The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn (23 page)

At some point they both realized that their remarks had been overheard and might be misconstrued—which was what in fact happened. The Queen of England had to be above suspicion in every respect, but on this occasion Anne’s rash words were open to a more serious and dangerous interpretation: people might (and indeed would) think that she had flirted outrageously, gone way beyond the accepted rules of courtly banter, been overfamiliar with Norris, at the very least, and was even actively plotting the King’s assassination. Indeed, her remarks gave rise to the worst possible scenario, for they would be used against her as damning evidence of treason—and actually appear to have been among the Crown’s most compelling pieces of evidence; moreover, they showed that she was ready to initiate a dangerous flirtation. It followed that, in her indictment, her accusers were able convincingly to portray her as a female seductress who at every opportunity incited her lovers to criminal acts. Anne, unwittingly, had given Cromwell evidence he needed to bring her down. Her exchange with Norris could not have been more timely.

Anne was sufficiently concerned about what she and Norris had been heard to say that she bade him go to her almoner, John Skip, and “swear for the Queen that she was a good woman.” That would prove to be a fatal mistake, for Skip’s suspicions were immediately aroused, and he confided the matter to Anne’s chamberlain, Sir Edward Baynton, who also took a dim view of the exchange, possibly because this was not the first time Anne had said compromising things to Norris—she herself would shortly reveal that there had been another conversation between them on April 25, the details of which are not clear.
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The almoner and the chamberlain discussed the matter, and Skip urged Baynton to go to Cromwell and Sir William FitzWilliam, who would become heavily involved in the investigation against Anne, to “plainly express” his opinion, which he did.
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Given the suspicions to which the conversation between Anne and Norris gave rise, even in John Skip, who hitherto had been a supporter of the Queen, we might conjecture whether Anne, fearing the consequences (for she was a prisoner in the Tower at the time), reported it in its entirety, and that what Norris said to Skip was more compromising. This is not to suggest that it was necessarily evidence of criminal intercourse, or even a
serious flirtation, but that there was perhaps more sexual innuendo than Anne could bring herself to admit to, or, more likely, that the exchange about Norris looking for dead men’s shoes was more explicit and open to an even worse interpretation.

The strange thing is that Anne was never charged with offenses involving Norris at this time, only with inveigling the men to treason in November 1535, and compassing the King’s death on January 8, 1536,
and on various dates thereafter
[author’s italics]. It is evident that her accusers were intent on alleging that this was a long-established—and therefore more dangerous—conspiracy, and that she was so wicked that she had not scrupled to plot regicide when she was carrying the King’s child. There is no record of the conversation with Norris being mentioned at Anne’s trial, or in the written testimony of witnesses (none of which survive), but the records and eyewitness accounts are incomplete. Nevertheless, it clearly was regarded as crucial evidence, and seems to have been the basis for some of the Crown’s allegations.

Sometime that day, or the next morning, Aless witnessed the King and Queen arguing. He wrote an account of what he had seen in 1559 in a letter to Elizabeth I:

The cause of the quarrel is not known, because Aless could not hear the words that passed between the royal couple. It is possible Anne was fearful that Henry would get to hear of her conversation with Norris, and sought to preempt his anger by trying to explain herself, taking Elizabeth with her for maximum emotional appeal;
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or that Henry had already heard about it, and that she was trying to defuse his wrath. It has recently been suggested that Anne was pleading with him for mercy,
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which is
very likely, but it begs the question of what she had heard exactly. Was it divorce she feared? Or did her fears go deeper? Certainly they had been mounting over the past weeks. Whatever it was, we can assume that Henry refused to divulge what was going on—he was a man who preferred to keep his secrets to himself, and once said that if his cap knew what he was thinking he would throw it in the fire
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—and that Anne’s appeal, for enlightenment or understanding, failed.

The council sat until eleven o’clock that night. By then, conjecture had spread about the nature of the urgent business being debated, and a throng of people, Alexander Aless among them, had gathered at Greenwich to speculate as to what was going on. “From the protracted conference of the council (for whom the crowd was waiting until it was quite dark, expecting that they would return to London), it was most obvious to everyone that some deep and difficult question was being discussed. Nor was this opinion incorrect.”
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When the meeting broke up, an announcement was made that the planned trip to Calais would be postponed for a week.
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No reason for the sudden change of plan was given. “The King’s journey is prolonged,” Lord Lisle was informed by John Granfield, his man in London. “My brother Diggory will bring you the certainty of the King’s coming.”
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This sudden decision to cancel the Calais trip in itself strongly suggests that the evidence against the Queen had only been recently laid, and that the outcome of the investigations had thrown everything into disarray. Contrary to what has recently been claimed,
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it cannot in any way be seen as proof that Henry had known all along of Cromwell’s plot to destroy Anne.

The “Spanish Chronicle” asserts that, when Smeaton arrived at Cromwell’s house, “two stout young fellows were called, and the secretary asked for a rope and a cudgel. The rope, which was filled with knots, was put around Mark’s head, and twisted with the cudgel until he cried, ‘Sir Secretary, no more! I will tell the truth. The Queen gave me the money.’”

He then, according to this chronicle, made a confession, saying that after he had entered the Queen’s service (which is incorrect, because he was in the King’s service), she had singled him out for special notice, asking her ladies, “Does not the lad play well?” Then one morning she had
sent for him as she lay abed, and he was ordered to play so that her ladies might dance. Watching him, she resolved to seduce him and began scheming to get him discreetly into her bed, no easy thing with all her ladies about, and with Smeaton too lowly to be expected to make the first move. So she took into her confidence an old waiting woman called Margaret, who slept every night in the antechamber of the Queen’s bedroom, the other ladies sleeping beyond, in the gallery.

In the antechamber there was a cupboard in which were stored sweetmeats, candied fruits, and conserves. One night, when all was quiet, Margaret, acting on Anne’s instructions, hid a very nervous Mark behind the royal bed curtains; then, when her mistress called out from her bed, “Bring me a little marmalade!” Margaret took him by the hand and pulled him into view, saying—for the benefit of anyone who might be within earshot, “Here is the marmalade, my lady.”

“Go along, go to bed,” Anne is said to have replied, and after Margaret had gone, she “went to the back of the bed and grasped the youth’s arm, who was all trembling, and made him get into bed. He soon lost his bashfulness, and remained that night and many others.” In reward for his services, Anne gave him money, which enabled him to become “smart and lavish in his clothes.” He was aware, though, that both Sir Henry Norris and William Brereton were rivals for her favors.
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This account is probably largely apocryphal, the invention of a hostile Spaniard, and is probably based on the rumors circulating in the City of London at this time. The chronicle further asserts that Margaret was arrested and put on the rack, where she incriminated Norris and Brereton, but swore that Sir Thomas Wyatt—who was not yet in Cromwell’s sights, so far as we know—was innocent; then she is said to have been burned at the stake under cover of darkness within the Tower. There is no evidence to support these statements. The account is littered with errors, with Rochford being referred to as a duke and Weston’s name being omitted entirely, while “Margaret” cannot be identified, although it is possible that the writer confused her with either Lady Wingfield or Margery Horsman.

Someone else thought that Smeaton was perhaps tortured, although not in the manner that the “Spanish Chronicle” describes. One of the best contemporary sources for this period is George Constantine, William Brereton’s former school fellow and long-standing friend, who was now
Sir Henry Norris’s body servant and later became registrar of the bishopric of St. David’s. Constantine had long been a zealous Protestant and trafficker in forbidden books, and in 1531 narrowly escaped burning at the hands of the former Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas More, having saved himself only by betraying his associates and fleeing abroad. Thanks to the reforming influence of Anne Boleyn, he was able to return to London under the protection of Norris, bringing with him, for Anne, a copy of Miles Coverdale’s translation of the Bible into English. Given his sympathies, Constantine at first “could not believe” that the Queen was guilty.
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Constantine was to attend his master during the latter’s imprisonment in the Tower of London, and three years later wrote a memorial of these events for Cromwell.
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According to this, “the saying was that [Smeaton] confessed, but he was first grievously racked, which I could never know of a truth.”
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It is easy to see that Constantine imagined that torture was routine in such interrogations, for, according to his own explanation of why he had betrayed his friends five years earlier, he himself had been subjected to the most dreadful torture.
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It is hardly conceivable that there was a rack at Cromwell’s house, but there was certainly one at the Tower, even though torture was officially illegal in England. Although all the sources imply that the hapless musician’s confession was obtained at Stepney, it is of course possible that he was racked soon after his arrival at the Tower on May 2; but if he was tortured thus, he must have given in before too much unbearable pressure was brought to bear, for there is no evidence that his bones were dislocated, and he was able, only days later, to stand trial and walk to his execution without anyone commenting on him being in evident pain or in any way disabled, while no observer mentions any visible injuries consistent with the rope torture, which is almost certainly a lurid fabrication. In 1546, when the heretic Anne Askew was racked, with the then Lord Chancellor, Thomas Wriothesley, himself turning the wheel, people knew about it, not least because she was carried in a chair to the stake.
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Moreover, Lancelot de Carles states that, although “Mark was forced to answer the accusation against him, without being tortured, he deliberately said that the Queen had three times yielded to his passion.” So probably the tales of Smeaton being tortured were based on unfounded rumors and assumptions. The fact that he was not “well-lodged” in the Tower until ten o’clock at night on May 2
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suggests that he was again interrogated, probably for several hours, but he
certainly did not suffer “twenty-four hours of fierce torture,” as one historian has recently claimed.
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The fact that he was initially questioned for at least twenty-four hours suggests that Smeaton did not willingly divulge any information. Yet in the end, racked or not, he finally admitted “that he had been three times with the Concubine”
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in the spring of 1535—a confession that (as will be seen) was at variance with Anne’s own independent recollections of her dealings with him, in which she stated she had only spoken to him twice, and then only briefly.
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Having confessed to the adultery, Smeaton threw himself on the King’s mercy,
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but he was adamant that he was not guilty of abetting the Queen in compassing the King’s death, and desired to be tried by a jury on that charge. This reinforces the view that he was not tortured, otherwise he surely would have capitulated on all counts, the penalty being the same for violating the Queen as for plotting regicide: a traitor’s death. It does, however, raise the question of why he admitted to adultery. Did he mistakenly think it was a lesser charge? Or was he—and by implication, Anne—in fact guilty? Or was “psychological pressure”
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brought to bear on him? He was perhaps told, as Norris would be, that he could save his life by confessing; or he could have been informed that, since it was known that he had committed treason and must suffer the penalty anyway, he might be rewarded with a quicker death than usually meted out to traitors in return for his cooperation, a choice that would be offered to Anne herself; this would explain why Smeaton was allowed to die like a gentleman.

Cavendish states that “by his confession, he did them all accuse.”
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The well-informed contemporary printer and annalist, Richard Grafton, in his extension of Edward Hall’s
Chronicle
, says that Smeaton was “provoked” to incriminate himself, the Queen, and others “by the [future] Lord Admiral [Sir William FitzWilliam, the King’s treasurer], that was later Earl of Southampton, who said unto him, ‘Subscribe, Mark, and see what will come of it.’” It sounds as if names were put to him, and that pressure was exerted to make him incriminate them.