The Fall
and Execution of Anne Boleyn
Today marks the anniversary of
the execution in 1536 of Anne Boleyn on spurious charges of adultery and
therefore (by one argument) treason.
While she would be included in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, a 16th century
effort at Protestant hagiography, all indications are that Anne died a
Catholic; it is difficult to otherwise understand her request that the
Eucharist be placed in her chambers at the Tower of London in the days before
her execution.
It was a convoluted process that brought
Anne to execution.
Previously, Henry VIII had been married
to Catherine of Aragon. That marriage
would ultimately sour on the fact that only one of the children of Henry and
Catherine survived infancy, that being Mary.
England was not, it was feared, ready to be ruled by a queen. The only example of it doing so, that being
the reign of the Empress Matilda (daughter of King Henry I) was referred to as
the “Anarchy.” Seeking to perpetuate the
dynasty and avoid the possibility of civil war after his death, Henry pursued
the Divorce (it was actually what we would refer to today as an annulment) so
that he could marry Anne Boleyn.
The Divorce could not easily be had
consequent to at least a pair of factors.
Initially, on theological grounds, the basis for the Divorce was
weak. Second, Eleanor’s nephew, Charles
V, was King of both Spain and the Netherlands and as well Holy Roman
Emperor. He was able to delay any
decision on the Divorce, thereby depriving Henry of the one thing he did not
have, namely time. Ultimately, Henry
would schism the English church from Roman communion (an act which earned for
Henry his very own bull of excommunication).
The marriage to Catherine of Aragon was then annulled by Thomas Cramer,
Archbishop of Canterbury. Now “single,” Henry proceeded to marry Anne
Boleyn. She, already pregnant at the
time of the marriage, would be the mother of Elizabeth. Elizabeth would be their only child. Henry was now in no better position than he
was before; two potential female heirs to the throne did not address the
perceived need for a male heir. Anne’s
fortunes would ultimately be destroyed consequent to a series of events whose
genesis is still greatly debated, but it is clear that the charges of adultery
and incest for which she was convicted and executed were entirely
fabricated. Regardless, by some means
Thomas Cromwell was told to make it happen, and he did.
On April 30, 1536 Mark Smeaton, a court
musician and hanger-on, was arrested, this being the first overt step in
Cromwell’s plan to bring down Anne Boleyn.
According to one source, Cromwell had Smeaton brought to his own house
and there tortured him. Eventually,
Smeaton would be racked and confess to have committed adultery with Anne
Boleyn. Some five additional men would
be arrested on similar grounds. One of them, Wyatt, was not ultimately charged.
The first trial (albeit indirect) of Anne
Boleyn took place on May 12, 1536. Anne,
however, was not a participant in the trial.
Rather, at this trial each of Mark Smeaton, Henry Norris, William
Brereton and Francis Weston were charged with multiple acts of adultery with
the Queen. Sadly, no transcript of the
proceedings, if made (and that is doubtful), survives. All were found guilty, thereby sealing Anne’s
fate. She did not attend the trial;
rather, at that time she was confined in the Tower of London. Her father, Thomas Boleyn, did sit on the
jury – his vote in favor of their conviction sealed the fate of his children.
On May 15, 1536, Anne Boleyn as well as
her brother George were tried on allegations of adultery and incest. As to Anne, the conclusion of this “trial”
was a foregone conclusion. Four of the
men with whom Anne was accused of having engaged in adultery, Mark Smeaton,
Henry Norris, William Brereton and Francis Weston, had already been convicted
on May 12, and, so goes the adage, it does take two to tango. George as well was convicted on the charges against
him.
Although some incomplete notes of this
trial do survive, sadly no transcript is available; it would no doubt make
interesting reading. It is clear that
both Anne and then George (George’s trial was separate and held after that of
Anne) denied all charges against them. Those
denials (as well as the expected denials of the other men charged with having
committed adultery with Anne) must be accepted at face value. As has been demonstrated by several scholars,
most conclusively Eric Ives, the author of the definitive biography of Anne,
Anne and her various co-conspirators could not have been guilty of the charges
made – even with the incomplete records available to us today, it can be
demonstrated that in numerous instances Anne and a particular gentleman were
charged with having committed adultery at a particular time and place when, in
fact, either or both of them were at a different place or even two difference
places. The truth, however, was not the
issue; the outcome of the trial was a foregone conclusion before it ever
started. Henry was tired of Anne, and
Cromwell had been charged to bring about her fall. End of story.
On May 14, Cranmer, Archbishop of
Canterbury, had declared the marriage of Henry and Anne to have been invalid ab
initio, possibly (the papers as to his determination have been lost) on the
basis of her prior contract of marriage to Henry Percy the son of the then
Fifth Earl of Northumberland (this Henry would be the Sixth Earl). An
alternative basis was that Mary Boleyn, Anne's sister, had been Henry's
mistress, and on that basis the marriage could have been invalid based upon
consangruity. Regardless as to why, Anne would not die as the Queen of England,
having never been validly married to Henry, and their daughter Elizabeth (the
future Queen Elizabeth I) was rendered illegitimate. As to this point, Diarmaid MacCulloch, in his biography Thomas Cranmer, wrote (p. 158-59):
His passing of the nullity judgment on 17 May at Lambeth Palace did not imply that Cranmer thought Anne guilty of lurid crimes; nullity would not be affected by sexual misbehavior during marriage, so strictly speaking these procedures had no relevance to Anne's supposed crimes. Nevertheless, the judgement is a stain on Cranmer's reputations, the unacceptable face of his loyalty to the Supreme Head. There may have been a technical case to construct for nullity through evidence of pre-contracts and the invalidity of papal dispensations; it is not now possible to say. No papers survive, hardly surprisingly in view of what they would have meant for the later Tudor succession, but in any case it was a bizarre and contradictory procedure to declare the Boleyn marriage null: if there had been no marriage how could Anne have committed treason by her supposed sexual promiscuity? No-one, Cranmer included, seems to have pointed out this common-sense illogicality in the face of the King's destructive fury, and of Cromwell's ferocious determination to remove his new-found enemies in the Queen's circle.
All of Mark Smeaton, Henry Norris,
William Brereton and Francis Weston, along with George Boleyn, would be
executed on May 17. Anne’s death would
not take place until May 19.
Famously, Anne was executed not with the
traditional English ax, but rather by a French swordsman. I have never found a
satisfactory explanation as to why the swordsman was requested over the axeman;
Friedmann (another biographer of Anne) suggested, and Ives admits it as a
possibility, that it was at Anne’s request, she desiring the French manner of
execution in light of her having been raised in the French court. There is,
however, a problem of chronology. Anne was consigned to the Tower on May 2, her
alleged partners in adultery (other than her brother George) were tried on May
12, and she was tried on May 15. The
swordsman, normally resident in Calais, appears to have been ordered to come to
England before Anne’s trial. If so, there is further evidence that the trials
were for show and the verdicts were pre-determined; even though her trial had
not yet taken place, the manner of her dispatch may have already been
selected. Still she came out ahead (no
pun intended); her sentence was commuted to beheading – the regular sentence
for a woman convicted of treason was burning at the stake.
Anne was buried in St. Peter ad Vincula,
the church on the grounds of the Tower of London. There she joined Sir (now Saint) Thomas More,
another of Henry’s victims.
Henry would marry Jane Seymour, his third
wife, on May 30. She shortly thereafter became pregnant, ultimately delivering
a son who would survive infancy. That
child was Edward VI. Jane would die of
complications from childbirth. While Henry would go on to marry three more
times, namely to Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr, none of
them would have children by him. Edward VI would die, probably of tuberculosis,
in his mid-teens. Mary and then
Elizabeth, the girls Henry feared could not rule, would in turn rule
England. As observed by Peter W. Hogg, Succession to the Throne, 33 Nat'l J. Const. L. 83 (2014):
[W]hile Henry VIII was engaged in his obsessive quest for a
male heir he could not know that his daughter Elizabeth by Anne Boleyn (the
second of his six wives) was destined to become the greatest monarch England
had ever known. She became Elizabeth I
(Good Queen Bess, as she was known), and ruled for 45 years (1558-1603,
England's “golden age”). Henry should
have stopped worrying and settled down with Anne Boleyn instead of beheading
her.
Anne
Boleyn by Eric Ives is the definitive biography of her life.
