TL *Humaning the Best She Can*’s Reviews > The Fall of Anne Boleyn: A Countdown > Status Update

The Anne Boleyn I have come to know though my research is a far cry from the Anne of popular fiction, but she is certainly no saint, angel or martyr, and does not deserve to be put on a pedestal. Anne was stubborn, ambitious, impatient, hot-tempered, driven, calculating, spiteful at times, and a woman who would not suffer fools gladly.

I agree with Derek Wilson that the plot against Anne and the men was too complex to be down to Cromwell alone; if this were the case, there would certainly have been easier ways of ending the marriage. Adultery and incest were not even treason, so Anne and the men also had to be charged with conspiring against the King.

I've heard it said that Anne Boleyn has to take some responsibility for her fall in 1536 even though she was innocent of the crimes for which she was condemned. In his TV series on Henry VIII, "Henry VIII: Mind of a Tyrant",40 David Starkey spoke about how Anne's forthright character and ability to say "no" to Henry, when nobody else would, were attractive in a mistress but not what Henry found acceptable in a wife.

Anne's executioner was a French swordsman from Calais10,11 and for him to get to London by 18th or 19th May he would have to have been ordered before Anne's trial had even taken place.

Chapuys wrote to Charles V on the 19th May: "I hear that, even before the arrest of the Concubine, the King, speaking with Mistress Jane Semel[Seymour] of their future marriage, the latter suggested that the Princess should be replaced in her former position".8 So Henry had mentioned marriage to Jane Seymour before Anne was even arrested on 2nd May! Court gossip perhaps but it's interesting nonetheless.

Ralph Morice, secretary of Archbishop Cranmer, recorded the following warning issued by the King to Cranmer in 1546 when the conservatives targeted him and tried to bring him down: "Oh Lorde God ! (quod the king) what fonde symplicitie have you :

so to permitt yourself to be ymprisoned, that every enemy of yours may take vantage againste you. Doo not you thincke that yf thei have you ones in prison,

So, according to Henry VIII, the Queen had come to a sticky end from 'meddling' rather than being guilty of treason! As Eric Ives8 points out, Henry VIII also admitted years later that once a prisoner was in the Tower of London then false evidence could be used against him.

The imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, in reporting the trials to Charles V, wrote that the men "were condemned upon presumption and certain indications, without valid proof or confession", that George Boleyn was charged "by presumption" and that "those present wagered 10 to 1 that he would be acquitted, especially as no witnesses were produced against either him or her".

Although Cromwell's propaganda machine had been working flat out, spreading the salacious and shocking news that the King of England had been saved from a conspiracy instigated by his own wife and Queen, there were those who were cynical and could not quite believe the official line.

On Tuesday 30th May, just eleven days after the execution of his second wife, Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII married Jane Seymour in the Queen's Closet at York Place, the property renovated by himself and Anne.