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.