It’s the question everyone asks.
Not just what went wrong, but why Anne Boleyn had to die. Why was she not simply imprisoned, sent to a nunnery or divorced and banished like Katherine of Aragon before her?
Sadly, there were too many inescapable reasons as to why Anne’s fate was sealed before her crimes had even been fabricated. Firstly, as this all began with Cromwell, it wasn’t simply a case of appeasing the king and finding him an escape route, in which case another annulment would have been the obvious option – especially now they were in full control of the law. Alas, the current situation was unique in that Cromwell had to convince the king to get rid of his wife at a time when this wasn’t something he was actively pursuing himself. In order to achieve this spectacular feat, Cromwell had to present Henry with shocking evidence that would play on his paranoia, trigger his well-known explosive anger and push him to make the kind of irrational and catastrophic decisions his minister had now come to know him for.
Of course, once Cromwell had taken this underhand route, he knew that while Anne lived there was always a chance she could make a comeback, just as Wolsey had done. The fight she had unleashed in recent months was all the proof he needed that she would not go quietly and accept her fate. While there was breath in her body, she would conspire for revenge against the man who ruined her. Who knows, maybe one of those damn poison plots might have finally come to fruition. So, the lawyer in him knew he couldn’t risk her survival; he needed to tie up all loose ends, and with Anne having been an English commoner, Cromwell knew they could kill her off without starting the kind of war that would have followed any attempt on Katherine of Aragon’s life.
But what about Henry?
Once he realised the evidence Cromwell had provided him with had given him a sudden and unplanned escape route, the king understood what needed to be done. Anne was as strong-willed as Katherine. Henry knew she would fight him for years, as his first wife had done, and in the process cast doubts over the legitimacy of his next queen and subsequent heir.
But that was not the only practical factor for Henry. He had been warned before that any annulment from Anne could be interpreted as acceptance of the pope’s long-standing belief that Katherine of Aragon was the true queen – something England could never back down on after all they had sacrificed for it.567
So, as soon as it was decided that Anne was no longer to be queen, Henry would have realised the urgent need for her to die; and unfortunately for Anne, her husband had no conscience urging him not to kill her.
When Henry abruptly left the May Day celebrations without a word of explanation to Anne and rode to Whitehall Palace, she knew something was happening. She wouldn’t have known of Smeaton’s confession and arrest, or of Henry interrogating Norris on their journey to Whitehall. Instead, she was left at Greenwich Palace with her toddler, Elizabeth, her anxiety building and eating away at her.
The following day, 2 May, Anne tried to distract herself by watching a tennis match with her ladies. And that was when they came for her. Three men: Master Treasurer Fitzwilliam, Master Controller William Paulet, and most galling of all, Anne’s own uncle the duke of Norfolk – a man with zero moral compass, yet with the innate ability to sense whose team he needed to be on for his own self-serving interest; to hell with any notions of loyalty or family ties. Norfolk knew that if he were to escape going down with his sister’s family, he needed to convey to the king his disgust at the unfolding situation. Indeed, he displayed an impressive willingness that bordered on eagerness to bring his niece to justice. Never having been a fan of Anne’s power when it was teamed with her increasingly strong-minded independence, Norfolk’s patronising show of horror at her supposed misconduct was a role he played to convincing perfection.
As Norfolk took control of Anne’s capture, she describes how she was ‘cruelly handled’ when told of her alleged offences by the council and that she was to be arrested and sent to the Tower of London. It sounds like Paulet was playing good cop and acted like a gentleman, and Fitzwilliam was quiet, apparently in a world of his own; but it was Norfolk, as Anne told her jailers in the Tower, who was the most antagonistic, passive-aggressively tutting and shaking his head at her.568 The sheer condescension of his mock disappointment would have made the whole scene that much more infuriating for her.
And so this is what it came to. Of all the doomsday scenarios she might have tortured herself with, could she ever have imagined it would end like this? She must have been experiencing such confusion as to where this had come from . . . Was this even Cromwell’s doing? It had nothing to do with their politics, so was it a plot by Mary? But there were no allegations of being a heretic, so was it Henry’s accusation?
There would have been no answers. They were here to take her away. But fate gave Anne one small respite. As they were to travel by barge to the Tower, they had to wait for the tide to turn, so she was taken to her queen’s quarters within Greenwich Palace – essentially under house arrest – until they could set off.569 Did this give Anne a chance to say one last goodbye to her daughter, Elizabeth? Would they have allowed her the privilege? Is this what she alluded to when she said she was cruelly handled? Either way, those few hours alone before she had to face the horror of the Tower would have given her essential time to regain her composure and come to terms with what was happening. Indeed, when the men finally escorted her aboard the barge, she is said to have stayed silent for the hour-long journey down the Thames.
Anne arrived at the Tower at 5 p.m., but contrary to popular legend she didn’t make her entrance through the infamous Traitors’ Gate. Surprisingly, as queen she was still afforded the luxury of using the royals’ private entrance at Court Gate, a few hundred yards along – the one she had passed through for her coronation celebrations only three years earlier. From there she crossed the bridge over the moat and was escorted through the Byward entrance into the Tower, where a cannon was fired, as was customary to mark the arrival of all nobility into the fortress.570 Here, Anne was greeted by the prison’s own grim reaper, William Kingston, the constable of the Tower. It’s at this point that Anne’s composure is said to have crumbled. Wyatt reports her as having prayed before them all, ‘O Lord, help me, as I am guiltless of this whereof I am accused.’571
Then she asked if she would be taken to a dungeon. When Kingston replied that she was to stay in the same lodgings as for her coronation, it’s claimed Anne said, ‘It is too good for me.’572 Some historians have taken this to be an accidental admission of guilt; what else could she have possibly meant by such a statement? But we cannot presume to know Anne’s inner turmoil at that terrifying moment, or indeed what harrowing thoughts she was torturing herself with. Could her desire for self-punishment have been the result of a mother’s guilt at leaving her daughter in the hands of the monsters responsible for this horrific turn of events? Did she believe she deserved this fate, having gone too far and now placed everyone she loved in dire jeopardy?
Anne had held it together stoically until this moment; but now, as Kingston reported to Cromwell, she broke down as reality set in, dropping to her knees on the cobblestones, weeping. Then overcome with a sudden hysteria, ‘in the same sorrow fell into a great laughing, and she hath done so many times since’.573
Anne was put with four female attendants but none of her own ladies, which she told Kingston she thought ‘very unkind’.574 Little did she realise her own ladies had been spying on her just as much as these new women had now been instructed to, going out of their way to interact with Anne in order to get incriminating stories out of her.575 But in the first moments of her incarceration, Kingston reported back to Cromwell that she only had scattered and fragmented thoughts, asking, ‘Do you know why I am here? When saw you the king? I pray you to tell me where my Lord Rochford is? Oh where is my sweet brother?’576
Kingston pleaded ignorance as to the reasons for her imprisonment, claiming that he hadn’t seen Henry since the celebrations the day before, and that at this point George was still at Whitehall. Anne concluded sadly, ‘O my mother, though will die for sorrow.’577
Then, fully aware that she was at the mercy of a corrupt system, she asked Kingston, ‘Shall I die without justice?’
His response? ‘The poorest subject the king hath, had justice,’ to which Anne laughed – the only appropriate response to such a false claim.578
It was here that Kingston wrote how he had ‘seen many men and women executed and they have been in great sorrow, and to my knowledge, this lady hath much joy and pleasure in death’.579 Indeed, while Anne was in prison she would go on to display many erratic actions that were out of character, not least prophesying they would have no rain until she was delivered out of the Tower and that a disaster from heaven would follow her execution.580
It was on her first night in prison that she asked for the sacrament in her chamber ‘that she might pray for mercy’, as Kingston put it.581 Now, while we have already discussed how this does not prove a lack of true evangelical faith or motivation on Anne’s part, merely that she was a moderate reformer, Kingston did also report her as saying, ‘I shall be in heaven, for I have done many good deeds.’ This seemingly goes against the core values of evangelism; but it was Melanchthon of the German Lutheran Schmalkaldic League, a friend and pupil of Martin Luther, who insisted that justification and salvation by good deeds was less important than being justified by faith alone. Less important. Alas, still important, and arguably the basis for most religious schools of thought. So not, I must point out, the last grains of evidence history provided us with that Anne was a selfish, faithless, morally corrupt adulteress with only her own self-serving interest at heart.
By his third written report to Cromwell, Kingston noted that ‘one hour she is determined to die, the next much contrary to that’.582
Once again, while musing over what possible events of the past few days could have led her to here, Anne asked Kingston, ‘Shall I have justice?’ But so confident was she that the silly encounters she detailed with Norris, Smeaton and Weston were not worthy of imprisonment, she declared, ‘If any man accuse me I can say but nay and they can bring no witness.’583
Little did she realise that it was around this point that they were bribing and bullying her ladies into giving false witness accounts.
Though Anne’s brother, George, had been arrested mere hours before her on 2 May when he rode to see the king at Whitehall, Anne herself did not hear of him being at the Tower with her until much later. When she did, clearly unaware of the accusations levied against him, she found it strangely comforting to know she wasn’t in this harrowing situation alone, telling Kingston she was very glad they were both together.584
In fact, Anne’s only comfort and familiarity during this entire terrifying and isolating experience were the regular visits from her chaplain and sermon partner in crime, John Skippe.585 At last, she had someone who knew the full story and could bring her news from the outside, as well as discuss the truth of why she was being targeted, and by whom. This is surely when the plot against her must have fallen into place, particularly as she then asked Kingston to pass a letter on to Cromwell. However, he offered her the opportunity only to pass on a verbal message, to which she said, ‘I have much marvelled that the king’s council come not to me.’586 But unbeknown to her, Cromwell had come to the Tower several times by this point, he had just been too scared to face Anne himself – no doubt not wanting to weaken his resolve to kill her.587
It’s a miracle they actually granted Skippe access to such a high-risk prisoner, as it would appear all other close family members and friends were banned from visiting the Tower. Kingston reported that Anne complained her female attendants couldn’t provide any news on her father – this, of course, leading to one of history’s most notorious lies about Thomas Boleyn.
Second only to the notion that he pimped out his daughters to the king is the idea that he left his children to die in the Tower and made no attempt to save them. Even if you are unconvinced of his moral integrity, let’s logically assess the situation from a self-preservation viewpoint: surely any skilled diplomat of Thomas’s pedigree, trained to defuse high-tension incidents exactly like these, would have fought to save his children – if only because their demise would result in his own. If we overlook for a moment every protective, fatherly instinct he had displayed throughout Anne’s life, from securing her a nobility-level education to sheltering her away from Henry’s early bombardment and discouraging this whole dangerous marriage, we realise there is not one plausible reason for Thomas Boleyn to have stayed silent, leaving his children to die and his own reputation to be inevitably ruined.
Historians are well within their rights to argue that there is no evidence that he fought to save them. Indeed, no evidence survives. But it seems illogical to presume it never existed. If Cromwell was as smart and calculating as he appears to have been, he would have destroyed any begging letters appealing for amnesty so as not to risk Thomas wrangling his family out of this almighty set-up.
We also have to realise, though, there was a limit to how hard Thomas could fight for his children without putting the rest of his family in grave danger. He knew Cromwell was baying for all Boleyn blood, and as he himself was a powerful and key member of the king’s inner circle, if Thomas took a public stance against the monarch’s decision to execute Anne and George he risked becoming a target himself. And if Thomas was wiped out too, who would protect and provide for his wife, his remaining daughter and three grandchildren?
As his biographer concludes, ‘Just because Thomas’s grief was not officially recorded does not mean he and his wife did not suffer over the loss of their children.’588
And yet Anne’s father wasn’t the only person criticised for not doing enough to save her from her fate.
The day after her incarceration, Anne’s closest confidant and ally, Thomas Cranmer, wrote what has now become an infamous letter to the king. With limited information on exactly why she had been arrested, the archbishop knew he had to walk a tightrope; one false step and the entire evangelical cause that he and Anne had been championing in England could come crashing down with her. Which more than explains his lacklustre attempt at defending her innocence in the way we might have hoped.
But before we condemn him as a traitor to his patron, it must be pointed out that by the time Cranmer came to send his letter to Henry, he had been given full details of the lurid claims against Anne; but instead of rewriting the letter to further safeguard and distance himself from her, he sent the original, in which he attested that, ‘I never had better opinion in woman, than I had in her; which maketh me think, that she should not be culpable.’
Of course, he quickly threw in that surely Henry would never have reacted in such an extreme way had she not been guilty and, if so, she should suffer the full extent of the law. Yet, even after this safe acknowledgement that the king was right, Cranmer still put his neck on the line and declared his alliance and love for the queen by telling him that ‘next unto your Grace I was most bound unto her of all creatures living . . .’589
Alas, this might give us pause to consider that if a letter clearly accepting the possibility of Anne’s guilt was allowed to reach the king, why a more impassioned letter from her father arguing only the irrefutable evidence of Anne’s innocence might have been destroyed, for fear it would change Henry’s mind.
As Anne became more desperate and desolate in prison, cut off from all communication, it’s said she penned a heartfelt and somewhat cutting letter to the one man who could make all of this stop: her husband, the king. Yes, a letter exists that is said to have been written by Anne on 6 May, during her first week in prison. This letter’s authenticity has gone from hotly debated to downright dismissed, with persuasive arguments for and against it being genuine.
Indeed, upon first inspection the letter is convincing. The fact that it was found among Cromwell’s papers after his own arrest in 1540, along with the letters from William Kingston, the constable of the Tower, makes a very good case for authenticity.590 However, why would Cromwell not destroy a letter like this that could run the risk of being discovered and change the king’s mind? Or, worse, that could bring about Cromwell’s arrest for concealing vital evidence regarding the execution of the queen? Henry was impulsive; what if he changed his mind about Anne and blamed Cromwell for withholding information?
It is said that stylistically, in language and penmanship, this intriguing letter doesn’t match any of Anne’s other writings. In it, she repeatedly refers to herself in the third person, something she had never done before, as well as signing off as simply Anne Boleyn, not her usual Anne the Quene. But this has been explained away as either Anne writing under extreme stress or having dictated the letter to a scribe – and yes, both are plausible.591
There is also a lot of truth in the content of the letter. If this is a forgery, it is clear the writer knew certain things about Anne’s situation and was angered at the negative propaganda following her death. So for this reason I still believe it’s an important document that we should pay attention to, but there are also some vital oversights in the detail that the writer couldn’t have realised, and these straight away call the letter out as fake.
Firstly, it opens with, ‘Your displeasure and my imprisonment are things so strange unto me, as to what to write or what to excuse, I am altogether ignorant.’ But she wasn’t ignorant. She was told upon arrest exactly why the king was displeased with her and why she was being arrested. Surely, she would have used this one chance to defend herself eloquently against the lurid and outrageous claims, rather than play dumb to make a point?592
The fact that the letter then goes on to entirely blame Jane Seymour for her imprisonment ‘for whose sake I am now as I am’ is another warning sign. That might be how it appeared to an outsider dreaming up a letter from Anne, but she herself knew, as we do now, that the real reason for the plot against her was her political interference and not Henry taking a new mistress – an affair which, for all Anne knew at this stage, could have blown over in a couple of months like all the others.
Another thing historians have called into question is the fact Anne tears into Henry with the line ‘I desire of God, that he will pardon your great Sin . . . and that he will not call you unto a strict Account of your unprincely and cruel usage of me.’593 I agree with some that if anyone would have dared speak to Henry in this way it would have been Anne, particularly given that her emotions were so erratic during her imprisonment. However, as letters are a more measured form of expression, I’m unconvinced she would take this stance at such a delicate time. It wasn’t just her own life at risk here; after all, it was for the sake of her daughter that Anne sugar-coated her execution speech and practically celebrated the king. She knew better than anyone how Henry reacted to goading comments like this. So why would she have risked angering him when she and her family’s lives were in his hands?
There is another unrealistic moment in the final paragraph, where Anne pleads for the lives of the men accused with her. But by the date of this letter, she knew she had been joined in prison by her brother, so it seems odd that she wouldn’t specifically plead her brother’s innocence over those of the court staff.
Finally, a postscript written in the third person on the reverse side of the letter, seemingly by an assistant, has a suspiciously retrospective tone; here, Anne thanks the king for making her a marquess, then queen, and ‘now, seeing he could bestow no further honour upon her on earth, for purposing to make her, by martyrdom, a saint in heaven’.
But when Anne supposedly wrote this letter, she didn’t know she was going to die. Also, her being seen as a ‘Protestant martyr’ was an idea that would grow in time, when her supporters felt safe to talk about her again. Not only that but she had been arrested for adultery, not heresy. Her name was being dragged through the mud; there was no martyrdom in what was happening to her, which, disappointingly, renders this bold letter unlikely to have been written by Anne.
As the days went on, Cromwell got a little gung-ho with the arrests. Not content with Smeaton, Norris, Weston and Anne’s own brother, he also brought in for questioning Thomas Wyatt, Richard Page and William Brereton.
Wyatt we know well from his pursuit of Anne in the early days, and so may seem an obvious target. But during Cromwell’s initial years at court the two became good friends, which makes his arrest seem even more cold-hearted. Or was this the very reason he was allowed to leave, free of charge? Did his release conveniently add more weight to those who were convicted – for if some were found to be not guilty upon interrogation, wouldn’t this imply they found real evidence for those they condemned?594 That would certainly seem to be the case, for they also released Page without charge. Unfortunately, Brereton was not so lucky. A past run-in with Cromwell – he had rigged the trial of a man Cromwell tried and failed to save from execution595 – sealed his fate. Vitally, Brereton also dominated the monasteries in Cheshire and had blocked Cromwell from dissolving them. And so, suddenly, the list of men accused reads like a personal vendetta against all those who had ever wronged Master Thomas Cromwell.596
Finally, on Friday 12 May, it was time for the first of the men to stand trial at Westminster Hall. For Smeaton, Norris, Weston and Brereton, Cromwell selected a suitably biased jury that included Edward Willoughby, who owed Brereton money, William Askew, a supporter of Princess Mary, Walter Hungerford, a dependant of Cromwell’s, and Giles Alington, who was married to Thomas More’s stepdaughter. The remaining jurors were members of the anti-Boleyn faction or Cromwell’s own allies.597 The accused didn’t stand a chance.
Though all the men pleaded not guilty – apart from Smeaton, for whom it was too late to back out of his original confession – you’ll not be surprised to hear there was no room for a fair defence and they were quickly found guilty, sentenced to the horrifying prospect of being hanged, drawn and quartered. Thankfully, this was later downgraded to only a beheading by axe as a ‘royal favour’ – something that was more likely to have come from a potentially guilt-ridden Cromwell than the king, who didn’t possess the capacity to feel guilt or sympathy. Though it’s an interesting thought that if Henry truly believed these men to be guilty, surely he would have wanted them to suffer as much as possible?598 The fact that he signed off on such simple beheadings speaks volumes as to how emotionally invested he really was in this supposedly heartbreaking trial of adultery and treachery.
Because the men’s trials took place on the Friday, this meant Anne and George, who were being tried separately at the Tower of London, had to wait the weekend before their own trials on Monday 15 May.
Though George’s fate still hung in the balance, the guilty verdicts for the men on the Friday meant only one thing for Anne. If they were guilty, so was she, and this is why they called for her executioner before she had stood trial. This also explains why Henry would tell Jane Seymour of Anne’s condemnation before she had even set foot in the courtroom. It sounds like a set-up to us, but even Anne would have realised that her trial was merely a formality; if her so-called lovers had already been convicted, it could only go one way for her.
So really, Friday 12 May was the day Anne Boleyn discovered she had been found guilty of adultery. This meant that when she stepped into the courtroom on Monday she was prepared. She knew the inevitability of what was coming. It was no longer a case of fighting to prove her innocence, but of defending her name with as much dignity as possible.
Anne and George’s trials took place in the King’s Hall within the Tower of London, where special stands were built to hold an audience of two thousand. The siblings’ uncle the duke of Norfolk had the galling nerve to sit as lord steward, with his son deputising as earl marshal.599 And as a needlessly spiteful finishing touch, Henry Percy was made to sit on the jury and condemn Anne to death.
As queen, she was tried first, and made her entrance accompanied by the constable’s wife, Lady Kingston, and one of her aunts, Lady Boleyn.
For someone so hot-headed, the fact that Anne managed to stay calm and composed as the most ludicrous accusations were thrown at her says so much about the towering strength of character that had got her this far and intimidated all who opposed her. She was poised, focused and fully in control as she confirmed that no, she hadn’t been unfaithful, and no, she hadn’t wished or plotted the king’s death. Nor Katherine’s. Nor Mary’s.
While on the stand, it was also put to Anne that she had conspired to poison the king and promised to marry one of her lovers because, of course, it’s easy for us to see that any one of them were more powerful and more important than the King of England! That such a notion could stand up in court would be laughable had it not contributed to the deaths of six innocent people. If Henry had died for any reason whatsoever, Anne would have remarried one of the highest-born noblemen in Europe, not one of the king’s privy chamber staff members.600
De Carles reports that Anne ‘defended herself soberly against the charges . . . She said little but no one to look at her would have thought her guilty.’ Funny, that.601 It was also he who reported what Anne was meant to have said in her defence on the stand: ‘I do not say I have always borne the king the humility which I owed him, considering his kindness and the great honour he showed me . . .’ Quite true; he made her queen of England, after all. ‘. . . and the great respect he always paid me.’ Not so accurate. He did cheat on her multiple times and sacrificed her life for the Holy Roman Emperor. But this was her last chance at a lenient sentence, so she had to lay it on thick. ‘I admit, too, that often I have taken it into my head to be jealous of him . . . But God be my witness if I have done him any other wrong.’602
Even Thomas Wriothesley of Princess Mary’s faction conceded Anne was incredibly believable. But that could not save her from the inevitable. The jury gave their guilty verdict one by one. Norfolk, fickle as ever, wept as he concluded she had been found guilty.603 This much Anne expected. But what of her fate? Was she to be banished to a European nunnery? Divorced? Exiled . . . ?
It was Norfolk who announced her death sentence. She was to be ‘burned or beheaded as shall please the king’.604
According to Alexander Alesius, Anne was said to have ‘raised her eyes to heaven’, but only de Carles reports that she turned to the judges and ‘said she would not dispute them, but believed there was some other reason for which she was condemned than the cause alleged’.605 Whether or not she did indeed say this, the fact that de Carles reports it confirms that people at the time were aware that she was no adulterer but, rather, the victim of a set-up. Although the reason for this would remain a secret for centuries to come.
He says Anne went on to insist that ‘she did not say this to preserve her life, for she was quite prepared to die’. To which de Carles, a hostile source and strong supporter of Mary, admitted ‘her speech made even her bitterest enemies pity her’.606
And so, as the shock of her death sentence sank in, Anne was escorted out of the oppressive King’s Hall and back to her prison lodgings, for it was now her brother’s turn.
Formal charges Cromwell brought against George were that he once stayed too long in Anne’s chambers, and joked that Elizabeth might not be the king’s child. George was then handed a piece of paper on which was written a delicate question they didn’t want to ask aloud. At this point, you get a real sense of his rebellion and contempt at the attack on his family – daring and defiant, he read the question aloud to the court of two thousand people: ‘Had George ever said that the king couldn’t have sex with women and had neither virtue or staying power?’607
Under the circumstances, I feel we can forgive him this one last dig and not deem it antagonistic or reckless. His sister, the queen, had just been sentenced to death, which not only sealed his own fate but tells us this was no courtroom banter from George. He was in pain. He was angry. He wanted to hurt and humiliate the man who was doing the same to those he loved. But the mere fact that Cromwell felt the need to ask such a question in a court of law illustrates that rumours of this nature had been circulating among courtiers – indeed, it was Chapuys who had repeated them some weeks before608 – and that he was determined to pin their source as Anne Boleyn.
As the jury of peers started to deliver their sentencing it all became too much for Henry Percy, who collapsed and had to be helped out of the courtroom. Fellow jury member Charles Brandon suffered no such guilt and was happy to push on with the proceedings.
George’s guilty verdict and death sentence were delivered with the speed and flippancy that only a Tudor court could muster. Just like that, another life was to end.
Though Anne was initially sentenced to death by burning or beheading, in the end Henry opted for the unusual method of execution by sword. And here we arrive at one of the biggest misconceptions surrounding Anne’s execution: that Henry displayed spontaneous compassion by opting out of the traditional beheading by axe, which regularly went disastrously wrong, and chose instead swift decapitation by sword. One final act of mercy for the woman he still loved, but who had betrayed him so deeply.
However, in situations like this, acts of mercy for someone you were supposedly once hopelessly in love with might include hearing their defence against the accusations, giving them a lesser sentence, letting them live. Not once during the investigation was Anne Boleyn herself ever questioned or asked to explain what had happened, so we can’t now turn round and claim that the manner in which she was to be brutally murdered was a sign of Henry’s everlasting love for her. Death by sword was no act of mercy. As a sociopath, he was devoid of any feelings of compassion, remorse or conscience. The fact that he was betrothed to Jane Seymour the very day after Anne’s death should tell you just how much her fate was playing on his mind.
It’s not that Henry consciously chose to be as cold and evil as possible – the tyrant who just loved to hurt people. This was the science of how his brain functioned. Yes, it’s heartless and inhumane, but this is the devastating reality of living with a severe mental illness such as sociopathy. This also renders somewhat questionable the claim by the French priest André Thevet that Henry repented on his deathbed for the ‘injustices done to Queen Anne Boleyn’.609
So, if not an act of mercy, then what could explain this unprecedented move with Anne’s execution?
Henry may have felt indifferent to his wife at the time of her murder, but that’s not how he could allow it to look to his subjects. As we have witnessed, sociopaths have an innate ability to mimic the emotions they lack, and a death by sword would enable the king to appear merciful. More importantly, this was the first time a reigning queen had been executed – in fact, this would have been one of the main reasons Henry needed to annul his marriage to Anne before she died, ensuring she wasn’t technically a queen when killed. Not that this dulled the impact of her death. To the outside world, Anne still represented the monarchy, and so a noble death by sword would appear more dignified than burning her like a witch at the stake. Even Wyatt describes her death by sword as ‘honourable’.610
Of course, as the years went on and Henry’s mental health deteriorated further, the act of killing a queen evidently lost its shock value. And with Cromwell no longer around to oversee damage limitation for the monarchy, Henry was later to kill his fifth wife, Katherine Howard, employing a standard axeman.
But back in 1536, this was a royal precedent.611 The Tudor monarchy needed to appear merciful and chivalric; so death by sword was simply the first step in the royal propaganda machine saving Henry from the PR disaster of executing the woman for whom, in the public’s eyes, he broke from the Catholic Church. The fact that it is still referenced by historians today to illustrate the king’s mercy shows just how effective it was.612
After her trial, Anne’s chaplain John Skippe was on hand to comfort her, staying with her until 2 a.m. the following day.613 Though she tried to focus her mind with prayer, in the hours and days following her death sentence her thoughts in prison became more and more fragmented and disconnected from reality. Kingston reported that she wondered if Henry was doing all this to test her, and proposed that she should be sent to a nunnery in Antwerp, a move that might have allowed him to marry again. At other times, she was determined to die, and mused darkly that she would come to be known as ‘Queen Anne the Headless’. Her mind drifted back to her childhood with Margaret of Austria, and even to whether she’d won the bet she placed on the tennis match she was watching when arrested.614
However, on 16 May, the day after Anne’s trial, everyone else’s minds were focused on the business of killing the condemned. Kingston reports he met with the king himself, who told him all the men should die the following day, on the 17th, and that Archbishop Cranmer would be Anne’s confessor – a move that would coincidentally allow the two a chance to say a heartbreaking goodbye and, dare we imagine, perhaps a chance for Anne to pass on a final message to her parents. Yet no news on the date of Anne’s own death, with Kingston actively pushing Cromwell for the details of her execution so he could put her mind at rest and prepare the scaffold.615
However, Kingston was able to inform George Boleyn that he was to die the next day; George was said to have accepted this, but was deeply worried about the effect his death would have on those around him. The previous day in court, he had even read out a list of people he owed money to, so they wouldn’t be left wanting. We might note that this is rather telling of his true personality – that his main concerns were for others and not himself as his final hours passed.616 Not that this should come as such a great surprise, for in his lifetime George had become governor of the mental asylum Bethlehem, or Bedlam as it is better known – proving that, like his sister, he didn’t waste his days indulging solely in the fleeting frivolities of court life.
When the awful day rolled round, it was said that Anne witnessed her brother’s beheading from a window in her prison quarters. However, given the location, it would have been impossible to see the scaffold on Tower Hill beyond the north-west walls of the prison. Whether she requested to be moved and whether they would have complied, we will never know.
The only record of Anne’s reaction to the men’s deaths comes from de Carles. Upon hearing that Smeaton pleaded his guilt on the scaffold with the conventional phrase, ‘Masters, I pray you all pray for me for I have deserved the death,’ Anne supposedly replied, ‘Alas! I fear that his soul will suffer punishment for his false confession.’617 But does this simply illustrate once again just how scared young Smeaton was of doing the wrong thing? Or was this part of his plea deal with Cromwell? ‘Plead guilty and you will have a swift death.’ Might this be why the men’s punishment was downgraded from being hanged, drawn and quartered to a quick beheading?
On that very same day, 17 May, something else was to die, and that was Anne’s marriage to the king. Thomas Cranmer was forced to declare it annulled on the grounds of Henry’s earlier affair with her sister, Mary. Of course, this didn’t stop rumours circulating over the centuries that it was in fact due to a pre-contract between Anne and Henry Percy. With no firm evidence either way – Chapuys confirms he heard rumours that it was because of Mary Boleyn, but also ridiculous gossip that it was down to Elizabeth being Norris’s child, not the king’s618 – we are left to make our own rational conclusions in light of everything we’ve learned thus far.
It’s also important to note that the marriage annulment wasn’t in relation to the crimes that Anne was charged with, and therefore should not be misread as yet another treacherous move from Cranmer, confirming he believed in the guilt of his patron.619 Stripping Anne of the title of queen wasn’t one final insult before the grave, but a necessity to fix a major issue regarding Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth. If Anne died as Henry’s wife and queen, her daughter would remain heir to the kingdom. Annulling their marriage was simply Henry’s way of lining everything up so that his next child with Jane Seymour would have no legal heir to challenge it.
The fear and worry this must have instilled in Anne over the uncertainty of Elizabeth’s future is unfathomable. Having seen how Henry had treated Mary after disinheriting her, Anne’s anxieties for her daughter must have been tormenting her at this point.620
But she had run out of time. She was to die the next day.
At 2 a.m. on 18 May, Anne was still awake with her almoner. She requested that Kingston hear Mass with her shortly after dawn, so he would witness her swearing on the sacrament that she had never been unfaithful to the king. This was the sixteenth-century equivalent of a lie detector test, and not something anyone took lightly; you were risking the eternal damnation of your soul if you lied before the sacrament. This was essential to Anne in order to prove to those present that she was genuine in her declarations of innocence.621 There was nothing more she could say or do. She was now prepared to die.
But that’s when she heard news that she wasn’t to be killed until the afternoon. Kingston tells how she called for him, panicking: ‘I hear I shall not die afore noon, and I am sorry there for, for I thought to be dead by this time and past my pain.’622
However, as Kingston explains, the date of her execution had still not been set.
Anne had mentally prepared herself for her moment of reckoning and now the emotional rollercoaster dropped her into the abyss of another torturous day of imagining the horrors that were to come.
Kingston reassured her that he would forewarn her on the morning of her death and that she should not fear the execution itself, as the fatal blow wasn’t painful but, in his own words, ‘so subtle’. Anne’s haunting reply to his attempt to soothe and calm her nerves has gone down in history. She said, ‘I heard say the executioner was very good, and I have a little neck,’ putting her hands around her neck to double-check. At which point, the grim ridiculousness of measuring her own neck for decapitation hit her, and she dissolved into a disturbing fit of laughter.623
The following day, 19 May 1536, the time had finally come.
Witnesses say Anne was serene and calm as she faced the scaffold. Religious supporters put her seemingly bold and courageous attitude down to unwavering faith. And while I have no doubt that this would have certainly come into play for such a devout evangelical, the more likely reason for her lack of tears and show of emotion come judgement day was that her nerves had been torn to shreds. She would have been dazed, drained and sleep-deprived. Mentally and emotionally exhausted. Are we really surprised an unnatural calm enveloped her at the sheer relief that the suffering was almost over?
An anonymous hostile source reported that Anne walked to the scaffold ‘feeble and half stupefied’. I’m sure this was intended as an insult, by someone unaware that future readers aren’t in need of Anne the Stoic Martyr and are merely striving to comprehend how Anne Boleyn the human being would have felt at the stark reality of her execution; but her appearing ‘half stupefied’ strikes me as a completely normal human reaction to this final surreal moment.624
However, upon further analysis with Dr Kevin Dutton, we believe we may have identified what Anne was experiencing in the days, hours and indeed minutes leading up to her death. The fact that she knew the inevitability of the verdict of her trial a full week before her execution suggests she may have been displaying symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder days before she even stepped on to the scaffold: these are the emotional highs and lows, the poor sleep patterns, lack of concentration, the mind whirring with scattered thoughts and an emotional detachment from the situation, which explains her jests about being decapitated.625 It may seem a bizarre notion to consider, yet seemingly not impossible within the complex labyrinth of the human mind.
And so now, after weeks of isolation, as Anne was led out through a crowd of a thousand spectators packed within the tower walls, her mind and emotions would have been numb to the terrifying scene that surrounded her. Kingston led the way, followed by the four wardresses, as Anne walked the short journey from the queen’s quarters, through Coldharbour Gate, to the scaffold awaiting her directly behind the north face of the White Tower.626 This would have been her last sight on earth, its northern wall dripping with excrement where the toilet drainage poured out. Quite apt, methinks, that Anne should see a wall of human filth before she died. A fitting representation of the corrupt world she was leaving behind.
Kingston led her up the steps, leaving her to face the silent crowd on the four-foot-high scaffold draped in black. We don’t know if Anne managed to pick out the faces of the men who were responsible for her death, Cromwell and Brandon, who came to witness the result of their weeks of scheming and plotting. Could Anne even have imagined their level of involvement in her murder at that point? Could anyone?
Reports that she kept looking behind her, nervous of the executioner striking before she was ready, have been misinterpreted as her desperately looking for any sign of a last-minute pardon from the king, and are in contrast to all other reports that she was calm and at peace.
And with that, Anne stepped forward and addressed the crowd.
From the multiple and varying reports of what she said that day, the words that were corroborated by a number of sources were roughly as follows:
Good Christian people, I have not come here to preach a sermon; I have come here to die. For according to the law and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak of that whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the king 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. And if any person will meddle of my cause, I require thee to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me.627
Her final words of kindness towards the king may appear to the modern reader to be steeped in sarcasm and irony, but it’s clear at this stage that she was being overly gracious for the simple aim of protecting her daughter. If Anne had defended her name and publicly torn into the king, it was only her remaining family members who would have suffered the repercussions. In warning that ‘If any person will meddle of my cause, I require thee to judge the best,’ she knew any support for her would be seen as treason against the king, and she didn’t want any more innocent people to die in her name.
But what we can be sure Anne didn’t say, as reported by a Portuguese gentleman, is ‘Alas, poor head! In a very brief space thou wilt roll in the dust on this scaffold; and as in life thou didst not merit to wear the crown of a queen, so in death, thou deservest not a better doom than this.’ How do we know she didn’t say this? Firstly, because no foreigners were allowed to witness the execution. Secondly, because the reporter has her saying in the very next breath, ‘And ye, my damsels, who, whilst I lived, ever showed yourself so diligent in my service.’ And as we well know, the ladies at her execution were not the ladies who had served her in life; she had only known these women for the seventeen days she’d been in the Tower.628
In reality, Anne was said to have spoken with ‘an untroubled countenance’,629 and sensationalism aside, when her speech ended she turned to say goodbye to her four wardresses, only to find them now in tears. Yes, these were the same women who had been spying on her for the past few weeks in the Tower, providing her own words to be twisted into a case to condemn her to this death over which they were weeping. But their hypocrisy was of no matter to Anne now.
Her ermine mantle was removed, revealing a grey damask gown lined with fur. She took off her gable hood and replaced it with a cap provided by the women. She turned back to the crowd, knelt down and prepared to die. One of the ladies stepped forward to secure a blindfold over her eyes as she started to pray:
‘To God I commend my soul. To Christ I commend my soul. Jesu, receive my soul.’630
Then the swordsman decapitated Anne with one blow. It was over. She was gone.
One woman had the horrific experience of having to pick up Anne’s severed head and wrap it in a cloth. The other ladies wrapped her body in a sheet, and together carried her to the chapel a few hundred yards away. There, she shared the indignity of all victims of the Tower, and was stripped of her clothing. Her body was then placed not in a coffin but an elm chest and buried next to her brother, George, where Anne could finally rest in peace after, let’s face it, one almighty fight in this formidable lifetime of hers.631
ANNE BOLEYN 1501–1536
They say few mourned her, but that’s not true. Many mourned Anne Boleyn.
The evangelical reformists knew Anne was the only one in England fighting their cause from a genuine position of power, and now she was gone. And if she could be killed, what about them? So, when historians state that few mourned Anne, perhaps what they should say is that few were allowed to mourn her. To support the former queen was considered treason, and meant they must automatically be against the king. Hence, few dared risk their life to defend the name of a woman who was now dead and could no longer be hurt, whereas they and their cause still could be.
But make no mistake, Anne was mourned:632 by the youths whose education she relentlessly championed, by the underprivileged families for whom she fought so hard, by those who could not live in the freedom of their religious beliefs – they would all have mourned the loss of Anne Boleyn; now that we know the full story of her work, it’s impossible to think otherwise.
So, there you have it. The whole truth. Nothing left out for convenience. An honest analysis that takes into account the fact that Anne Boleyn was a real person who wasn’t reading from a script, whose shortcomings made her human, whose fight should be an inspiration to us all. Like for Anne, now is not a time to sleepwalk through life turning a blind eye, believing if it’s not affecting us, then it’s not our responsibility. Take note from what you’ve just read, for history has a nasty habit of repeating itself. This is why it’s so important we know the truth about what really happened, in order to make damn sure it never happens again. History is watching you.
