[264] Lady Bulmer seems from the depositions to have deserved as serious punishment as any woman for the crime of high treason can be said to have deserved. One desires to know whether in any class of people there was a sense of compunction for the actual measure inflicted by the law. The following is a meagre, but still welcome, fragment upon this subject:—
“Upon Whitsunday, at breakfast, certain company was in the chauntry at Thame, when was had speech and communication of the state of the north country, being that proditors against the King’s Highness should suffer to the number of ten; amongst which proditors the Lady Bulmer should suffer. There being Robert Jones, said it is a pity that she should suffer. Then to that answered John Strebilhill, saying it is no pity, if she be a traitor to her prince, but that she should have after her deserving. Then said Robert Jones, let us speak no more of this matter; for men may be blamed for speaking of the truth.”—Rolls House MS. first series, 1862.
[265] MS. State Paper Office: —— to Henry Saville.
[266] A second cause “is our most dear and most entirely beloved wife the queen, being now quick with child, for the which we give most humble thanks to Almighty God, albeit she is in every condition of that loving inclination and reverend conformity, that she can in all things well content, satisfy, and quiet herself with that thing which we shall think expedient and determine; yet, considering that, being a woman, upon some sudden and displeasant rumours and brutes that might be blown abroad in our absence, she might take impressions which might engender danger to that wherewith she is now pregnant, which God forbid, it hath been thought necessary that we should not extend our progress this year so far from her.”—Henry VIII. to the Duke of Norfolk: State Papers, Vol. I. p. 552.
[267] MS. Rolls House, A 2, 28.
[268] A curious drawing of Hull, which was made about this time, with the plans of the new fortifications erected by Henry, is in the Cotton Library. A gallows stands outside the gate, with a body hanging on it, which was probably meant for Constable’s.
[269] “Immediately tofore Sir Robert Constable should receive his rights, it was asked of him if that his confession put in writing was all that he did know. To which he made answer that it was all. Notwithstanding he knew, besides that, sundry naughty words and high cracks that my Lord Darcy had blown out, which he thought not best to shew so long as the said lord was on life, partly because they should rather do hurt than good, and partly because he had no proof of them.
“But what these words were he would not declare, but in generality. Howbeit, his open confession was right good.”—MS. State Paper Office, first series, Vol. I.
[270] A general amnesty was proclaimed immediately after. “The notable unkindness of the people,” Norfolk said, “had been able to have moved his Grace to have taken such punishment on the offenders as might have been terrible for all men to have thought on that should hereafter have only heard the names of sedition and rebellion.
“Yet the king’s most royal Majesty, of his most tender pity and great desire that he hath rather to preserve you from the stroke of justice imminent upon your deserts, than to put you to the extremity of the same, trusting and supposing that the punishment of a few offenders in respect of the multitude, which have suffered only for an example to others to avoid the like attemptations, will be sufficient for ever to make all you and your posterities to eschew semblable offences, of his inestimable goodness and pity is content by this general proclamation to give and grant to you all, every of you, his general and free pardon.”—Rolls House MS. A 2, 28; State Papers, Vol. I. p. 558.