to consider the effect of it, pronounced her marriage with the King to have been null and void. The supposition, that this business was a freak of caprice or passion, is too puerile to be considered. It is certain that she acknowledged something; and it is certain also that Lord Northumberland was examined upon the subject before the Archbishop. In person upon oath indeed, and also in a letter to Cromwell, Northumberland denied that he had ever been legally connected with her; but perhaps Northumberland was afraid to make an admission so dangerous to himself, or perhaps the confession itself was a vague effort which she made to save her life.[1] But whatever she said, and whether she spoke truth or falsehood, she was pronounced divorced, and the divorce did not save her.[2] Friday, the 19th, was fixed for her death; and when she found that there was no hope she recovered her spirits. The last scene was to be on the green inside the Tower. The public were to be admitted; but Kingston suggested that to avoid a crowd it was desirable not to fix the hour, since it was supposed that she would make no further confession.
Thursday, May 18.'This morning she sent for me,' he added, 'that I might be with her at such time as she- ↑ On the day on which she first saw the Archbishop, she said, at dinner, that she expected to be spared, and that she would retire to a nunnery.—Kingston to Cromwell: Singer, p. 460.
- ↑ Burnet raises a dilemma here. If, he says, the Queen was not married to the King, there was no adultery; and the sentence of death and the sentence of divorce mutually neutralize each other. It is possible that in the general horror at so complicated a delinquency, the technical defence was overlooked.
