, and Mother to
Queen Elizabeth
, which is still extant in the
Cotton Library,
as written by her own Hand.
Shakespear
himself could not have made her talk in a Strain so suitable to her Condition and Character. One sees in it the Expostulations of a slighted Lover, the Resentments of an injured Woman, and the Sorrows of an imprisoned Queen. I need not acquaint my Reader that this Princess was then under Prosecution for Disloyalty to the King's Bed, and that she was afterwards publickly beheaded upon the same Account, though this Prosecution was believed by many to proceed, as she her self intimates, rather from the King's Love to
Jane Seymour
than from any actual Crime in
Ann of Bologne.