Queen Anne Boleyn Justice, Law and Reality: A Historian looks at May 19th, 1536

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

The Execution Woodcut Print  

A contemporary woodcut print illustrates the 19th May 1536 tragedy on Tower Green, London

Trial Papers

On May 19th, 1536 an elegant woman, dressed in a crimson velvet gown, a white bodice covered by a chemise, in French fashion walked across to an open space just beyond the Royal Quarters, where a back draped scaffold had been erected. Queen Anne (yes, she was still Queen) walked and knelt down after making the speech that Hollywood has hammered into the heads of movie goers: Good Christian people! I have not come hither to make a speech, but to die." Exhorting the people to serve their Gentle Sovereign Prince she absolves him of all blame as she has been Judged by the Law. Her words were carefully chosen, if we trust the version given by the Spanish Ambassador who for some inexplicable reason was a witness to this tragedy.  Anne certainly wanted to protect the claims of her 3 year old daughter Elizabeth to the throne as promulgated by the Act of Succession. After a brief moment of prayer she moved her head, and the French executioner swiftly and in one swell scoop cut off her head, and it bobbed on to the platform. Historical Records make it clear that the French executioner was summoned even before the trial had started, suggesting quite plausibly that the charges against Anne and the 5 men including her brother George Boleyn were driven by political and extra legal considerations.

Death Warrant

  After the judicial trial and execution of Queen Anne, the Lord Chancellor of the Real Thomas Cromwell ordered all records of the trial destroyed and Henry VIII, fresh after his marriage to Jane Seymour scrubbed all  traces of his three year marriage with Anne by ordering the removal of her coat of arms from Hamden Court. However the almost complete transcript of the trial has been preserved and Historians like Eric Ives are quite convinced of the innocence of the Queen, her brother George and the 4 men who died with him two days earlier. 

Lets look at the charges that took the Queen to her death that May morning. Incest, Adultery and wishing "death" to the King making it a act of treason. The last charge is easily disposed of. Wishing "death" to the King entered the statues only in 1351 and was never invoked until this charge. And it is quite likely that a humorous off the cuff remark was misconstrued, but the serious injury sustained by the King in a jousting tournament a few weeks earlier added a sinister tone to a flippant remark and Jane Boleyn, the wife of George Boleyn and therefore the Sister-in-Law of Anne was the only witness. As for the other charges, a Queen's adultery remained a matter of Church Law not subject to the King's Court or the Star Chamber. On May 2nd 1536 the Queen was arrested and taken to the tower where she lived for the next fortnight until her date with the French executioner from Calais. 

The Lord Chancellor, Thomas Cromwell used procedural manipulation to secure her conviction. He separated the trial of the 5 men including her brother, George, from that of the Queen and made Anne face Lord Norfolk, her own uncle who was the presiding judge of a "Jury of her peers". A day prior, the 5 men had been sentenced to death leaving no hope for the Queen except the mercy of her "Sovereign Lord". Within days of her death Henry VIII married Jane Seymour and this leaves the question open about the motives of Henry VIII. The King had broken with the Roman Catholic Church over his marriage to Katherine of Aragon, the niece of the King of Spain. The "Great Matter" of the King's marriage had been managed by Thomas Cromwell who literally rode rough shod over the clerical institutions and establishment. The "dissolution of the monasteries" a strategy adopted for securing treasure for the impending war with France led to protests all over Northern England, called the Pilgrimage of Grace. And Queen Anne came out in open support of the Pilgrimage of Grace. Thus the King and his first Minister both had strong personal and political reasons to see the end of Queen Anne.

The innocence of the Queen is established by the fact that the dates on which she was said to commit acts of adultery were days on which she was not present in the places where the acts as charged took place. Also the Queen was not permitted to bring her evidence or cross examine the witnesses and so the jury retuned as expected a guilty verdict and she met her end.

Thomas Cromwell and Jane Boleyn or Lady Rochford too met their ends on the scaffold. Was Karma at work. Who knows? Who can predict the mysterious ways through which Fate/Fortuna acts. 

CRIME, POLITICS AND RETRIBUTION IN INDIA; THE ATIQ AHMED SAGA

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

What transpired in Prayagraj was shocking and totally unexpected. A notorious criminal Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf Ahmed were gunned down execution style by 3 gunmen as they were being taken for a medical examination at Colvin Hospital at 10.30 in the night. On the 13th his son, Asad Ahmed and his accomplice Ghulam were killed in Jhansi by the Special Task Force constituted by the Government. This sequence of events has explosive implications for the politics of India in general and Uttar Pradesh in particular.

Certain questions that are bound to come up before the Judicial Inquiry constituted by the Government of Uttar Pradesh:

1 Why were the two hand cuffed criminals taken to the Hospital at 1030 in the night.

2 How did the news of their medical examination lea out giving the killers time to organize their crime by laying in wait at the Hospital Gate.

3 How did the 3 killers get Press identification cards which gave them access

4 Why was the flank of the two prisoners left unprotected giving the killers the opportunity to fire and kill the two

5 The two were under the custody of the Police and hence the involvement and conduct of the Police has also to be questioned.

Atiq Ahmed and his brother were sons of a tonga (an Indian horse drawn vehicle) driver and though he proudly sported Khan in his name, came for a very humble background. He took to crimes such as murder and extortion along with land grabbing and kidnapping for ransom from an early age and by the time he was 20 had more than 40 criminal cases registered against him. He had a very successful run as a politician and was elected to the UP Assembly 5 times on the tickets of the Samajwadi Party, Apna Dal and the Bahujan Samaj Party. In 2004 he was elected to Parliament from the Phulpur constituency from where Jawaharlal Nehru was once elected in the 1952 General Elections. When he vacated his Assembly seat he sought to have his brother Ashraf elected in his place, but was defeated by Raju Pal who contested on the BSP ticket. 

Atiq was close to the Samajwadi Party and being a Muslim became the symbol of the political bonds between the Yadavas who dominated the Party and Muslims who shared power with them, an arrangement that is generally called Secularism in India. Using the clout with the political establishment Atiq built up an empire of nearly 12,000 crores. And in this growth all political parties with the exception of the Bharatiya Janata Party colluded with him.

In 2005, the defeated candidate Ashraf Ahmed had Raju Pal  killed publically in a gruesome manner. Raju Pal was ambushed by 15 criminals and more than 150 rounds fired into his body. In February this year Umesh Pal, the lawyer and eye witness in the earlier case was gunned down by a team of 13 assassins led by Asad Ahmed, the son of Atiq Ahmed. The long career in violent crime came to an abrupt in 2017 with the election of Yogi Aditanath as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. The Chief Minister sees to improve the Economy of the state by attracting Foreign Direct  Investment for which Law and Order was the fundament requirement. He promised to make UP, "Mafia Mukth" Mafia free. He famously declared on the floor of the Assemby that,Mafia ko mitti me mila denge, we will bring down the mafia rule.

Events started taking frenetic pace when Atiq Ahmed was brought from Sabarmati Jail to Prayagraj to face trial in the Raju Pal murder case in which he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. With 167 cases registered against him the police were keen to  track down his cfrime empire and sought police remand which was duly granted. Atiq and his brother Ashraf were killed while they were in police custody.

The execution style killing with shots fired to the temple has raised far too many inconvenient questions both for the Government of Uttar Pradesh and for the Opposition parties. It is now being speculated that they were eliminated as their political patrons no longer needed them and indeed, had become an embarrassment. The fact that the 3 killers were caught alive is the saving grace. Otherwise the charge of political cover up would have been made. The shocking crime reminded me of the elimination through murder of the assassin of JFK ,Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby. Till today there are suggestions that Lee was killed in order to hide the larger conspiracy. Fortunately that scenario is unlikely in this case.

My own assessment is that the people of Uttar Pradesh will, while not endorsing the murders of the two, not hold it against the Government as Atiq and his criminal gang had terrorised North India for nearly 30 years.