than murder. Those who consider that he possessed the ordinary qualities of humanity, and that he was really convinced of her guilt, may explain his offer as the result of natural feeling. But in whatever motive his conduct originated, it was ineffectual. Anne, either knowing that she was innocent, or trusting that her guilt could not be proved, trusting, as Sir Edmund Baynton thought, to the constancy of Weston and Morris,[1] declined to confess anything. 'If any man accuse me,' she said to Kingston, 'I can but say nay; and they can bring no witness.'[2] Instead of acknowledging any guilt in herself, she perhaps retaliated upon the King in the celebrated letter which has been thought a proof both of her own innocence, and of the conspiracy by which she was destroyed.[3] This letter also, although at once so well known and of so dubious authority, it is fair to give entire.
Saturday, May 6.'Sir, Your Grace's displeasure and my are imprisonment are things so strange unto me,- ↑ The sentence is mutilated, but the meaning seems intelligible: 'The Queen standeth stiffly in her opinion that she wo … which I think is in the trust that she [hath in the] other two'—i.e. Norris and Weston.—Baynton to the Lord Treasurer. The Government seems to have been aware of some secret communication between her and Norris.—Ibid.: Singer, p. 458
- ↑ Kingston to Cromwell: Singer, p. 457.
- ↑ My first impression of this letter was strongly in favour of its authenticity. I still allow it to stand in the text because it exists, and because there is no evidence, external or internal, to prove it to be a forgery. The more carefully I have examined the MS., however, the greater uncertainty I have felt about it. It is not an original. It is not an official copy. It does not appear, though here I cannot speak conclusively, to be even a contemporary copy. The only guide to the date is the watermark on the paper, and in this instance the evidence is indecisive.—Note to the 2nd edition.
