husband, shown his horns so openly, and seemed so proud of them!' Yet when the moment came for Audley to begin, some sense of the intolerable shame attending such a charge prevented Henry from permitting Audley from extending his 'conspiracy' beyond the men who were already named as her accomplices. No more arrests were made. Wyat was suffered to go free. Bryan was discharged from custody, and Audley's labours were restricted to the prisoners in the Tower.

3. The form into which Audley threw his indictment was that of a conspiracy 'to compass and imagine the King's death.' His first clause stood: "That the Lady Anne, Queen of England, having been the wife of the King for the space of three years and more, she, the said Lady Anne, contemning the marriage so solemnized between her and the King, and bearing malice in her heart against the King, and following her frail and carnal lust, did falsely and traitorously procure, by means of indecent language, gifts, and other acts therein stated, divers of the King's daily and familiar servants to be her adulterers and concubines, so that several of the King's servants, by the said Queen's most vile provocation and invitation, became given and inclined to the said Queen.' Five clauses followed in which Anne was to be accused of adultery with Norreys, Rochford, Brereton, Weston, and Smeaton. Clause number seven was to accuse the five traitors of being jealous of each other, and of receiving gifts and rewards from the Queen.

4. The clauses numbered eight and nine stood thus:- Furthermore, that the Queen, and other the said traitors, jointly and severally, 31st October, 27 Hen. VIII., and at various times before and after, compassed and imagined the King's death; and that the Queen had frequently promised to marry some one of the traitors, whenever the King should depart this life, affirming she never would love the King in her heart. Furthermore, that the King, having within a short time before become acquainted with the before-mentioned crimes, vices, and treasons, had been so grieved that certain harms and dangers had happened to his royal body.'

5. Such were the charges to be brought against the six prisoners in the Tower, and no amount of legal ingenuity could give them an air of truth. Audley had meant to charge the Queen with poisoning Catharine, and intending to poison Mary. Chapuys assured so many people of these facts being true, that the pretenders and their partizans were expecting to see them proved; but Audley, though he clung to these theories of poisoning with a desperate energy, was obliged to let them go at last. soning was a crime for which a culprit might be boiled to death; for which a culprit had been lately boiled to death; and the malignant passions of Lady Exeter and Lady Willoughby would have found a fearful joy in boiling Anne. But Hales, the Attorney-General, though a tool of Audley, was a thorough lawyer, and the lawyers had to deny these ladies the excitement

Poi

of this fearful joy. A charge of conspiring with Rochford, Norreys, and the other prisoners, to 'compass and imagine the King's death,' was an issue that might be tried. Beyond this issue nothing could be dared. A dose of deadly nightshade given to 'Lady Catharine, dowager Princess of Wales,' was not an act of compassing and imagining the King's death; nor could the alleged fact in one case, and the alleged intention in another, be connected in the way of 'conspiracy' with Rochford, Norreys, or the other prisoners in the Tower. This poisoning theory was therefore dropt.

6. Taking a lower line, Audley elected to stand by his 'conspiracy' to compass the King's death. Norreys was to be the chief offender, since the King expected him to yield in love if not in fear; and his imaginary intrigue with Anne was dated so far back as to support the plea that Elizabeth was his child! This method suited Chapuys, Norfolk, Suffolk, Exeter, and Montagu. If Elizabeth were degraded from her rank, the field would be thrown open to the families of all pretenders. thought of Mary, Norfolk of Richmond. saw an opening for his daughter Frances. Exeter and Montagu were males, and therefore might come in before these females. Exeter was a grandson of Edward the Fourth, Montagu a grandson of Clarence. Sweep out Elizabeth, the only legal heir, and each of these pretenders would have a chance; Mary the best of all, as Chapuys easily foresaw. Chapuys

Chapuys

Suffolk

was assured that Norreys would be charged in such a way as to touch the birthright of Elizabeth, and one day he was told that things had gone so far that Cranmer had already given his sentence against Elizabeth as that prisoner's child! But this idea was abandoned also. If he tossed his horns about in private, Henry shrank from the unspeakable odium of proclaiming in a court of justice that 'his entirely beloved wife' had been seduced by his domestic in their honeymoon. He feared, as much as the pretenders hoped, to taint Elizabeth's birth. Until a prince were born, Elizabeth was his legal heir, and Henry feared to see his crown and sceptre pass into another line. So Audley was allowed to stand by his conspiracy to compass the King's death,' but he was forced to date his charge against the Queen a few days after the princess's birth.

305

CHAPTER V.

TRIAL.

1536.

1. As the indictment stood, when all these changes had been made, Norreys was to be accused of an offence committed at Westminster, commencing on the sixth and completed on the twelfth day of October, 1533 ; Brereton of an offence committed at Hampton Court, commencing on the third, completed on the twentyfifth day of December, 1533; Smeaton of an offence committed at Westminster, commencing on the twelfth, completed on the twenty-fifth day of April, 1534; Weston of an offence committed at Westminster, commencing on the eighth, completed on the twentieth day of May, 1534; Rochford of an offence committed at Westminster, commencing on the second, completed on the fifth day of November, 1535. To crowd so many crimes into so small a space was difficult, and Audley's ingenuity was overtaxed, even when assisted by his able and ingenious colleague Hales. Elizabeth was born on the seventh day of September, 1533, and Anne, according to their pleas, was to be charged with the indulgence of a criminal

VOL. IV.

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