sion, near Isleworth, his house on the Thames, to which Lady Jane had repaired. When Dudley summoned the Princess Mary to Greenwich, he sent his wife to Suffolk House for Lady Jane. Frances, her mother, refused to give her up; Jane herself preferred to stay in Southwark; on which the Duchess of Northumberland fetched her son, who begged Lady Jane, on her duty as a wife, to depart with him. Not liking to begin her married life by an act of disobedience, Lady Jane went with t duchess and her son to Chelsea. There they locked her up till Sunday, on which day Lady Sydney, her husband's sister, brought her a request from Dudley to repair at once to Sion and await his coming, | with a message of highest moment from the king. She was not aware that Edward had been dead for three days! The two ladies took boat at Chelsea. When Lady Jane arrived at Sion the house was empty, but the great lords soon came dashing in: the duke himself, President of the Council; William Parr, Marquis of Northampton, Grand Chamberlain, and brother of Queen Catherine Parr; Francis Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon, husband of Catherine Pole; William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, husband of Anne Parr, the queen's sister; Henry Fitz-Alan, the smiling and deadly Earl of Arundel; accompanied by the Duchess of Northumberland and the Marchioness of Northampton. Arundel and Pembroke fell on their knees, and were the first to kiss Lady Jane's hand as queen. By help of these men and women the first and fatal part of Dudley's work was done. Jane fainted when they told her she was queen. She had loved King Edward with a sister's love; read with him, played with him, shared his secrets and his hopes; and when she heard that he was dead, she swooned and sank upon her face. They told her she was queen by Edward's will, according to the Acts which vested the suc cession in the king. Pembroke and Arundel, who were famous soldiers, swore by their souls they would shed their blood and give their lives to maintain her rights. Then Lady Jane stood up before the lords, saying she had never dreamt of such greatness being thrust upon her, but that if she was called to reign, she prayed for grace to act as might be best for God's glory and his people's good. The next day being Sunday, she remained at Sion, surrounded by her husband's family, the duke giving orders of many kinds, instructing heralds, sending out proclamations, writing to the lords and sheriffs, and acting generally as protector. That night the interregnum was to end, the new reign to begin. First Day-On a bright July morning, Queen Jane embarked in the royal barge at Sion, and followed by a cloud of galleys, bright with bunting, gay with music, riotous with cannon, dropt down the river, making holiday along the banks, passing the great abbey, calling for an hour at Whitehall Palace, and for another hour at Durham House, and shooting through the arches of London Bridge, she landed at the queen's stair about three o'clock, under the roar of saluting guns, and was conducted, through crowds of kneeling citizens, to her regal lodgings by the two dukes, the Marquises of Winchester and Northampton, Arundel, Pembroke, Paget, Westmoreland, Warwick, all the great noblemen who had |