Anne Boleyn's Ghost (9 page)

Meanwhile, the accused men Smeaton had named had all been arrested, and were being questioned at the Tower of London. Sir Henry Norris was mortified by the charges put him. Utterly amazed and outraged by what he was being accused of, he demanded to dual with the King in defense of Anne’s honour, and his own.

Sir Francis Weston was knighted the day before Anne was crowned Queen, and now a dire fate awaited him as he tried to contest his innocence amongst the King’s corrupt court.

William Brereton and Lord Rochford (Anne’s brother!) were the two others Smeaton had named. All of them vehemently denied the charges.

Losing Her Freedom

May 2nd 1536, Anne Boleyn was taken, under arrest, to meet with the King’s Privy Council at Westminster Palace, to begin proceedings. Thomas Cromwell, the Duke of Norfolk, and two others waited for her arrival.

Once she was seated and in full gaze of the Privy Council, Anne stared fixedly at them, interested to know their reasons for summoning her. There was a long silence. Finally, the Duke said one-tonally, that Mark Smeaton, a Court Musician, and Henry Norris, Groom of the Stool, had confessed at the Tower of London to having committed adultery with Anne Boleyn. In reality, only Smeaton had confessed, and by claiming Henry Norris had done so as well, the Council was hoping to put Anne on weak footing, and to dig in the injustice that was unfolding before her very eyes.

Aghast at what she was hearing, Anne fervently denied the charges read her, which filled her soul with disgust at the mere mention of them.

The Duke paused, having witnessed her calm, dignified reaction, looked at her cynically and said,
‘Tut, tut, tut,’
shaking his head in a slow, sickly heavy manner.

Thomas Howard, 3
^rd
Duke of Norfolk

With the tide turning against the Boleyns’, everyone in it was out for their own necks
.

Back at Greenwich Palace, at around five o’clock that evening, Anne was waiting to be sent to the Tower, and was being treated more like a criminal than the
Queen of England
.

Sailing along the River Thames, all was quiet except for the oars as they creaked and groaned in their locks and the rustling of water beneath them. Storm clouds loomed above
.

Arriving at the same spot where she had entered the Tower on her coronation day, three years prior, Anne Boleyn was once again kindly received by the Tower’s constable, William Kingston. He appeared sombre today, and when Anne’s boat finally docked he offered her his hand as she placed her feet on to the Tower’s cold stone.

Overcome with grief, Anne fell to her knees, horror-struck. ‘Shall I go into a dungeon?’ she asked Kingston, wiping her tears and coming to her feet
.  

‘No, no, Madam,’ he said, ‘to the chamber that you lay in before your coronation.’

Anne’s attendants were forbidden to speak in her presence, and had been ordered to report anything she said directly to Cromwell. At the same time, the Treasurer of the King’s house, Master Fittes-Williams, was ordered to break-up and depose her servants of their duties.

Behind the Tower’s high encompassing walls, Anne looked up at the dark enclosing sky: something told her she would not be leaving them alive …

*    
*  
  
*   

The eerie silence, only ever broken by woeful cries; the gravity of what she was being accused of, with execution being the likeliest, if not the only,
form of punishment; and suddenly finding herself
–
the Queen of England
–
condemned to the Tower of London: the gloom of it seeped deeper with every passing second into her soul.

When the Archbishop of Canterbury heard what was happening, he quickly dispatched a letter to the King.

This is a revised version of the letter he wrote to Henry on May 3rd 1536:

Please, your most noble Grace should be spoken with. As you have not asked to see me, I dare not, contrary to the contents of the said letters, presume to come unto your Grace’s presence; nevertheless, it is my most bounden duty, I can do no less than most humbly admire you for your great wisdom, and by the assistance of God’s help, somewhat to suppress the deep sorrow of your Grace’s heart, and to take all adversities of God’s hand both patiently and thankfully. I cannot deny that you hath great causes, many of which are of lamentable heaviness: and also that, in the wrongful estimation of the world, your honour of every part is highly touched (whether the things that commonly be spoken of are true or not), that I can’t remember Almighty God having sent unto your Grace a similar occasion to test your constancy throughout, whether you can be content to take of God’s hand, as well as things displeasant as pleasant. And if he find in your most noble heart an obedience to His Will, that you should, without expressing discontent or too much heaviness, accept all adversities, and thank Him when all things succeed of your will and liking, and no less procure his glory and honour; then I suppose you never did a thing more acceptable for Him, since you first governed this your realm.

And if it be true, what is reported of Her Grace, and the people have rightly estimated these things, they shouldn’t regard any part of your honour to be affected, but her honour to be clearly of little worth. And I am so perplexed, that my mind is clean amazed, for I never had better opinion in women than I had in her; which makes me think that she should not deserve blame. And again, I think Her Grace would not have gone so far, except she had surely been culpable ... Now, I think that you know,
next to your Grace
,
I was bound unto her of all creatures living. Therefore, I most humbly ask you, to suffer me in that, which is both God’s law, nature, also her kindness binds me to; that is, that I may, with your favour, wish and pray for her, that she may declare herself inculpable and innocent. And if she is found culpable, considering your goodness towards her, and from what condition your only mere goodness took her, and set the crown upon her head; I repute Him not your faithful servant and subject, nor true to the realm, that would not desire the offence to be punished without mercy, to the example of all other. And as I did not love her,
for the love which I judged to bear towards God and his gospel; so, if she proved culpable, there is not one that loves God and his gospel that will favour her, but must hate her above all other; and the more they favour the gospel, the more they will hate her: for then there was never a creature in our time that so much slandered the gospel. And God has sent her his punishment, for feigning to have professed his gospel in her mouth, and not in heart and deed. And although she would have offended, that she have deserved never to be reconciled in your favour; yet Almighty God has of many kinds declared his goodness towards you, and never offended you. But you, I am sure, will acknowledge that you have offended him. Therefore, I trust that you will bear no less but your entire favour for the truth of the gospel than you did before: as your favour of the gospel was not led by your affection of her, but your desire for the truth. And so I beseech Almighty God, whose gospel he has ordained you to be defender of, ever to preserve your Grace from all evil, and give you at the end promise of his gospel.

Though the letter is heavily worded with regard to Anne Boleyn, there was no denying the graveness of what she was being accused of. He was clearly performing a balancing act at the time he wrote this, at the same time being deeply shocked by the news. On the one hand, he felt it highly
unlikely she was guilty, given the sacred role she carried out. On the other, he knew what lengths Henry went to get rid of his first wife, Catherine, when she had failed to give birth to a son, and no doubt this had happened again with Anne
…
so whilst imploring the King to be truthful, as this time he was putting virtuous lives at stake (not something Henry took much concern over, if the people involved were an impediment to his will), and that he would be putting his own soul at great peril if lack of truth sufficed
–
if Cranmer didn’t watch his words and play along with Henry, he would come down on him like a sack of stones if he thought his trust in him was wavering
.

The Accused are Heard

May 12th 1536, the trials had begun at Westminster Palace. Four of the five accused men were being heard by the King’s Privy Council. Anne thought she knew the reason why Smeaton was so willing to tarnish her reputation, and was cursing herself for the day she believed had led,
or had contributed,
to the hopeless position she and five innocent men now found themselves in.

The real
reason why she was being kept prisoner and possibly facing execution, there was no doubt: Henry sought to remove her, by any means necessary, as she had failed, like Catherine before her, to give birth to the child and heir that would have insured the family tradition of passing down the throne from father to son.

It was over a brief conversation that had taken place when Anne had stopped by Smeaton in her home and he was looking out of a window and appeared to be upset. It ran like this
.

‘I spoke with him on the Saturday before May Day,’ she said. ‘I found him standing in the round window in my chamber of presence, and I asked why he was so sad. He said: “It was no matter.” Then I said: “You may not look to have me speak to you as I should to a nobleman, because you are an
inferior person.” And then he said: “No, no, Madam. A look sufficed me; and thus fare you well.”’

Smeaton had longed for Anne Boleyn to notice him, ever since he had had the privilege of a being within her house. It was this plain inappropriateness, if not downright fool-heartedness, of Smeaton openly exhibiting his feelings for her at every chance he could, and Anne having sensed this for some time and feeling it was time to confront him, was what had made her react so snidely towards him that day. But it appears Smeaton didn’t take her remark so well; and less than a month after Anne had insulted him (nevertheless spurred on by Cromwell), he was sitting before her in court, accusing her of having slept with him and four other men
.

Anne went on to slander Smeaton openly for his falsehoods. She scorned him so severely and with unshakable fury, he lost all composure. His whole body shook, and his heels bounced energetically off the floor without rest. He could no longer manage to look at Anne Boleyn, nor the members of the Privy Council, for that fact, but endeavored to engage them when spoken to, only to cower in his seat like a child who knows he has done something very wrong.

The accused were unable to say anything that might prove them guiltless. Now they could only wait to live out their fate, and be no more than puppets in the King’s dark scheme. All of them, apart from Smeaton, were men of high nobility; yet it was Smeaton who was being given all the credibility of someone who had unquestionably high rank. All the accused had pleaded not guilty, as they found themselves not only charged with liaising salaciously with the highest woman in the land, but with plotting to kill the King, as well!

With Anne no longer around, Henry’s new lady in waiting was Jane Seymore. She was staying in a house situated along the River Thames, a little more than a stone’s throw away from Westminster.

After the day’s tedious trials, Henry would get into a small boat and casually row himself up the River Thames to see Jane, who waited patiently for him to arrive at the home of Sir Nicholas Carew. Everything was once again going the King’s way, and he was eager to celebrate
this turn of luck with his new mistress.

His covert trips up and down the river, however, didn’t go unnoticed for long. Before he knew it, the locals had caught on to his nightly, watery strolls, and, each evening, would look on from their homes as the King drifted slowly past, seemingly unaware to their protruding, incredulous eyes
.

In due course, rumour spread, and soon it was the talk of London Town, before eventually the story made it as far away as Devon and Lincolnshire. The nation was wondering: ‘Surely the King
isn’t sneaking off during the trials, to have an affair with a
new
mistress, while the Queen is locked away and possibly facing execution on charges of
adultery?
Or could our leaders actually be so innately licentious…?’