On the 17th of May the Queen was taken to Lambeth Palace, where she made her confession to Archbishop Cranmer, but, according to Bishop Burnet, any statements that she made then were induced by the prospect of saving her life; but this cannot be proved. Up to the last Anne appears to have maintained her cheerfulness and lightness of heart. Knighton writing to Cromwell tells him that, whilst dining with him, the Queen had announced her intention of going to Antwerp, as if she fully expected to be released. Another time she said to him, “If any man accuse me, I can say but nay, and they can bring no witness”; and also, “I think the King does this to prove me.” In Burnet’s “History” the following incident, which took place shortly before Anne’s execution, and which I think goes far to prove her innocence of the charges brought against her, is recounted: “The day before she suffered, upon a strict search of her past life, she called to mind that she had played the step-mother too severely to Lady Mary (afterwards Queen Mary), and had done her many injuries. Upon which, she made the Lieutenant of the Tower’s lady sit down in the Chair of State; which the other, after some ceremony, doing, she fell down on her knees, and with many tears charged the lady, as she would answer it to God, to go in her name, and do, as she had done, to the Lady Mary, and ask her forgiveness for the wrongs she had done her.” Speede, alluding in his “History” to this scene, says, “as she cleared her conscience of the lesser crimes, so undoubtedly could she have done of the greater, if any had been committed.” In a long letter Knighton wrote to Cromwell on the 18th of May, he says that the Queen had sent for him to be present when she received the Sacrament in her prison. “And at my commyng,” he writes, “she sayd, ‘Mr Knighton, I hear say that I shall not dye affore noon, and I am very sory therefore; for I had thowtt to be ded by thys time and past my payne.’ I told hyr it should be no payne it was so suttel, and then she sayd, ‘I have heard say the executioner was very good and I have a lyttel neck,’ and put her hand about it lawying hartely. I have seen many men and also women executed, and that they have been in grate sorrow; and to my knowledge thys lady hasse muche joy and plesur in dethe.” One may infer from the tone of this letter that Knighton did not believe in Anne’s guilt.