The Press.
London, England, 1856-04-26 00:00:00

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thought to be dead by this time, and past my pain.' I told
her it should be no pain, it was so subtle ; and then she
said, I heard say the executioner was very good, and I
have a little neck,' and put her hands about it, laughing
heartily. I have seen many men, and also women exe•
cnted, and they have been in great sorrow ; and to my
knowledge, this lady bath much joy and pleasure in death."
The " worst returns to laughter," says
Shakespeare. When the spirits are borne
down by an accumulation of sorrow too great
for endurance, too potent for expression,
nature strives to relieve itself by an explosion
of hysterical mirth. Was the demeanour of
the Queen, as witnessed by her keeper, that
of suffering innocence, or that of the shame-
less guilt which had known five paramours,
and her own brother among them ? We must
follow Mr. Fronde to the end of his narrative.
The day after the Queen's execution Henry
married Jane Seymour

:-

The indecent hasto is usually considered a proof en'
tirely conclusive of the cause of Anne lioleyn's ruin. To
myself the haste is an evidence of something very
different.

The King was urged to an immediate re-
marriage by his council, and Mr. Froudo sup
poses that " he looked on matrimony as an in-
" different official act, which his duty required
" at the moment." When the Parliament which
had been summoned by Henry in anticipation
of his Queen's guilt assembled, every step
which had been taken was sanctioned :
The criminality of the Queen was considered to have
been proved; the sentence upon her to hate been just.
The King was thanked in the name of the nation for
having made haste with the marriage which has been re-
garded as the temptation to his crime.
Then, as a question of succession arose
through the illegitimacy of, the two Princesses,—

The Parliament, with as much boldness as good sense,
cut the knot, by granting Henry the power to bequeath
the crown by will. It was an expression of confidence
as honourable to the country as the King; and if we may
believe, as the records say, that the tragedy of the past
month had indeed grieved and saddened Henry, the gene-
rous language in which the Legislature committed the
future of the nation into his hands, may have something
soothed his wounds.

Here we close our extracts. We have been
anxious to let Mr. Froude state his case in his
own wa). He requires us to believe that in
those days juries were independent, and par-
liaments free. But ho produces no proofs
that they were so. Such a task would be be-
yond his power. Surely Mr. Froude must
know that a royal indictment was equivalent
to a conviction, and that the guilt or innocence
of a prisoner once threatened by Henry had
no more to do with judgment than had the
soundness of the arguments in the dispute
between the King and Lambert to do with the
sentence which gave to the flames the unfortu-
nate controversialist who denied the real
Presence. Throughout Henry's reign juries
and parliaments were used but as instruments
to enrol the King's decrees and confirm his
pleasure. It is questionable whether in State
trials the juries ever thought of exercising an
independent jurisdiction. Certain formulaiies
were gone through, and that was all. The
secrecy with which the criminal charge against
the Queen was got up, the rapidity with which
the proceedings were hurried on, the haste
with which the trial itself was gone through,
and the impossibility of the accused being
able, alone and unsupported, to refute the
charges against them, supply a presumption
that their trial was in reality only a mere
mockery—their conviction, instead of estab-
lishing prima facie their guilt, in reality estab-
lishes nothing except this, that the King had
made up his mind that the) should be guilty.

The only circumstance against the accused
is the confession of Smeton ; but we have
seen how Henry, with murderous craft, at-
tempted to ensnare the Queen into confession,
and how Brereton complained that he had
been similarly tampered with. Smeton was
but a menial ; and it does not appear im•
probable that the story which gained currency
at a later date was literally correct, that he had
been frightened into a confession, through a
hope that he might be spared. We can but
indicate very generally the grounds for doubt-
ing Mr. Froude's case. We hope it may be
subjected ere long to a critical and elaborate
examination.

One word on the authenticity of tho State
records which have conic down to us. May
not those records be, of all kind of evidence,