Traitors of the Tower (2 page)

But in the three years that followed his secret wedding to Anne Boleyn, Henry was not a kind husband. His ‘blind passion’ had not lasted, and he had turned to other women, telling Anne to ‘shut her eyes as her betters had done’. Now he was chasing after her maid, Jane Seymour, and Anne had borne a dead son. Yet it does not seem that the loss of her child was the main cause of her downfall. She was hated by the people, and by many at court, who were doing their best to get rid of her.

Chief among them was Henry’s minister, Thomas Cromwell, who was ‘ready at all things, evil or good’. Clever and ruthless, he was ‘the King’s ear and mind’. Cromwell had once been Anne’s friend, but they had fallen out. She did not agree with him on many things, and feared that his growing power was a threat to her. They were now rivals, and she had even said ‘she would see his head cut off’.

Anne’s downfall has long been seen as the result of a failed marriage. It is often thought that Henry VIII had tired of her and asked Cromwell to make a case for getting rid of her. Yet it seems that it was Cromwell, not Henry, who was the man behind her overthrow.

Cromwell was later to admit that ‘he had thought up and plotted the affair’. He had good reason: Anne had regained the King’s favour, and had made it clear to all that ‘wicked ministers’ should be hanged. This came at a time when Cromwell had angered Henry. Plainly, he feared it would be his neck, or hers.

Cromwell built his case on the King’s fear of treason and the Queen’s teasing nature. Anne had failed to give the King a son. She had proved unfit to be a queen, with her temper and her moods. She was hated by the people, and Catholics did not see her as the King’s true wife. More to the point, she was known to enjoy flirting with the men in her circle. For years there had been lewd gossip about her. It would not be hard for people to believe that a woman who had slept with the King before their marriage could have affairs after it.

Cromwell quizzed many who knew Anne, and found evidence against her. We know very little about it, but he was able to build a strong case. It seems that Cromwell showed Henry VIII things he could not ignore.

On 2 May 1536, Anne was arrested for treason at Greenwich Palace and taken by barge to the Tower of London. Entering the Tower, she was in a frail state. She ‘fell down on her knees’, begging God to help her ‘as she was not guilty’. She knew it was rare for anyone accused of treason to escape death.

Sir William Kingston, the Constable of the Tower, led her away.

‘Mr Kingston, do I go into a dungeon?’ Anne asked.

Kingston told her no, she would be held in the Queen’s Lodgings in the palace.

‘It is too good for me!’ Anne cried. ‘Jesu, have mercy on me!’

In her gilded prison, Anne veered from tears to laughter. She could not believe that the King meant her any real harm. She was well treated, but four ladies had been set to spy on her and report all she said. In her distress, she made some very suspect remarks that would be used against her.

While Anne was in the Tower, the King would not see anyone or appear in public. Yet he was seen sailing along the Thames in his barge at night, with ladies by his side and music playing. He had his new love, Jane Seymour, brought to a house by the river and he visited her there. She was now as richly dressed and treated as if she were queen already.

At dinner with a bishop, Henry told the guests that he had seen all this coming, and believed that more than a hundred men had slept with Anne. One envoy wrote, ‘You never saw a prince or husband make greater show of his horns.’

A week after Anne’s arrest, two lists of charges were drawn up against her, accusing her of adultery with five men. Three were friends of the King, while one, Mark Smeaton, was a lute player. That was shocking enough, but the fifth man was Anne’s own brother, George Boleyn, Lord Rochford. His wife, Jane, Lady Rochford, had given so-called ‘proof’ of incest. It seemed George Boleyn had once been alone with Anne and that he had kissed her. Anne was also said to have plotted the King’s death so that she could marry one of her lovers and rule England with him.

Only Smeaton pleaded guilty. Anne and the rest would maintain their innocence. But on 12 May, all the men except George Boleyn were tried in Westminster Hall and condemned to death.

Three days later, at a show trial in the great hall of the Tower, watched by three thousand people, the Queen was tried by twenty-six lords. Her own father seems to have been among them. Never before had a queen of England been brought to trial. It caused a great stir, and much scandal.

Anne was calm and composed. She showed no fear. She put up a strong defence, causing some to say that the trial was just an excuse to get rid of her, but it did her no good. When the lords were asked for their verdict, all said: ‘Guilty.’

A hush fell as Anne’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, weeping, told her she was to be ‘burnt here within the Tower, or else to have thy head cut off’, as the King should decide. When Anne heard these dread words, she was calm. She said, ‘O Father, Thou who art the way, the life and the truth, know whether I have deserved this death.’ She added that she was ready to die, but very sorry that others, blameless as she, should die because of her. She swore that she had always been true to the King, but admitted that she had been a proud and jealous wife. ‘But God knows that I have not sinned against him in any other way.’ She asked only for time to prepare her soul for death.

Anne was taken back to the Queen’s Lodgings, where she spent her last days. It is often claimed that she was held in two Tudor rooms in the Queen’s House facing Tower Green, but they date from the early 1540s, after her death. The ladies who had spied on her were sent away, and four young maids took their places. They were known to Anne, and kind to her.

The Queen’s brother, George Boleyn, was tried after her, and he too was found guilty. All five men were beheaded on Tower Hill on 17 May. Anne was made to watch them die from a window in the Tower. That same day, with her consent, her marriage to Henry VIII was dissolved, and her daughter Elizabeth made a bastard.

‘Moved by pity’, the King allowed his wife the kinder death. Even before her trial, he had sent to France for an expert swordsman to behead her. This proves he had never meant to have her burned at the stake. There can be little doubt that the hope of a quick death by the sword was used to gain her consent to the ending of her marriage.

The Queen was to die at nine o’clock on 18 May, but Cromwell needed time to make sure that a good crowd would be there to watch. Justice must be seen to be done. But the delay was torture for Anne.

‘Master Kingston,’ she said to the Constable, ‘I hear say I shall not die afore noon, and I am very sorry for it, for I thought then to be dead and past my pain.’ When Kingston told her there should be no pain, she said, ‘I have a little neck.’ Then she put her hand about it, laughing. Kingston wrote: ‘I have seen many men and also women put to death, and all have been in great sorrow, but this lady has much joy and pleasure in death.’

At noon, her beheading was delayed again, until the next morning. Again, Anne begged that the King might hasten her end, as she was ready to die and feared she might lose her nerve. But her pleas fell on deaf ears.

That day, she made her peace with God, stating that she had never offended with her body against the King. It is hard to believe she would have put her soul at risk when she was about to face her Maker.

Anne spent much of her last night praying. At eight o’clock on the morning of 19 May 1536, attended by the four young ladies, she was led by Sir William Kingston to a new scaffold that had been built for her. Draped in black, it stood before the ‘House of Ordnance’ (now the Waterloo Barracks), facing the White Tower in the Tower of London. A thousand people had come to watch Anne die. They saw her mount the steps, wearing a rich grey robe with a white fur cape and a gable hood. She was calm and brave, and made a short speech.

She said ‘she was come to die, as she was judged by the law. She would accuse none, nor say anything of why she was judged. She prayed for the King, and called him a most gentle prince. If any would meddle with her cause, she asked them to judge the best. And so she took her leave of them, and of the world’, and asked them all to pray for her.

There was no block. She knelt upright on the straw, bound her eyes, and then prayed aloud as she waited for the blow, saying over and over again, ‘Oh, Lord God have pity on my soul!’ The headsman took off his shoes, came up behind her, swung his sword, and took off her head ‘at a stroke’. Her eyes and lips were seen to move as the head fell.

‘The Queen died boldly,’ Sir William Kingston wrote. Her ladies, weeping, wrapped the head and body in white cloths. No one had thought to provide a coffin, and in the end an arrow chest was all that could be found. Anne’s body was buried that day in the royal chapel of St Peter in Chains in the Tower, before the altar. Ten days later, the King married Jane Seymour.

Without any real proof of Anne’s guilt, and with her having been judged only on weak and false evidence, there can be little doubt that she went to her death an innocent woman.

Chapter Three

Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury (1541) - Hacked to Death

Margaret was the daughter of the Duke of Clarence, the younger brother of King Edward IV. Born near Bath in 1473, she was a princess of the House of York. She and her younger brother, Edward, Earl of Warwick, grew up in a rich household, but their childhood was marred by sadness. In 1476, when Margaret was three, her mother died in childbirth. The baby did not long outlive her.

Margaret’s father, the Duke of Clarence, was not trusted by his brother, Edward IV, and with good reason. Some years before, he had turned traitor and tried to depose Edward. He had allied with the King’s enemies and driven him from England. When Edward regained his throne, they had made peace, but Clarence was still jealous of his brother and hated the Queen. In 1477, he accused her of the murder of his wife, saying she had given her poison. He also said in public that the King was a bastard. There was no truth in all this, but the Queen feared that Clarence was a threat to her and her children. Edward could not let Clarence get away with such insults, so he sent him to the Tower.

Clarence was charged with high treason and brought before the House of Lords, where Edward himself sat in judgement on him. Thus it was that one brother condemned the other to death. Their mother begged the King for mercy. Most traitors were hanged, drawn, beheaded and cut in quarters, but Clarence was a lord and it was the right of lords to be beheaded.

In the end, Edward let Clarence choose how he would die. It is said he was drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine. His daughter Margaret would always wear a wine barrel jewel at her wrist in memory of him, and this can be seen in her portrait at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Margaret and her brother Warwick were sent to Sheen Palace to be brought up with the King’s children. When Richard III seized power in 1483, they were moved with other young royals to Sheriff Hutton Castle in Yorkshire. There they lived in great state and were well looked after.

After the death of Richard III’s only son in 1484, young Warwick was next in line for the throne, but Richard did not name him his heir. This might have been because Warwick was slow-witted. But Richard III knew that Warwick had a good claim to the throne, so he kept close watch on him. He feared that others might take up his cause, for he, Richard, was not well liked.

In 1485, Henry Tudor led an army into England and defeated and killed Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. Henry then had himself crowned Henry VII, the first king of the House of Tudor. Henry was aware that Warwick had a better claim to the throne than he did, so he shut him up in the Tower of London. The poor boy was to spend the rest of his sad life there.

Over the next few years, two pretenders, Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, claimed to be Warwick, in the hope of becoming king. This made Henry VII realise that the simple young man posed a real danger to him. In 1499, he placed agents in the Tower who led Warwick to plot treason with Perkin Warbeck. This gave Henry VII the excuse he needed to have Warwick beheaded, and Warbeck hanged.

In these years, Margaret had grown up to be pious and learned. In 1494, she had married Sir Richard Pole. Henry VII’s mother was Sir Richard’s aunt. Sir Richard served Henry VII well, and was given high offices at court and in Wales in return. He was also made a Knight of the Garter. Margaret bore him four sons and a daughter before he died in 1505.

Things got better for Margaret after Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509. He was always wary of those with royal blood, fearing they would plot against him, but he liked her, and did not doubt that she was loyal to him. He called her ‘the most saintly woman in England’. He wanted to make up to her for the unjust death of her brother, Warwick. He gave her a good income, and in 1513 made her Countess of Salisbury, a title that had belonged to her father. He also paid for her clever son, Reginald, to go to Oxford University, and set him on the way to a career in the Church.

Margaret was now a rich woman with vast lands. She was often at court, and became close friends with Henry’s first wife, Katherine of Aragon. Katherine had always felt guilt about the death of Margaret’s brother. Her parents, the King and Queen of Spain, had seen Warwick as a threat to the Tudors, and would not let her come to England until he was dead. She always said that her marriage had been made in blood, but it is clear that Margaret did not hold this against her.

By 1519, Margaret was serving as governess to Katherine’s daughter, the Princess Mary. Margaret was her godmother. Margaret and the Queen both hoped at one time that Mary would marry Margaret’s son, Reginald Pole, and unite the Houses of York and Tudor, but the King had other plans. When Mary, aged nine, was given her own court at Ludlow Castle in 1525, Margaret went with her. She took the place of Mary’s mother, and made sure she stayed healthy and worked hard at her lessons.

Two years later, after Henry VIII made it clear that he wanted to end his marriage to Queen Katherine and marry Anne Boleyn, Margaret Pole stood by Katherine. She and her family hated Anne, and Reginald spoke out hotly against her. In the end, he had to flee to Italy to escape the King’s wrath. There, he rose high in the Church, and was made a cardinal. Many years later, Henry’s daughter, Mary, would make him Archbishop of Canterbury.