Anne Boleyn: Henry VIII's Obsession (28 page)

Anne would have known of the men’s trial even without any official announcement. Although a prisoner, she was kept in the palace in the Tower rather than the dungeons and she may have watched from her window as the men were led out of the Tower and when they returned. Anne knew that, even though there was no proof against any of them, they would be found guilty, and she also realised what the ramifications were for her own trial. The four men had been convicted of adultery with her and with a guilty verdict against them, there was no way that she could ever be acquitted. None the less, Anne fully intended to defend herself and she was glad to hear that the men, with the exception of Smeaton, had refused to admit to any crime. It seems probable that Smeaton, whose confession may well have been extracted under torture, had been promised his life if he would confess, a fact of which Anne may have been aware.

As members of the nobility, Anne and her brother were afforded the special privilege of being tried within the Tower itself and, on the morning of 15 May, Anne prepared herself for her appearance before her peers. Anne had always known how to make the best of herself and she dressed carefully for her trial. England had never before seen a queen tried and a special scaffold had been built in the hall at the Tower to ensure there were places for all those required to attend. According to an anonymous account of Anne’s trial, the nobility assembled first:

‘The Duke of Norfolke sittinge vnder the cloath of state, the Lord Chauncellour on his right hand, and the Duke of Suffolke on his lefte, the Earle of Surrey, sonne of the Duke of Norfolke, sittinge directly before his Father, a degree lower, as Earle Marshall of England; to whome were adioyned 26 other Peeres, and among them the Queenes Father, by whome shee was to be tryed’.

Tudor England was no place for family sentiment and neither Norfolk nor Thomas Boleyn, for all the differences that they had had with Anne, can have relished their roles at her trial. Anne’s old suitor, Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, was also compelled by his rank to attend Anne’s trial, although the strain affected his already failing health and he was forced to leave George’s trial due to illness.

Once all the peers had assembled, the king’s commission was read and Anne was led into the hall. She was a prisoner but she was still accorded the respect due to her as the king’s wife and Anne would have been pleased to find a special chair waiting for her which had been made expressly for the purpose of her trial. It was a small comfort, and Anne quickly focussed her mind on the charges laid against her. She had no counsel and could call no witnesses and was solely responsible for her own defence.

Surviving details of Anne’s trial are sparse. Following her arrival in the hall, the charges against her were read. Although Anne had heard rumours of what she was charged with, this was the first time that they were set out clearly to her and she may have laughed at the absurdity of the list of her offences. Sir John Spelman, who again sat on the bench at Anne’s trial made a short note, setting out the charges against Anne and her ‘lovers’. According to Spelman:

‘The said queen and lord [George Boleyn], and the other four, were indicted twice (once in the county of Kent, and again in the county of Middlesex) for one same treason, but it was supposed at different times and places. And the points against the queen were that she procured the said lord her brother and the other four to defile her and have carnal knowledge of her, and that they did so; and that they conspired the king’s death, for she said that the king should never have her heart and she said to each of the four by himself that he loved him more than the others, and this slandered the issue which was begotten between her and the king, which is made treason by the statute of the twenty-sixth year of the present king. And all the evidence was of bawdery and lechery, so that there was no such whore in the realm’.

Anne must have been horrified that the Act of Succession, which had been designed to protect both her and her children from slander should be used against her and, as each charge against her was read, she would have realised just how impatient Henry was to be rid of her, less than a decade after he had first fallen so passionately in love with her. The list of specific charges levelled against Anne also survives from her trial. According to the indictment, Anne, ‘despising her marriage, entertaining malice against the king, and following daily her frail and carnal lust, did falsely and traitorously procure by base conversations and kisses, touching, gifts, and other infamous incitations, divers of the king’s daily and familiar servants to be her adulterers and concubines’. Anne was portrayed at her trial as, essentially, a nymphomaniac, desperate for the company of men. The commission even went so far as to offer specific dates for her crimes, for example stating that on 6 October 1534 she procured Henry Norris ‘by sweet words, kisses, touches, and otherwise’ and they committed adultery together six days later, as well as on several other occasions. The following year in November, according to the indictment, Anne ‘procured and incited her own natural brother, George Boleyn, Lord Rocheford, 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’. Anne and George ‘despising the laws of God’ committed incest on numerous occasions according to the charges and Anne was also charged with procuring the other three men on various days during her time as queen. Even more damagingly, Anne was also accused of conspiring for the death of the king with her lovers so that she would be free to marry one of them.

The charges against Anne were outrageous and she must have felt like laughing bitterly as she sat in the hall. Once they had been read, Anne stood to make her defence. No details of Anne’s speech survive but she must have pointed out the absurdity of the charges in a society where the queen was never permitted to be alone. She may also have asserted her continuing love for the king although, by this point, Anne may well have begun to hate him. Whatever Anne did say, she certainly made an impression on everyone assembled. Henry’s Chancellor, Wriothesley, commented that ‘she made so wise and discreet aunsweres in all things layde against her, excusing herself with her words so clearlie, as though she had never bene faultie to the same’. The anonymous author of the account of Anne’s trial was also impressed with her eloquence and stated that she, ‘haueinge an excellent quick witt, and being a ready speaker, did so answeare to all obiections, that, had the Peeres given theire verdict according to the expectacion of the assembly, shee had beene acquitted’. Anne sat down knowing that she had done all she could but also knowing that it was not enough.

Following Anne’s speech, the assembled peers, one by one, gave the verdict of guilty, as Anne would have known they would. She may have made eye contact with her father or Henry Percy as each peer gave the same answer in turn, aware that they were as trapped as she was. Even Anne’s uncle, Norfolk, was touched by the knowledge that he would have to give judgment against his niece and there were tears in his eyes as he delivered the sentence. He had no choice but to continue and, turning to Anne, Norfolk declared that she had been found guilty of high treason. The only possible sentence for high treason was death and, for a woman, that meant burning. Anne must have steeled herself for her uncle’s words, although she knew what was to come. She was probably as shocked as the rest of the assembly when Norfolk declared a dual sentence, that ‘she should be burned or beheaded at the king’s pleasure’. This sentence may have been devised by Henry to show that he did not intend Anne to suffer but, for Anne, it can have meant little and she knew as she was escorted back to her apartments in the Tower that she was condemned to die.

Once Anne had left the great hall, George was led in to face his judges. Like Anne, he knew that the result was inevitable although he may not yet have heard of his sister’s conviction. George Boleyn would also have had an idea of what the charges against him would be and he probably listened calmly to the accusation that he had committed incest with his sister. According to Chapuys, the evidence presented for this charge was that ‘he had been once found a long time with her’. This was the flimsiest of possible evidence and George contemptuously dismissed it when it was put to him. He was also charged, as Anne was, with having laughed at the king and his clothes. Given the fact that both Anne and George prided themselves on their cosmopolitan education and experience, this may well have been true and the stylish Anne may have attempted to teach Henry about dress in the early days of their relationship.

George batted away the more outrageous charges but there may have been truth in some of the other accusations levelled against him. According to Chapuys, George was handed a piece of paper during the course of his trial which he was instructed not to read out to the court. George however, contemptuously read from the paper, declaring to the court that it said that Anne had told his wife that the king was impotent. George must have been furious to find that his wife was one of the informants against him and it does seem likely that both he and Anne would have discussed the king’s problem together. The report was widely believed and Chapuys wrote a few days after George’s trial when discussing Jane Seymour’s prospects that ‘according to the account given by the Concubine, he [Henry] has neither vigour nor virtue’. Following the Act of Succession, such speculation was treason in that it impugned the king’s issue and George also refused to answer the charge that he had called into question whether Elizabeth was, in fact, Henry’s child. It seems likely that, in his conversations with Anne, George may indeed have joked that, if the king was impotent, then Elizabeth could not be his, and these words came back to haunt him.

There may have been some truth in the minor charges against George but the main charge of incest is completely improbable and George defended himself as eloquently as Anne had done before him. According to Chapuys, no great admirer of George, ‘he replied so well that several of those present wagered 10 to 1 that he would be acquitted’. Like Anne, George’s efforts were in vain and he was also convicted by the assembled peers and sentenced to die.

With the convictions of Anne, George, Norris, Brereton, Weston and Smeaton, only Thomas Wyatt and Sir Richard Page remained in the Tower unsure of their fate. It is unclear why no attempt was made to try Wyatt and Page as Anne’s lovers and it may be that even the spurious evidence used against the other men could not be found in their cases. Certainly, rumours surrounded them as much as the other men. On 10 May, Cromwell wrote to Wyatt’s father to assure him that his son’s life was not in danger. While this was a comfort to Wyatt’s family, much uncertainty still shrouded the two men left languishing in the Tower. Rumours flew around court and while, on 12 May, John Husee felt able to write that Wyatt and Page were expected to escape with their lives, on the next day he heard that both were going to be executed and that it was Weston who would survive. Even after the trials, the fate of everyone in the Tower was still shrouded in uncertainty.

Anne knew full well that she had not received justice in her trial and she may have written to Henry from the Tower expressing her anger. Following the fall of Thomas Cromwell in 1540, a letter was found amongst his papers inscribed from ‘the Lady in the Tower’ and purporting to be from Anne to Henry. While the letter is not in Anne’s handwriting, it is possible that it was a copy of a genuine letter and that the original was destroyed by the king. The tone of the letter sounds like Anne and she began by telling the king that she would never acknowledge guilt where she had none, claiming that ‘to speak a truth, never a prince had wife more loyal in all duty, and in all true affection, than you have ever found in Anne Bulen’. She also confirmed that she knew full well that ‘the ground of my preferment being on no surer foundation than your grace’s fancy, the least alteration was fit and sufficient (I knew) to draw that fancy to some other subject’. Anne continued, begging the king to give her a fair trial, which would presumably be more impartial than the mockery of a trial that she had already been through. In her request for an impartial trial she pointed out that:

‘Then you shall see either my innocency cleared, your suspicions and conscience satisfied, the ignomity and slander of the world stopped, or my guilt openly declared, So that, whatever God and you may determine of, your grace may be freed from an open censure; and my offence being so lawfully proved, your grace may be at liberty, both before God and man, not only to execute worthy punishment on me as an unfaithful wife but to follow your affection already settled on that party for whose sake I am now as I am’

Anne blamed her enemies for the position in which she found herself. She also begged that the men with whom she was accused would not die on her behalf. If this letter was truly from Anne, and it may well have been, Henry made no response. He had no further use for the woman he had once loved so dearly and, on 17 May, Thomas Cranmer annulled Anne’s marriage in a church court at Lambeth, based on her precontract with Henry Percy, declaring that she ‘was never lawfull Queen of England’. Anne’s pleas for clemency for her supposed lovers also fell on deaf ears.

Anne fully came to understand that she was to die on 17 May. On the same day that she ceased to be queen of England and Henry’s wife, Anne’s five convicted lovers were also executed. The five men were all taken out to die together as Anne watched from her window at the Tower. It may have been some comfort to her to know that the king, in his mercy, had commuted the sentences of the four gentlemen to simple beheading rather than the more painful death of hanging, drawing and quartering. Only Smeaton, who was no gentleman, would suffer that death and Anne may have felt that there was some justice in this since he was the only man to accuse her.