prised in bed with the King's organist.[1] In the course of the investigation, witnesses had come forward to say that nine years previously a marriage had been made and consummated between Anne and Percy, Earl of Northumberland. Percy, however, swore, and received the sacrament upon it, before the Duke of Norfolk and the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, that no contract or promise of marriage of any kind had passed between them.[2] Anne's attendants in the Tower had been ordered to note what she might say. She denied that she was guilty, sometimes with hysterical passion, sometimes with a flighty levity; but not, so far as her words are recorded, with the clearness of conscious innocence. She admitted that with Norris, Weston, and Smeton she had spoken foolishly of their love for herself, and of what might happen were the King to die. Smeton, on his second examination, confessed that he had on three several occasions committed adultery with the Queen. Norris repudiated his admissions to Sir William Fitzwilliam—what they were is unknown—and offered to maintain his own innocence and the Queen's with sword and lance. Weston and Brereton persisted in absolute denial.
Meanwhile the Commission continued to take evidence. A more imposing list of men than those who composed it could not have been collected in England. The members of it were the Lord Chancellor, the Duke of Norfolk, the Duke of Suffolk, Lord Wilt-
- ↑ "Le Visconte Hannaert a escript au Sr de Granvelle que au mesme instant il avoit entendu de bon lieu que la concubine du diet Roy avoit esté surprise couchée avec l'organiste du dict Roy."
- ↑ The Earl of Northumberland to Cromwell, May 13, 1536.—Calendar, Foreign and Domestic, vol, x. p. 356.
time. I am reminded correctly that there was no Viscount Howard in the English Peerage.
