enthusiasm out of doors, and real love was absent within. The passion which had thus far blinded the king was already on the wane. Within three months of her coronation he gave her cause of jealousy, and, when she complained of his conduct, brutally told her to shut her eyes ‘as her betters had done,’ for he had the power to humble her even more than he had raised her. It was very shortly after this incident that she gave birth to her only daughter, the future Queen Elizabeth, on 7 Sept. 1533. The disappointment at court was great, for physicians, astrologers, and others had flattered the king's sanguine hopes that the child was to be a boy. Next year there was a worse disappointment still: Anne met with a miscarriage. All this gave evident satisfaction to the people, who were anxious to see the Princess Mary restored to her place in the succession. Anne moreover became more and more conscious that the king's regard for her was diminished. Indeed Henry told her flatly, when she complained, that she ought to be very well satisfied with what he had done for her already, for he would not do the same thing again if the matter were to begin anew. Then a third disappointment came, still greater than either of the others. On 29 Jan. 1536—little more than three weeks after the death of her rival Katharine of Arragon—she was delivered prematurely of a dead child.
The climax of her miseries was now at hand. On Mayday following a tournament was held at Greenwich, from which the king suddenly took his departure with only six attendants, leaving the spectators, and most of all (we are told) the queen, in perplexity as to the cause. If, however, we may believe the jesuit Sanders, who, though a little later, is scarcely a more one-sided authority than Hall, the king had seen her let fall a handkerchief that one of her supposed lovers in the lists might wipe his face with it. Such an act may have been the pretext for the king's departure, yet the thing itself was probably neither better nor worse than a thousand other trivialities which could hardly have escaped notice before. If Anne was really guilty, it was certainly not the first time she had shown undue familiarity towards others besides the king. The two indictments afterwards found against her, in Kent and in Middlesex, charge her with a number of acts of adultery and also of incest, extending over nearly the whole three years of her married life. These charges, even though untrue, must have been plausible, and it is scarcely conceivable that during all this period the king saw nothing in Anne's conduct that might have been construed amiss. His growing disgust no doubt led him to interpret her acts in a way that his own self-respect had hitherto forbidden him to do. But it was not in one day or one moment that his opinion of her was altogether changed. There is reason, indeed, to believe that even before the tournament commenced one of Anne's alleged paramours had confessed his guilt under torture, or at least under the dread of it (see the remarkable deposition of George Constantyne in Archæologia, xxiii. 64). In any case we can hardly imagine that the dropping of that handkerchief was the first thing that aroused the king's suspicions, supposing them to be real and well founded.
The day after the tournament, about five in the evening, Anne was conducted to the Tower by the lord chancellor, the Duke of Norfolk, and others. On entering the court-gate she fell on her knees and protested her innocence. Her brother Lord Rochford and her other alleged paramours seem to have been arrested at an earlier hour that same day and brought to the Tower before her. Lord Rochford was accused of the revolting crime of incest—a charge apparently supported by his own wife, but not more credible on that account; for of her it is sufficient to say that she afterwards suffered death for assisting Henry's fifth queen, Katharine Howard, in her intrigues. The untitled offenders, however, were first disposed of. On 12 May Sir Francis Weston, Mr. Henry Norris, and William Brereton, gentlemen of the privy chamber, with Mark Smeaton, a musician, were arraigned for criminal intercourse with the queen, and condemned of high treason. Anne's case was thus prejudged before she herself was put on her trial. She and her brother were tried before a body of six-and-twenty peers assembled for the purpose in the Tower on the 15th; and every peer from the lowest to the highest gave in a verdict of guilty. The Duke of Norfolk then, as lord high steward, gave sentence that she should either be burnt or beheaded at the king's pleasure, and that her brother should undergo the hideous punishment that was usual in cases of high treason. This was, however, commuted to simple decapitation, which he and the others suffered on the 17th, the queen's execution being deferred till the 19th.
Meanwhile on the 17th her marriage with the king was pronounced invalid by a court of ecclesiastical lawyers presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth. On what ground this judgment could have been given it is difficult to understand, unless it was that there had been a previous contract between her and the Earl of Northumber-
