against her, and of the peers, who were carefully selected for trying her, men who had no rule, save the capricious will of the monarch to regulate their determinations; the privacy of her trial, depriving her of one of the most effectual safeguards of justice-publicity, and indicating a consciousness, on the part of her prosecutors, of the incompetency of the evidence; the haste of the whole procedure, so prejudicial to calm and impartial investigation; the slender occurrence upon which she was pronounced guilty of incest; the unprincipled arts resorted to in order to extract from her pretended accomplices confessions against her; the testimony borne by them all, with only one exception, to her innocence; the suspicions resting on his testimony, and the fact that he was never confronted with her; the judgment confidentially expressed by one of her most active prosecutors, that the evidence was so glaringly defective, that her condemnation would damage the popularity of the king, unless the other culprits should testify to her guilt; the consideration that had she been so abandoned as the indictment represents her to have been, evidence would not have been wanting, as in that case she would, what invariably happens when every modest feeling is extinguished from the breast, have thrown off circumspection, laying herself open to conviction, upon proofs of criminality so abundant and manifest, as to leave no room for doubt, the more especially as many hostile eyes were upon her in the court:-these, and other circumstances, stamp suspicion upon the whole proceedings, and force upon us the conviction, that though the forms of a trial were gone through, they were a mere mockery of justice, a shocking and shameless pretence; and that her condemnation and execution were the triumph of power and calumny over the weak and defenceless.

The reflecting mind is appalled at the precipitate violence, the cool deliberation, the unshrinking steadiness of purpose displayed by Henry in this transaction, from the commencement to the close. Never for a moment did he exhibit a single symptom of relenting, or betray the slightest returning tenderness of feeling, but, as in his whole career, evinced a determined resolution, a carelessness of

the means employed to effect his purposes, and a disregard of all

consequences.

One cannot always

Finish one's work by soft means.

'Dash and through with it.' That's the better watchword.

Then after come what may come. "Tis man's nature

To make the best of a bad thing once past." 1

That such was the temper of Henry is attested by Cavendish, who

s us that Wolsey said of him: "Rather than miss or want y part of his will or appetite, he would put the loss of one-half of ts kngdom in danger, and that he had often kneeled before him the cace of an hour or two to persuade him from his will and appetite,

ald never bring to pass to dissuade him therefrom." To a man this reckless and violent character, the sacrifice of the life of a een towards whom he had conceived an aversion, or whom he pected of conjugal infidelity, was nothing; especially when she d in the way of the consummation of his union with a new object faction

On the day of Anne's execution he arrayed himself in white, as if zett to express his joy or his innocence of the brutal murder. Harriage the next day to Jane Seymour, eldest daughter of Sir

Seymour, of Wolf Hall, Wilts, goes far to explain the mystery se proceedings, by showing that he had determined the destrucf Anne, to make way for another to occupy her place. What very surprising is the eagerness of Jane Seymour to ascend perons eminence of becoming the wife of a monarch whose hands yet reeking with the blood of his former queen. Young and rienced, and perhaps believing in the guilt of Anne Boleyn, tie thought how brittle and transitory that happiness was depended on the changeful temper of a ruthless tyrant like who might be loving to-day, and animated by the fury of a to-morrow. From a hardened conscience, or from the boilry of passion, the monster himself, in the meantime, appa

1 Schiller.

rently felt no compunction. But the crime met him on a future day the day of his death-when the horrors of remorse and the darkness of despair gathered around and settled on his soul. At that solemn period, when conscience forced upon his memory the past, and unveiled to him at but a short, an almost imperceptible distance in the future, the dreadful tribunal of a righteous God, who will bring every work into judgment, and with whom there is no respect of persons, he is said to have confessed to some around him the bitter anguish he felt on account of the severity with which he had treated this unfortunate queen. "Many English gentlemen," says an old Roman Catholic writer, "have assured me that Henry VIII., on his death-bed, greatly repented of the offences he had committed, and, among other things, of the injury and crime committed against Anne de Boleyn, in her condemnation and death on the ground of the false charges brought against her."1

This horrible tragedy was bewailed by the secret tears of many of the good in England, who traced it to a secret Popish conspiracy, in combination with the furious passions of the monarch; though, overawed by his terrible decision, even the leaders of the reformed party had pusillanimously deserted the hapless queen. The friends of the Reformation in other countries were shocked, and deeply lamented her unmerited fate. Viewing all the circumstances, the States of Germany confederated for the defence of the reformed religion, considered her guilt so improbable, that they now laid aside all further thoughts of an alliance with him.3 Melancthon, who had contemplated visiting England, now abandoned the idea, and, moved with a generous pity, pronounced her innocent. In a letter to Joachim Camerarius, written in June, 1536, he thus writes: "I am altogether released from concern about my English journey. After events so tragical have happened in England, a great change of counsels has followed. The late queen, rather accused than convicted of adultery,

1 Thevet, Cosmographie Universelle, liv. 16, c. v., p. 657, quoted in Turner's Reign of Henry VIII., vol. ii., pp. 458, 459.

2 See Appendix, No. II.

3 Godwin.

has undergone the last sentence of the law. How wonderful are the tures of things, my Joachim; how great the wrath of God they denounce against mankind; into how great ealamities, also, do the mightiest of earthly potentates at this day fall. When I think upon these things, the conclusion to which I am brought is, that our ctions and our dangers should be borne with a more patient ind" The tidings created a great sensation in France, and must have struck with horror Margaret of Valois, Queen of Navarre, Anne's old patroness and friend, who could hardly fail of being pressed with a feeling of gratitude to Providence that, when the der was made to her, she refused to supplant Katharine of Aragon, becoming the queen of a sovereign who, under similar charges, ght have brought her to the same terrible end.

Maxthon's Epist., quoted in Ellis's Original Letters, first series, vol. ii., p. 65,

ANNE ASKEW,

DAUGHTER OF SIR WILLIAM ASKEW, KNIGHT, OF KELSEY.

N this lady, whose story we are now to relate, we have a noble example of female Christian heroism. She fell a martyr for denying the doctrine of transubstantiation, during the reign of Henry VIII., and her name must ever stand among the foremost in the list of the venerated martyrs of the English Reformation. Her calm unshrinking fortitude in maintaining the truths of God's Word in opposition to the Popish doctrines, and in suffering a cruel death rather than abjure them, places her on a level with the most illustrious martyrs of any age or country.

ANNE ASKEW was the second daughter of Sir William Askew, knight, of Kelsey, in Lincolnshire, a gentleman of an ancient and honourable family. Of her education and early life nothing is now known. She is said to have been "a lady of great beauty, of gentle manners, and warm imagination." The earliest notice in her

1 Sir William, besides Anne and an elder daughter, had a third, named Jane, who was married, first to Sir George St. Paul, and secondly to Richard Disney, Esq., of Norton Disney, ancestor of the present John Disney, Esq., of the Hyde, Essex. He had also two sons, Francis, the eldest, and Edward, who was one of his majesty's body-guard.-Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, vol. ii., pp. 190, 191. 2 Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, vol. i., p. 634.