Traitors of the Tower Read Free

guilty. Anne and the rest would maintain their innocence. But on 12 May, all the men except George Boleyn were tried in Westminster Hall and condemned to death.
    Three days later, at a show trial in the great hall of the Tower, watched by three thousand people, the Queen was tried by twenty-six lords. Her own father seems to have been among them. Never before had a queen of England been brought to trial. It caused a great stir, and much scandal.
    Anne was calm and composed. She showed no fear. She put up a strong defence, causing some to say that the trial was just an excuse to get rid of her, but it did her no good. When the lords were asked for their verdict, all said: ‘Guilty.’
    A hush fell as Anne’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, weeping, told her she was to be ‘burnt here within the Tower, or else to have thy head cut off’, as the King should decide. When Anne heard these dread words, she was calm. She said, ‘O Father, Thou who art the way, the life and the truth, know whether I have deserved this death.’ She added that she was ready to die, but very sorry that others, blameless as she, should die because of her. She swore that she had always been true to the King, but admitted that she had been a proud and jealous wife. ‘But God knows that I have not sinned against him in any other way.’ She asked only for time to prepare her soul for death.
    Anne was taken back to the Queen’s Lodgings, where she spent her last days. It is often claimed that she was held in two Tudor rooms in the Queen’s House facing Tower Green, but they date from the early 1540s, after her death. The ladies who had spied on her were sent away, and four young maids took their places. They were known to Anne, and kind to her.
    The Queen’s brother, George Boleyn, was tried after her, and he too was found guilty. All five men were beheaded on Tower Hill on 17 May. Anne was made to watch them die from a window in the Tower. That same day, with her consent, her marriage to Henry VIII was dissolved, and her daughter Elizabeth made a bastard.
    ‘Moved by pity’, the King allowed his wife the kinder death. Even before her trial, he had sent to France for an expert swordsman to behead her. This proves he had never meant to have her burned at the stake. There can be little doubt that the hope of a quick death by the sword was used to gain her consent to the ending of her marriage.
    The Queen was to die at nine o’clock on 18 May, but Cromwell needed time to make sure that a good crowd would be there to watch. Justice must be seen to be done. But the delay was torture for Anne.
    ‘Master Kingston,’ she said to the Constable, ‘I hear say I shall not die afore noon, and I am very sorry for it, for I thought then to be dead and past my pain.’ When Kingston told her there should be no pain, she said, ‘I have a little neck.’ Then she put her hand about it, laughing. Kingston wrote: ‘I have seen many men and also women put to death, and all have been in great sorrow, but this lady has much joy and pleasure in death.’
    At noon, her beheading was delayed again, until the next morning. Again, Anne begged that the King might hasten her end, as she was ready to die and feared she might lose her nerve. But her pleas fell on deaf ears.
    That day, she made her peace with God, stating that she had never offended with her body against the King. It is hard to believe she would have put her soul at risk when she was about to face her Maker.
    Anne spent much of her last night praying. At eight o’clock on the morning of 19 May 1536, attended by the four young ladies, she was led by Sir William Kingston to a new scaffold that had been built for her. Draped in black, it stood before the ‘House of Ordnance’ (now the Waterloo Barracks), facing the White Tower in the Tower of London. A thousand people had come to watch Anne die. They saw her mount the steps, wearing a rich grey robe with a white fur cape and a gable hood. She was calm and