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“Anecdote of Anne Bullen,” The New York Magazine, or Literary Repository, vol. 5, no. 9 (September 1794), p. 534.
Anonymous
Robert Campbell (1769–1800) published by subscription in Philadelphia the first American edition of Hume’s History in 1795–96. (See “Introduction to Part III.” For more on the 326 subscribers, see Spencer, David Hume and Eighteenth-Century America, including “Appendix B.”) By then, Hume’s History was firmly established as the standard account from which Americans learned their English history. Excerpts from the History, such as this one from The New York Magazine, are scattered throughout eighteenth-century American periodical publications. The New York Magazine was long-lived, being published by Thomas and James Swords from 1790 to 1797. The Swords brothers, both Loyalists, had fled New York, for Halifax, in 1783. But in 1790 they returned to New York where they carried on their work as booksellers and publishers. Hume figured in several of their publications. This anecdote related to Anne Bullen (c. 1501–36) circulated widely in nineteenth-century publications, although not always accompanied by the Shakespeare quotation.
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IN Houssaie’s Memoires, Vol. i. p. 435, a little circumstance is recorded concerning the decapitation of the unfortunate Anne Bullen, which illustrates an observation of Hume. Our Historian notices, that her executioner was a Frenchman of Calais, who was supposed to have uncommon skill: it is probable that the following incident might have been preserved by tradition in France, from the account of the executioner himself. — Anne Bullen being on the scaffold, would not consent to have her eyes covered with a bandage, saying, that she had no fear of death. All that the Divine, who assisted at her execution, could obtain from her, was, that she would shut her eyes. But as she was opening them at every moment, the executioner, fearful of missing his aim, was obliged to invent an expedient to behead the Queen. He drew off his shoes, and approached her silently; while he was at her left hand, another person advanced at her right, who made a great noise in walking, so that his circumstance drawing the attention of Anne, she turned her face from the executioner, who was enabled by this artifice to strike the fatal blow, without being disarmed by that spirit of affecting resignation which shone in the eyes of the lovely Anne Bullen.
‘The Common Executioner,
Whose heart th’ accustom’d sight of
death makes hard,
Falls not the axe upon the humbled neck,
But first begs pardon.’
SHAKESPEARE