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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 trial was a forgone conclusion. The executioner from France had already arrived before the trial, and Henry VIII and Jane Seymour were married 11 days after Anne's execution on the 19th of May. A short excerpt from the text:
"Anne's musician, Mark Smeaton, was arrested in April and was probably tortured before he confessed to adultery with the Queen. A nobleman, Henry Norris, and a groom, William Brereton, were also arrested and charged with adultery with Anne Boleyn. Finally, Anne's own brother, George Boleyn, was also arrested on charges of incest with his sister in November and December of 1535.
Anne Boleyn was arrested on May 2, 1536. Four men were tried for adultery on May 12, with only Mark Smeaton pleading guilty. On May 15, Anne and her brother were put on trial. Anne was charged with adultery, incest, and high treason. Many historians believe that the charges were created, likely with or by Cromwell, so that Henry could get rid of Anne, marry again, and have male heirs. The men were executed on May 17 and Anne was beheaded by a French swordsman on May 19, 1536. Anne Boleyn was buried in an unmarked grave; in 1876 her body was exhumed and identified and a marker added. Just before she was executed, Cranmer pronounced that the marriage of Henry and Anne Boleyn was itself invalid.
Henry married Jane Seymour on May 30, 1536. The daughter of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII became Queen of England as Elizabeth I on November 17, 1558, after the deaths of, first, her brother, Edward VI, and then her older sister, Mary I. Elizabeth I reigned until 1603."
"Anne's musician, Mark Smeaton, was arrested in April and was probably tortured before he confessed to adultery with the Queen. A nobleman, Henry Norris, and a groom, William Brereton, were also arrested and charged with adultery with Anne Boleyn. Finally, Anne's own brother, George Boleyn, was also arrested on charges of incest with his sister in November and December of 1535.
Anne Boleyn was arrested on May 2, 1536. Four men were tried for adultery on May 12, with only Mark Smeaton pleading guilty. On May 15, Anne and her brother were put on trial. Anne was charged with adultery, incest, and high treason. Many historians believe that the charges were created, likely with or by Cromwell, so that Henry could get rid of Anne, marry again, and have male heirs. The men were executed on May 17 and Anne was beheaded by a French swordsman on May 19, 1536. Anne Boleyn was buried in an unmarked grave; in 1876 her body was exhumed and identified and a marker added. Just before she was executed, Cranmer pronounced that the marriage of Henry and Anne Boleyn was itself invalid.
Henry married Jane Seymour on May 30, 1536. The daughter of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII became Queen of England as Elizabeth I on November 17, 1558, after the deaths of, first, her brother, Edward VI, and then her older sister, Mary I. Elizabeth I reigned until 1603."
Anne Boleyn Biography, Facts, and Background
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The Last Days of Anne Boleyn | BBC Documentary
Anne Boleyn’s sudden and violent downfall has captivated and fiercely divided historians, writers and amateur enthusiasts for centuries, thanks to its intoxi...
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 Last Days of Anne Boleyn | BBC Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmWTkALTja0
Images:
1. Anne Boleyn praying in the Tower of London
2. Anne on the eve of her execution in May 18, 1536
3. The execution of Anne Boleyn, on 19 May, 1536, was conducted by a French swordsman to limit her pain
4. Anne’s real ‘crime’ was her failure to produce a male heir.
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.
FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarter SPC Michael Duricko, Ph.D GySgt Thomas Vick SGT Denny Espinosa LTC (Join to see)Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. PO1 William "Chip" Nagel PO2 (Join to see) SSG Franklin Briant SPC Woody Bullard TSgt David L. SPC Michael Terrell SFC Chuck Martinez CSM Charles HaydenSMSgt Tom Burns SGT John " Mac " McConnell SP5 Jeannie Carle
The Last Days of Anne Boleyn | BBC Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmWTkALTja0
Images:
1. Anne Boleyn praying in the Tower of London
2. Anne on the eve of her execution in May 18, 1536
3. The execution of Anne Boleyn, on 19 May, 1536, was conducted by a French swordsman to limit her pain
4. Anne’s real ‘crime’ was her failure to produce a male heir.
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.
FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarter SPC Michael Duricko, Ph.D GySgt Thomas Vick SGT Denny Espinosa LTC (Join to see)Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. PO1 William "Chip" Nagel PO2 (Join to see) SSG Franklin Briant SPC Woody Bullard TSgt David L. SPC Michael Terrell SFC Chuck Martinez CSM Charles HaydenSMSgt Tom Burns SGT John " Mac " McConnell SP5 Jeannie Carle
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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 Anne Boleyn executed by French swordsman
2. A coverlet traditionally thought to have been associated with Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII, Royal Collection Trust
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. Lady Anne Boleyn in the Tower
Biographies:
1. onthetudortrail.com/Blog/anne-boleyn/annes-execution-speech
2. biography.com/royalty/anne-boleyn
1. Background from {[https://onthetudortrail.com/Blog/anne-boleyn/annes-execution-speech/]}
May 19th 1536- Tower of London; 8 o’clock in the morning
‘Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, for according to the law, and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything 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 them 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. O Lord have mercy on me, to God I commend my soul.’
Once blindfolded and kneeling, she repeated several times: ‘To Jesus Christ I commend my soul; Lord Jesu receive my soul.’
As recorded by Edward Hall."
2. Background from {[ https://www.biography.com/royalty/anne-boleyn]}
Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII, served as queen of England in the 1530s. She was executed on charges of incest, witchcraft, adultery and conspiracy against the king.
Who Was Anne Boleyn?
Anne Boleyn was the second wife of King Henry VIII — a scandalous marriage, given that he had been denied an annulment from his first wife by the Roman Church, and that his mistress was Anne's sister, Mary. Thusly, King Henry VIII broke from the Church to marry Anne. She gave birth to a daughter, but could not conceive a son. On May 19, 1536, Boleyn was executed on false charges of incest, witchcraft, adultery and conspiracy against the king. Her daughter, Elizabeth, emerged as one of England's greatest queens. Boleyn died on May 19, 1536, in London, England.
Early Life
Born circa 1501, Anne Boleyn was the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, who would later become earl of Wiltshire and Ormonde, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Howard. After living in France for a time during her youth, Boleyn returned to England in 1522 and soon established a residence at King Henry VIII's court as a maid of honor to Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's queen consort at the time.
By the mid-1520s, Boleyn had become one of the most admired ladies of the court, attracting the attention of many men, among them Henry Percy, the 6th Earl of Northumberland. When Henry VIII caught wind of Lord Henry Percy’s desired marriage with Boleyn, he ordered against it. Around this same time—whether it was before or after Percy's interest in Boleyn had developed is uncertain—the king himself fell in love with the young maid. What is known is that Boleyn's sister, Mary, one of the king's mistresses, had introduced her to Henry VIII and that the king wrote love letters to Boleyn circa 1525.
In one of the king's letters, he wrote: "If you ... give yourself up, heart, body and soul to me ... I will take you for my only mistress, rejecting from thought and affection all others save yourself, to serve only you." Boleyn replied with rejection, however, explaining that she aimed to be married and not be a mistress: "Your wife I cannot be, both in respect of mine own unworthiness, and also because you have a queen already. Your mistress I will not be."
Boleyn's response surprised Henry VIII, who is believed to have had several mistresses at that time, reportedly entering into these adulterous relationships because he badly wanted a son, and Catherine of Aragon had not borne a male child. (Queen Catherine would not bear a son that survived infancy throughout the duration of their marriage, from 1509 to 1533; the couple's first child to survive infancy, Princess Mary, was born in 1516.) But Henry was desperate to have Boleyn, so he quickly configured a way to officially abandon his marriage with Catherine. In his petition for annulment to the pope, he cited an excerpt from the Book of Leviticus stating that a man who takes his brother's wife shall remain childless, and claimed that he and Catherine (who was his brother's widow) would never have a son who survived infancy because their marriage was a condemnation in the eyes of God.
Queen of England
Following a six-year debate, during which time Henry and Boleyn had courted discreetly, Anne discovered that she was pregnant in early 1533. Without the blessing of the pope, on January 25, 1533, Henry and Boleyn quickly married in a secret ceremony led by Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury. The following June, a lavish coronation ceremony was held in honor of the new queen. On September 7, 1533, Queen Anne gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth I, who would be Henry VIII's only child with Boleyn to survive infancy. (Anne would conceive twice more, in 1534 and 1536, with each delivery producing a stillborn baby.) In 1534, Archbishop Cranmer decreed Henry's marriage to Catherine Aragon invalid because she was the king's sister-in-law. Henry subsequently broke England away from Rome by setting up the Church of England. Catherine would pass away two years later, in 1536.
While Queen Anne's public persona was that of a sexually promiscuous status seeker—due in no small part to the public's long-held allegiance to Catherine of Aragon—her efforts to play the traditional role of queen during her reign were both valid and sincere, focusing on improvements for the poor. Boleyn was also renowned at court for her stylish wardrobe, much of which followed French fashion trends of the time. England would never warm up to Queen Anne, however. She would remain disliked, by and large, for the rest of her short life.
But if Boleyn was less than prepared for her new role as queen, she was extremely unprepared for her new role as the king's wife. A year into their union, Henry VIII pursued and engaged in sexual relationships with two of Anne's maids-of-honor, Madge Shelton and Jane Seymour. Unlike Queen Catherine before her, who knew of her husband's infidelity but was able to turn the other cheek, Boleyn was enraged by Henry's promiscuity and became increasingly jealous. As he had with Catherine, Henry blamed his adulterous behavior on his mission to have a son and heir to the throne and became increasingly frustrated by his wife's questions about his whereabouts and subsequent reactions. Permeated by resentment and hostility, the marriage quickly fell apart.
Execution and Legacy
After Boleyn gave birth to a stillborn male child in January 1536, Henry VIII decided that it was time to take hold of his legacy. He quickly settled on taking Seymour as his future wife and sought out the annulment of his marriage to Boleyn. He then had Boleyn detained at the Tower of London on several false charges, among them adultery, incest and conspiracy. It is believed that Thomas Cromwell, Chief Minister to the King and Boleyn’s former friend, plotted her downfall.
"I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. O Lord have mercy on me, to God I commend my soul."
Boleyn went to trial on May 15, 1536. In court, she remained levelheaded and articulate, calmly and clearly denying all of the charges against her. Four days later, on May 19, 1536, Boleyn was unanimously convicted by a court of peers, and Henry's marriage to her was annulled and declared invalid. That same day, Boleyn was taken to the Tower Green in London, England, for her execution, by a French swordsman. There, on the scaffolds, she delivered a speech: "I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything 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," she said, adding, "I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. O Lord have mercy on me, to God I commend my soul."
Her ermine mantle was removed and Boleyn removed her headdress. She kneeled down and was blindfolded. With one swift motion, she was beheaded. Her head and body was buried in an unmarked grave. Within days of Boleyn's execution, Henry VIII and Jane Seymour were formally wed. The daughter of Henry VIII and Boleyn, Elizabeth I, would later emerge as one of England's most revered queens.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI78pGuj7k0
Images:
1. May 19, 1536 execution of Anne Boleyn executed by French swordsman
2. A coverlet traditionally thought to have been associated with Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII, Royal Collection Trust
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. Lady Anne Boleyn in the Tower
Biographies:
1. onthetudortrail.com/Blog/anne-boleyn/annes-execution-speech
2. biography.com/royalty/anne-boleyn
1. Background from {[https://onthetudortrail.com/Blog/anne-boleyn/annes-execution-speech/]}
May 19th 1536- Tower of London; 8 o’clock in the morning
‘Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, for according to the law, and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything 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 them 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. O Lord have mercy on me, to God I commend my soul.’
Once blindfolded and kneeling, she repeated several times: ‘To Jesus Christ I commend my soul; Lord Jesu receive my soul.’
As recorded by Edward Hall."
2. Background from {[ https://www.biography.com/royalty/anne-boleyn]}
Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII, served as queen of England in the 1530s. She was executed on charges of incest, witchcraft, adultery and conspiracy against the king.
Who Was Anne Boleyn?
Anne Boleyn was the second wife of King Henry VIII — a scandalous marriage, given that he had been denied an annulment from his first wife by the Roman Church, and that his mistress was Anne's sister, Mary. Thusly, King Henry VIII broke from the Church to marry Anne. She gave birth to a daughter, but could not conceive a son. On May 19, 1536, Boleyn was executed on false charges of incest, witchcraft, adultery and conspiracy against the king. Her daughter, Elizabeth, emerged as one of England's greatest queens. Boleyn died on May 19, 1536, in London, England.
Early Life
Born circa 1501, Anne Boleyn was the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, who would later become earl of Wiltshire and Ormonde, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Howard. After living in France for a time during her youth, Boleyn returned to England in 1522 and soon established a residence at King Henry VIII's court as a maid of honor to Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's queen consort at the time.
By the mid-1520s, Boleyn had become one of the most admired ladies of the court, attracting the attention of many men, among them Henry Percy, the 6th Earl of Northumberland. When Henry VIII caught wind of Lord Henry Percy’s desired marriage with Boleyn, he ordered against it. Around this same time—whether it was before or after Percy's interest in Boleyn had developed is uncertain—the king himself fell in love with the young maid. What is known is that Boleyn's sister, Mary, one of the king's mistresses, had introduced her to Henry VIII and that the king wrote love letters to Boleyn circa 1525.
In one of the king's letters, he wrote: "If you ... give yourself up, heart, body and soul to me ... I will take you for my only mistress, rejecting from thought and affection all others save yourself, to serve only you." Boleyn replied with rejection, however, explaining that she aimed to be married and not be a mistress: "Your wife I cannot be, both in respect of mine own unworthiness, and also because you have a queen already. Your mistress I will not be."
Boleyn's response surprised Henry VIII, who is believed to have had several mistresses at that time, reportedly entering into these adulterous relationships because he badly wanted a son, and Catherine of Aragon had not borne a male child. (Queen Catherine would not bear a son that survived infancy throughout the duration of their marriage, from 1509 to 1533; the couple's first child to survive infancy, Princess Mary, was born in 1516.) But Henry was desperate to have Boleyn, so he quickly configured a way to officially abandon his marriage with Catherine. In his petition for annulment to the pope, he cited an excerpt from the Book of Leviticus stating that a man who takes his brother's wife shall remain childless, and claimed that he and Catherine (who was his brother's widow) would never have a son who survived infancy because their marriage was a condemnation in the eyes of God.
Queen of England
Following a six-year debate, during which time Henry and Boleyn had courted discreetly, Anne discovered that she was pregnant in early 1533. Without the blessing of the pope, on January 25, 1533, Henry and Boleyn quickly married in a secret ceremony led by Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury. The following June, a lavish coronation ceremony was held in honor of the new queen. On September 7, 1533, Queen Anne gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth I, who would be Henry VIII's only child with Boleyn to survive infancy. (Anne would conceive twice more, in 1534 and 1536, with each delivery producing a stillborn baby.) In 1534, Archbishop Cranmer decreed Henry's marriage to Catherine Aragon invalid because she was the king's sister-in-law. Henry subsequently broke England away from Rome by setting up the Church of England. Catherine would pass away two years later, in 1536.
While Queen Anne's public persona was that of a sexually promiscuous status seeker—due in no small part to the public's long-held allegiance to Catherine of Aragon—her efforts to play the traditional role of queen during her reign were both valid and sincere, focusing on improvements for the poor. Boleyn was also renowned at court for her stylish wardrobe, much of which followed French fashion trends of the time. England would never warm up to Queen Anne, however. She would remain disliked, by and large, for the rest of her short life.
But if Boleyn was less than prepared for her new role as queen, she was extremely unprepared for her new role as the king's wife. A year into their union, Henry VIII pursued and engaged in sexual relationships with two of Anne's maids-of-honor, Madge Shelton and Jane Seymour. Unlike Queen Catherine before her, who knew of her husband's infidelity but was able to turn the other cheek, Boleyn was enraged by Henry's promiscuity and became increasingly jealous. As he had with Catherine, Henry blamed his adulterous behavior on his mission to have a son and heir to the throne and became increasingly frustrated by his wife's questions about his whereabouts and subsequent reactions. Permeated by resentment and hostility, the marriage quickly fell apart.
Execution and Legacy
After Boleyn gave birth to a stillborn male child in January 1536, Henry VIII decided that it was time to take hold of his legacy. He quickly settled on taking Seymour as his future wife and sought out the annulment of his marriage to Boleyn. He then had Boleyn detained at the Tower of London on several false charges, among them adultery, incest and conspiracy. It is believed that Thomas Cromwell, Chief Minister to the King and Boleyn’s former friend, plotted her downfall.
"I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. O Lord have mercy on me, to God I commend my soul."
Boleyn went to trial on May 15, 1536. In court, she remained levelheaded and articulate, calmly and clearly denying all of the charges against her. Four days later, on May 19, 1536, Boleyn was unanimously convicted by a court of peers, and Henry's marriage to her was annulled and declared invalid. That same day, Boleyn was taken to the Tower Green in London, England, for her execution, by a French swordsman. There, on the scaffolds, she delivered a speech: "I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything 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," she said, adding, "I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. O Lord have mercy on me, to God I commend my soul."
Her ermine mantle was removed and Boleyn removed her headdress. She kneeled down and was blindfolded. With one swift motion, she was beheaded. Her head and body was buried in an unmarked grave. Within days of Boleyn's execution, Henry VIII and Jane Seymour were formally wed. The daughter of Henry VIII and Boleyn, Elizabeth I, would later emerge as one of England's most revered queens.
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Anne Boleyn Biography - The life of Queen Anne Boleyn Second Wife of Henry VIII Documentary
The first 1000 people to use the link will get a free trial of Skillshare Premium Membership: https://skl.sh/thepeopleprofiles04211For early access to our vi...
Anne Boleyn Biography - The life of Queen Anne Boleyn Second Wife of Henry VIII Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I99wQkhnvvc
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.
Biographies:
1. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/25/chilling-find-shows-how-henry-viii-planned-every-detail-of-boleyn-beheading
2. britroyals.com/tudor.asp?id=anne_boleyn
1. 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.”
2. Background from {[https://www.britroyals.com/tudor.asp?id=anne_boleyn]}
House of Tudor - Anne Boleyn
Name: Anne Boleyn
Father: Thomas Boleyn
Mother: Lady Elizabeth Howard
Born: abt.1501 at Blickling, Norfolk
Married: Henry VIII, on January 25, 1533
Children: Elizabeth
Died: May 19, 1536 at Tower of London
Buried at: Tower of London
Anne Boleyn was the 2nd wife of Henry VIII, and was born around 1501. Some sources put it as late at 1507. She had an elder sister Mary Boleyn, and a brother George Boleyn. Her father Thomas Boleyn was a diplomat for Henry VII, and arranged a place for Anne in the household of Archduchess Margaret of Austria in the Netherlands. In 1514 she moved to Paris where she was a lady-in-waiting for Queen Claude of France. Anne became well educated and studied French, acquiring knowledge of culture, fashion and religious philosophy particularly the new renaissance humanism that challenged the traditional teachings of the Catholic Church.
In 1521 she returned to England and joined her sister Mary Boleyn at the court of Henry VIII as a maid of Catherine of Aragon. Her sister was one of Henry’s mistresses. She was courted by Henry Percy son of the Duke of Northumberland but the romance was broken off. In 1525 Henry VIII started courting Anne but she rejected his attempts to seduce her making it clear that she would not be his mistress only his wife. Henry wanted to divorce his wife Catherine of Aragon who was too old to bear him the son he wanted, but his appeal to the Pope for divorce was unsuccessful. Catherine was banished from court and Anne was openly courted by Henry who tried to use her contacts with Francis I of France to enlist support for his new marriage.
The political and legal debate over Henry’s divorce from Catherine lasted for 6 years until 1533 when Henry broke with Rome and declared himself head of the Church of England. By that time Anne was pregnant and they were married on 25 January 1533. Anne became Queen consort on 23 May. News of the English Reformation spread throughout Europe, and Anne became a heroine to new wave of Protestants following Martin Luther. Her daughter Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth I) was born on 7 September 1533.
The marriage was turbulent as Anne was strong willed and attempted to influence Henry in political and religious matters. She was instrumental in the removal of Thomas More, and spent large sums of money on fashions and jewellery. She was protective of her daughter Elizabeth but rejected her step daughter Mary. Anne miscarried a stillborn male child in 1536. Following the death of Catherine her position became more insecure and Henry took a new mistress Jane Seymour. Anne’s downfall was engineered by Thomas Cromwell who had her accused of adultery with Mark Smeaton a court musician and of incest with her brother George. She was condemned to death and beheaded at the Tower of London on 19 May 1536. Three weeks later Henry married Jane Seymour."
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I99wQkhnvvc
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.
Biographies:
1. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/25/chilling-find-shows-how-henry-viii-planned-every-detail-of-boleyn-beheading
2. britroyals.com/tudor.asp?id=anne_boleyn
1. 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.”
2. Background from {[https://www.britroyals.com/tudor.asp?id=anne_boleyn]}
House of Tudor - Anne Boleyn
Name: Anne Boleyn
Father: Thomas Boleyn
Mother: Lady Elizabeth Howard
Born: abt.1501 at Blickling, Norfolk
Married: Henry VIII, on January 25, 1533
Children: Elizabeth
Died: May 19, 1536 at Tower of London
Buried at: Tower of London
Anne Boleyn was the 2nd wife of Henry VIII, and was born around 1501. Some sources put it as late at 1507. She had an elder sister Mary Boleyn, and a brother George Boleyn. Her father Thomas Boleyn was a diplomat for Henry VII, and arranged a place for Anne in the household of Archduchess Margaret of Austria in the Netherlands. In 1514 she moved to Paris where she was a lady-in-waiting for Queen Claude of France. Anne became well educated and studied French, acquiring knowledge of culture, fashion and religious philosophy particularly the new renaissance humanism that challenged the traditional teachings of the Catholic Church.
In 1521 she returned to England and joined her sister Mary Boleyn at the court of Henry VIII as a maid of Catherine of Aragon. Her sister was one of Henry’s mistresses. She was courted by Henry Percy son of the Duke of Northumberland but the romance was broken off. In 1525 Henry VIII started courting Anne but she rejected his attempts to seduce her making it clear that she would not be his mistress only his wife. Henry wanted to divorce his wife Catherine of Aragon who was too old to bear him the son he wanted, but his appeal to the Pope for divorce was unsuccessful. Catherine was banished from court and Anne was openly courted by Henry who tried to use her contacts with Francis I of France to enlist support for his new marriage.
The political and legal debate over Henry’s divorce from Catherine lasted for 6 years until 1533 when Henry broke with Rome and declared himself head of the Church of England. By that time Anne was pregnant and they were married on 25 January 1533. Anne became Queen consort on 23 May. News of the English Reformation spread throughout Europe, and Anne became a heroine to new wave of Protestants following Martin Luther. Her daughter Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth I) was born on 7 September 1533.
The marriage was turbulent as Anne was strong willed and attempted to influence Henry in political and religious matters. She was instrumental in the removal of Thomas More, and spent large sums of money on fashions and jewellery. She was protective of her daughter Elizabeth but rejected her step daughter Mary. Anne miscarried a stillborn male child in 1536. Following the death of Catherine her position became more insecure and Henry took a new mistress Jane Seymour. Anne’s downfall was engineered by Thomas Cromwell who had her accused of adultery with Mark Smeaton a court musician and of incest with her brother George. She was condemned to death and beheaded at the Tower of London on 19 May 1536. Three weeks later Henry married Jane Seymour."
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