Note 2 — The Case of Anne Boleyn
Reading edition
They really seem to have taken some little pains to make the death of the King’s old flame as little terrible as possible. They might have burnt her or subjected her to the usual grim preliminaries of the scaffold. Probably they did this not because the King had ever loved her, but because she was a queen, and therefore not to be subjected to needless infamy; one of the Lord’s anointed, in short.