Amidst the vituperations of the adherents of the papacy and the later Elizabethan eulogies, and in the absence of the records on which her sentence was pronounced, Anne Boleyn's guilt remains unproved. To Sir William Kingston she protested her entire innocence, and on the scaffold while expressing her submission she made no confession.[8] Smeaton alone of her supposed lovers made a full confession, and it is possible that his statement was drawn from him by threats of torture or hopes of pardon. Norris, according to one account,[9] also confessed, but subsequently declared that he had been betrayed into making his statement. The others were all said to have "confessed in a manner" on the scaffold, but much weight cannot be placed on these general confessions, which were, according to the custom of the time, a declaration of submission to the king's will and of general repentance rather than acknowledgment of the special crime. "I pray God save the king," Anne herself is reported to have said on the scaffold, "and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never; and to me he was ever a good, a gentle and sovereign lord." A principal witness for the charge of incest was Rochford's own wife, a woman of infamous character, afterwards executed for complicity in the intrigues of Catherine Howard. The discovery of Anne's misdeeds coincided in an extraordinary manner with Henry's disappointment in not obtaining by her a male heir, while the king's despotic power and the universal unpopularity of Anne both tended to hinder the administration of pure justice. Nevertheless, though unproved, Anne's guilt is more than probable. It is almost incredible that two grand juries, a petty jury, and a tribunal consisting of nearly all the lay peers of England, with the evidence before them which we do not now possess, should have all unanimously passed a sentence of guilt contrary to the facts and their convictions, and that such a sentence should have been supported by Anne's own father and uncle. Every year since her marriage Anne had given birth to a child, and Henry had no reason to despair of more; while, if Henry's state of health was such as was reported, the desire for children, which Anne shared with him, may be urged as an argument for her guilt. Sir Francis Weston in a letter to his family almost acknowledges his guilt in praying for pardon, especially for offences against his wife;[10] Anne's own conduct and character almost prepare us for some catastrophe. Whether innocent or guilty, however, her fate caused no regrets and her misfortunes did not raise a single champion or defender. The sordid incidents of her rise, and the insolence with which she used her triumph, had alienated all hearts from the unhappy woman. Among the people she had always been intensely disliked; the love of justice, and the fear of trade losses imminent upon a breach with Charles V., combined to render her unpopular.