The Execution of Anne Boleyn, A Guest Post by Lissa Bryan

The Execution of Anne Boleyn, A Guest Post by Lissa Bryan

At nine AM, Anne Boleyn left the royal apartments where she had been imprisoned. She walked through the Coldharbour Gate and around the northwest corner of the White Tower to the scaffold.

She carried a prayer book in her hands and read from it as she walked, but she kept glancing back over her shoulder. Was she looking for a messenger, riding into the Tower with a pardon in his hand? It’s possible that Anne expected - up to the very last instant - that Henry would relent and pardon her, and send her to a nunnery, as Cranmer may have promised to get her to sign the annulment papers.

That morning, Anne Boleyn wore a gable hood. Likely she had chosen it not for fashion’s sake, but because it was a purely English style. Over her gown, she wore an ermine mantle. By all accounts, it was a beautiful, warm spring morning, so she wasn’t wearing the cloak to ward off the chill, but to emphasize her royal status. Her choice of clothing stated that despite the fact the king had annulled their marriage and she'd been asked to surrender her crown, Anne Boleyn was still an anointed Queen of England.

She reached the scaffold and found a large crowd waiting for her around it, over a thousand people - some sources say two thousand. As she walked, she handed out coins from a purse of £20 to the people who appeared to be in need . They were her final alms, or charity, given in the traditional expectation the recipients would pray for her soul.

The two coin purses she carried had been sent by the council. She emptied the alms purse before she reached the steps of the scaffold. The second purse had a grimmer purpose.

The scaffold was bedecked with dozens of yards of expensive black fabric, as suited her queenly rank - until the very last moment, the niceties must be observed. Swathed like macabre parade float, it was built high so that all who were present could see the spectacle. Straw to soak up her blood thickly covered the floor. Toward the front and center was a velvet cushion laid on the floor.

Anne climbed the few steps to the straw-strewn stage and turned to face the thousands who had gathered on the Green to watch her die. A sea of faces that must have stretched back to the gray stone walls.

She had now been awake for over forty-eight hours, but she seemed to show no sign of her exhaustion. The Bishop of Riez, one of the “foreigners” whose attendance Henry hoped to avoid, wrote later that she had never looked more beautiful.

In her final moments, Anne Boleyn was truly worthy of the title of queen, regal and brave. This was her last duty as a courtier, as a queen, as a daughter of the nobility. It was a point of pride among the nobility to "die well," and she held her head high.

She had been raised from birth to believe that a Christian does not fear death. If she had seemed at all daunted, it would have been seen as a sign her faith was weak or that she was afraid to face her God with a sinful soul.

Her ladies, on the other hand, were a sobbing mess. One observer described them as weeping as though they were “bereft of souls,” or like the living damned. It’s interesting, because Anne had complained bitterly about being served in her final two weeks by women known to be hostile to her and who were recorded as having treated her with disdain and disrespect during her first few days in the Tower.

Some assume that because of the multiple descriptions of her ladies wracked with grief that Henry relented after she was convicted and allowed Anne’s friends to be with the queen in her final days, but no mention is made in the records of such a change.

Did these ladies come to care for Anne in those two weeks? Anne is often portrayed as a termagant, unable to get along with members of her own sex due to vanity or jealousy, but whether or not the ladies had been switched out, they wept as they watched Anne’s final moments. The queen is said to have comforted them with an “untroubled countenance.”

Many of the highest nobles in the land were present in the crowd, people Anne had seen every day at court. However, none of Anne’s family, save her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk and her aunt, Lady Shelton, were present.

Henry FitzRoy, the king’s bastard son, also stood in the crowd. Only days before, his father had hugged him and wept that FitzRoy should praise God he and his half-sister Mary had been preserved from that “venomous whore” who wished to poison them. FitzRoy had sat on the jury which condemned Anne to the scaffold, and now he was here as his father’s witness.

The executioner, a French swordsman, knelt before her to beg Anne for forgiveness for the task he had to do. Historian Alison Weir notes that for him to have reached London in time for the execution, he would have to have been summoned before Anne’s trial even began.

Anne replied in French, saying the expected words granting him forgiveness. And then she handed him the second purse, containing a gratuity that was traditionally meant to ensure the executioner would do his duty well and provide a swift and merciful death. Through the council, the king had sent his wife money so she could tip the man who would kill her.

Anne asked that he not perform his office until she said what she needed to say. One can almost feel the tense intake of breath that must have swept through the court officials present. Would Anne defy convention and swear her innocence before this crowd?

Kingston had sent a note to Cromwell, fretting about the possibility. They had failed to keep the crowd small, nor had they been able to prevent members of foreign courts from attending. Anne Boleyn’s final words would spread far and wide.

But Anne kept her dignity and poise. Her speech was the utterly conventional final words of a condemned noble of the day, asking for pardon from sins, praising the king as a good and gentle prince, and asking the onlookers to pray for her. Kingston must have given a silent sigh of relief as she handed away her prayer book.

According to later tradition, Margaret Wyatt was the recipient of her prayer book inscribed with the words "Remember me when you do pray / that hope doth lead from day to day." It was signed Anne Boleyn. Not "Anne the queen" or even "Anne Pembroke." It was Anne Boleyn, as she had come into this world, and would now leave it.

She began to disrobe. The clothing she wore to the scaffold traditionally belonged to the headsman, and it would be taken off and laid aside for him to collect later.

Off came her ermine-trimmed cloak, necklace, and hood - which she had to remove herself, because her ladies were trembling too badly. Her gray damask gown was unlaced. Perhaps there was another intake of breath when her scarlet kirtle was revealed. Scarlet, the color of innocent martyrs. Anne had always known how to make a statement without saying a word.

Her hair was carefully tucked up into a white cap, leaving her long, slender neck bare. When her hands dropped back down, it was done ... she was ready to die, stripped of all worldly ornament and glory.

Anne walked over to the cushion and knelt on it, and took a moment to carefully tuck her kirtle around her feet to avoid immodestly exposing her ankles. Accounts vary as to whether she was blindfolded. I don’t think she was.

She bowed her head and began to pray.

And then, something remarkable happened. One by one, the thousands of people in the audience dropped to their knees in the grass, and began to pray with her. Some openly wept. Only FitzRoy and Charles Brandon remained standing, likely staring around with incredulity at what was happening. Such a thing is reported at no other execution of the era. I have a wistful hope that Anne saw it and was touched by their tribute.

Anne prayed aloud, repeating the same phrase over and over, asking God to receive her soul into heaven, a soul which was to leave her body within moments.

The executioner must have made a sound as he moved toward her because she turned her head to look up at him with those beautiful black eyes that had once captivated a king. They must have welled with fear. How could they not?

He froze. Anne bowed her head and returned to her prayers, but he knew she was hyper-aware of his every move.

The executioner was kind. He turned toward the stairs and called, “Bring me my sword!”

Anne’s head turned to watch the steps. She may have been expecting a boy to carry up a pardon scroll instead of a blade. Dramatic, last-second pardons were Henry's style.

But at the moment her head turned, the Swordsman of Calais swept up the sword that had been hidden in the straw. A last mercy: she didn’t have to see it coming. The blade swooped down behind her line of sight, and it was over.

The instant her head fell to the straw-covered boards, the cannons on top of the Tower walls boomed to announce to London that Anne Boleyn was dead. When they heard the sound, some at court - like Cranmer - wept. Her husband, waiting in the woods, spurred his horse and set off for Jane Seymour’s house to celebrate. They were given a dispensation - which Henry had to have applied for while his previous wife was still breathing - and betrothed that same afternoon.

There was still a man in the Tower, one of those accused with Anne, though never tried for the supposed crimes. Thomas Wyatt had once been in love with the beautiful woman on the scaffold. He is believed to have watched her execution from his cell in the Bell Tower, and later wrote this poem:

These bloody days have broken my heart.
My lust, my youth did them depart,
And blind desire of estate.
Who hastes to climb seeks to revert.
Of truth, circa Regna tonat.
The bell tower showed me such sight
That in my head sticks day and night.
There did I learn out of a grate,
For all favour, glory, or might,
That yet circa Regna tonat.
“Around the throne, the thunder rolls.”