The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn (41 page)

On May 14, Cromwell wrote to Gardiner and Wallop, the English ambassadors in France, formally apprising them of the action taken against the Queen and the judgment on those accused with her. He said he had “to inform them of a most detestable scheme, happily discovered and notoriously known to all men,” of which they may have heard rumors. He “expressed to them some part of the coming out and the King’s proceeding”: how Anne’s crimes had come to light, the arrests of all concerned, and the condemnation of the men two days earlier. “She and her brother shall be arraigned tomorrow,” he concluded, “and will undoubtedly go the same way. I write no particularities, the things be so abominable, and therefore I doubt not but this shall be sufficient instruction to declare the truth if you have occasion to do so.”
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In this official version of events, Henry VIII was to be portrayed as the grievously injured party.

As news of the arrests spread like wildfire across Europe, the story gained much in the telling. From Paris, on May 10, the Papal Nuncio, the Bishop of Faenza, reported to the Vatican: “News came yesterday from England that the King had caused to be arrested the Queen, her father, mother, brother, and an organist with whom she had been too intimate. If it be as it is reported, it is a great judgment of God.” The bishop was still under the impression, on May 19, that the King had “imprisoned his wife, her father, mother, brother, and friends,” and believed “that woman will doubtless be put to death.” By May 24 he had heard a further mish-mash of truth and rumor, and reported: “It is not true that her father and mother were imprisoned. It is said that the King has been in danger of being poisoned by that lady for a whole year, and that her daughter is suppositious, being the child of a countryman; but these particulars are not
known for certain, according to what the King [Francis I] said today. The discovery was owing to words spoken by the organist from jealousy of others.”
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In Spain it was initially believed that “the mistress of the King of England had been put in the Tower for adultery with an organist of her chamber. Her brother is imprisoned for not giving information of the crime.”
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On May 26, John Hannaert of Lyons was to inform the Emperor: “There is news from England that the so-called Queen was found in bed with the King’s organist and taken to prison. It is proved that she had criminal intercourse with her brother and others.”
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Charles V thought it “very probable that God has permitted it after her damnable life.”
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Dr. Ortiz, Charles V’s ambassador in Rome, was informed that “the King of England has imprisoned his mistress in the Tower. Other letters state that, in order to have a son who might be attributed to the King, she committed adultery with a singer who taught her to play on instruments. Others say it was with her brother. The King has sent them to the Tower with her father, mother, and other relations.” Ortiz later reported, on June 2: “The prayers of the late Queen of England and the Holy Martyrs have prevailed. The King’s mistress had six lovers, one being her own brother. Another, a musician, seeing that he was less favored, discovered the fact to the King, first asking for pardon and his life. Now they are all taken, it is found to be true.” Ortiz recalled the Cardinal of Burgos telling him that it had been prophesied by a martyred saint “that this Anna would be burned to death.”
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In the Vatican, Pope Paul III summoned Gregory Casale, an English government agent, and informed him of what had taken place, declaring that God had enlightened the King of England’s conscience, and making it very clear that he would respond gladly to any overture of friendship and reconciliation that the King might make.
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On May 29, in Germany, the Protestant reformer Philip Melanchthon heard the rumors about Anne Boleyn with great sorrow: “The reports from England are more than tragic. The Queen is thrown into prison with her father, her brother, two bishops, and others for adultery.” In June, having obtained more information, he concluded that “she was more accused than convicted of adultery.”
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Abroad, some people expressed the opinion that, “as none but the organist had confessed, the King invented the device
to get rid of her;” but many others, convinced that she fully deserved the poor reputation that was hers in Catholic Europe, had no trouble believing the charges.

Henry VIII had now returned to York Place, and with freedom in sight, decided that he wanted Jane, his bride-to-be, to be near at hand to receive the news of Anne’s condemnation. On Sunday, May 14, Chapuys reported that the King had that day “sent for Mrs. Seymour by the Grand Esquire [Sir Nicholas Carew] and some others, and made her come within a mile of his lodging”;
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she was installed in the fine house at Chelsea that had once belonged to Sir Thomas More but reverted to the Crown on his execution the previous summer, and was now in the keeping of Sir William Paulet, comptroller of the royal household, and later Marquess of Winchester.
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Its exact location is uncertain, but it certainly fronted the river, probably where Beaufort Street now lies to the north of Battersea Bridge. This great house boasted a seventy-foot hall, a chapel, a library,
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and twenty-seven acres of beautiful gardens, orchards, and parkland, the whole lying in an area that was still largely rural, yet within a half hour walk of Westminster.

Here, Jane had her first taste of what it would be like to be a queen, finding herself lodged in surroundings of some splendor, “very richly adorned” in the most sumptuous fabrics and “served very splendidly by the servants, cooks, and certain of the King’s officers in very rich liveries.” Her parents, Sir John and Lady Seymour, had come to stay with and support her at this time, and to act as chaperones when the King visited.
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For all this display of virtue, they, and Jane, were eagerly awaiting the outcome of Anne’s trial.

It is clear from Chapuys’s dispatches that the Seymours had very quickly taken him into their confidence, and more than likely that the Imperialist party and the Seymour affinity had been lobbying for the death penalty for Anne. Lady Mary’s supporters were convinced that Anne had poisoned Katherine and attempted to do the same to Mary and Richmond, removing all possible rivals to her daughter Elizabeth.
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They feared that, left alive, she would remain a threat to her successor and any new heirs the King might have. Above all, her death, following Katherine of Aragon’s, would leave the way clear for a new royal marriage and an undisputed succession. That Anne’s execution was widely anticipated is
clear from a letter written by Charles V on May 15, the day of her trial, in which he suggested several possible marriage alliances for Henry VIII, clearly having assumed that she would die.
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Throughout the weekend of May 13–14, the Tower officials were kept busy with hasty preparations for the trials of Anne and Rochford. There was no precedent in England for the trial of a queen, but it was nevertheless felt that it should take place with an appropriate degree of state and ceremony: it was to be the ultimate show trial, and would be held in the thirteenth-century great hall of the Tower, which was known as the King’s Hall.
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This battlemented building was part of the palace complex, and it stood at right angles to the south end of the Queen’s lodging, with one side facing the Jewel Tower and the White Tower, and the other the river. Measuring eighty feet by fifty, the hall had side aisles separated from the central space by two timber arcades with four arches apiece.

The King’s Hall was long neglected, having been used as a storeroom as far back as 1387, and had to be repaired and redecorated for Anne’s coronation in 1533. But these repairs seem to have been purely superficial, for the hall would be falling into ruin by 1559. It was labeled “decay’d” in a plan of the Tower dated 1597,
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and a temporary canvas roof had to be put in place for the coronation of James I in 1604. In 1641 the hall was converted into an ordnance store. It was finally demolished in or shortly before 1788, when a new store was erected in its place. The Medieval Palace Shop now occupies part of the site.

Anticipating a high demand by the public for seats, the constable arranged for a “great scaffold” or platform to be built in the center of the hall, “and there were made benches or seats for the lords,” while along the walls were positioned many more benches,
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so there would be space for the two thousand spectators described by Chapuys; these benches were still to be seen in the great hall as late as 1778.
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On the dais at one end of the chamber, the chair of estate—or throne—assigned to the Duke of Norfolk was placed under a canopy of estate bearing the royal arms, for Norfolk, as Lord High Steward, would be representing the King.
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On the morning of Monday, May 15, the duke seated himself majestically here, holding the long white staff of his office. On a chair at his feet sat his nineteen-year-old son, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, grasping the golden staff that symbolized his father’s office of Earl Marshal of
England. At the duke’s right hand sat Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas Audley; as a commoner, he was not entitled to judge a queen, but was there to offer legal advice to the duke.
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At Norfolk’s left hand was the Duke of Suffolk, the King’s brother-in-law, who had long been Anne’s enemy. Now appointed chief of those who had gathered to judge her, he was “wholly applying himself to the King’s humor.”
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Then were seated, in order of precedence, “twenty-six of the greatest peers,”
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although the number is also given as twenty-seven,
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which is in fact the number that had been summoned by Norfolk.
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Although Constantine claimed that this jury consisted of “almost all the lords that were in the realm,” it in fact comprised fewer than half the entire peerage of sixty-two lords.
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Nevertheless, “the highest peers, marquesses, earls, and lords, every one after their degrees,” had been “chosen” to try the Queen and her brother.
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Friedmann, Anne’s Victorian biographer, had no doubt that this panel was “fairly chosen,” but Charles Wriothesley’s editor felt that the word “chosen” lent some credence to conjecture that “care was taken to select those who could be relied upon to gratify the King’s will,” as had certainly been the case when Cardinal Wolsey chose the lords who sent the Duke of Buckingham to the block in 1521. George Wyatt heard that the peers who had assembled to judge the Queen were “men of great honor” but felt “it had been good also if some of them had not been suspected of too much power and no less malice.” Some were there “more perhaps for countenance of others’ evil than for means by their own authority to do good—which also peradventure would not have been without their own certain perils.”

Given its composition, there was little hope that the panel of peers would be impartial. As one historian has recently written, “they had much to gain or lose by their behavior in such a conspicuous theater.”
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Ives contends that they were summoned at such short notice that there was little opportunity for the Crown to influence their judgment, but who is to say that is was not made clear to them, directly or indirectly, what verdict was expected?

Among them was Anne’s former lover and would-be betrothed, Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, whose pursuit of her in 1523 had been halted by Wolsey, acting on the King’s orders;
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Percy had been hustled into an unhappy marriage, and was now an ailing embittered man, whose former love for Anne had long since withered into contempt, especially
after she had offended his fellow peer, Norfolk; in 1534, Chapuys overheard Northumberland saying to a friend that Anne was a bad woman who had plotted to poison Lady Mary, which effectively demolishes the romantic myth that he loved her till the end of his days. The earl, having no children, had made the King his heir the previous January, describing himself as “unfeign[ed]ly sick” of “the debility in my blood.”
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The other high-ranking “lords triers” were Robert Radcliffe, Earl of Sussex, a great confidant of the King, whose name heads the extant list preserved in the
Baga de Secretis;
Henry Somerset, Earl of Worcester, whose wife Elizabeth had laid evidence against the Queen; the Marquess of Exeter and his cousin Henry Pole, Lord Montagu, staunch partisans of Lady Mary, who were no doubt rejoicing in Anne’s fall, for which they had long been scheming; William FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel; John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, another friend of the King; Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland, who served Henry VIII loyally in the North; Thomas Manners, Earl of Rutland, a cousin and great favorite of the King; and George Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon, another favorite of Henry’s.

The rest of the peers were barons: George Brooke, Lord Cobham, a strong supporter of the King, whose sister Elizabeth was married to Thomas Wyatt, and whose wife was perhaps the “Nan Cobham” who had given evidence against Anne Boleyn; Henry Parker, Lord Morley, the friend of Lady Mary, come to sit in judgment on his son-in-law Rochford,
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and possibly motivated by righteous anger on behalf of his daughter Jane; William, Lord Sandys, the Lord Chamberlain, another long-standing favorite of the King; Thomas Fiennes, Lord Dacre of the South, who had only narrowly escaped being convicted of treason two years earlier, and was not likely to put his neck at risk a second time; John Tuchet, Lord Audley; Thomas West, Lord de la Warr; Arundel’s son, Henry FitzAlan, Lord Maltravers; Edward, Lord Grey of Powys, and Thomas Stanley, Lord Monteagle, both of whom were married to daughters of the Duke of Suffolk, the King’s brother-in-law and close friend; Edward Fiennes de Clinton, Lord Clinton, who was married to Elizabeth Blount, former mistress to the King and mother of his son, the Duke of Richmond; Andrew, Lord Windsor, who was very much a King’s man; Thomas, Lord Wentworth, whose aunt, Margaret Wentworth, was Jane Seymour’s mother; Thomas, Lord Burgh; and John, Lord Mordaunt, a career courtier who served on several treason trials.
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