After the Trial: What Did Anne Expect Would Be Her Fate?

Until the very moment the swordsman of Calais swung his sword at her neck, Anne Boleyn may have been expecting a pardon.

No Queen of England had ever been put on trial, let alone executed. Though Anne likely expected to be found guilty at trial, it seems that she may have believed she would be pardoned afterward and sent to a nunnery. William Kingston records the day after Anne's trial, May 16, Archbishop Cranmer came to visit Anne in the Tower. We don't know what was said, but at dinner afterward, Anne was cheerful when she told her ladies she was going to be sent to a convent.

In the Tudor era, a marriage could be legally dissolved if one of the parties entered a religious order. The children from such a union would still be legitimate. This "solution" to ending a marriage was urged on Katharine of Aragon when the king wanted an annulment to marry Anne, because it would give the king his freedom to remarry, yet preserve Princess Mary's rights to the throne. However, Katharine refused, saying she had no religious vocation. Another family of the era seems to have used this option. Catherine Fillol was sent to a convent when she was accused of adultery, and her husband remarried.

It seems Cranmer's visit to the Tower had two purposes: he was to act as Anne's spiritual comfort - which she had been requesting - and he was to get from her a reason to legally declare the king's marriage null and void. It has been speculated that at this meeting, Cranmer offered Anne a deal: Anne she would be pardoned and sent to a convent if she "confessed" to an impediment that made her marriage to the king invalid.

What was this impediment? We don't know. The annulment decree Cranmer issued simply said it was something Anne had known all along but only recently revealed to Cranmer, which made the marriage invalid. Some have speculated Anne claimed she'd been pre-contracted to Henry Percy, because Percy was asked about it again during the proceedings. He irritably wrote back that he had already sworn on the host there had been no pre-contract between himself and Anne Boleyn. If this was, indeed, the issue that was cited, they must have decided Anne's word on the matter would be accepted at face-value despite Percy's denial.

Chapuys claimed that the reason cited was Henry's prior affair with Mary Boleyn. However, Henry had not only gotten a dispensation from the pope allowing him to marry a woman whose sister he had slept with, he had also had parliament confirm his union with Anne as lawful. Chapuys seems incorrect on this one.

Henry never did anything by halves. He married Anne Boleyn twice. He had her crowned as a consort, and as a monarch in her own right. He had declared his daughter by Anne to be the only legitimate princess, and had made all of England formally swear to recognize her as the sole heir to the throne. Now it appeared he wanted Anne Boleyn to enter a convent to end their marriage, and to have an annulment, as well.

Anne seems to have agreed to the deal, believing it would save her life and preserve the rights of her beloved daughter to the throne.

But it seems the more she thought about it, the more she began to question it. Would Henry really let her live? She would still be a wealthy marquess, with powerful supporters, and any female children of his marriage to Jane would have to take place in line to the throne behind Princess Elizabeth. William Kingston reports that one moment she was cheerful and eager to find out what convent she'd be sent to, and the next moment, she was fearful she would be executed. She spent the next few days vacillating between these two states.

The king's pardon didn't come, and there were men building a scaffold on the green.

The annulment was announced, and it said since Anne had known of the impediment all along, it rendered the parents' "good faith" invalid, and thus Princess Elizabeth was now a bastard. Kingston makes no mention he ever informed Anne of that fact. I hope he didn't. I hope she went to the scaffold believing she had saved Elizabeth's future.

As she waited those agonizing hours, did Anne hear the sound of the hammers as the scaffold was built?

Anne must of thought of Esther from the Bible - to whom she had been compared - pardoned by the king in front of whole court when she finally reached his throne and touched his sword. She must have thought of Guinevere, rescued from the stake itself, and the various tales of Tristan and Iseult seeking pardon from King Mark. The literature with which Anne was familiar had many such tales of last-minute redemption and pardon.

Dramatic, last-minute pardons were Henry's style. On May 25, 1536, orders were given in regards to a request for a prisoner's pardon by Lord Lisle:

... Peretre's pardon is granted, and you shall shortly have a letter missive for it; but his Grace willeth the law to proceed upon him to the last point of execution before announcing it.

On the evening of May 17, Anne was told to prepare to be executed the following morning. What must she have been thinking at that moment? Shock and denial, wanting to protest there had been a deal? Did part of her think it was an elaborate show on Henry's part so he could pardon her at the last second in a display of regal magnanimity? In any case, she decided to prepare herself.

She asked Lady Kingston to take a message to Princess Mary, requesting forgiveness of any wrongs Anne had done her. A Victorian chronicler paints the scene in dramatic fashion, with Anne pushing the protesting Lady Kingston into Anne's chair of estate and Anne bowing to Lady Kingston as a proxy for Mary. There's no contemporary source for the fanciful version, but asking for forgiveness was an ordinary preparation for death in those days, so an apology of some sort is likely.

Her almoner was sent to her to prepare her soul. Anne spent the night with him in prayer, but taking a moment to call Kingston to witness her swearing on the host she had never committed adultery. Whatever Henry had in store for her, Anne was prepared, her soul shriven and her earthly matters settled.

But the appointed execution time came and went. Anne finally called for Kingston and he told her it had been delayed to the following day. She replied she'd hoped to be dead by now and past her pain, then laughed about having a little neck. Kingston marveled at her odd demeanor and said she seemed to have much "joy and pleasure in death." Could it be because Anne really didn't think it would happen?

The following morning, as she walked toward the scaffold, a witness reported Anne looked back over her shoulder frequently. Was she looking for a messenger, charging in with a pardon in hand to dramatically end the show?

She stepped up onto the scaffold and said the required words forgiving the executioner. She even praised the king as a "gentle and merciful prince"... Was it because she was still expecting his mercy to materialize at any moment now?

Anne removed her cloak, her jewelry, her hood. She stripped off her gown to reveal her scarlet kirtle, and then knelt down. She took a while tucking the kirtle carefully around her feet for modesty's sake, and then began to pray.

Was she still expecting the sound of hooves? Of cries to wait?

When the executioner moved toward her, she turned her head to look at him. She looked away and went back to her prayers. He tried again, and her eyes flashed up to meet his. Did he see fear in their depths, or expectation? Was she waiting to hear Kingston step forward and draw a written pardon from his doublet to read to the crowd?

The executioner looked to the direction of the stairs and shouted, "Bring me my sword!" Anne turned her head to watch - perhaps expecting an assistant to carry up a pardon scroll instead of a blade. Behind her line of sight, the executioner swept the sword up from where he had hidden it in the straw and struck, taking off her head with one blow.

It's possible that Anne died still expecting a pardon that would never come.


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Dismantling the Queen's Household

May 13, 1536

Anne's trial was still four days away, but her reign as Queen of England was decisively over. Her servants were informed on this date that Anne's royal household was dissolved. Every servant, from high-born lady in waiting to the lowest chambermaid, was dismissed and told to pack up their things to depart for their own homes.

For the nobles, this was a minor inconvenience, or perhaps even a small vacation, as they returned to their family estates. Many of them would be recalled in just a few weeks to serve the new queen, Jane Seymour. (At this point, Henry was still coyly protesting he had no intention of marrying again, unless his subjects asked him. His council would obediently make that request a few days later.)

For the lower servants, it must have been a terrifying time. Most of them didn't have a home outside of court, and without social safety nets, their families could face starvation. There must have been frantic scrambling as they tried to find jobs with another noble household, begging their connections to find them a place.

Royal households were a complex system of patronage. Anne personally selected the people to fill the more important positions, giving favor to the friends she wanted around her every day, but she was also compelled to find positions for the highest nobles in the land, even if she wasn't fond of them. Those people, in turn, appointed their friends and favorite servants to the positions that supported theirs. All told, Anne's household comprised hundreds of people, including the servants of the nobles who served the queen, all the way down to the charwomen who cleaned the fireplaces.

By breaking up her household, Henry was making a very clear announcement. Even if Anne - by some miracle - was found not guilty at trial, she would no longer live at court as Henry's queen. Her banners and badges were ordered torn down, soon to be replaced with Jane Seymour's. Her rooms were emptied of her property, sold or tucked away into the king's treasure houses. Anne's clothing and jewels would be recycled to make things for Jane. The queen's apartments, which had once been filled with music and laughter now echoed with silence, waiting for their new occupant.

The task of erasing Anne Boleyn from memory had begun.


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Spring, 1536: The Conspiracy to Destroy a Queen

By spring of 1536, Henry VIII's passion for Anne Boleyn had soured into hatred. The son he had expected had turned out to be another worthless daughter, and Anne had miscarried of a son in January. The quick mind and spirited personality that had attracted him to Anne in the first place were now starting to irritate him. He was experiencing problems in the bedroom, which - knowing Henry's personality - he likely blamed on Anne. He wanted a placid, submissive wife now, and he had his eye on a woman who seemed to embody those very qualities: Jane Seymour.

But it had taken Henry seven long years to rid himself of his first wife, Katharine of Aragon. Anne was just as stalwart as Katharine, and well-versed in Scripture. She also had powerful and wealthy supporters in the religious reformist movement. Like Katharine, Anne deeply loved her daughter and would fight to her last breath to preserve Elizabeth's rights to the throne. Henry was in no mood for a protracted legal battle and another inconvenient ex-wife causing him grief.

But invalidating his second marriage might tacitly confirm the pope had been right to say it wasn't legal, and Henry couldn't have that. Chapuys noted Henry's predicament:

[T]he King would have declared himself earlier, but that some one of his Council gave him to understand that he could not separate from the Concubine without tacitly confirming, not only the first marriage, but also, what he most fears, the authority of the Pope.

Divorce also left his future marriage to Jane questionable. There were people who never accepted his marriage to Anne while Katharine still lived. Princess Elizabeth was considered a bastard by conservative Catholics, born of a bigamous relationship. Henry didn't want anyone to question the legitimacy of the heir he was certain he would father with Jane.

There was only one conclusion ...

Anne must die.

Thomas Cromwell later admitted he was the main architect of the plot against Anne. He had to have started working on it in April, 1536 - possibly earlier, but likely around then, because they needed to move fast in order to catch Anne and her supporters unaware.

Cromwell was a religious reformist himself, but he was the king's man first. His primary duty was to get Henry whatever he wanted - to find a "legal" way to obtain his desired end, that is. And Cromwell was extraordinarily good at his job.

Anne and Cromwell had worked together in the past, but lately, tensions between them had increased. On the 1st of April, Cromwell told the Imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, that Anne would like to see Cromwell beheaded. Whether he was speaking with hyperbole to try to curry favor with Chapuys, or whether relations between Cromwell and Anne had really gotten so strained, is unknown.

One of the main sticking points between them was that Anne wanted the funds from the dissolved monasteries to go toward founding schools. Cromwell and the king wanted it to go to the royal treasury. Guess who won that particular dispute? Anne also favored an alliance with the French, and German religious reformers; Cromwell was courting the Emperor and a renewed friendship with the Spanish.

Some scholars have put the entire conspiracy on Cromwell's shoulders, making Henry an innocent dupe of the false accusations against the queen, but I doubt that highly. Henry's own behavior illustrates plainly that he was in on the plot. (Contrast his behavior during Anne's fall with how he reacted to the fall of Katheryn Howard for ample proof.) Henry said he wanted rid of his queen, and Cromwell supplied a way to make it happen.

Anne likely knew something was stirring. In January, Chapuys had written that the king had said he felt his marriage was invalid because he had been tricked into it by the promises of soothsayers ("sortileges") that Anne Boleyn would bear him a son. In late April, Chapuys reported that the Bishop of London had been asked whether the king's marriage to Anne might be found invalid. (The Bishop wisely responded he would only give his answer to the king himself, and only if he knew in advance what answer was wanted.) Henry was testing the waters.

Jane Seymour's supporters also knew the queen's days were numbered. Henry had already been speaking to her of their future marriage, even before Anne's arrest. Chapuys writes at the end of April that Nicholas Carew was daily conspiring with Jane toward the queen's ruin.

The Grand Esquire, Master Caro (Carew), was on St. George's Day invested with the Order of the Garter, in the room of Mr. De Bourgain, who died some time ago. This has been a source of great disappointment and sorrow for lord Rochefort [George Boleyn], who wanted it for himself, and still more for the concubine, who has not had sufficient credit to get her own brother knighted. In fact, it will not be Carew's fault if the aforesaid concubine, though a cousin of his, is not overthrown (desarçonee) one of these days, for I hear that he is daily conspiring against her, and trying to persuade Miss Seymour and her friends to accomplish her ruin. Indeed, only four days ago the said Carew and certain gentlemen of the Kings chamber sent word to the Princess to take courage, for very shortly her rival would be dismissed, the King being so tired of the said concubine that he could not bear her any longer.

Cromwell seems to have operated under the concept of "Go big, or go home." The plot against Anne had to destroy her reputation utterly, and leave the king's honor spotless. As a result, Anne could not be charged with mere adultery, because then people might laugh at the king for having a wife who prefered another man's caresses to his own. No, she had to be a depraved monster of lust, whose carnal appetites were so all-consuming that she would seduce her own brother to satisfy them. That's why so many men were accused with her, along with Mark Smeaton, whose inclusion was meant to show how truly depraved she was. She would even sleep with commoners!

Cromwell also seems to have used the case against the queen to solve some pesky problems he had on his desk. William Brereton, for example, was involved in a dispute over some land with one of the lords of the privy council. He was killing  all of his inconvenient birds with one stone.

Henry was kept aware of the progress of the plot. Chapuys reports that all-day council meetings ran late into the evening. Anne was also getting very nervous. On the 26th of April, she met with her chaplain, Matthew Parker, and made a special request of him. She asked him to watch over her daughter, Princess Elizabeth, if anything were to happen to her.

But Anne couldn't have known what was in store for her. Likely, she suspected Henry was trying to get his ducks in a row for an annulment suit, or put her under a state of perpetual house arrest, as had been done with Eleanor of Aquitaine. She would never have suspected what Henry actually had in mind. No queen of England had ever been executed.

On May 2nd, Anne Boleyn was arrested and charged with adultery and treason. Share on Tumblr

Elizabeth Browne Somerset, Countess of Worcester

While Jane Parker traditionally takes most of the blame for the incest allegations against Anne Boleyn and her brother, George, the Countess of Worcester may be the one who betrayed Anne and sealed her doom.

Elizabeth Browne was born around 1502, the eldest daughter of Sir Anthony Browne and his wife, Lucy Neville. Sir Anthony served as the lieutenant of Calais. Lucy was an avowed Yorkist and did not support the reign of Henry VII. She supposedly once intimated that if the king should happen to die, she would seize control of the fortress of Calais and hold it for her cousin, Edmund de la Pole. The king fired a heavy shot across the family's bow in 1507, imposing a huge fine on a trumped-up pretext. Lucy got the hint and kept her head down after that.

Elizabeth had a brother also named Sir Anthony Browne, who served as a close advisor to Henry VIII. He was so trusted by the king that he held a "dry stamp" of the king's signature, carved in wood, used for impressing the king's signature on minor documents, which would then be inked over.

Elizabeth Browne married well. In about 1527, she wed Henry Somerset, Earl of Worcester. Somerset had been married first to Margaret Courtenay, granddaughter of Elizabeth Woodville, and a cousin of the king. They had no children before Margaret died, supposedly from choking on a fish bone.

Elizabeth's marriage to Somerset was very fruitful. They had up to ten children together, though the number is somewhat in question because not all of the children lived to adulthood.

The couple seems to have had financial difficulties of some sort. Somerset never rose to a position of much prominence, and is barely mentioned in most histories of the era.

At one point, a "Mistress Browne," first name unknown, was said to be a short-term mistress of the king. It's generally assumed to have been Elizabeth, but there's no direct evidence of it. Things of that nature weren't considered important to the chroniclers of the era, and so the beginnings of most of Henry's relationships are shrouded in mystery. We don't know for certain that it was Elizabeth Henry was pursuing, or that the relationship ever progressed to the point of consummation. None the less, it may have given Elizabeth an unsavory reputation, or a vulnerability to accusations of that sort, as we will see later.

Elizabeth appears to have been a close friend of Anne Boleyn. Henry VIII's privy purse expenses detail a payment made to a midwife for Elizabeth in February, 1530, likely on Anne's behalf to assist her friend. Three years later, during Anne's coronation feast, Elizabeth knelt beside Anne with a silver ewer, tasked with holding up a cloth in front of the queen whenever she needed to spit out a bone. To modern eyes, it seems somewhat of a demeaning task, but in the Tudor era, it was a position of high honor.

After Anne became queen, Elizabeth was appointed as one of her ladies in waiting. It must have been somewhat of a relief to Elizabeth and Somerset for her to have a steady source of income, but living at court was expensive. The financial troubles of Elizabeth and her husband seem to have continued, because in April 1536, she borrowed from Anne the substantial sum of £100 (about $40,600 in today's money). Elizabeth did not tell her husband she had borrowed the money and later begged Cromwell not to mention it to him.

Less than a month later, Anne Boleyn was arrested on trumped-up charges of adultery and treason, and Elizabeth was named as one of the principal witnesses against her. How did Elizabeth come to betray a friend who had been so good to her?

Lancelot de Carles is the source which gives further details.

A lord of the Privy Council seeing clear evidence that his sister loved certain persons with a dishonorable love, admonished her fraternally. She acknowledged her offence, but said it was little in her case in comparison with that of the Queen, as he might ascertain from Mark [Smeaton], declaring that she was guilty of incest with her own brother.

Sir Anthony Browne

The "lord of the Privy Council" is identified as Elizabeth's brother, Sir Anthony Browne, by John Husee, writing to Lady Lisle.

As to the confession of the Queen and others, they said little or nothing; but what was said was wondrous discreetly spoken. "The first accuser, the lady Worcester, and Nan Cobham with one maid mo; but the lady Worcester was the first ground."

Sir Anthony Browne was a religious conservative and a proponent of Princess Mary. In fact, he later got in a dicey situation himself for trying to promote Princess Mary's claim to the throne over that of Princess Elizabeth. He probably wasn't troubled about helping to bring down the reign of Anne Boleyn.

Elizabeth herself does not seem to have testified directly. Indeed, we don't even have mention that she was ever personally questioned by the council or judges. We have only the mention that her brother said she'd made these accusations against the queen.

Lancelot de Carles has her offering the information freely, but his poem is a paraphrase of her brother's testimony. Sir Anthony Browne, knowing his sister was a close confidant of the queen, may have interrogated her personally as soon the "investigation" of the queen began. He was in the thick of the plot, and his sister could be a valuable tool to getting what the king wanted.

We can only speculate as to what happened, but Elizabeth must have been badly frightened if her brother approached her with the accusations of immoral behavior. She would have feared for her position at court. Anne was very strict about moral behavior in her ladies; she had even sent her own sister away from court for misconduct. Elizabeth must have been terrified the same thing would happen to her. Since Elizabeth was heavily pregnant at the time the allegation was made, she may have feared her husband would claim the child was not his.

With the secret loan from Anne and the accusations of immorality hanging over her head, Elizabeth could have thought her marriage, her child, and her future at court were all at stake.

Then, she would have realized the true scope of what was happening. If she did not "confess" to witnessing Anne's misconduct, Elizabeth might have feared she would be accused of assisting her. She could do only what the rest of the court was doing: obey the will of the king and hope that the shadow of the axe passed away her own family. Jane Parker may have faced the same sort of choice.

The Somersets did not escape unscathed. Elizabeth's husband's sister was married to William Brereton, one of the men accused of adultery with Anne Boleyn. Brereton  just so happened to be withholding control of some lands that Sir Anthony Browne wanted. In short, he had a financial incentive to see to it that his sister cooperated.

Anne didn't know that Elizabeth had betrayed her when she was imprisoned in the Tower. She is recorded to have worried about Elizabeth's pregnancy.

[Anne] myche lamented my lady of Worceter, for by c[ause that her child di]d not store in hyre body. And my wyf sayd, what shuld [be the cause? And she sai]d, for the sorow she toke for me.

The "sorrow" Anne spoke of was likely her own miscarriage in January and the subsequent loss of the king's favor.

Anne was executed, along with her brother and the other men accused of being her lovers. Elizabeth and her husband left court, probably when Anne Boleyn's household was dissolved. She resided afterward in Tintern, Monmouthshire, Wales.

Sometime before September, Elizabeth gave birth to a daughter she named Anne. Was it in remembrance of the doomed queen whom had once been her friend, or after her long-dead sister, Anne Browne, who had been the second wife of Charles Brandon, an enemy of Anne Boleyn?

Two years later, Elizabeth wrote a letter to Cromwell, thanking him for being so kind in the matter of the money she had borrowed from Queen Anne. She asked him not to tell her husband about the loan because he didn't know about it - or how she had spent it - and she didn't know how he would take it if he found out. There is no mention of whether she actually repaid the debt or not before her own death in 1565. If not, it would have been one of the debts paid for by her estate after her will was probated.

Elizabeth is buried beside her husband in Cheapstow. Her tomb can be seen here.


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Did Anne Boleyn Have a "Fair Trial"?

On May 15, 1536, Anne Boleyn and her brother, George, were convicted of adultery and incest and sentenced to death.

To modern eyes, what happened to those swept up in Anne Boleyn's fall is appalling, a gross miscarriage of justice. Even five hundred years later, we have documentary evidence to prove the charges in the indictment false. But according to the standards of the day, the criminal trial was fair and followed the standard legal procedures. King Henry wanted everything to be strictly "by the book." He knew the eyes of the world were watching this stunning course of events, an anointed queen on trial for treason.

In the Tower after her arrest, Anne Boleyn asked her jailor, William Kingston if she was "to die without justice." Kingston replied that even the poorest of the king's subjects had justice. Anne is recorded to have laughed at that, and some interpret that to be her ironic acknowledgement that the "justice" she was to receive was merely a formality before the inevitable execution.

If the letter "From the Lady in the Tower" is to be believed, Anne hoped an "open trial" would allow her to prove her innocence before the world. But it doesn't seem Anne ever had any doubt she and the others would be found guilty.

In the Tudor era, there was no presumption of innocence. 

The accused had the burden of proving their innocence, but the design of the judicial system made that almost impossible.

The preliminary court investigated the allegations, heard testimony and questioned witnesses. They presented their findings in the indictment. The indictment was taken as more-or-less established fact by the trial court, not something to be challenged by the defendants on an evidentiary basis. The question before the trial court was how the accused would respond to these facts.

For the most part, people believed the accused had to be guilty, or they wouldn't have been charged with the crime in the first place.

Many believed if a person was truly innocent, God would intercede with a miracle to prove it. Anne herself may have believed this, as evinced by her statements to William Kingston that it wouldn't rain until she was delivered from the Tower, or if she died, there would be a great punishment visited on England within seven years.

As John Strype explains it:

... thinking probably that God (who takes care of innocency) would vindicate her, by giving, or withholding the clouds of Heaven. [...] This she spake no doubt in the confidence of her innocency; and God's righteous and visible judgments for the most part, for shedding innocent blood. And indeed within the seventh year following, happened a dreadful pestilence in London, and many commotions and insurrections to the end of this reign.

The jurors were selected by the prosecution. 

Out of the fifty-plus peers in England, twenty-six were summoned. Many were hostile to the Boleyn and Howard families for one reason or the other, or owed their positions to the king's favor. In short, they were selected because they could be relied upon to deliver the verdict the king wanted. This was standard procedure.

Had the jury returned a verdict the monarch deemed "contrary to the evidence," the jurors could be fined or imprisoned. It wasn't a frequent occurrence, but it did happen. There's no doubt that was on the jurors' minds when they sat in judgement on the queen the king obviously wanted to be rid of.

It was also lawful to try a defendant again for the same crime if they were acquitted. William Brereton once convinced the king (supposedly with Anne's help) to re-instate murder charges against a man who had killed one of retainers. The man was convicted and hanged the second time around.

The accused had no advocates or legal representation to assist in their defense. 

The chief justice of the trial was ostensibly supposed to ensure that the proceedings against the accused were entirely lawful and did not impugn the few rights a defendant had. William Hawkins explained the reasoning behind this in 1721 when he wrote that if the accused was innocent, they would be as effective as any lawyer, but if he was guilty, his demeanor and speech would reveal it.

Consider that most common defendants might be kept in a squalid prison for months, where they had to pay for their own food, bedding, and water for washing - then brought before the court filthy and starving, and expected to answer eloquently to charges they had just heard for the first time. The nobility had the advantage of comfortable conditions, but they didn't necessarily know the law well enough to ague effectively in their own defense.

The accused did not know the charges until the trial began.

Until the 1600s, there was no precedent for allowing the accused to know the charges for which they were to stand trial until the day they stepped into the courtroom. In other words, they were forced by the nature of the system to come up with a defense on the spot.

Most defendants were imprisoned before the trial, and held incommunicado. The could not gather evidence on their own behalf beforehand, nor call for witnesses to come and help them defend themselves.

Had Anne Boleyn known the charges beforehand, and if she had access to her own records, she could easily have proven she was not in the locations where the alleged offenses took place and could not possibly have committed the crimes.

No witnesses were called. 

All of the witnesses had already given their testimony and been questioned by the preliminary court which had drawn up the indictments. There was no chance for the defendant to cross-examine them.

The sworn depositions of the witnesses were considered - essentially - an established fact beyond question.

In 1571, during the trial of the Duke of Norfolk, the Duke tried to question the testimony of one of the witnesses. One of the judges retorted, "He is sworn, there needeth no more proving." 

The notion that sworn testimony was somewhat sacrosanct lasted for a long time within the English legal system. The law held that no one would dare to swear falsely for fear of the punishment God would unleash upon them.

To avoid the somewhat sticky situation in which defendants denied sworn testimony, the defendants were not sworn. But without the oath, their words had less weight than those of the sworn witnesses for the prosecution.

In 1554, defendant Nicholas Throckmorton attempted to bring in witnesses to testify on his behalf, but the witnesses were not "suffered to speak." When Throckmorton tried to protest, the chief justice on the case told him he had no grounds for complaint, for he had been permitted to speak in his own defense as long as he liked.

Hearsay was accepted as evidence.

We don't know what Lady Bridget Wingfield supposedly said on her deathbed, because the trial records do not survive. Years after her death, Bridget's husband - known to be hostile to Anne Boleyn - appeared at the trial to recount the statement as evidence for the prosecution.

Lancelot de Carles claims some of the major testimony against Anne Boleyn came from Sir Anthony Browne (as identified by John Hussee), who reported Browne had chided his sister - the Countess of Worcester - for appearing promiscuous, and in response, the Countess claimed the queen's behavior was worse.

Browne reported the Countess had told him Anne allowed men into her room at inappropriate times, and accused Anne of incest with George. There is no mention of the Countess being questioned or testifying directly about these matters - nor of the fact that the Countess secretly owed Anne a substantial amount of money, unbeknownst to her husband.

The last piece of hearsay evidence comes from the trial of George Boleyn. He was handed a piece of paper with the last charge of the indictment written upon it and cautioned to read it silently. George defiantly read it aloud. It was a claim that his sister had told Jane Parker the king was impotent. It does not appear that Anne herself was asked to corroborate whether she had said this to Jane.

There was also no right to remain silent, or to protect a defendant against self-incrimination. 

The panicked babble of Anne after her arrest was used as evidence against her in the court. Indeed, Anne's arrest seemed to be engineered in order to take advantage of this trait she had of talking without guarding her words when she was frightened. Orders were given that every word she spoke was to be recorded, and her ladies were never to speak to the queen without Lady Kingston being present.

Testimony derived from torture was legal.

It's believed Mark Smeaton was tortured - or threatened with torture - in order to force a confession that he was Anne Boleyn's lover. George Constantine, the servant of Henry Norris, wrote about:

the saying was that he [Mark] was first grievously racked, which I never could know of a truth.

Torture was believed to be a tool for compelling "obstinate" persons to reveal the truth. It wasn't used as a punishment, or sadistic intent, but rather as a way of forcing the accused person to acknowledge what the prosecution believed to be factually established guilt. "Whereby he may be the better brought to confess the truth," one warrant reads. Another, written by Queen Elizabeth within a few months of her ascension, authorizes a man

to be brought to the rack, and to feel the smart thereof as the examiners by their discretion shall think good, for the better of boulting out the truth of the matter.

In the official records, warrants authorizing torture in criminal trials were issued eighty-one times between 1540 and 1640. There are undoubtedly more that aren't accounted for because of missing documents, gaps in the record and so forth. Certainly, a warrant for the torture of Mark Smeaton does not exist, but it could be part of the records of Anne Boleyn's trial which were apparently destroyed.

The nobility was exempt from the threat of torture. Only Mark Smeaton was eligible. It's probably not coincidental that Mark was the only one who confessed.

The threat of an incredibly painful death was probably also a factor. As a commoner, Smeaton would have experienced the full horrors of being drawn and quartered. In exchange for his confession, his sentence would be commuted to simple beheading, alongside the gentlemen. He may have needed no further incentive.


In short, there was little chance Anne Boleyn or any of her accused lovers had a chance of being found not guilty. 

In court, Anne and George gave the eloquent, "intelligent and plausible" defense of the innocent that was supposedly as good as a lawyer's assistance, but it availed them nothing. They were both found guilty, as Anne knew they would be. (In her post-conviction speech, she regretted her innocent brother would die with her, though he had not been put on trial yet.)

They were all encouraged to confess and throw themselves on the mercy of the king, but except for Smeaton, they all insisted upon their innocence. Norris, it's said, even offered to defend Anne's honor in a "trial by combat," an old legal tradition in which it was believed God would protect an innocent man and allow him to triumph in single combat.

Historian John Strype claimed to have seen a letter from Anne to Henry in which she angrily rejected a plea bargain which would require her to confess, and would insist upon her innocence, even if it meant death. Norris also is quoted as saying he would rather die a thousand deaths than condemn an innocent woman through falsehood.

Anne Boleyn did the one thing she could to restore her reputation, something even more powerful than the oath sworn by her accusers: she swore on the sacrament that she was innocent, both before consuming it, and afterward. The Tudors believed lying on the host merited instant damnation, an unforgivable sin. Anne would never have falsely sworn her innocence right before meeting her Maker. She called Kingston to witness it to make sure it would be recorded - just as her panicked words after her arrest had been - but this time, she would use that system to grasp the only vindication she could.

It was the only vindication she would get. She had hoped the trial would allow her to prove her innocence to the world, regardless of the actual verdict. However, none of the transcripts of the trial, examinations, or depositions survive. It's rather curious, for the records of the investigation of Katheryn Howard survive intact. But of Anne's trial, we have only the salacious indictment, and the verdict, slightly augmented by eyewitness testimony.

It's speculated the records were purposefully destroyed because the lack of evidence against the queen was troublesome, even given the lax standards of the day. It seems whomever destroyed them was relying on posterity continuing the contemporary presumption that a person charged with a crime must be guilty of it. They seem to have hoped Anne Boleyn would simply fade from the records and be forgotten as a shameful blot on history. They could never have anticipated our enduring fascination with her. Perhaps this, then, is the miracle Anne Boleyn hoped for. Share on Tumblr

Was Anne Boleyn Guilty of Adultery and Incest?

On May 15, 1536, Anne Boleyn and her brother, George, were tried on charges of adultery, incest, and treason.

The verdict was a foregone conclusion. The swordsman of Calais had already been summoned to execute the queen, even before her trial. The jury was loaded with the enemies of her family, and the property of the accused was already being divided up between them to ensure they had a financial incentive to render a guilty verdict.

Did Anne know she was already condemned before she stepped into the courtroom? It seems likely. But she walked in before the court, head held high, with a pleasant smile on her face, welcoming this chance to clear her name.

The Bishop of Riez, a witness to the trial, wrote:

She walked forth in fearful beauty, and seemed unmoved. She came not as one who had to defend her cause, but with the bearing of one coming to great honour.

The indictment was read, sparing no salacious detail. Henry Norris ... Mark Smeaton ... Francis Weston ... William Brereton ... A parade of names and dates, with Anne as the aggressor, seducing the men with gifts, luring them into sin.

And then the most shocking allegation of all, that Anne had seduced her own brother, George Boleyn.

... at Westminster, procured and incited her own natural brother, George Boleyn, lord Rochford, gentleman of the privy chamber, to violate her, alluring him with her tongue in the said George's mouth, and the said George's tongue in hers, and also with kisses, presents, and jewels; whereby he, despising the commands of God, and all human laws, violated and carnally knew the said Queen, his own sister, at Westminster; which he also did on divers other days before and after at the same place, sometimes by his own procurement and sometimes by the Queen's.

Anne could be no mere adulteress who simply preferred another man to the king, for then people might laugh at him. She had to be a depraved monster, so twisted by lust that she would seduce her own brother. She had to be an English Messalina (another powerful woman against whom unlikely sexual charges were levied.) Henry himself made the wildly exaggerated and impossible claim Anne had slept with a hundred men.

Modern historians are divided as to whether the person who made the terrible accusation of incest was George's wife, Jane Parker, or the Countess of Worcester (who owed Anne money, unbeknownst to her husband.) George was incredulous at the charges.

On the basis of only one woman you are willing to believe this great evil of me, and on the basis of her allegations you are deciding my judgment?

Mark Smeaton was the only one of the accused men who confessed. He was also, coincidentally, the only one of them who was a commoner, permitted by law to be tortured to extract a confession. A servant of Henry Norris wrote he heard Mark “... was first grievously racked, which I never could know of a truth.” Norris himself was offered clemency if he confessed, but he refused. He told his chaplain in the Tower, “I would rather die a thousand deaths than be guilty of such a falsehood.”

The indictment continued with the allegation that Anne and her lovers plotted to kill the king and she promised to marry one of them after he was dead. It mentioned that she and her "concubines" had also mocked the king's clothing and songwriting, and the whole thing had been so distressing for his majesty that "certain perils" had befallen his royal body. Fortunately for him, they weren't severe enough to curtail his nightly partying with Jane Seymour.

What are we to make of these charges? Was Anne really an adulteress?

The indictment was a clumsy frame-up. Had anyone been interested in the facts, Anne could easily have been proven innocent. As historian Eric Ives put it:

Investigation, furthermore, shows that even after nearly 500 years, three-quarters of these specific allegations can be disproved. In twelve cases Anne was elsewhere or else the man was.

Why were those tasked with putting together the charges against the queen so slipshod with establishing the allegations? Why didn't they look at their own records and make sure Anne was actually staying in the palaces mentioned on those dates? Why did no one consider that on one of the dates, Anne was still in seclusion, recovering from childbirth? Historians, who have only a tiny surviving portion of the records of the day, are able to reconstruct her whereabouts. Why didn't they?

The answer can only be that they thought it wouldn't matter. The verdict was already decided before they even wrote up the charges. No one would be interested in proving the facts, one way or the other.

Had Anne been permitted to know the charges against her in advance, or allowed to gather evidence for a defense, she could have easily shown she could not have committed the crimes of which she was accused. But criminal defendants in the Tudor era were not given such opportunities.

On only eight occasions do the whereabouts of Anne and the accused coincide. But even then, would adultery have been possible?

At court, Tudor queens were surrounded by servants at all times. Even during her most intimate moments, Anne would have had a servant with her, or at least standing outside the door. Servants even slept in the queen's room, the favored ones sometimes sharing her bed. Getting away from all of those watching eyes to have sex, without creating a storm of gossip, would have been nearly impossible.*

One of fanciful chronicles relating the charges against queen tacitly acknowledged this lack of privacy by claiming the queen's servant ushered all of her other ladies out of the room, and when the queen was ready for her lover, she would request a dish of marmalade jelly, demonstrating that if the queen had so much as said aloud to bring a man into her room, her servants would have heard it. Significantly, none of her ladies were charged with assisting her, as Jane Parker was charged with helping Katheryn Howard.

Anne's enemies watched her closely for any hint of impropriety on which to attack her, which was one of the reasons why Anne insisted her court be so circumspect. Her court was a place of dancing, music, poetry, and flirtation, but she was strict about moral behavior. It was why she had to send her sister, Mary Boleyn, away from court when Mary wed a minor courtier without permission.

Anne was an intensely religious woman, an evangelical with reformist zeal. That's often forgotten in depictions of Anne. She had a deep interest in theology; most of her books were centered on this topic. She believed that God had brought her to the throne to reform His church. She worked very hard to install reformist clerics in important positions within the church, and tried to divert the money from the dissolution of the monasteries to schools, so poor children could learn to read the Bible she was working on getting translated into English. By ignoring her faith, some writers have stripped away what Anne considered her most important work as queen.

Anne's faith provides us with a major piece of evidence regarding her innocence. While in the Tower, Anne called her servants and the constable of the Tower, William Kingston, to witness as she swore twice on the communion host that she had never committed adultery. A person of that era, expecting to see their Maker within a few hours, would never falsely swear on the host and condemn their soul to hell in the process.

As a practical gesture, Anne's oath was pointless. She was still condemned to die. But she knew that if word of it spread, it would help restore her reputation, just as she believed her words at the trial would help to clear her name.

Anne was wrong about the trial. All of the records were destroyed, and no word-for-word witness accounts have ever surfaced. The "intelligent and plausible" defense she gave is lost to us. All that remains in the records is the indictment, and Kingston's written accounts of her behavior in the Tower. Those, too, were almost lost in a 1731 library fire. According to a historian who saw the papers before the fire, the records contained a letter from Anne, angrily rejecting a plea deal which would require her to "confess." She said she would stand on her innocence unto death.

Who destroyed the trial records, and why? Was it simply the indifferent hand of Time causing their loss, or did someone deliberately cull them from the records?  That only the indictment survives is suspiciously thorough for it to be simple accident or decay. But if they were destroyed, why would that be necessary? If it was truly an "open and honest" trial, why the need for secrecy?


It may be for the same reason that it may be that none of Anne's contemporary portraits survive. Henry wanted all record of Anne Boleyn erased, leaving behind nothing that would show her in a positive light. He hoped history would view her as a traitorous whore, best forgotten.

But even with the scant records that have come down to us, Anne's innocence is obvious, just as it was obvious to the Lord Mayor of London after attending the trial, when he said,

I could not observe anything in the proceedings against her, but that they were resolved to make an occasion to get rid of her at any price.

The last clue is Henry's own behavior. He spent the time between Anne's fall and execution partying with his court, and making nightly trips to visit Jane Seymour. Ambassador Eustace Chapuys, who was no fan of Anne Boleyn, wrote about it in his dispatches to the Emperor:

It should be observed that in the meantime, and in order to conceal from the public his love for Jane Seymour, the King has made her reside seven miles from this city, at the house of the Grand Squire [Sir Nicholas Carew], a rumour having been previously spread among the public that the King has not the least wish of marrying again unless he be actually urged to it by his subjects.

A few days after putting out word that the king didn't want to marry again unless his people asked him to, Henry's council obligingly "pleaded" with the king to remarry for the "good of the realm." Henry replied that coincidentally enough, he just happened to know a young woman who might be suitable...

Chapuys continued:

Although the generality of people here are glad of the execution of the said concubine, still a few find fault and grumble at the manner in which the proceedings against her have been conducted, and the condemnation of her and the rest, which is generally thought strange enough. People speak variously about the King, and certainly the slander will not cease when they hear of what passed and is passing between him and his new mistress, Jane Seymour. 

Already it sounds badly in the ears of the public that the King, after such ignominy and discredit as the concubine has brought on his head, should manifest more joy and pleasure now, since her arrest and trial, than he has ever done on other occasions, for he has daily gone out to dine here and there with ladies, and sometimes has remained with them till after midnight.

I hear that on one occasion, returning by the river to Greenwich, the royal barge was actually filled with minstrels and musicians of his chamber, playing on all sorts of instruments or singing; which state of things was by many a one compared to the joy and pleasure a man feels in getting rid of a thin, old, and vicious hack in the hope of getting soon a fine horse to ride—a very peculiarly agreeable task for this king.

 The other night, whilst supping with several ladies at the house of the bishop of Carlion [Carlisle], he [the King] manifested incredible joy at the arrest of Anne, as the Bishop himself came and told me the day after. Indeed, he related to me that, among other topics of conversation, the King touched on that of the concubine; telling him: "For a long time back had I predicted what would be the end of this affair, so much so that I have written a tragedy, which I have here by me." Saying which, he took out of his breast pocket a small book all written in his own hand and handed it over to the Bishop, who, however, did not examine its contents. 

Perhaps these were certain ballads, which the King himself is known to have composed once, and of which the concubine and her brother had made fun, as of productions entirely worthless, which circumstance was one of the principal charges brought against them at the trial.

Chapuys noted that the king was the most cheerful cuckold he had ever heard of. He showed no sorrow over the end of his marriage to this woman he had once loved enough to destroy a thousand years of religious tradition and set Europe in a roar. 

It's a chilling contrast with his behavior when Katheryn Howard was accused, accusations that the king had not engineered. Cranmer was so concerned about the king's reaction that he told him by passing him a note at mass. Henry initially doubted the allegations could be true and demanded an investigation. When it was found Katheryn had lovers before her marriage, Henry screamed and wept, and delayed for months, deciding what to do with her.

The conclusion is undeniable: Anne Boleyn was an innocent woman who died to make room for her replacement, Jane Seymour. Henry was complicit in her fall. Cromwell would have never dared to move against her without Henry's agreement.

Historian Joanna Denny said:

Henry’s hand in the whole sordid business is clearly seen: the real blood-guilt lies with the King. The source of all the horror and brutality was Henry. The whole world revolved around him and his ego.”

~.~

* Please see my article on Katheryn Howard, explaining the circumstances surrounding the allegations against her, and why I believe she, too, could not have committed actual adultery.

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