Her surprise and confusion threw her into hysterical disorders; and in that situation she thought that the best proof of her innocence was to make an entire confession; and she revealed some indiscretions and levities, which her simplicity had equally betrayed her to commit and to avow.

She owned that she had once rallied Norris on his delaying his marriage, and had told him that he probably expected her when she should be a widow: she had reproved Weston, she said, for his affection to a kinswoman of hers, and his indifference towards his wife; but he told her that she had mistaken the object of his affection, for it was herself; upon which she defied him.[*] She affirmed that Smeton had never been in her chamber but twice, when he played on the harpsichord; but she acknowledged that he had once had the boldness to tell her that a look sufficed him.

The king, instead of being satisfied with the candor and sincerity of her confession, regarded these indiscretions only as preludes to greater and more criminal intimacies.
* Burnet, vol.i.p.

198.
** Strype, vol.i.p.

281.
Of all those multitudes whom the beneficence of the queen's tamper had obliged during her prosperous fortune, no one durst interpose between her and the king's fury; and the person whose advancement every breath had favored, and every countenance had smiled upon, was now left neglected and abandoned.