regained the King's favour, and had made it clear to all that 'wicked ministers' should be hanged. This came at a time when Cromwell had angered Henry. Plainly, he feared it would be his neck, or hers.
Cromwell built his case on the King's fear of treason and the Queen's teasing nature. Anne had failed to give the King a son. She had proved unfit to be a queen, with her temper and her moods. She was hated by the people, and Catholics did not see her as the King's true wife. More to the point, she was known to enjoy flirting with the men in her circle. For years there had been lewd gossip about her. It would not be hard for people to believe that a woman who had slept with the King before their marriage could have affairs after it.
Cromwell quizzed many who knew Anne, and found evidence against her. We know very little about it, but he was able to build a strong case. It seems that Cromwell showed Henry VIII things he could not ignore.
On 2 May 1536, Anne was arrested for treason at Greenwich Palace and taken by barge to the Tower of London. Entering the Tower, she was in a frail state. She 'fell down on her knees', begging God to help her 'as she was not guilty'. She knew it was rare for anyone accused of treason to escape death.
Sir William Kingston, the Constable of the Tower, led her away.
'Mr Kingston, do I go into a dungeon?' Anne asked.
Kingston told her no, she would be held in the Queen's Lodgings in the palace.
'It is too good for me!' Anne cried. 'Jesu, have mercy on me!'
In her gilded prison, Anne veered from tears to laughter. She could not believe that the King meant her any real harm. She was well treated, but four ladies had been set to spy on her and report all she said. In her distress, she made some very suspect remarks that would be used against her.
While Anne was in the Tower, the King would not see anyone or appear in public. Yet he was seen sailing along the Thames in his barge at night, with ladies by his side and music playing. He had his new love, Jane Seymour, brought to a house by the river and he visited her there. She was now as richly dressed and treated as if she were queen already.
At dinner with a bishop, Henry told the guests that he had seen all this coming, and believed that more than a hundred men had slept with Anne. One envoy wrote, 'You never saw a prince or husband make greater show of his horns.'
A week after Anne's arrest, two lists of charges were drawn up against her, accusing her of adultery with five men. Three were friends of the King, while one, Mark Smeaton, was a lute player. That was shocking enough, but the fifth man was Anne's own brother, George Boleyn, Lord Rochford. His wife, Jane, Lady Rochford, had given so- called 'proof' of incest. It seemed George Boleyn had once been alone with Anne and that he had kissed her. Anne was also said to have plotted the King's death so that she could marry one of her lovers and rule England with him.
Only Smeaton pleaded guilty. Anne and the rest would maintain their innocence. But on 12 May, all the men except George Boleyn were tried in Westminster Hall and condemned to death.
Three days later, at a show trial in the great hall of the Tower, watched by three thousand people, the Queen was tried by twenty-six lords. Her own father seems to have been among them. Never before had a queen of England been brought to trial. It caused a great stir, and much scandal.
Anne was calm and composed. She showed no fear. She put up a strong defence, causing some to say that the trial was just an excuse to get rid of her, but it did her no good. When the lords were asked for their verdict, all said: 'Guilty.'
A hush fell as Anne's uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, weeping, told her she was to be 'burnt here within the Tower, or else to have thy head cut off', as the King should decide. When Anne heard these dread words, she was calm. She said, 'O Father, Thou who art the way, the life and the truth, know whether I have deserved this death.' She added that she was ready to die, but very sorry that others, blameless as she, should die because of her. She swore that she had always been true to the King, but admitted that she had been a proud and jealous wife. 'But God knows that I have not sinned against him in any other way.' She asked only for time to prepare her soul for death.
Anne was taken back to the Queen's Lodgings, where she spent her last days. It is often claimed that she was held in two Tudor rooms in the Queen's House facing Tower Green, but they date from the early 1540s, after her death. The ladies who had spied on her were sent away, and four young maids took their places. They were known to Anne, and kind to her.
The Queen's brother, George Boleyn, was tried after her, and he too was found guilty. All five men were beheaded on Tower Hill on 17 May. Anne was made to watch them die from a window in the Tower. That same day, with her consent, her marriage to Henry VIII was dissolved, and her daughter Elizabeth made a bastard.
'Moved by pity', the King allowed his wife the kinder death. Even before her trial, he had sent to France for an expert swordsman to behead her. This proves he had never meant to have her burned at the stake. There can be little doubt that the hope of a quick death by the sword was used to gain her consent to the ending of her marriage.
The Queen was to die at nine o'clock on 18 May, but Cromwell needed time to make sure that a good crowd would be there to watch. Justice must be seen to be done. But the delay was torture for Anne.
'Master Kingston,' she said to the Constable, 'I hear say I shall not die afore noon, and I am very sorry for it, for I thought then to be dead and past my pain.' When Kingston told her there should be no pain, she said, 'I have a little neck.' Then she put her hand about it, laughing. Kingston wrote: 'I have seen many men and also women put to death, and all have been in great sorrow, but this lady has much joy and pleasure in death.'
At noon, her beheading was delayed again, until the next morning. Again, Anne begged that the King might hasten her end, as she was ready to die and feared she might lose her nerve. But her pleas fell on deaf ears.
That day, she made her peace with God, stating that she had never offended with her body against the King. It is hard to believe she would have put her soul at risk when she was about to face her Maker.
Anne spent much of her last night praying. At eight o'clock on the morning of 19 May 1536, attended by the four young ladies, she was led by Sir William Kingston to a new scaffold that had been built for her. Draped in black, it stood before the 'House of Ordnance' (now the Waterloo Barracks), facing the White Tower in the Tower of London. A thousand people had come to watch Anne die. They saw her mount the steps, wearing a rich grey robe with a white fur cape and a gable hood. She was calm and brave, and made a short speech.
She said 'She was come to die, as she was judged by the law. She would accuse none, nor say anything of why she was judged. She prayed for the King, and called him a most gentle prince. If any would meddle with her cause, she asked them to judge the best. And so she took her leave of them, and of the world', and asked them all to pray for her.
There was no block. She knelt upright on the straw, bound her eyes, and then prayed aloud as she waited for the blow, saying over and over again, 'Oh, Lord God have pity on my soul!' The headsman took off his shoes, came up behind her, swung his sword, and took off her head 'at a stroke'. Her eyes and lips were seen to move as the head fell.
'The Queen died boldly,' Sir William Kingston wrote. Her ladies, weeping, wrapped the head and body in white cloths. No one had thought to provide a coffin, and in the end an arrow chest was all that could be found. Anne's body was buried that day in the royal chapel of St Peter in Chains in the Tower, before the altar. Ten days later, the King married Jane Seymour.
Without any real proof of Anne's guilt, and with her having been judged only on weak and false evidence, there can be little doubt that she went to her death an innocent woman.
Chapter Three
Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury (1541) - Hacked to Death
Margaret was the daughter of the Duke of Clarence, the younger brother of King Edward IV. Born near Bath in 1473, she was a princess of the House of York. She and her younger brother, Edward, Earl of Warwick, grew up in a rich household, but their childhood was marred by sadness. In 1476, when Margaret was three, her mother died in childbirth. The baby did not long outlive her.
