1536.]
EXECUTION OF ANNE BOLEYN.
361
Queen, and caught by Norris, roused Henry's jealousy; and that his after-conduct was the result of a momentary anger. The incidents of the preceding week are a sufficient reply to this romantic story. The mine was already laid, the match was ready for the fire.
The King did not return: he passed the night in London, and Anne remained at Greenwich. Tuesday, May 2.On the morning of Tuesday the privy council assembled in the palace under the presidency of the Duke of Norfolk, and she was summoned to appear before it. The Duke of Norfolk, her uncle, was anxious, as Burnet insinuates, on political grounds that his niece should be made away with. Such accusations are easily brought, especially when unsupported by evidence. She was unpopular from her manner. The London merchants looked on her with no favour as having caused a breach in the alliance with Flanders, and the duke was an Imperialist and at heart a friend of Queen Catherine; but he had grown old in the service of the State with an unblemished reputation; and he felt too keenly the disgrace which Anne's conduct had brought upon her family, to have contrived a scheme for her removal at once so awkward and so ignominious.[1]- ↑ Five years later, after the similar misbehaviour of Catherine Howard, the duke wrote to the King of 'the abominable deeds done by two of my nieces against your Highness;' which he said have 'brought me into the greatest perplexity that ever poor wretch was in, fearing that your Majesty, having so often and by so many of my kyn been thus falsely and traitorously handled, might not only conceive a displeasure in your heart against me and all other of that kyn, but also in manner abhor to hear speak of any of the same.'—Norfolk to Henry VIII.: State Papers, vol. i. p. 721.
