Spanish Chronicle Chapter 29. 02 May 1536 ... and he sent them to the Duke (age 33) [Note. a mistake for Viscount] to see how he would answer. To explain why the Duke had been arrested, it should be told that the King was informed that he had been seen on several occasions going in and out of the Queen's room dressed only in his night-clothes. When the gentlemen went to him, he said, "I do not know why the King has had me arrested, for I never wronged him in word or deed. If my sister has done so, let her bear the penalty." Then the Chancellor replied, "Duke, it was ground for suspicion that you should go so often to her chamber at night, and tell the ladies to leave you. It was a very bold thing to do, and you deserve great punishment." "But look you, Chancellor," answered the Duke, "even if I did go to speak with her sometimes when she was unwell, surely that is no proof that I was so wicked as to do so great crime and treason to the King." Then the Duke of Norfolk said, "Hold thy peace, Duke, the King's will must be done after all." So they left him, and presently put old Margaret to the torture, who told the whole story of how she had arranged that Mark and Master Norris and Brereton should all have access to the Queen unknown to each other. She was asked about Master Wyatt, but she said she had never even seen him speak to the Queen privately, but always openly, whereupon Secretary Cromwell was glad, for he was very fond of Master Wyatt.

So the gentlemen ordered the old woman¹ to be burnt that night within the Tower, and they took her confession to the King; and the King ordered all the prisoners to be beheaded, and the Duke as well, so the next day the Duke, Master Norris, Brereton, and Mark were executed.

Note 1. Lady Wingfield; I can find no record, however, of her having been burnt in Tower, although her dying confession, of which a part only now remains, has always been considered the strongest proof of Anne's guilt.

Spanish Chronicle Chapter 30. 17 May 1536. How the Duke, and Norris, and Brereton, and Mark were beheaded the next day¹.

We have told how the old woman was ordered to be burned in the great courtyard of the Tower, and they made the Queen see it from an iron-barred window. She said, "Why do you grieve me so? I wish they would burn me with her." To which the keeper answered, "Madam, another death is reserved for you." I do not care for all the harm they can do me now," she said, "for they can never deny I was a crowned Queen, although I was a poor woman."

The next day they brought out the Duke (age 33) and the others, and it was a surprising sight to see the great crowd there was. There came with the culprits over five hundred halberdiers, and when the Duke ascended, a gentleman said to him, "My lord Duke if you have anything to say, you can say it." Then the Duke turned to the people and said in the hearing of many, "I beg you pray to God for me; for by the trial I have to pass through I am blameless, and never even knew that my sister was bad. Guiltless as I am, I pray God to have mercy upon my soul." Then he lay upon the ground with his head on the block, the headsman gave three strokes, and so died this poor Duke.

Then Master Norris mounted, and made a great long prayer; and then, turning to the people, he said, "I do not think any gentleman at Court owes more to the King than I do, and none have been more ungrateful and regardless of it than I have. I deserve the death they condemn me to, and worse still, and so I pray to God for mercy on my soul, and acknowledge the justice of my sentence." Then he cast himself on the ground, and was beheaded. The next was Brereton, who said nothing but "I have offended God and the King; pray for me," and he was executed.

The last was Mark, and he cried in a loud voice that all could hear, "Oh, woe is me! Only four months ago I was a poor man, and my good fortune raised me to better things, and would have lifted me higher still, but for the devil's tempting, and my inability to resist the pride which has been my undoing. I thought treason would never come to light, but I confess now I erred, and do not deserve so honourable a death as that which the King has ordered me. I ask pardon of God and the King, for I have wronged him more than any other, and I beg you, gentlemen, to pray to God for me;" and then he threw himself down and was beheaded; but before he died he said, "Gentlemen, I ask pardon of Master Percy, for he would have been killed if I had not been arrested, as I had set men on to murder him;" and fortunately Master Percy was there, and answered, "God pardon thee, Mark, as I pardon thee²."

The good Wyatt was witnessing all this from a window of the Tower, and all the people thought that he also was to be brought out and executed; but Wyatt that night wrote a letter to the King, and sent it to him by a cousin of his, which letter was as follows.

Note 1. Sir Henry Norris, Lord Rochford, William Brereton, Mark Smeaton, and Sir Francis Weston were beheaded on 17th May, 1536. The Chronicle makes no mention of Sir Francis Weston.

Note 2. Lingard positively asserts that Smeaton was hanged, and not beheaded; but quotes at length the letter of a Portuguese gentleman, then resident in London, to a friend in Lisbon, in which the account given of the affair agrees with the present Chronicle.