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Tell this story how you may, and the evidence remains of guilt under any hypothesis–guilt such as in Grecian tragedy was seen thousands of years ago hanging in clouds of destiny over princely houses, and reading to them a doom of utter ruin, root and branch, in which, as in the anarchy of hurricanes, no form or feature was descried distinctly–nothing but some dim fluctuating phantom, pointing with recording finger to that one ancestral crime through which the desolation had been wrought.

Mr. Froude, through his natural sense of justice, and his deep study of the case, is unfavourably disposed towards the Lady Anne Boleyn: nevertheless he retains lingering doubts on her behalf, all of which, small and great, we have found reason to dismiss. We, for our parts, are thoroughly convinced of her guilt. Our faith is, that no shadow of any ground exists for suspending the verdict of the sentence; but at the same time for mitigating that sentence there arose this strong argument–namely, that amongst women not formally pronounced idiots, there never can have been one more pitiably imbecile.

There is a mystery hanging over her connection with the king which nobody has attempted to disperse. We will ourselves suggest a few considerations that may bring a little coherency amongst the scattered glimpses of her fugitive court life. The very first thought that presents itself, is a sentiment, that would be pathetic in the case of a person entitled to more respect, upon the brevity of her public career. Apparently she lost the king’s favour almost in the very opening of her married life. But in what way? Not, we are persuaded, through the king’s caprice. There was hardly time for caprice to have operated; and her declension in favour from that cause would have been gradual. Time there was none for her beauty to decay–neither had it decayed. We are disposed to think that in a very early stage of her intercourse with the king, she had irritated the king by one indication of mental imbecility rarely understood even amongst medical men–namely, the offensive habit of laughing profusely without the least sense of anything ludicrous or comic. Oxford, or at least one of those who shot at the Queen, was signally distinguished by this habit. Without reason or pretext, he would break out into causeless laughter, not connected with any impulse that he could explain. With this infirmity Anne Boleyn was plagued in excess. On the 2nd of May, 1536, the very first day on which she was made aware of the dreadful accusations hanging over her good name and her life, on being committed to the Tower, and taken by Sir William Kingston, the governor, to the very same chambers in which she had lain at the period of her coronation, she said, ‘It’ (meaning the suite of rooms) ‘is too good for me; Jesu, have mercy on me;’ next she kneeled down, ‘weeping a great space.’ Such are Sir William’s words; immediately after which he adds, ‘and in the same sorrow fell into a great laughing.’ A day or two later than this, she said, ‘Master Kingston, shall I die without justice?’–meaning, it seems, would she be put to death without any judicial examination of her case; upon which Sir William replied, ‘The poorest subject the king hath, had justice’–meaning, that previously to such an examination of his case, he could not by regular course of justice be put to death. Such was the question of the prisoner–such was the answer of the king’s representative. What occasion was here suggested for rational laughter? And yet laughter was her sole comment. ‘Therewith,’ says Sir William, ‘she laughed.’ On May 18th, being the day next before that of her execution, she said, ‘Master Kingston, I hear say I shall not die afore noon; and I am very sorry therefore, for I thought to be dead by this time, and past my pain.’ Upon this Sir William assured her ‘it should be no pain, it was so subtle;’ meaning that the stroke of a sword by a powerful arm, applied to a slender neck, could not meet resistance enough to cause any serious pain. She replied, ‘I heard say the executioner was very good, and I have a little neck;’ after which she laughed heartily. Sir William so much misunderstood this laughter, which was doubtless of the same morbid and idiotic character as all the previous cases, that he supposes her to have had ‘much joy and pleasure in death,’ which is a mere misconstruction of the case. Even in the very act of dying she could not check her smiling, which assuredly was as morbid in its quality and origin as what of old was known as ‘risus sardonicus.’