After her condemnation, Anne was not taken back to the royal apartments, but was lodged instead in rooms in the Lieutenant's house (afterwards known as the Queen's House), a half-timbered building between the Bloody Tower and the Bell Tower. It was much altered in 1540, and has been restored since, but the first floor bedroom occupied by Anne still exists, with its linenfold panelling and stone fireplace, dominated by a great four-poster bed, and overlooking Tower Green (or East Smithfield Green, as it was then known) and the Royal Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula, which had not then acquired the reputation Macaulay gave it as 'the saddest spot on earth'.
There was no longer any need for the women to inform on Anne, and Mrs Cosyn was discharged at this point. She was replaced, at Anne's request, by her own niece, Katherine Carey, who was seven years old; it was not thought unsuitable in those days to expose such a young child to the realities of suffering and death.
Jane Seymour did not show herself in public on the day of the trial. She was much agitated about its outcome, and waited with her parents for news. Chapuys, who attended, had promised to tell them about it. In the morning, Jane had received a note from the King, telling her that at three o'clock she would hear of the condemnation of the Queen from Sir Francis Bryan, and this was exactly what did happen, to Jane's intense relief.
Rochford's trial followed that of his sister. The evidence for incest rested solely upon the fact that he had once been closeted for a long time alone with Anne. Chapuys says that Rochford's 'wicked wife' supplied this information, and the French poet Lancelot de Carles, a witness at the trial, quotes Rochford as saying, 'On the evidence of only one woman, you are prepared to believe this great evil of me.' Other witnesses felt that Lady Rochford had acted more out of envy and jealousy than loyalty to the King.
Rochford was also charged with having expressed doubts that Elizabeth was the King's daughter. He made no answer to this, but to the other charges he replied so well that bets were being laid on his acquittal. And he would perhaps have escaped the death penalty, had it not been for a letter from his wife, produced in court at the last minute and containing details of the 'accursed secret' he shared with the Queen. Again he denied these allegations eloquently and sensibly, confessing to nothing. There was one tense moment when he was handed a piece of paper on which was written a statement he had allegedly made to the effect that the King was impotent. This was too sensitive to be read out in court, and Rochford sealed his fate when he declared that he would not 'create suspicion in a manner likely to prejudice the issue the King might have from a second marriage', thereby implying what had been written and creating a sensation in court. 'I did not say it!' he cried, but it was too late. The twenty-six peers found him guilty by a unanimous decision, and Norfolk sentenced him to the full horrors of a traitor's death. Had he not been so proud, wrote Sir Thomas Wyatt, every man would have bemoaned his fate, if only for his great wit, but Rochford had alienated so many with his arrogance that few spoke up in his favour, although there were many who admired his courage at his trial.
The King, and most of his subjects, thought the sentences entirely justified. Told of Anne's spirited defence, Henry replied, 'She hath a stout heart, but she shall pay for it!' To celebrate the verdicts, he held a lavish river pageant, then went to supper at the house of the Bishop of Carlisle, where he produced a book he had written entitled The Tragedy about Anne. 'For a long time I foresaw this,' he said. Chapuys was present at that supper, and offered Henry his commiserations on the Queen's treachery. Henry answered complacently that many great men had suffered from the arts of wicked women, and he did not appear unduly upset. Then he left for the Strand, where he dined late with Jane on food prepared by his own cooks.
On 16 May, Chapuys noticed more and more courtiers going to pay their respects to Jane, while in the Strand the common people waited to catch a glimpse of her. Yet the ambassador was cynical: he thought the King 'may well divorce her when he tires of her'. Nor was Jane universally popular, for scurrilous ballads about her were circulating in London, which the King tried in vain to suppress; a letter he sent to her at this time, the only one to survive from their courtship, refers to this:
My dear friend and mistress,
The bearer of these few lines from thy entirely devoted servant
will deliver into thy fair hands a token of my true affection for
thee, hoping you will keep it for ever in your sincere love for me.
There is a ballad made lately of great derision against us; I pray you
pay no manner of regard to it. I am not at present informed who is
the setter forth of this malignant writing, but if he is found out, he
shall be straitly punished for it. Hoping shortly to receive you into
these arms, I end for the present
Your own loving servant and sovereign,
H. R.
On the day after Anne's trial, Kingston wrote to ask Cromwell, 'What is the King's pleasure touching the Queen, as for the preparation of scaffolds and other necessaries?' Neither he nor Anne knew as yet whether she was to be burned or beheaded, or even when. In fact, Henry was waiting for Cranmer to declare his marriage to Anne null and void. The Archbishop had been studying the relevant documents, but had faced severe difficulty in finding grounds for an annulment. Northumberland had angrily reaffirmed that there had never been a precontract between him and Anne. Nor dared Cranmer imply that the King's marriage to Katherine of Aragon had not been lawfully annulled. In the end, he seems to have found a legal loophole in connection with the King's liaison with Mary Boleyn, which had placed Henry and Anne within the forbidden degrees of affinity. The Pope had issued in 1528 a dispensation permitting them to marry when Henry was free, yet the 1534 Act of Supremacy had decreed that existing papal dispensations would no longer be held as valid if they were contrary to Holy Scripture and the law of God. Cranmer probably applied this ruling to the bull dispensing with Henry's relationship with Mary Boleyn, which meant that his marriage to Anne was incestuous and invalid; and in July 1536, Parliament would declare it void because of 'certain just, true and unlawful impediments' that were not known of when it was contracted.
On 16 May, Cranmer visited the Tower to offer some spiritual consolation to Anne and administer the Holy Sacrament. He also required the Queen's consent to the annulment of her marriage; she had her daughter's rights to consider, and had she disputed it the proceedings could have been very protracted. It may be that Cranmer offered her the easier death in return for her cooperation; even more probable is the likelihood that he held out the possibility of her being reprieved and sent into exile as bait, for when he left she was much more cheerful and told her ladies that 'she was to be banished', and thought she might be sent to a nunnery at Antwerp. This in itself would have been enough to make her agree to; everything Cranmer asked of her, even to abandoning her child's claim to the succession and condemning her to a lifetime marred by the stigma of bastardy.
The King had commuted the sentence on the condemned men to decapitation; the Lisle Letters make it clear that all of them, even Smeaton, died by the axe on the scaffold on Tower Hill, and not at Tyburn. They were told by Kingston on the evening of 16 May that they must prepare for death on the morrow. Rochford took it well, although he was worried that his debts had not been cleared. Kingston promised to raise the matter with Cromwell. Weston spent his last evening writing a farewell letter to his parents, asking them and his wife to forgive him all the wrongs he had done them, and calling himself 'a great offender to God'. Brereton's wife certainly believed her husband to be innocent, and kept the gold bracelet he sent her as a parting gift for their son in memory of his father.
The executions of the men took place early in the morning of Wednesday 17 May before large crowds. The Queen was taken beforehand to the Bell Tower, whose windows overlooked Tower Hill, so that she might watch them die; according to Chapuys, this greatly 'aggravated her grief. The condemned men all died 'charitably'. Rochford mounted
the scaffold first, and made a long and pious speech of which there are three versions. According to the chronicler Charles Wriothesley, he said, 'Trust in God, and not in the vanities of the world, for if I had so done, I think I had been alive as ye be now.' He prayed that God would give the King a long and good life, then submitted to the axe. Weston followed: 'I thought little I would come to this,' he lamented. Then it was Norris's turn: he bravely declared that, 'in his conscience, he thought the Queen innocent of these things laid to her charge, and he would die a thousand deaths rather than ruin an innocent person.' Brereton died next. 'If any of them were innocent,' wrote George Constantine, 'it was he.' Only Smeaton was left. 'Masters,' he faltered, from a scaffold awash with blood, 'I pray you all pray for me, for I have deserved the death.' Within seconds, his head and body had joined the others in a cart standing beside the scaffold, which carried them back to St Peter ad Vincula within the Tower. Rochford was buried inside the chapel, and the rest in the adjacent churchyard, Weston and Norris in one grave, Brereton and Smeaton in the other. The heads were buried with the bodies, for the King had decided not to display them on poles above London Bridge, as was usually the case with those executed for treason.
Meanwhile, the Queen, much shaken, had returned to the Lieutenant's house. There was now no doubt in her mind that she would shortly follow the men to the scaffold, and all that concerned her now was to clear her name and prepare her soul for death. When Kingston came to tell her she must die the following morning, she asked him if any of those just executed had protested her innocence, and he told her that only Smeaton had confessed he deserved death. This upset Anne, and she cried,
Alas! Has he not then cleared me of the public shame he has brought me to? Alas, I fear his soul suffers for his false accusations! But for my brother and those others, I doubt not but they are now in the presence of that Great King before whom I am to be tomorrow.
Kingston was now able to tell Anne that she would not die at the stake, but suffer a quicker death by decapitation, and that the King, to ensure a swift and painless end for the woman he had once loved, had sent to St Omer in France for a headsman whose expertise in cutting off heads with a sword was renowned. The man was already on his way.
During the afternoon of 17 May, Archbishop Cranmer convened a court at Lambeth for the purpose of annulling the King's marriage to Anne Boleyn. Anne was represented by her proctor, Dr Nicholas Wotton, and it was he who heard Cranmer pronounce that her union with the King was invalid and therefore null and void, and her daughter a bastard. Afterwards, it was announced publicly that Anne had never been the lawful Queen of England. She would go to the scaffold as Lady Marquess of Pembroke.
On the green outside her window she could see workmen erecting a high scaffold, for which they would be paid 23. 6s. Sd. They continued working through the night in order to have it ready by nine o'clock the next morning, the time set for Anne's execution. It was practically impossible for Anne and her ladies to sleep. At 2.0 a.m. Anne's chaplain arrived, and she spent the rest of the night praying with him. Cranmer came to the Tower soon after dawn on 18 May, as he had promised, to hear Anne's last confession and administer Holy Communion. She sent for Kingston, that he might be present when she 'received the good Lord', and also so that he could hear her declare her innocence before God. He later informed the King that, both before and after receiving the Sacrament, Anne swore on the damnation of her soul that 'she had never been unfaithful to her lord and husband'. Her ladies, who were also present, repeated this to Chapuys, who reported to the Emperor that 'the Concubine' had affirmed that she had 'never offended with her body against the King'.
Shortly before nine o'clock, Kingston received word from Cromwell that the headsman had been delayed on the Dover road and would not be at the Tower until noon. Anne, who had steeled herself to face death that morning, was 'very sorry' to hear this, 'as I thought to be dead before this time, and past my pain'. Kingston told her 'it should be no pain, it was so subtle', to which she replied, 'I have heard say the executioner was very good, and I have a little neck.' And she put her hands around it, 'laughing heartily'. Kingston told Cromwell he had seen many men and women executed who had been in great sorrow, 'but, to my knowledge, this lady hath much joy and pleasure in death'. Kingston then cleared the Tower of foreigners, since the King would allow only his own subjects to witness Anne's execution. The Constable advised Cromwell to keep the time of the event a secret in order to avoid crowds of Londoners coming to watch, for he supposed 'she will declare herself to be a good woman for all men but the King at the hour of her death'.
When noon came, the executioner had still not arrived, and Kingston had to tell Anne that her ordeal would be prolonged until nine o'clock the next morning. She was visibly shaken by the news. It was not that she desired death, she said, but she thought herself prepared to die, and feared the delay might weaken her resolve. But somehow she got through the next hours, spending most of the time at prayer and the rest in conversation with her ladies, telling them she blamed Chapuys for what had befallen her. Chapuys later said he was glad to know that 'the English Messalina' had held him accountable for her doom. 'I was flattered by the compliment, for she would have cast me to the dogs!'
Meanwhile, at Lambeth, on 18 May, Cranmer issued a dispensation permitting the King's marriage to Jane Seymour even though the parties were within the forbidden degrees of affinity, for Jane's grandmother, Elizabeth Neville, was a cousin of Henry's great grandmother Cicely Neville, Duchess of York. Henry's behaviour during the days leading up to Anne's execution astonished everybody. Displaying great joie de vivre, he was, Chapuys tells us, 'Out to dinner, here, there and everywhere with the ladies,' returning along the river after midnight to the sound of music and singing. The Bishop of Carlisle, who had once again hosted a dinner for his king, afterwards told Chapuys that Henry had 'behaved with almost desperate gaiety'. The ambassador thought that the King's rejuvenation sprang from 'hope of change, a thing especially agreeable to this king', and the prospect of 'getting soon a fine horse to ride'. Regarding Anne, whom Chapuys referred to as 'that thin old woman', Henry now believed that more than a hundred men had slept with her, 'but you never saw a prince or husband make greater show or wear his horns more patiently and lightly than this one does. I leave you to imagine why.'
Chapuys noted that Wyatt and Page were still in the Tower, but once Anne had been disposed of they would be freed, Wyatt upon his father's surety of his good behaviour, and Page on condition that he never again came near the King or the court.
Henry spent the evening of 18 May at the Strand with Jane Seymour, who was richly dressed and already carrying herself like a queen. Chapuys thought her behaviour 'very commendable' at this time. It is tempting to wonder how often her thoughts dwelt upon her predecessor, who was now languishing only a mile away downriver, waiting for death.
Anne could not sleep that night. She prayed, and talked with her ladies. She was quite calm, and at times almost cheerful, saying that those people who thought up nicknames for royalty would be able to call her Queen Anne Lackhead after her death, managing to laugh as she spoke. Chapuys was later gratified to hear that Anne thought her execution was a divine judgement upon her for having treated the Lady Mary so badly, and for having conspired her death. 'No person ever showed greater willingness to die,' the ambassador wrote. Robbed of everything she held dear in the world, Anne was now eager to leave it, placing her hope and trust in the deity she so firmly believed in.
Alexander Aless, the Scots reformer, was still in London. For some days, he had remained indoors, so knew nothing of the outcome of Anne's trial. On the night of 18-19 May, he had a terrible
335nightmare, dreaming that he beheld the severed head of Queen Anne with its vertebrae, arteries and veins exposed in all their bloody horror. Much troubled by this, he rose early in the morning and made his way to Lambeth Palace, where he encountered the Archbishop in the gardens. Cranmer looked unutterably sad, and Aless asked what was tro
ubling him. 'Do you not know what is to happen today?' asked Cranmer, sighing. 'She who has been the Queen of England on earth will today become a queen in Heaven.' And he sat down on a bench and wept, as Aless realised with a jolt what his dream had foretold.
At nine o'clock on Friday, 19 May 1536, Kingston appeared at the door to Anne's rooms. 'Madam, the hour approaches,' he said; 'you must make ready.' Anne answered fearlessly: 'Acquit yourself of your charge, for I have been long prepared.' He gave her a purse containing 20.00, so that she could pay the headsman for his services and distribute alms for the poor, then escorted her, her ladies following, down the stairs and out into the May sunshine where a small contingent of the Yeomen of the King's Guard awaited to conduct the prisoner to the scaffold.
A crowd of two or three thousand people had gathered around the scaffold, which was now draped with black cloth and strewn with straw. Cromwell, his son Gregory (soon to marry Jane Seymour's widowed sister Elizabeth), Lord Chancellor Audley and the ailing Duke of Richmond were all present, as was the Duke of Suffolk, but Norfolk had stayed away.
A great murmur rose from the crowd as Anne Boleyn advanced on her short walk to Tower Green. She wore a robe of dark grey or black damask, trimmed with fur, with a low square neck and a crimson kirtle; from her shoulders flowed a long white cape. She looked exhausted and dazed, which was partly the result of two sleepless nights and partly from apprehension; she also kept looking behind her, as if she expected at any moment to see the King's messenger come galloping into the Tower to bring word of a reprieve. If so, it was a vain hope.