Of course, Cromwell does not say she is guilty.
TRIAL AND EXECUTION
Cromwell engineered the trial of Anne and her co-accused, ensuring that there could be no other outcome but a guilty charge, supplied by a jury openly against Anne Boleyn. The trial threatened to erupt into chaos, with Cromwell barely managing to keep a hold on events. Even the day before the trial, Norfolk, who would preside over events, was still asking what the charges actually were – Cromwell was still working this out.
The men, excluding George who would be tried separately as a peer, were tried on 14 May. All were found guilty, which meant that Anne and George’s convictions were a forgone conclusion.
Mantel’s Cromwell watches Anne as she is tried, he marvels that she doesn’t seem to believe it all. This Anne is impassive and seems to be a world away, but historical accounts of Anne’s trial suggests she was composed and dignified, calmly refuting all of the charges. Regardless of the facts, both she and George were convicted of high treason and sentenced to death.
Henry allows Anne a small mercy: she will be beheaded not with an axe but a French sword, wielded by a French swordsman from Calais. Mantel points out one important fact, denoting the contrived nature of Anne’s downfall – Henry is no innocent cuckold. In Bringing Up the Bodies Jean de Dinteville, a French diplomat, shares this news with Cromwell and Sir William Kingston. Cromwell wants to make sure Kingston has understood:
‘Did you get that?’ he asks. ‘Henry has sent to Calais for the headsman.’ ‘By the Mass,’ Kingston says. ‘Did he do it before the trial?’ ‘So monsieur the ambassador tells me.’
17 M
AY
1536
Cromwell is neither present historically, nor on the page, as George, Weston, Brereton, Smeaton and Norris are executed. Records of George’s eloquent speech have survived the centuries:
And if I have offended any man that is not here now, either in thought, word or deed, and if ye hear any such, I pray you heartily in my behalf, pray them to forgive me for God’s sake... I say unto you all, that if I had followed God’s word in deed as I did read it and set it forth to my power, I had not come to this. If I had, I had been a living man among you.
19 M
AY
1536
Historical records follow Anne’s last hours in the Tower, as she prays and swears on the sacrament of her innocence. Mantel’s Cromwell stands on the scaffold, testing the wooden beams.
Before 9am, Sir William Kingston led Anne and four maidservants out to the scaffold, and it was reported that Anne ‘went to her execution with an untroubled countenance’. There was a scaffold but no block, since Anne was to be decapitated by a French swordsman, and would kneel upright for the blow. Mantel’s Cromwell can barely hear Anne’s last words: they come on the wind, fragmented. Thankfully, we have some records of her final speech:
Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, according to law, for by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I come here only to die, and thus to yield myself humbly to the will of the King, my lord. ... Thus I take my leave of the world, and of you, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. Oh, Lord, have mercy on me. To God I commend my soul.
Mantel describes the moment:
Then a silence, and into that silence, a sharp sigh or a sound like a whistle through a keyhole: the body exsanguinates, and its flat little presence becomes a puddle of gore.
We might imagine a flurry of activity as Anne’s body was hastily packed away, but Anne’s body lay on the scaffold for a few hours after her execution because no one was prepared. Her head and body were placed in an empty arrow chest and brought to the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula, at the Tower, and interred under the altar.
We do not know what else Cromwell did that day, whether he returned to his desk, thinking no more of his vanquished enemies, or whether, as Mantel has it, he sits with a friend and reflects on the bloodshed. But Mantel has captured Cromwell’s unwavering, unapologetic stance.
Once you have chosen a course, you should not apologise for it. God knows, I mean nothing but good to our master the king. I am bound to obey and serve. And if you watch me closely you will see me do it.’
When Cromwell asks Wriothesley to ‘drink my health’, he is not just inviting us to make a toast – we are seeing the celebration of a new era, a new queen, new court favourites, many of whom owe their positions to him.
AFTER THE EXECUTION
In the opening scene of The Mirror and the Light Anne Boleyn’s head lies on the scaffold, a few feet from her bloodied, exposed neck. George and his co-accused have been interred in the chapel in the Tower of London. Having symbolically devoured his enemies, Cromwell fancies a second breakfast.
Historians have long debated the reasons why Cromwell moved so decisively against Anne as, for so many years, they had been regarded as allies. However, apart from a mutual interest in religious reform, there is no evidence that they were ever close. Mantel’s Anne may have laughingly called Cromwell ‘her man’, but historically Anne was not responsible for any of Cromwell’s favours or advancement, nor did she promote any of his friends, family members or close associates. Cromwell may have kept his distance because, as his biographer Diarmaid MacCulloch writes, he could neither forget nor forgive what he believed to be her part in the downfall of his mentor, Cardinal Wolsey. Equally, Anne would have done likewise, for she could never forget that Wolsey was Cromwell’s first master, and therefore Cromwell was not to
