maid went abroad into the streets and made moan to the prentices, and they by her did send in money.'[1] But this explanation, so touching in its simplicity, failed to satisfy her questioners. They suspected Hertford and Cranmer, and perhaps the Queen; and could they prove their complicity, they had insured their own victory and the ruin of their rivals. The condemned lady was taken from Newgate to the Tower, where the chancellor and the solicitor- general were waiting for her. She was asked if Lady Hertford, the Duchess of Suffolk, or Lady Fitzwilliam belonged to her sect. She refused to say. They told her that they knew she had been maintained by certain members of the council, and they must have their names. She was still silent. 'Then,' she says (and this is no late legend or lying tradition, but a mere truth related at first hand, from the pen of the sufferer herself), 'they did put me on the rack because I confessed no ladies or gentlemen to be of my opinion, and thereupon they kept me a long time; and because I lay still and did not cry, my Lord Chancellor and Master Rich[2] took pains to rack me with their own hands till I was nigh dead.'[3] Sir Anthony Knyvet,
- ↑ Anne Ascue's Narrative.
- ↑ The Solicitor-General.
- ↑ 'I understand,' she wrote subsequently, 'the council is not a little displeased that it should be reported abroad that I was racked in the Tower. They say now that what they did then was but to fear me, whereby I perceived they are ashamed of their uncomely doings, and fear much lest the King's Majesty should have information thereof.'—Foxe, vol. v. p. 548. The abominable cruelty of Wriothesley and Rich is perhaps the darkest page in the history of any English statesmen. Yet, as Wriothesley was a man who had shown at other times high and noble qualities, it is hard to believe that bigotry had entirely blinded
