England and president of the court commissioned for her trial. She was condemned to be burnt or beheaded at the king's pleasure. Anne Boleyn heard this dreadful doom without changing color or betraying the slightest symptom of terror, but when her stern kinsman and judge had ended, she clasped her hands, and, raising her eyes to heaven, made her appeal to a higher tribunal, in these words: "Oh Father! Oh Creator! Thou who art the way, the life and the truth, knowest whether I have deserved this death." Then, turning to her earthly judges, she said, "My lords, I will not say your sentence is unjust, nor presume that my reasons can prevail against your convictions. I am willing to believe that you have sufficient reasons for what you have done, but then they must be other than those which have been produced in court, for I am clear of all the offences which you then laid to my charge." Then, with a composed air, she rose up, made a parting salutation to her judges, and left the court as she had entered it.

On the 16th of May the king signed the death-warrant of his once passionately loved consort, and sent Cranmer to receive her last confession.

She had drunk of the last drop of bitterness that mingled malice and injustice could infuse into her cup of misery; and when she received the awful intimation that she must prepare herself for death, she met the fiat like one who was weary of a troublesome pilgrimage, and anxious to be released from its sufferings.

The time appointed by Henry for the execution of his unhappy consort was twelve o'clock at noon. This was kept a profound mystery from the people till the time was at hand. A few minutes before that hour, the fatal portals through which the royal victim was to pass for the last time were thrown open, and she appeared dressed in a robe of black damask, with a deep white cape falling over it on her neck. She wore the pointed black velvet hood, which is familiar to us in her portraits; or, as some have said, a small hat with ornamented coifs under it; perhaps the picturesque bangled hat which forms part of the costume of her statue at Blickling Hall. The feverish state of excited feeling in which she had passed the morning vigil, had probably recalled the brightness to her eye, and a flush to her cheek, which supplied the loss of her faded bloom; for she is said to have come forth in fearful beauty,

indeed, one writer says, "Never had the queen looked so beautiful before." She was led by the lieutenant of the Tower, and attended by the four maids of honor who had waited upon her in prison. She was conducted by sir William Kingston to the scaffold, which was erected on the green before the church of St. Peter ad Vincula. Having been assisted by sir William to ascend the steps of the platform, she there saw assembled the lord mayor, and some of the civic dignitaries.

When she had looked round her she turned to Kingston, and entreated him "not to hasten the signal for her death till she had spoken that which was on her mind to say;" to which he consented, and she then spoke: "Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, according to law, for by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak any thing of that whereof I am accused, as I know full well that aught that I could say in my defence doth not appertain unto you, and that I could draw no hope of life from the same."

She then with her own hands removed the hat and collar, which might impede the action of the sword, and taking the coifs from her head delivered them to one of her ladies. Then covering her hair with a little linen cap (for it seems as if her ladies were too much overpowered with grief and terror to assist her, and that she was the only person who retained her composure), she said, "Alas! poor head, in a very brief space thou wilt roll in the dust on the scaffold; and as in life thou didst not merit to wear the crown of a queen, so in death thou deservest not better doom than this."

The account given by the Portuguese spectator of this mournful scene is as follows:

“And being minded to say no more, she knelt down upon both knees, and one of her ladies covered her eyes with a bandage, and then they withdrew themselves some little space, and knelt down over against the scaffold, bewailing bitterly and shedding many tears. And thus, and without more to say or do, was her head struck off; she making no con fession of her fault, but saying, 'O Lord God have pity on my soul.'”