Mercy, your majesty, mercy for Anne Askew!" "And you, Thomas Seymour, do you also renew your petition ?" "No, I withdraw it.

Earl Surrey protects her; I, therefore, retire, for without doubt she is a criminal; your majesty says so, and, therefore, it is so.

It would ill become a Seymour to protect a person who sinned against the king." This new indirect attack on Earl Surrey seemed to make on all present a deep but very varied impression.

Here, faces were seen to turn pale, and there, to light up with a malicious smile; here, compressed lips muttered words of threatening, there, a mouth opened to express approbation and agreement.
The king's brow was clouded and troubled; the arrow which Earl Sudley had shot with so skilful a hand had hit.

The king, ever suspicious and distrustful, felt so much the more disquieted as he saw that the greater part of his cavaliers evidently reckoned themselves friends of Henry Howard, and that the number of Seymour's adherents was but trifling.
"These Howards are dangerous, and I will watch them carefully," said the king to himself; and for the first time his eye rested with a dark and hostile look on Henry Howard's noble countenance.
But Thomas Seymour, who wished only to make a thrust at his old enemy, had at the same time decided the fate of poor Anne Askew.