The Execution of Anne Boleyn
On a clear May morning in the year 1536 a crowd of about two thousand people, including several leading courtiers, gathered inside the precincts of the Tower of London to witness one of the most shocking and endlessly controversial events in english history: the execution of Queen Anne Boleyn.
Her fall from grace had been as sudden and swift as her rise had been drawn-out and slow. Her husband, King Henry VIII, his passion for her having fatally soured, had publicly abandoned her at the traditional May Day tournament, held at Greenwich just three weeks earlier. During the proceedings the king had received a note, the contents of which probably outlined the arrest and confession to adultery with the queen of the young court musician Mark Smeaton. Seemingly stunned, the king had stood up and departed the tournament ground, without a word to his wife. He never saw her again.
After that dramatic moment, events moved at a rapid pace. The queen was arrested as were her brother George Boleyn, Henry Norris, Francis Weston, William Brereton and Mark Smeaton. They were all tried, convicted and executed for adultery with Anne. Smeaton was the only one who confessed but his admission must be treated with caution as it may have been obtained under torture. The others admitted no guilt at all.
They had all fallen to the axe two days before Anne on 17 May. In an act perhaps of some mercy, the king decided that his second queen would not die in the same way. To that end he hired, at the cost of twenty three pounds, a swordsman from Calais to dispatch his wife. The traditional english method of beheading by axe often went wrong - it had taken three strokes to sever George Boleyn's head.
And so, on the morning of the 19th, Anne Boleyn went to meet her fate. She was dressed in a grey gown with a low neck, furred sleeves and crimson kirtle and many spectators commented on how beautiful she looked. Beautiful she may have been but she must also have been in a state of exhaustion and terror. Nevertheless, in a display of great courage, she walked calmly onto the scaffold and told the Constable, Sir William Kingston, that she had "a mind to speak."
There are several versions of her speech but all seem to agree that she exhorted the crowd to pray for the king, "one of the best princes on the face of the earth", and added that if any person sought to meddle with her cause she required them to "judge the best". By and large though it seems to have been a speech that stuck to the accepted conventions but, like her supposed lovers before her, she confessed to nothing.
Once she had finished speaking, Anne bid farewell to her weeping ladies, knelt in the straw, and prepared herself for death. She prayed aloud, repeating over and over again "Jesu receive my soul, oh Lord God have pity on my soul!". The swordsman earnt his fee and took her head off at one stroke and the brief, dazzling and tumultuous life and reign of Anne Boleyn was over.
A proper coffin had not been provided for her body and there would be no funeral. Her ladies, sobbing pitifully, were left to wrap her remains and place them in an old arrow chest. They then carried it to the Tower chapel of St Peter ad Vincula where their erstwhile mistress was hastily buried beneath the chancel stones. The king remarried, to Jane Seymour, within a month and reportedly never mentioned his second wife by name again. He soon however provided her with company in her lonely grave - her cousin, Catherine Howard, and her sister in law Jane Boleyn were both beheaded in 1542 and buried beside Anne in the chapel. Centuries later, in his 1848 book 'History of England', Thomas Babington Macaulay was so affected by the final resting place of Anne Boleyn, and many others, that he was moved to write that "in truth, there is no sadder spot on Earth."
Her fall from grace had been as sudden and swift as her rise had been drawn-out and slow. Her husband, King Henry VIII, his passion for her having fatally soured, had publicly abandoned her at the traditional May Day tournament, held at Greenwich just three weeks earlier. During the proceedings the king had received a note, the contents of which probably outlined the arrest and confession to adultery with the queen of the young court musician Mark Smeaton. Seemingly stunned, the king had stood up and departed the tournament ground, without a word to his wife. He never saw her again.
After that dramatic moment, events moved at a rapid pace. The queen was arrested as were her brother George Boleyn, Henry Norris, Francis Weston, William Brereton and Mark Smeaton. They were all tried, convicted and executed for adultery with Anne. Smeaton was the only one who confessed but his admission must be treated with caution as it may have been obtained under torture. The others admitted no guilt at all.
They had all fallen to the axe two days before Anne on 17 May. In an act perhaps of some mercy, the king decided that his second queen would not die in the same way. To that end he hired, at the cost of twenty three pounds, a swordsman from Calais to dispatch his wife. The traditional english method of beheading by axe often went wrong - it had taken three strokes to sever George Boleyn's head.
And so, on the morning of the 19th, Anne Boleyn went to meet her fate. She was dressed in a grey gown with a low neck, furred sleeves and crimson kirtle and many spectators commented on how beautiful she looked. Beautiful she may have been but she must also have been in a state of exhaustion and terror. Nevertheless, in a display of great courage, she walked calmly onto the scaffold and told the Constable, Sir William Kingston, that she had "a mind to speak."
There are several versions of her speech but all seem to agree that she exhorted the crowd to pray for the king, "one of the best princes on the face of the earth", and added that if any person sought to meddle with her cause she required them to "judge the best". By and large though it seems to have been a speech that stuck to the accepted conventions but, like her supposed lovers before her, she confessed to nothing.
Once she had finished speaking, Anne bid farewell to her weeping ladies, knelt in the straw, and prepared herself for death. She prayed aloud, repeating over and over again "Jesu receive my soul, oh Lord God have pity on my soul!". The swordsman earnt his fee and took her head off at one stroke and the brief, dazzling and tumultuous life and reign of Anne Boleyn was over.
A proper coffin had not been provided for her body and there would be no funeral. Her ladies, sobbing pitifully, were left to wrap her remains and place them in an old arrow chest. They then carried it to the Tower chapel of St Peter ad Vincula where their erstwhile mistress was hastily buried beneath the chancel stones. The king remarried, to Jane Seymour, within a month and reportedly never mentioned his second wife by name again. He soon however provided her with company in her lonely grave - her cousin, Catherine Howard, and her sister in law Jane Boleyn were both beheaded in 1542 and buried beside Anne in the chapel. Centuries later, in his 1848 book 'History of England', Thomas Babington Macaulay was so affected by the final resting place of Anne Boleyn, and many others, that he was moved to write that "in truth, there is no sadder spot on Earth."
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