saw the king, and he said not since he saw him in the tilt-yard. She next asked where Lord Rochford was, and Kingston evasively replied, he saw him last at Whitehall. "I dare say," continued the disconsolate woman, "that I shall be accused with these men, and I can say no more than nay, though you should open my body." "Oh, Norris!" she exclaimed, "hast thou accused me? Thou art in the Tower, and thou and I shall die together. And Mark, thou art here too! Oh, my mother! thou wilt die for sorrow." Then suddenly breaking off, she exclaimed, "Mr. Kingston, I shall die without justice!" "The poorest subject," replied Sir William, "the king hath, has that." At which poor Anne, knowing what sort of justice her Royal husband administered where his will was concerned, burst into a bitter hysterical laugh.
Left alone in her prison, her affliction seemed to actually disturb her intellect. She would sit for hours plunged in a stupor of melancholy, and shedding torrents of tears, and then she would abruptly burst into wild laughter. To her attendants she would say that she should be a saint in heaven; that no rain would fall on the earth till she was delivered from prison; and that the most grievous calamities would oppress the nation in punishment for her death. At other times she became calm and devotional, and requested that a consecrated host might be placed in her closet.
But the unhappy queen was not suffered to enjoy much retirement. It was necessary for Henry to establish a charge against her sufficiently strong to turn the feeling of the nation against her, and from him; and for this purpose, no means were neglected which tyranny and harshness of the intensest kind could suggest. Whilst the accused gentlemen were interrogated, threatened, cajoled, and even put to the torture in their cells, to force a confession of guilt from them, two women were set over Anne to watch her every word, look, and act, to draw from her in her unguarded conversation everything they could to implicate her, and, no doubt, to invent and colour where the facts did not sufficiently answer the purpose required. These were Lady Boleyn, the wife of Anne's uncle, Sir Edward Boleyn, a determined enemy of hers, and Mrs. Cosyns, the wife of Anne's master of the horse, a creature of the most unprincipled character.
These women never left her, day or night. They had a pallet laid at the foot of her bed, and they carefully hoarded up every word, every exclamation which fell from her, and repeated it to the king, no doubt giving their own colour to the communication. Their business was to entrap and villify, and for this purpose they put all sorts of ensnaring questions to her, and led her on to talk, whilst, on the other hand, they would tell her nothing comfortable of any of her friends or relations outside the walls. She was very apprehensive that her father might have fallen into disgrace or trouble on her account, but to all her inquiries of these women there was no reply. She implored that she might be attended by certain ladies of the privy chamber, but this, of course, was not allowed. Gossip absurd, but most fatal, like the following, was reported as her conversation.
Mrs. Cosyns asked her why Norris had told his almoner on the preceding Saturday "that he could swear the queen was a good woman?" "Marry," replied Anne, "I bade him do so, for I asked him why he did not go on with his marriage, and he made answer that he would tarry awhile. 'Then,' said I, 'you look for dead men's shoes. If aught but good should come to the king (who was then afflicted with a dangerous ulcer), you would look to have me.' He denied it, and I told him I could undo him if I would." Again, the queen expressed some apprehension of what Weston might say in his examination, for he had told her on Whit Monday last that Norris came more into her chamber for her sake than for Madge, one of her maids of honour. Of Weston, that she told him he did love her kinswoman, Mrs. Skelton, and that he loved not his wife; and he answered again that he loved one in his house better than them both. She asked him who, and he said, "yourself," on which she defied him.
Such was the stuff which Kingston gathered at the hands of these wretched spies, to be used against the queen, who was to be got rid of. To suppose that Anne talked in that manner to these women, who she knew were placed there to malign and betray her, is to suppose that she had lost her senses, or was a far more foolish woman than she was ever supposed to be. It is more than improbable that Anne should talk thus imprudently when we find her saying, "The king wist what he did when he put such women as Mrs. Cosyns and my Lady Boleyn about her." Her mind, indeed, seems to have been really affected by the intensity of her anguish and anxiety at times. "One hour," says Kingston, "she is determined to die, and the next hour much contrary to that. Yesterday I sent for my wife, and also for Mrs. Cosyns, to know how she had done that day; and they said that she had been very merry, and made a great dinner, and yet soon after called for her supper, having marvelled where I was all day. 'Where have you been all day?' she asked when I went in. I replied, 'I have been with the prisoners.' 'So,' she said, 'I thought I heard Mr. Treasurer' (this was her father). I assured her that he was not there. Then she began to talk, and said, 'I was cruelly handled at Greenwich by the king's council, with my Lord of Norfolk, who said, "Tut, tut, tut!" shaking his head three or four times.' As for my Lord Treasurer, he was in Windsor Forest all the time." At other times the situation into which she had fallen appeared so unaccountable, that she could not believe the king meant her any harm, and would say, "I think the king does it to try me;" and then she would burst into her strange laughter, and appear very merry.
She applied to have her almoner sent to her, but the king appointed Cranmer to that office; and when Anne implored him, as he knew her innocence, to intercede with the king, Cranmer wrote a letter to Henry in that creeping and courtier-like style which betrayed more fear of offending the impetuous monarch on his own account, than influencing his mind towards the queen, whom the time-serving reformer had represented as being the very bulwark of the Reformation in England. Never through his whole life did Cranmer show to less advantage than in this matter.
Anne exhorted Kingston to convey a letter from her to Cromwell, but he declined such a responsibility; she contrived, however, by some means, on the fourth day of her imprisonment, to forward the following letter, which bears a very different impress from the conversation
