Posted on May 15, 2020
BBC - History - Anne Boleyn and the Downfall of her Family
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On May 15, 1536, Anne Boleyn and her brother George, Lord Rochford, were accused of adultery and incest. From the article:
"History - Anne Boleyn and the Downfall of her Family
By Richard Bevan
Anne Boleyn was the first English queen to be publicly executed. Five hundred years after her death, her tragic tale is still the subject of historians and the inspiration for films. Out of all of Henry VIII's wives, Anne is perhaps the most famous and instantly associated with the gargantuan Tudor King.
Introduction
On the 19th May, 1536 at 8.00am, a thirty-six-year-old woman took her place on a scaffold dressed in a robe of black damask covered by an ermine mantle of white. Instead of denying her guilt as an adulteress and disciple of witchcraft, she delivered a generous speech praising her former lord and lover Henry VIII. After being blindfolded, she waited only a few seconds before a French swordsman severed her head from her delicate neck.
Greek tragedy
The story of the Boleyns could be likened to a Greek tragedy. They were an accomplished family, ennobled within a short period of time, only to find themselves the victims of the very prominence so desperately sought and attained by Anne's father, Sir Thomas Boleyn. His daughter's rapid ascension to the throne due to his own influence was also to be his entire family's undoing when Anne was accused of treason.
The story of the Boleyns could be likened to a Greek tragedy.
Thomas, only fourteen years older than Henry himself, was a respected mercer with a talent for languages and diplomacy. He was already established at the Royal Court well before Henry became King in 1509. Even his marriage to the well-connected Lady Elizabeth Howard seemed to work to his advantage, enhancing his ruthless ambitions.
A father's master plan
Their three children, George, Mary and Anne, were all well-educated and formed part of their father's grand master plan to attain greater power and status. Anne, the youngest of the sisters, was extremely close to her brother George but possibly had a more distant relationship with her elder sister Mary, exacerbated by the fact that the latter became a discarded mistress of Henry.
The young girls spent their teenage years in France as ladies-in-waiting to Henry's sister the French Queen. Later they were to part when Anne was transferred to the court of the new French Queen, Claude, while Mary returned home. Anne arrived back in England when she was about twenty and was immediately placed in the household of Henry's wife, Katherine of Aragon, as maid of honour.
Sexual magnetism
Anne's French manner in both dress sense and attitude charmed many at the English court. Her dark looks were at the time unfashionable and although she was never recognised as a great beauty, her sexual magnetism and the way she captivated those around her is well documented. Indeed her presence influenced women at court to copy her sartorial style. It was this 'difference' as well as her wit, intelligence and effervescence that attracted the King. Some years later, Henry was to convince himself that he had been 'bewitched' by Anne when she was accused of adultery.
It was said that she was the only woman who ever dared to argue and answer back to Henry.
But as Anne's status increased with the prospect of becoming Henry's consort, so her own star's ascendancy helped enrich her family's fortunes. Anne's father was created Earl of Wiltshire and her brother Lord George Rochford was appointed to the Royal Privy Chamber. Even brother-in-law William Carey benefited from his association with the Boleyns.
Henry secretly wed Anne on 25th of January, 1533, and with that secured the Boleyns' status as one of the most influential families in the land. It was said that she was the only woman who ever dared to argue and answer back to Henry. At the time, the King tolerated his lover's feisty demeanour and her witty repartee excited him. Years later, perhaps reflecting on his tumultuous relationship with Anne, Henry was to insist on a future wife who was servile and 'untroublesome'. It is also questionable whether Anne really loved Henry or simply relished the idea of becoming Queen after her initial betrothal to Lord Henry Percy was callously terminated by Cardinal Wolsey. There is little doubt that had she married Percy as intended, she would have at least avoided an early demise at the executioner's block.
Accusations
Despite producing a healthy baby girl, Elizabeth, Anne's failure to provide a male heir was the beginning of the end of her and her family's streak of good luck. Henry's disaffection caused by her second miscarriage of a defective child was the one act - besides accusations of adultery - that would certainly destroy his trust in her. She had to be blamed for bringing about misfortune into the nursery as Henry would never be found culpable.
Anne's failure to provide a male heir was the beginning of the end of her and her family's streak of good luck.
Instead five innocent men, including Anne's brother Lord Rochford, became the sacrificial lambs to rid Henry of what had become to him as tiresome a predicament as his protracted divorce from Queen Catherine. Whether or not Henry chose to accept the accusations of Anne's adultery in order to salve his own conscience is not clear, but it must be remembered that the belief in witchcraft in the 16th century associated the birth of deformed babies with illicit sexual practices.
Sir Francis Weston, William Brereton, Mark Smeaton, Sir Henry Norris and Anne's brother Lord Rochford were arrested under suspicion of having relations with the Queen. The famous poet Sir Thomas Wyatt was also imprisoned but later released from the Tower. All the accused men were well known for their licentious behaviour and for this reason possibly became easy targets for incrimination.
When Anne finally heard about the allegations she laughed at the absurdity of such findings...
A secret commission, including Thomas Cromwell, Anne's father and her uncle the Duke of Norfolk, was put forward to inquire into allegations of sexual misconduct and witchcraft by the Queen. At first Anne was unaware of the conspiratorial efforts to bring about her downfall and it is more than likely that her father warned her of the seriousness of the matter. When Anne finally heard about the allegations, she laughed at the absurdity of such findings when some of her accused lovers such as the musician and possibly homosexual Mark Smeaton had only met her briefly.
Anne's brother, Lord Rochford was the most important suspect. He was accused of responsibility for his sister's last miscarried child after it was alleged that both he and Anne had conspired out of desperation to produce a male heir. Interestingly Rochford's wife, Jane Parker, perhaps motivated by vengeance for her husband's rumoured affairs, spoke ill of him during court proceedings. Ironically Parker was herself beheaded several years later for treason relating to Henry's fifth and equally doomed wife Catherine Howard.
Sorcery
At Anne's trial, presided over by her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, she was accused of acting the 'libertine' before her marriage to Henry. So many factors worked against the Queen, reinforcing the view that she was a disciple of Satan who had 'bewitched' Henry with sorcery. Anne's minor physical defects, namely an extra digit on her hand and a prominent neck mole added to the belief that she was a 'she-devil'. Above all, her inability to produce a healthy male heir condemned her further. Despite inaccuracies relating to dates when Anne was supposed to have conducted her affairs, the belief that as a witch she could materialise in any place at any time invalidated any such evidence from being used in her defence.
Imprisonment
Anne's minor physical defects... added to the belief that she was a 'she-devil'.
After Anne's arrival at the Tower in April 1536 it was noted that her behaviour oscillated from a resigned calmness to occasional bouts of hysteria and depression. One moment she would be laughing, sometimes maniacally, the next weeping uncontrollably. It is perhaps little wonder that due to her miscarriage several months before and worrying about her family, that she was extremely emotional during this stressful time. William Kingston, the Constable of the Tower took pity on Anne and recorded that she enquired about her father, also her 'sweet broder (brother)' and lamented that her mother would die of 'sorrow' for her.
During Anne's imprisonment at the Tower - ironically in the same state rooms she had resided during her happy coronation - her family were forbidden to see her. Perhaps it is not too difficult to imagine how Anne's family must have suffered. Apart from the shame of being socially ostracised, they must have indeed been in a state of shock and disbelief that their once privileged and envied existence was crumbling around them. Anne's parents were after all not only witnessing the humiliating downfall of their daughter, the Queen of England, but also the destruction of a much loved son.
Anne was left in agonising uncertainty of whether she would be beheaded or burned at the stake...
On Monday 15th of May, 1536, the Duke of Norfolk proclaimed the death sentence on Anne with 'tears in his eyes'. The convicted men suffered painful deaths. Anne herself was left in agonising uncertainty of whether she would be beheaded or burned at the stake, until her friend and supporter Archbishop Cramner was able to inform her that she would be spared the latter.
Social ostracism
It is difficult to imagine how Sir Thomas, Anne's father, managed to continue his role at the royal court both during his daughter's trial and after her execution. Did he become emotionally dislocated in order to protect the rest of his family or was he perhaps convinced that Anne would be spared the executioner's axe? Sadly there are no written records that have survived to contribute to a clearer understanding. But the fact that Sir Thomas' much loved and only son was accused of incest could only have served to increase the degree of shame and trauma visited upon the Boleyn family. It is baffling to think that Anne's father could continue working in such close proximity to his children's slayer. Certainly the fear of what Henry may do to remaining members of the Boleyn family perhaps influenced Sir Thomas to continue working by Henry's side.
After Thomas' wife died in 1537, a year after Anne's death, he shortly passed away himself. It was said Elizabeth, Anne's mother, had died from a broken heart. A remaining daughter, Mary, died in 1542 but was survived by a young daughter and the rumoured illegitimate son of Henry.
Less than eight years after Anne had become Queen of England and brought about the ennoblement her father had so desperately sought, not one member of the immediate Boleyn household had survived. It is believed that remaining relatives, stigmatised by such tragic events, left England's shores for Ireland."
"History - Anne Boleyn and the Downfall of her Family
By Richard Bevan
Anne Boleyn was the first English queen to be publicly executed. Five hundred years after her death, her tragic tale is still the subject of historians and the inspiration for films. Out of all of Henry VIII's wives, Anne is perhaps the most famous and instantly associated with the gargantuan Tudor King.
Introduction
On the 19th May, 1536 at 8.00am, a thirty-six-year-old woman took her place on a scaffold dressed in a robe of black damask covered by an ermine mantle of white. Instead of denying her guilt as an adulteress and disciple of witchcraft, she delivered a generous speech praising her former lord and lover Henry VIII. After being blindfolded, she waited only a few seconds before a French swordsman severed her head from her delicate neck.
Greek tragedy
The story of the Boleyns could be likened to a Greek tragedy. They were an accomplished family, ennobled within a short period of time, only to find themselves the victims of the very prominence so desperately sought and attained by Anne's father, Sir Thomas Boleyn. His daughter's rapid ascension to the throne due to his own influence was also to be his entire family's undoing when Anne was accused of treason.
The story of the Boleyns could be likened to a Greek tragedy.
Thomas, only fourteen years older than Henry himself, was a respected mercer with a talent for languages and diplomacy. He was already established at the Royal Court well before Henry became King in 1509. Even his marriage to the well-connected Lady Elizabeth Howard seemed to work to his advantage, enhancing his ruthless ambitions.
A father's master plan
Their three children, George, Mary and Anne, were all well-educated and formed part of their father's grand master plan to attain greater power and status. Anne, the youngest of the sisters, was extremely close to her brother George but possibly had a more distant relationship with her elder sister Mary, exacerbated by the fact that the latter became a discarded mistress of Henry.
The young girls spent their teenage years in France as ladies-in-waiting to Henry's sister the French Queen. Later they were to part when Anne was transferred to the court of the new French Queen, Claude, while Mary returned home. Anne arrived back in England when she was about twenty and was immediately placed in the household of Henry's wife, Katherine of Aragon, as maid of honour.
Sexual magnetism
Anne's French manner in both dress sense and attitude charmed many at the English court. Her dark looks were at the time unfashionable and although she was never recognised as a great beauty, her sexual magnetism and the way she captivated those around her is well documented. Indeed her presence influenced women at court to copy her sartorial style. It was this 'difference' as well as her wit, intelligence and effervescence that attracted the King. Some years later, Henry was to convince himself that he had been 'bewitched' by Anne when she was accused of adultery.
It was said that she was the only woman who ever dared to argue and answer back to Henry.
But as Anne's status increased with the prospect of becoming Henry's consort, so her own star's ascendancy helped enrich her family's fortunes. Anne's father was created Earl of Wiltshire and her brother Lord George Rochford was appointed to the Royal Privy Chamber. Even brother-in-law William Carey benefited from his association with the Boleyns.
Henry secretly wed Anne on 25th of January, 1533, and with that secured the Boleyns' status as one of the most influential families in the land. It was said that she was the only woman who ever dared to argue and answer back to Henry. At the time, the King tolerated his lover's feisty demeanour and her witty repartee excited him. Years later, perhaps reflecting on his tumultuous relationship with Anne, Henry was to insist on a future wife who was servile and 'untroublesome'. It is also questionable whether Anne really loved Henry or simply relished the idea of becoming Queen after her initial betrothal to Lord Henry Percy was callously terminated by Cardinal Wolsey. There is little doubt that had she married Percy as intended, she would have at least avoided an early demise at the executioner's block.
Accusations
Despite producing a healthy baby girl, Elizabeth, Anne's failure to provide a male heir was the beginning of the end of her and her family's streak of good luck. Henry's disaffection caused by her second miscarriage of a defective child was the one act - besides accusations of adultery - that would certainly destroy his trust in her. She had to be blamed for bringing about misfortune into the nursery as Henry would never be found culpable.
Anne's failure to provide a male heir was the beginning of the end of her and her family's streak of good luck.
Instead five innocent men, including Anne's brother Lord Rochford, became the sacrificial lambs to rid Henry of what had become to him as tiresome a predicament as his protracted divorce from Queen Catherine. Whether or not Henry chose to accept the accusations of Anne's adultery in order to salve his own conscience is not clear, but it must be remembered that the belief in witchcraft in the 16th century associated the birth of deformed babies with illicit sexual practices.
Sir Francis Weston, William Brereton, Mark Smeaton, Sir Henry Norris and Anne's brother Lord Rochford were arrested under suspicion of having relations with the Queen. The famous poet Sir Thomas Wyatt was also imprisoned but later released from the Tower. All the accused men were well known for their licentious behaviour and for this reason possibly became easy targets for incrimination.
When Anne finally heard about the allegations she laughed at the absurdity of such findings...
A secret commission, including Thomas Cromwell, Anne's father and her uncle the Duke of Norfolk, was put forward to inquire into allegations of sexual misconduct and witchcraft by the Queen. At first Anne was unaware of the conspiratorial efforts to bring about her downfall and it is more than likely that her father warned her of the seriousness of the matter. When Anne finally heard about the allegations, she laughed at the absurdity of such findings when some of her accused lovers such as the musician and possibly homosexual Mark Smeaton had only met her briefly.
Anne's brother, Lord Rochford was the most important suspect. He was accused of responsibility for his sister's last miscarried child after it was alleged that both he and Anne had conspired out of desperation to produce a male heir. Interestingly Rochford's wife, Jane Parker, perhaps motivated by vengeance for her husband's rumoured affairs, spoke ill of him during court proceedings. Ironically Parker was herself beheaded several years later for treason relating to Henry's fifth and equally doomed wife Catherine Howard.
Sorcery
At Anne's trial, presided over by her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, she was accused of acting the 'libertine' before her marriage to Henry. So many factors worked against the Queen, reinforcing the view that she was a disciple of Satan who had 'bewitched' Henry with sorcery. Anne's minor physical defects, namely an extra digit on her hand and a prominent neck mole added to the belief that she was a 'she-devil'. Above all, her inability to produce a healthy male heir condemned her further. Despite inaccuracies relating to dates when Anne was supposed to have conducted her affairs, the belief that as a witch she could materialise in any place at any time invalidated any such evidence from being used in her defence.
Imprisonment
Anne's minor physical defects... added to the belief that she was a 'she-devil'.
After Anne's arrival at the Tower in April 1536 it was noted that her behaviour oscillated from a resigned calmness to occasional bouts of hysteria and depression. One moment she would be laughing, sometimes maniacally, the next weeping uncontrollably. It is perhaps little wonder that due to her miscarriage several months before and worrying about her family, that she was extremely emotional during this stressful time. William Kingston, the Constable of the Tower took pity on Anne and recorded that she enquired about her father, also her 'sweet broder (brother)' and lamented that her mother would die of 'sorrow' for her.
During Anne's imprisonment at the Tower - ironically in the same state rooms she had resided during her happy coronation - her family were forbidden to see her. Perhaps it is not too difficult to imagine how Anne's family must have suffered. Apart from the shame of being socially ostracised, they must have indeed been in a state of shock and disbelief that their once privileged and envied existence was crumbling around them. Anne's parents were after all not only witnessing the humiliating downfall of their daughter, the Queen of England, but also the destruction of a much loved son.
Anne was left in agonising uncertainty of whether she would be beheaded or burned at the stake...
On Monday 15th of May, 1536, the Duke of Norfolk proclaimed the death sentence on Anne with 'tears in his eyes'. The convicted men suffered painful deaths. Anne herself was left in agonising uncertainty of whether she would be beheaded or burned at the stake, until her friend and supporter Archbishop Cramner was able to inform her that she would be spared the latter.
Social ostracism
It is difficult to imagine how Sir Thomas, Anne's father, managed to continue his role at the royal court both during his daughter's trial and after her execution. Did he become emotionally dislocated in order to protect the rest of his family or was he perhaps convinced that Anne would be spared the executioner's axe? Sadly there are no written records that have survived to contribute to a clearer understanding. But the fact that Sir Thomas' much loved and only son was accused of incest could only have served to increase the degree of shame and trauma visited upon the Boleyn family. It is baffling to think that Anne's father could continue working in such close proximity to his children's slayer. Certainly the fear of what Henry may do to remaining members of the Boleyn family perhaps influenced Sir Thomas to continue working by Henry's side.
After Thomas' wife died in 1537, a year after Anne's death, he shortly passed away himself. It was said Elizabeth, Anne's mother, had died from a broken heart. A remaining daughter, Mary, died in 1542 but was survived by a young daughter and the rumoured illegitimate son of Henry.
Less than eight years after Anne had become Queen of England and brought about the ennoblement her father had so desperately sought, not one member of the immediate Boleyn household had survived. It is believed that remaining relatives, stigmatised by such tragic events, left England's shores for Ireland."
BBC - History - Anne Boleyn and the Downfall of her Family
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Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that on May 15, 1536, Anne Boleyn and her brother George, Lord Rochford, were accused of adultery and incest, tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death.
The Fall of Anne Boleyn - Arrest | 2020 Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbZEjkiK6yA
Images:
1. Anne Boleyn by William Nelson Gardiner
2. Lady called Anne Boleyn by Hans Holbein the Younger
3. An engraving of the Tower taken from Old London Illustrated, by Brewer and Cox, shows the Tower as it would have looked in Anne’s day, A= The Queen’s Apartment; B=The Cold Harbour Gate; C=The Inner Ward; D=The Great Hall; E=The White Tower; F=The Jewel House
4. May 19, 1536 execution of Anne Boleyn executed by French swordsman
Background from {[https://thetudortravelguide.com/2019/05/18/the-royal-apartments-at-the-tower/]}
English queen was executed on May 19, 1536 on charges that were almost certainly entirely fabricated. She joined her five co-accused in death at the hands of the swordsman from Calais. Her name was Anne Boleyn. In this article, we are honouring her memory in a slightly unusual blog. I invite you to imagine you are transported back in time to 19 May 1536. Standing in the courtyard of the palace at the Tower of London, you are an unseen witness as the queen is led from her royal apartments, before we head inside together to explore the chambers once built in her honour, and which now lie deserted.
‘Good Christian People, I Have Come Here to Die’
There was nothing left to do but die. However, the queen had long been prepared. Emerging from the royal apartments, at the top of a wooden staircase, she casts a slim silhouette. Anne Boleyn is dressed in an English gown of dark, grey damask worn over a crimson, taffeta kirtle, whilst an English hood is fixed in place over a netted, white, linen coif that covers her lustrous auburn hair. She glances up to drink in the beauty of an almost clear, morning sky, smudged only here and there by the faintest wisps of clouds that float lazily across London’s skyline. From atop the adjacent White Tower, a raven caws out its raucous call, shattering the silence within the courtyard below. It is an impossibly perfect Spring day.
Yet, she has not come to revel in its loveliness; she is here to give up her life. For the king, once her lover, has tired of her and demands it is so.
Accompanied by Master Kingston and four ladies in waiting, Anne Boleyn, condemned traitor and adulteress, found guilty of incest, just four days earlier, picks up the skirts of her damask gown and carefully makes her way down the flight of 15 steps. At the bottom, the king’s guard awaits her. Arranged in two rows of yeoman, they are paired, facing each other, to form a long corridor that extends away from the base of the privy stair towards the mighty Cold Harbour Gate. Each of them stands attentive, motionless, swords slung at their sides, halberds balanced erect in their right hands. Every brawny fellow is dressed in their familiar bright-red livery, decorated across their puffed sleeves and skirts with guards of blue velvet, while flat, felt caps sit upon their closely-shaven heads.
She begins her final walk from the royal apartments, Master Kingston in front, her ladies following in pairs behind. One foot in front of the other, the pressure of the earth beneath her feet, the rustle of her skirts as her hips sway in their usual, elegant fashion. Moving out of the shadow cast by the bulk of the queen’s lodgings, the gentle warmth of the sun touches her back. Anne makes her way along the path that runs alongside the King’s Jewel House to her right; she remembers how Henry once brought her here to show her the treasures of England, bestowing upon her the precious plate, worthy of her elevation as consort to the king. In contrast, over to her left and across the courtyard, the towering pitched roof of the medieval Great Hall stands resolutely, a witness to her recent conviction.
She has no time to dwell on such things. The little party soon reaches the south-west corner of the White Tower, where it swings right, beneath the imposing Cold Harbour Gate and begins its gradual climb to the large, open space beyond. Here, the scaffold, draped in sombre black, awaits. As she disappears from sight, Anne leaves behind the royal palace and the apartments which were built to glorify the name of Anne Boleyn. Although her body will lie for eternity within a stone’s throw from the palace, she will never see the interiors of the royal apartments again.
The Royal Apartments: From Palace to Prison
One of THE most common and enduring misperceptions about Anne’s final seventeen days in the Tower of London was that she was held in some dreary dungeon – not helped one iota by film-makers’ insistence on showing such cringe-worthy scenes. Let’s strike all that from our minds once and for all! Mercifully, when Anne was committed to the Tower on 2 May 1536, one of the few comforts granted to her was that she was allowed to stay in the same lodgings that had housed her during those heady midsummer days of 1533: the queen’s lodgings, part of the royal palace at the Tower.
Unlike Anne, whose story, character and accomplishments remain scorched into the collective memory of the thousands of lives she continues to touch, the buildings erected for her by Henry VIII have long since been lost. This is with the exception of a few foundation footings still visible in the ground. I fell in love with these buildings whilst writing Le Temps Viendra: a Novel of Anne Boleyn and spent many happy hours recreating them in my mind. I ‘lived’ in them in my imagination for a couple of months, as a I wrote about the final, harrowing few weeks of the queen’s life. Now, what remains with me, I’d like to share with you. So, read on if you want to uncover these evocative buildings, associated with this most formidable of women.
There had been royal apartments on the site, in one form or another, since 1220. During the reign of Henry II, a permanent inner ward (C) was created and separate lodgings for both the king and queen were constructed, including a Great Hall (D).
The entrance to the inner ward was through the Cold Harbour Gate (B). Remnants of the gate can still be seen abutting the west wall of the White Tower today. Once inside the inner ward, in front of you once existed a complex of buildings arranged around an irregular triangular courtyard.
Running diagonally from the Cold Harbour Gate towards the Great Hall was a line of brick-built Tudor lodgings/offices. The thirteenth century hall occupied the southernmost aspect of the courtyard, while a series of buildings ran at right angles from the hall towards the south-east corner of the White Tower and the Wardrobe Tower, thereby completing the far side of the inner ward. These latter buildings formed the newly built queen’s apartments. Finally, abutting the southern wall of the White Tower was the Jewel House (F).
At the turn of the sixteenth century, Henry VII had significantly enlarged the king’s lodgings. He added a new tower including, amongst others rooms, a bedchamber, library and chamber for ‘my Lady, the King’s Mother’. Then, in 1532, Henry VIII ordered Cromwell to organise the refurbishment of the royal apartments on both the king and queen’s sides. These had not been used since 1520, and were said to be ‘wonderously foul’! Whilst the old Queen’s Watching Chamber was simply refurbished, but otherwise retained, a whole new suite of rooms was added for Anne’s coronation celebrations.
Now it’s time for us to stroll through the recently abandoned palace. Let’s rewind the clock, let the centuries fall away, and imagine that we are there, just as Anne takes her final walk toward the scaffold.
Standing in the inner ward, enter the Great Hall via its porch. Immediately, you notice how cool is the air. You stop for a moment, awestruck by the cavernous space surrounding you. The hall, some 60 feet in length has thick, stone walls, a vaulted ceiling and two lines of soaring pillars of cold, Purbeck marble, forming a central, and two outer, aisles. On either side, enormous windows illuminate the space.
Straightaway you are confronted with two, huge ranges of seats sited along each length of the hall. These were hastily arranged to accommodate the enormous level of public curiosity aroused by the trial of England’s ‘goggle eyed whore’. However, in all this sad and bloody drama, they have not yet been dismantled. It is then you notice that in the centre of the space is a raised wood dais, set out in front of the king’s canopy of estate. Upon the dais, a chair remains abandoned behind the bar at which Anne had launched a most spirited defence of her innocence. Ghostly echoes of shouts from the crowd and the verdict of ‘guilty’ ring out in the silence.
A shiver runs down your spine as you cross the hall and make your way through a doorway at the high (far) end. Beyond lies the King’s Great Watching Chamber, part of the original medieval suite of rooms. It is much smaller than the great hall, maybe a fifth of the size. Empty now, since everyone who is permitted in the Tower has gathered to watch Anne’s execution; you move on to the door at the far end of the chamber. The ‘portall’ is embellished with ‘panels of drapery work….with a crest of antyk upon its head’. Peeking your head through the doorway, you find yourself directly in the Queen’s Great Watching Chamber. The space is empty. You are alone.
You are struck by just how much larger this chamber is; at about seventy feet by thirty feet, it is one-and-a-half times as long, and twice as wide, as the king’s. Such preference shown to the queen’s side is virtually unheard of in any of Henry’s other houses. Standing in these rooms, you realise that Henry had truly meant for his new queen to take centre stage during those blissfully happy days of 1533. Like every great watching chamber, there is precious little furniture to adorn it. Instead, it is the fabulous soft furnishings, the painted frieze running around the top third of the walls, and the elaborate moulded and painted fretwork of the ceiling, that gives it its magnificence.
Beyond the Great Watching Chamber lies Anne’s Presence Chamber; usually two guards stand on either side of the doorway as burly sentinels, preventing entry to any unauthorised persons. But no-one stands guard now, for their prisoner – their queen – is gone. And so you pass through the open door unmolested.
This room sits at right angles to the last on an east-west axis. As you enter, a blaze of golden sunlight falls in great shafts upon the black and white chequerboard floor beneath your feet. The space is illuminated by a large window positioned high above the dais, at the western end of the hall. Built at the same time that the great refurbishment of Whitehall was well underway, three years earlier, it is unsurprising that the two interiors closely resemble one another.
You look up in awe to the pretty gabled roof. The vaulted ceiling is carved from great oak beams and decorated along its length with finely sculpted heraldic emblems and mythical beasts, all brightly painted with red, blue and gold. However, it is the sophisticated decoration of the walls that you most admire. Tapestries cover the walls to the north and south; whilst at each end of the chamber, oak panelling has been carved into the most intricate designs. Life-sized classical figures, angels, beasts and garlands of flowers and fruit form a backdrop to where the queen’s canopy of state once hung. However, Anne is in disgrace and so the canopy is gone.
A doorway on the far side of the room invites you to explore what lies beyond. You are surprised to see a gallery, unusually positioned between the Queen’s Presence Chamber and her privy lodgings, which are reached from its far end. It is a large, airy space, positioned here to provide a suitable stage for the many grand ceremonial events held in the palace for those brief few days before Anne’s summer coronation.
You wander along its length, catching sight of the privy gardens stretching out beneath the windows on your right hand side, with the inner ward visible through the windows to your left. All along its length, the gallery is covered in wainscoted panelling, decorated with yet more ‘antyk work’, with pictures hung here and there. Some you have never seen before, and yet strangely, you recognise their familiar faces.
Finally at the far end, another doorway leads you through into Anne’s privy chambers: her bedchamber and privy chamber. Inside these chambers, you still sense her presence; scrawled writing upon a piece of parchment lying on the table – maybe a letter of farewell she hopes will be delivered; a book of prayer discarded upon a chair, even the scent of her perfume lingers. As you trace your finger across the edge of an oak table, reflecting upon a love so deeply betrayed, the cannons of the Tower roar out their angry declaration that Anne Boleyn is dead.
Note:
Although the walk I have taken you on is fictional, the rooms described reflect the layout of the royal palace at the Tower; at least as far as we currently understand them, and the interiors based on those typical of the period, or in accounts recorded during works undertaken at the palace. Particularly informative sources, drawn upon in writing this blog, include:
• The Royal Houses of Tudor England, by Simon Thurley
• Houses of Power, by Simon Thurley
• The History of the King’s Works, by Colvin et al.
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The Fall of Anne Boleyn - Arrest | 2020 Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbZEjkiK6yA
Images:
1. Anne Boleyn by William Nelson Gardiner
2. Lady called Anne Boleyn by Hans Holbein the Younger
3. An engraving of the Tower taken from Old London Illustrated, by Brewer and Cox, shows the Tower as it would have looked in Anne’s day, A= The Queen’s Apartment; B=The Cold Harbour Gate; C=The Inner Ward; D=The Great Hall; E=The White Tower; F=The Jewel House
4. May 19, 1536 execution of Anne Boleyn executed by French swordsman
Background from {[https://thetudortravelguide.com/2019/05/18/the-royal-apartments-at-the-tower/]}
English queen was executed on May 19, 1536 on charges that were almost certainly entirely fabricated. She joined her five co-accused in death at the hands of the swordsman from Calais. Her name was Anne Boleyn. In this article, we are honouring her memory in a slightly unusual blog. I invite you to imagine you are transported back in time to 19 May 1536. Standing in the courtyard of the palace at the Tower of London, you are an unseen witness as the queen is led from her royal apartments, before we head inside together to explore the chambers once built in her honour, and which now lie deserted.
‘Good Christian People, I Have Come Here to Die’
There was nothing left to do but die. However, the queen had long been prepared. Emerging from the royal apartments, at the top of a wooden staircase, she casts a slim silhouette. Anne Boleyn is dressed in an English gown of dark, grey damask worn over a crimson, taffeta kirtle, whilst an English hood is fixed in place over a netted, white, linen coif that covers her lustrous auburn hair. She glances up to drink in the beauty of an almost clear, morning sky, smudged only here and there by the faintest wisps of clouds that float lazily across London’s skyline. From atop the adjacent White Tower, a raven caws out its raucous call, shattering the silence within the courtyard below. It is an impossibly perfect Spring day.
Yet, she has not come to revel in its loveliness; she is here to give up her life. For the king, once her lover, has tired of her and demands it is so.
Accompanied by Master Kingston and four ladies in waiting, Anne Boleyn, condemned traitor and adulteress, found guilty of incest, just four days earlier, picks up the skirts of her damask gown and carefully makes her way down the flight of 15 steps. At the bottom, the king’s guard awaits her. Arranged in two rows of yeoman, they are paired, facing each other, to form a long corridor that extends away from the base of the privy stair towards the mighty Cold Harbour Gate. Each of them stands attentive, motionless, swords slung at their sides, halberds balanced erect in their right hands. Every brawny fellow is dressed in their familiar bright-red livery, decorated across their puffed sleeves and skirts with guards of blue velvet, while flat, felt caps sit upon their closely-shaven heads.
She begins her final walk from the royal apartments, Master Kingston in front, her ladies following in pairs behind. One foot in front of the other, the pressure of the earth beneath her feet, the rustle of her skirts as her hips sway in their usual, elegant fashion. Moving out of the shadow cast by the bulk of the queen’s lodgings, the gentle warmth of the sun touches her back. Anne makes her way along the path that runs alongside the King’s Jewel House to her right; she remembers how Henry once brought her here to show her the treasures of England, bestowing upon her the precious plate, worthy of her elevation as consort to the king. In contrast, over to her left and across the courtyard, the towering pitched roof of the medieval Great Hall stands resolutely, a witness to her recent conviction.
She has no time to dwell on such things. The little party soon reaches the south-west corner of the White Tower, where it swings right, beneath the imposing Cold Harbour Gate and begins its gradual climb to the large, open space beyond. Here, the scaffold, draped in sombre black, awaits. As she disappears from sight, Anne leaves behind the royal palace and the apartments which were built to glorify the name of Anne Boleyn. Although her body will lie for eternity within a stone’s throw from the palace, she will never see the interiors of the royal apartments again.
The Royal Apartments: From Palace to Prison
One of THE most common and enduring misperceptions about Anne’s final seventeen days in the Tower of London was that she was held in some dreary dungeon – not helped one iota by film-makers’ insistence on showing such cringe-worthy scenes. Let’s strike all that from our minds once and for all! Mercifully, when Anne was committed to the Tower on 2 May 1536, one of the few comforts granted to her was that she was allowed to stay in the same lodgings that had housed her during those heady midsummer days of 1533: the queen’s lodgings, part of the royal palace at the Tower.
Unlike Anne, whose story, character and accomplishments remain scorched into the collective memory of the thousands of lives she continues to touch, the buildings erected for her by Henry VIII have long since been lost. This is with the exception of a few foundation footings still visible in the ground. I fell in love with these buildings whilst writing Le Temps Viendra: a Novel of Anne Boleyn and spent many happy hours recreating them in my mind. I ‘lived’ in them in my imagination for a couple of months, as a I wrote about the final, harrowing few weeks of the queen’s life. Now, what remains with me, I’d like to share with you. So, read on if you want to uncover these evocative buildings, associated with this most formidable of women.
There had been royal apartments on the site, in one form or another, since 1220. During the reign of Henry II, a permanent inner ward (C) was created and separate lodgings for both the king and queen were constructed, including a Great Hall (D).
The entrance to the inner ward was through the Cold Harbour Gate (B). Remnants of the gate can still be seen abutting the west wall of the White Tower today. Once inside the inner ward, in front of you once existed a complex of buildings arranged around an irregular triangular courtyard.
Running diagonally from the Cold Harbour Gate towards the Great Hall was a line of brick-built Tudor lodgings/offices. The thirteenth century hall occupied the southernmost aspect of the courtyard, while a series of buildings ran at right angles from the hall towards the south-east corner of the White Tower and the Wardrobe Tower, thereby completing the far side of the inner ward. These latter buildings formed the newly built queen’s apartments. Finally, abutting the southern wall of the White Tower was the Jewel House (F).
At the turn of the sixteenth century, Henry VII had significantly enlarged the king’s lodgings. He added a new tower including, amongst others rooms, a bedchamber, library and chamber for ‘my Lady, the King’s Mother’. Then, in 1532, Henry VIII ordered Cromwell to organise the refurbishment of the royal apartments on both the king and queen’s sides. These had not been used since 1520, and were said to be ‘wonderously foul’! Whilst the old Queen’s Watching Chamber was simply refurbished, but otherwise retained, a whole new suite of rooms was added for Anne’s coronation celebrations.
Now it’s time for us to stroll through the recently abandoned palace. Let’s rewind the clock, let the centuries fall away, and imagine that we are there, just as Anne takes her final walk toward the scaffold.
Standing in the inner ward, enter the Great Hall via its porch. Immediately, you notice how cool is the air. You stop for a moment, awestruck by the cavernous space surrounding you. The hall, some 60 feet in length has thick, stone walls, a vaulted ceiling and two lines of soaring pillars of cold, Purbeck marble, forming a central, and two outer, aisles. On either side, enormous windows illuminate the space.
Straightaway you are confronted with two, huge ranges of seats sited along each length of the hall. These were hastily arranged to accommodate the enormous level of public curiosity aroused by the trial of England’s ‘goggle eyed whore’. However, in all this sad and bloody drama, they have not yet been dismantled. It is then you notice that in the centre of the space is a raised wood dais, set out in front of the king’s canopy of estate. Upon the dais, a chair remains abandoned behind the bar at which Anne had launched a most spirited defence of her innocence. Ghostly echoes of shouts from the crowd and the verdict of ‘guilty’ ring out in the silence.
A shiver runs down your spine as you cross the hall and make your way through a doorway at the high (far) end. Beyond lies the King’s Great Watching Chamber, part of the original medieval suite of rooms. It is much smaller than the great hall, maybe a fifth of the size. Empty now, since everyone who is permitted in the Tower has gathered to watch Anne’s execution; you move on to the door at the far end of the chamber. The ‘portall’ is embellished with ‘panels of drapery work….with a crest of antyk upon its head’. Peeking your head through the doorway, you find yourself directly in the Queen’s Great Watching Chamber. The space is empty. You are alone.
You are struck by just how much larger this chamber is; at about seventy feet by thirty feet, it is one-and-a-half times as long, and twice as wide, as the king’s. Such preference shown to the queen’s side is virtually unheard of in any of Henry’s other houses. Standing in these rooms, you realise that Henry had truly meant for his new queen to take centre stage during those blissfully happy days of 1533. Like every great watching chamber, there is precious little furniture to adorn it. Instead, it is the fabulous soft furnishings, the painted frieze running around the top third of the walls, and the elaborate moulded and painted fretwork of the ceiling, that gives it its magnificence.
Beyond the Great Watching Chamber lies Anne’s Presence Chamber; usually two guards stand on either side of the doorway as burly sentinels, preventing entry to any unauthorised persons. But no-one stands guard now, for their prisoner – their queen – is gone. And so you pass through the open door unmolested.
This room sits at right angles to the last on an east-west axis. As you enter, a blaze of golden sunlight falls in great shafts upon the black and white chequerboard floor beneath your feet. The space is illuminated by a large window positioned high above the dais, at the western end of the hall. Built at the same time that the great refurbishment of Whitehall was well underway, three years earlier, it is unsurprising that the two interiors closely resemble one another.
You look up in awe to the pretty gabled roof. The vaulted ceiling is carved from great oak beams and decorated along its length with finely sculpted heraldic emblems and mythical beasts, all brightly painted with red, blue and gold. However, it is the sophisticated decoration of the walls that you most admire. Tapestries cover the walls to the north and south; whilst at each end of the chamber, oak panelling has been carved into the most intricate designs. Life-sized classical figures, angels, beasts and garlands of flowers and fruit form a backdrop to where the queen’s canopy of state once hung. However, Anne is in disgrace and so the canopy is gone.
A doorway on the far side of the room invites you to explore what lies beyond. You are surprised to see a gallery, unusually positioned between the Queen’s Presence Chamber and her privy lodgings, which are reached from its far end. It is a large, airy space, positioned here to provide a suitable stage for the many grand ceremonial events held in the palace for those brief few days before Anne’s summer coronation.
You wander along its length, catching sight of the privy gardens stretching out beneath the windows on your right hand side, with the inner ward visible through the windows to your left. All along its length, the gallery is covered in wainscoted panelling, decorated with yet more ‘antyk work’, with pictures hung here and there. Some you have never seen before, and yet strangely, you recognise their familiar faces.
Finally at the far end, another doorway leads you through into Anne’s privy chambers: her bedchamber and privy chamber. Inside these chambers, you still sense her presence; scrawled writing upon a piece of parchment lying on the table – maybe a letter of farewell she hopes will be delivered; a book of prayer discarded upon a chair, even the scent of her perfume lingers. As you trace your finger across the edge of an oak table, reflecting upon a love so deeply betrayed, the cannons of the Tower roar out their angry declaration that Anne Boleyn is dead.
Note:
Although the walk I have taken you on is fictional, the rooms described reflect the layout of the royal palace at the Tower; at least as far as we currently understand them, and the interiors based on those typical of the period, or in accounts recorded during works undertaken at the palace. Particularly informative sources, drawn upon in writing this blog, include:
• The Royal Houses of Tudor England, by Simon Thurley
• Houses of Power, by Simon Thurley
• The History of the King’s Works, by Colvin et al.
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The Fall of Anne Boleyn - Trial 2/3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fag3jbscEQ8
Images:
1. Anne Boleyn praying in the Tower of London
2. Lady Anne Boleyn in the Tower
3. The execution of Anne Boleyn, on 19 May, 1536, was conducted by a French swordsman to limit her pain
4. Anne on the eve of her execution in May 18, 1536
Background from {[ https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/history-and-stories/anne-boleyn/#gs.1k74ef]}
Anne Boleyn
She failed to give Henry VIII a son and paid with her life
Anne Boleyn is one of the most divisive figures in British history. Her love-match with Henry VIII and her subsequent execution at the Tower of London after only three years of marriage have inspired dozens of books and films.
Everyone wants to know how she really felt and how and why she became queen: was she a ruthless schemer or was her death simply a tragic consequence of court politics?’ We will never, really, know.
Anne has left behind virtually nothing of her own voice, and all of the histories of her life are marred by the writers’ prejudices or leaps of imaginative fantasy. Even the simplest statements about her are difficult. And all the portraits of Anne that survive were created during the reign of her daughter, Elizabeth I.
The fascination with the life and death of Anne Boleyn lives on. The closest we can get to Anne today is by visiting her final resting place; she is buried in the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London.
The darkness of her eyes
Anne was born in about 1500 (we don’t know exactly when), the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, a respected courtier, and Elizabeth Howard, the daughter of Sir Thomas Howard, one of the most powerful men in the country.
Impartial descriptions of Anne are hard to find: she appears to have had dark hair and eyes and a slender neck, but no contemporary portrait of her has survived, and we know little about her personality.
She spent her childhood at Hever Castle in Kent, and her adolescence at the French court, originally as a companion to Henry VIII’s sister, Mary, who was married to Louis XII.
Anne was back in England by 1522, and Henry may have first encountered her when she took one of the lead roles, ‘Perseverance’, in a court masque in March at Thomas Wolsey’s residence at Whitehall.
The one I love
Anne was not short of admirers on her return to England.
This seems to have been partly due to her glamorous French fashions. Henry Percy, later Earl of Northumberland, and the poet Thomas Wyatt both courted her, but these dalliances seem to have remained within the accepted boundaries of flirtatious ‘courtly love’ and romantic poetry.
In 1526, the King’s interest significantly upped the stakes.
Henry VIII’s long marriage to Katherine of Aragon had produced only one surviving child, Princess Mary. By the mid-1520s, Henry was becoming increasingly desperate for a legitimate son and heir to secure the future of the Tudor dynasty.
Growing infatuation
Henry may have originally courted Anne as a prospective mistress, but, if that is the case, she refused.
Either driven by her own virtue or ambition, or by her scheming relatives, and aware of the King’s dynastic dilemma, Anne held out for the possibility of marriage.
Image: Cardinal Wolsey and courtiers with, on the right, the King meeting Anne Boleyn at the Cardinal's residence, York Place, later Whitehall Palace. Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017
Love's great adventure
A series of 17 letters survives in the Vatican Library which detail Henry’s growing infatuation over the next couple of years.
One, awkwardly and explicitly, declared that the King’s heart belonged to Anne alone, and that he hoped his body would soon also. It was signed with a loveheart around Anne’s initials. Anne’s responses do not survive.
It's a sin
In the Tudor period, not even a king could simply decide to get a divorce.
If Katherine of Aragon had meekly accepted her fate, then English history may well have turned out rather differently. But Katherine was a proud and pious queen who believed that her marriage to Henry VIII was a sacred institution.
In 1527, the King began looking for a political and legal solution, petitioning the Pope and claiming that his marriage had never been legitimate because he had sinned in taking his brother’s widow, which some scholars believed to be prohibited by the Bible.
Thomas Wolsey was charged with procuring the divorce. He failed, and his own career was destroyed in the process as the Pope refused to give into Henry’s demands.
Marrying the King
It was Anne who may have suggested a solution. Driven perhaps by her own reformist faith, she gave Henry a copy of William Tyndale’s ‘Obedience of a Christian Man’.
This book argued that the supreme authority was not held by the Pope but by the words of God enshrined in the Bible.
Henry defied the Pope and dismissed Katherine in 1531.
Anne finally married Henry in January 1533 and was crowned Queen in Westminster Hall on 1 June that summer. Henry's marriage to Anne was technically bigamous, as his marriage to Katherine was not annulled until May 1533.
The following year, Henry broke with the Roman Catholic Church, setting himself up instead as the Supreme Head of what would become the Church of England. This created shockwaves, which caused religious and political unrest in Britain for the next 200 years.
High hopes
Unsurprisingly, Anne supported Henry’s new religious and political policies, gathering around them a new team of rising courtiers, including Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer.
From what little we can discover about her time as queen, Anne seems to have been active in promoting new educational identities for monasteries, no longer under the protection of the Catholic Church.
She was also the first royal patron of the great court artist, Hans Holbein, who designed an arch for her coronation and a rose-water fountain.
Meanwhile, Henry and Anne’s first child, born on 7 September 1533, was a healthy daughter, who would grow up to become Elizabeth I.
Anne's downfall
But Anne and Henry had no more children. Miscarriages in 1534 and 1536 may have led Henry, always spiritually superstitious, to question whether he had made the right choice in marrying Anne.
Meanwhile, a promising new foreign alliance with the Holy Roman Empire floundered because the Emperor, Charles V, refused to ratify the Boleyn marriage.
Hostile factions gathered in the wings, led by all those courtiers who had lost their influence during the Boleyn change of regime. Thomas Wolsey too resented Anne’s influence over the King, calling her the “night crow”, cawing into his ear at night.
Tainted love
Many people sympathised with Henry’s first wife Katherine. Even during Anne’s coronation procession in 1533, one eye-witness claimed that people lining the route looked “as sorry as though it had been a funeral.”
Ultimately, Henry and Anne’s relationship, built on passion and expectation, seems to have become more tempestuous and Henry, again, began to look outside his marriage for solutions
Fall from grace
In 1536, Cromwell made a decisive move against Anne. Accusations of adultery and even of plotting against the King’s life were levelled against the Queen, her brother and a small group of courtiers.
Anne was arrested on 2 May 1536 and taken by barge to the Tower of London, passing under the most notorious of all the Tower's entrances, Traitors Gate. (pictured)
Henry VIII, notoriously prone to suspicion, and now besotted with one of Anne’s own ladies-in-waiting, Jane Seymour, ignored the Queen’s protestations of innocence.
A sham trial filled with Anne’s enemies found her guilty, and she found herself a prisoner at the Tower of London, in the same royal apartment where, just three years before, she had awaited her coronation.
A small mercy
Henry showed her a small ‘mercy’ by granting her request to die by sword rather than axe.
Anne was executed on Tower Green on 19 May 1536 and is buried at the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula (pictured).
Henry VIII married Jane Seymour 11 days after Anne's execution.
Anne Boleyn
She failed to give Henry VIII a son and paid with her life
Anne Boleyn is one of the most divisive figures in British history. Her love-match with Henry VIII and her subsequent execution at the Tower of London after only three years of marriage have inspired dozens of books and films.
Everyone wants to know how she really felt and how and why she became queen: was she a ruthless schemer or was her death simply a tragic consequence of court politics?’ We will never, really, know.
Anne has left behind virtually nothing of her own voice, and all of the histories of her life are marred by the writers’ prejudices or leaps of imaginative fantasy. Even the simplest statements about her are difficult. And all the portraits of Anne that survive were created during the reign of her daughter, Elizabeth I.
The fascination with the life and death of Anne Boleyn lives on. The closest we can get to Anne today is by visiting her final resting place; she is buried in the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London."
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fag3jbscEQ8
Images:
1. Anne Boleyn praying in the Tower of London
2. Lady Anne Boleyn in the Tower
3. The execution of Anne Boleyn, on 19 May, 1536, was conducted by a French swordsman to limit her pain
4. Anne on the eve of her execution in May 18, 1536
Background from {[ https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/history-and-stories/anne-boleyn/#gs.1k74ef]}
Anne Boleyn
She failed to give Henry VIII a son and paid with her life
Anne Boleyn is one of the most divisive figures in British history. Her love-match with Henry VIII and her subsequent execution at the Tower of London after only three years of marriage have inspired dozens of books and films.
Everyone wants to know how she really felt and how and why she became queen: was she a ruthless schemer or was her death simply a tragic consequence of court politics?’ We will never, really, know.
Anne has left behind virtually nothing of her own voice, and all of the histories of her life are marred by the writers’ prejudices or leaps of imaginative fantasy. Even the simplest statements about her are difficult. And all the portraits of Anne that survive were created during the reign of her daughter, Elizabeth I.
The fascination with the life and death of Anne Boleyn lives on. The closest we can get to Anne today is by visiting her final resting place; she is buried in the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London.
The darkness of her eyes
Anne was born in about 1500 (we don’t know exactly when), the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, a respected courtier, and Elizabeth Howard, the daughter of Sir Thomas Howard, one of the most powerful men in the country.
Impartial descriptions of Anne are hard to find: she appears to have had dark hair and eyes and a slender neck, but no contemporary portrait of her has survived, and we know little about her personality.
She spent her childhood at Hever Castle in Kent, and her adolescence at the French court, originally as a companion to Henry VIII’s sister, Mary, who was married to Louis XII.
Anne was back in England by 1522, and Henry may have first encountered her when she took one of the lead roles, ‘Perseverance’, in a court masque in March at Thomas Wolsey’s residence at Whitehall.
The one I love
Anne was not short of admirers on her return to England.
This seems to have been partly due to her glamorous French fashions. Henry Percy, later Earl of Northumberland, and the poet Thomas Wyatt both courted her, but these dalliances seem to have remained within the accepted boundaries of flirtatious ‘courtly love’ and romantic poetry.
In 1526, the King’s interest significantly upped the stakes.
Henry VIII’s long marriage to Katherine of Aragon had produced only one surviving child, Princess Mary. By the mid-1520s, Henry was becoming increasingly desperate for a legitimate son and heir to secure the future of the Tudor dynasty.
Growing infatuation
Henry may have originally courted Anne as a prospective mistress, but, if that is the case, she refused.
Either driven by her own virtue or ambition, or by her scheming relatives, and aware of the King’s dynastic dilemma, Anne held out for the possibility of marriage.
Image: Cardinal Wolsey and courtiers with, on the right, the King meeting Anne Boleyn at the Cardinal's residence, York Place, later Whitehall Palace. Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017
Love's great adventure
A series of 17 letters survives in the Vatican Library which detail Henry’s growing infatuation over the next couple of years.
One, awkwardly and explicitly, declared that the King’s heart belonged to Anne alone, and that he hoped his body would soon also. It was signed with a loveheart around Anne’s initials. Anne’s responses do not survive.
It's a sin
In the Tudor period, not even a king could simply decide to get a divorce.
If Katherine of Aragon had meekly accepted her fate, then English history may well have turned out rather differently. But Katherine was a proud and pious queen who believed that her marriage to Henry VIII was a sacred institution.
In 1527, the King began looking for a political and legal solution, petitioning the Pope and claiming that his marriage had never been legitimate because he had sinned in taking his brother’s widow, which some scholars believed to be prohibited by the Bible.
Thomas Wolsey was charged with procuring the divorce. He failed, and his own career was destroyed in the process as the Pope refused to give into Henry’s demands.
Marrying the King
It was Anne who may have suggested a solution. Driven perhaps by her own reformist faith, she gave Henry a copy of William Tyndale’s ‘Obedience of a Christian Man’.
This book argued that the supreme authority was not held by the Pope but by the words of God enshrined in the Bible.
Henry defied the Pope and dismissed Katherine in 1531.
Anne finally married Henry in January 1533 and was crowned Queen in Westminster Hall on 1 June that summer. Henry's marriage to Anne was technically bigamous, as his marriage to Katherine was not annulled until May 1533.
The following year, Henry broke with the Roman Catholic Church, setting himself up instead as the Supreme Head of what would become the Church of England. This created shockwaves, which caused religious and political unrest in Britain for the next 200 years.
High hopes
Unsurprisingly, Anne supported Henry’s new religious and political policies, gathering around them a new team of rising courtiers, including Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer.
From what little we can discover about her time as queen, Anne seems to have been active in promoting new educational identities for monasteries, no longer under the protection of the Catholic Church.
She was also the first royal patron of the great court artist, Hans Holbein, who designed an arch for her coronation and a rose-water fountain.
Meanwhile, Henry and Anne’s first child, born on 7 September 1533, was a healthy daughter, who would grow up to become Elizabeth I.
Anne's downfall
But Anne and Henry had no more children. Miscarriages in 1534 and 1536 may have led Henry, always spiritually superstitious, to question whether he had made the right choice in marrying Anne.
Meanwhile, a promising new foreign alliance with the Holy Roman Empire floundered because the Emperor, Charles V, refused to ratify the Boleyn marriage.
Hostile factions gathered in the wings, led by all those courtiers who had lost their influence during the Boleyn change of regime. Thomas Wolsey too resented Anne’s influence over the King, calling her the “night crow”, cawing into his ear at night.
Tainted love
Many people sympathised with Henry’s first wife Katherine. Even during Anne’s coronation procession in 1533, one eye-witness claimed that people lining the route looked “as sorry as though it had been a funeral.”
Ultimately, Henry and Anne’s relationship, built on passion and expectation, seems to have become more tempestuous and Henry, again, began to look outside his marriage for solutions
Fall from grace
In 1536, Cromwell made a decisive move against Anne. Accusations of adultery and even of plotting against the King’s life were levelled against the Queen, her brother and a small group of courtiers.
Anne was arrested on 2 May 1536 and taken by barge to the Tower of London, passing under the most notorious of all the Tower's entrances, Traitors Gate. (pictured)
Henry VIII, notoriously prone to suspicion, and now besotted with one of Anne’s own ladies-in-waiting, Jane Seymour, ignored the Queen’s protestations of innocence.
A sham trial filled with Anne’s enemies found her guilty, and she found herself a prisoner at the Tower of London, in the same royal apartment where, just three years before, she had awaited her coronation.
A small mercy
Henry showed her a small ‘mercy’ by granting her request to die by sword rather than axe.
Anne was executed on Tower Green on 19 May 1536 and is buried at the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula (pictured).
Henry VIII married Jane Seymour 11 days after Anne's execution.
Anne Boleyn
She failed to give Henry VIII a son and paid with her life
Anne Boleyn is one of the most divisive figures in British history. Her love-match with Henry VIII and her subsequent execution at the Tower of London after only three years of marriage have inspired dozens of books and films.
Everyone wants to know how she really felt and how and why she became queen: was she a ruthless schemer or was her death simply a tragic consequence of court politics?’ We will never, really, know.
Anne has left behind virtually nothing of her own voice, and all of the histories of her life are marred by the writers’ prejudices or leaps of imaginative fantasy. Even the simplest statements about her are difficult. And all the portraits of Anne that survive were created during the reign of her daughter, Elizabeth I.
The fascination with the life and death of Anne Boleyn lives on. The closest we can get to Anne today is by visiting her final resting place; she is buried in the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London."
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LTC Stephen F.
The Fall of Anne Boleyn - Execution 3/3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI78pGuj7k0
Images:
1. May 19, 1536 execution of blindfolded Anne Boleyn by French swordsman
2. The remnants of the Coldharbour Gate, which once secured the entrance to the Inner Ward, and the royal palace, at the Tower.
3. Tower of London Orange Circle-Tower Hill; Purple Arrow-Bell Tower, Red Arrow-Royal Apartments, Black Circle-Byward Gate, Green Arrow-Coldharbor Gate, Blue Arrow St Peter ad Vincula, Black X site of the scaffold
4. King Of England Henry VIII telling Anne Boleyn queen consort mother of Elizabeth off her sorry fate - beheaded 1536.
Background from {[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/25/chilling-find-shows-how-henry-viii-planned-every-detail-of-boleyn-beheading]}
Chilling find shows how Henry VIII planned every detail of Boleyn beheading by Dalya Alberge, Sun 25 Oct 2020 04.00 EDT
Chilling find shows how Henry VIII planned every detail of Boleyn beheading
Archives discovery shows the calculated nature of the execution and reinforces the image of the king as a ‘pathological monster’
It is a Tudor warrant book, one of many in the National Archives, filled with bureaucratic minutiae relating to 16th-century crimes. But this one has an extraordinary passage, overlooked until now, which bears instructions from Henry VIII explaining precisely how he wanted his second wife, Anne Boleyn, to be executed.
In this document, the king stipulated that, although his queen had been “adjudged to death… by burning of fire… or decapitation”, he had been “moved by pity” to spare her the more painful death of being “burned by fire”. But he continued: “We, however, command that… the head of the same Anne shall be… cut off.”
Tracy Borman, a leading Tudor historian, described the warrant book as an astonishing discovery, reinforcing the image of Henry VIII as a “pathological monster”. She told the Observer: “As a previously unknown document about one of the most famous events in history, it really is golddust, one of the most exciting finds in recent years. What it shows is Henry’s premeditated, calculating manner. He knows exactly how and where he wants it to happen.” The instructions laid out by Henry are for Sir William Kingston, constable of the Tower, detailing how the king would rid himself of the “late queen of England, lately our wife, lately attainted and convicted of high treason”.
Boleyn was incarcerated in the Tower of London on 2 May 1536 for adultery. At her trial, she was depicted as unable to control her “carnal lusts”. She denied the charges but was found guilty of treason and condemned to be burned or beheaded at “the King’s pleasure”.
Most historians agree the charges were bogus – her only crime had been her failure to give Henry a son. The most famous king in English history married six times in his relentless quest for a male heir. He divorced his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to marry Boleyn – the marriage led him to break with the Catholic church and brought about the English Reformation. Boleyn did bear him a daughter, who became Elizabeth I.
Anne’s real ‘crime’ was failure to produce a male heir.
Anne’s real ‘crime’ was her failure to produce a male heir. Photograph: Roger-Viollet/Rex Features
In recent years, the story of Boleyn’s life and death have reached a new audience thanks to Hilary Mantel’s bestselling saga tracing the life of Thomas Cromwell, a blacksmith’s son who became one of Henry VIII’s most trusted advisers. In the Booker-prize-winning Bring Up the Bodies, she explored the destruction of Boleyn, writing of her execution: “Three years ago when she went to be crowned, she walked on a blue cloth that stretched the length of the abbey… Now she must shift over the rough ground… with her body hollow and light and just as many hands around her, ready to retrieve her from any stumble and deliver her safely to death.”
The warrant book reveals that Henry worked out details such as the exact spot for the execution (“upon the Green within our Tower of London”), making clear Kingston should “omit nothing” from his orders.
Borman is joint chief curator for Historic Royal Palaces, the charity that manages the Tower of London, among other sites. She will include the discovery in her forthcoming Channel 5 series, The Fall of Anne Boleyn, which begins in December.
She had visited the National Archives to study the Anne Boleyn trial papers when archivist Sean Cunningham, a Tudor expert, drew her attention to a passage he had discovered in a warrant book. Most of these warrants are “just the minutiae of Tudor government”, she said. “They’re pretty dull. The Tudors were great bureaucrats, and there are an awful lot of these warrant books and account books within the National Archives… It’s thanks to Sean’s eye for detail that it was uncovered.”
Borman argues that, despite the coldness of the instructions, the fact Henry spared Boleyn from being burned – a slow, agonising death – was a real kindness by the standards of the day. A beheading with an axe could also involve several blows, and Henry had specified that Boleyn’s head should be “cut off’, which meant by sword, a more reliable form of execution, but not used in England, which is why he had Cromwell send to Calais for a swordsman.
Henry’s instructions were not followed to the letter, though, partly due to a series of blunders, Borman said. “The execution didn’t take place on Tower Green, which is actually where we still mark it at the Tower today. More recent research has proved that… it was moved to opposite what is today the Waterloo Block, home of the crown jewels.”
She added: “Because we know the story so well, we forget how deeply shocking it was to execute a queen. They could well have got the collywobbles and thought we’re not going to do this. So this is Henry making really sure of it. For years, his trusty adviser Thomas Cromwell has got the blame. But this shows, actually, it’s Henry pulling the strings.”
FYI SMSgt David A AsburySPC Chris Bayner-CwikSgt Jim BelanusCPO John BjorgeSSG Franklin BriantLTC David BrownCpl Vic BurkSP5 Jeannie CarleSGT Rick ColburnGySgt Gary CordeiroSGT Denny EspinosaSGM Gerald FifeSSG Pete FishCPT (Join to see)SGM Bill FrazerSPC Chris HallgrimsonSSG Paul HeadleeGySgt John Hudson1SG Steven ImermanSP5 Dennis Loberger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI78pGuj7k0
Images:
1. May 19, 1536 execution of blindfolded Anne Boleyn by French swordsman
2. The remnants of the Coldharbour Gate, which once secured the entrance to the Inner Ward, and the royal palace, at the Tower.
3. Tower of London Orange Circle-Tower Hill; Purple Arrow-Bell Tower, Red Arrow-Royal Apartments, Black Circle-Byward Gate, Green Arrow-Coldharbor Gate, Blue Arrow St Peter ad Vincula, Black X site of the scaffold
4. King Of England Henry VIII telling Anne Boleyn queen consort mother of Elizabeth off her sorry fate - beheaded 1536.
Background from {[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/25/chilling-find-shows-how-henry-viii-planned-every-detail-of-boleyn-beheading]}
Chilling find shows how Henry VIII planned every detail of Boleyn beheading by Dalya Alberge, Sun 25 Oct 2020 04.00 EDT
Chilling find shows how Henry VIII planned every detail of Boleyn beheading
Archives discovery shows the calculated nature of the execution and reinforces the image of the king as a ‘pathological monster’
It is a Tudor warrant book, one of many in the National Archives, filled with bureaucratic minutiae relating to 16th-century crimes. But this one has an extraordinary passage, overlooked until now, which bears instructions from Henry VIII explaining precisely how he wanted his second wife, Anne Boleyn, to be executed.
In this document, the king stipulated that, although his queen had been “adjudged to death… by burning of fire… or decapitation”, he had been “moved by pity” to spare her the more painful death of being “burned by fire”. But he continued: “We, however, command that… the head of the same Anne shall be… cut off.”
Tracy Borman, a leading Tudor historian, described the warrant book as an astonishing discovery, reinforcing the image of Henry VIII as a “pathological monster”. She told the Observer: “As a previously unknown document about one of the most famous events in history, it really is golddust, one of the most exciting finds in recent years. What it shows is Henry’s premeditated, calculating manner. He knows exactly how and where he wants it to happen.” The instructions laid out by Henry are for Sir William Kingston, constable of the Tower, detailing how the king would rid himself of the “late queen of England, lately our wife, lately attainted and convicted of high treason”.
Boleyn was incarcerated in the Tower of London on 2 May 1536 for adultery. At her trial, she was depicted as unable to control her “carnal lusts”. She denied the charges but was found guilty of treason and condemned to be burned or beheaded at “the King’s pleasure”.
Most historians agree the charges were bogus – her only crime had been her failure to give Henry a son. The most famous king in English history married six times in his relentless quest for a male heir. He divorced his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to marry Boleyn – the marriage led him to break with the Catholic church and brought about the English Reformation. Boleyn did bear him a daughter, who became Elizabeth I.
Anne’s real ‘crime’ was failure to produce a male heir.
Anne’s real ‘crime’ was her failure to produce a male heir. Photograph: Roger-Viollet/Rex Features
In recent years, the story of Boleyn’s life and death have reached a new audience thanks to Hilary Mantel’s bestselling saga tracing the life of Thomas Cromwell, a blacksmith’s son who became one of Henry VIII’s most trusted advisers. In the Booker-prize-winning Bring Up the Bodies, she explored the destruction of Boleyn, writing of her execution: “Three years ago when she went to be crowned, she walked on a blue cloth that stretched the length of the abbey… Now she must shift over the rough ground… with her body hollow and light and just as many hands around her, ready to retrieve her from any stumble and deliver her safely to death.”
The warrant book reveals that Henry worked out details such as the exact spot for the execution (“upon the Green within our Tower of London”), making clear Kingston should “omit nothing” from his orders.
Borman is joint chief curator for Historic Royal Palaces, the charity that manages the Tower of London, among other sites. She will include the discovery in her forthcoming Channel 5 series, The Fall of Anne Boleyn, which begins in December.
She had visited the National Archives to study the Anne Boleyn trial papers when archivist Sean Cunningham, a Tudor expert, drew her attention to a passage he had discovered in a warrant book. Most of these warrants are “just the minutiae of Tudor government”, she said. “They’re pretty dull. The Tudors were great bureaucrats, and there are an awful lot of these warrant books and account books within the National Archives… It’s thanks to Sean’s eye for detail that it was uncovered.”
Borman argues that, despite the coldness of the instructions, the fact Henry spared Boleyn from being burned – a slow, agonising death – was a real kindness by the standards of the day. A beheading with an axe could also involve several blows, and Henry had specified that Boleyn’s head should be “cut off’, which meant by sword, a more reliable form of execution, but not used in England, which is why he had Cromwell send to Calais for a swordsman.
Henry’s instructions were not followed to the letter, though, partly due to a series of blunders, Borman said. “The execution didn’t take place on Tower Green, which is actually where we still mark it at the Tower today. More recent research has proved that… it was moved to opposite what is today the Waterloo Block, home of the crown jewels.”
She added: “Because we know the story so well, we forget how deeply shocking it was to execute a queen. They could well have got the collywobbles and thought we’re not going to do this. So this is Henry making really sure of it. For years, his trusty adviser Thomas Cromwell has got the blame. But this shows, actually, it’s Henry pulling the strings.”
FYI SMSgt David A AsburySPC Chris Bayner-CwikSgt Jim BelanusCPO John BjorgeSSG Franklin BriantLTC David BrownCpl Vic BurkSP5 Jeannie CarleSGT Rick ColburnGySgt Gary CordeiroSGT Denny EspinosaSGM Gerald FifeSSG Pete FishCPT (Join to see)SGM Bill FrazerSPC Chris HallgrimsonSSG Paul HeadleeGySgt John Hudson1SG Steven ImermanSP5 Dennis Loberger
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