The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn (54 page)

What is certain is that Anne’s attendants were made to strip the body of its expensive—and probably bloodstained—garments and jewelry, which were then distributed to the Tower officials as perquisites, as was customary after executions.
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Later, these items would be redeemed by the King for a substantial sum. Possibly Henry did not want people cherishing mementoes of his dead wife. The sumptuary laws banned the lower orders from wearing such attire anyway—rich materials, furs, and embroideries being reserved for those of high rank—so cash was probably very welcome in exchange.

Lancelot de Carles states that Anne was buried beside her brother; his evidence may not be entirely accurate, as will be seen, and the authorities surely would not have thought it fitting for an incestuous brother and sister to lie together in death. Other evidence suggests they were buried some distance apart, before the altar, and as theirs were the first bodies to be buried in the chancel, there was plenty of space. “God provided for her corpse sacred burial, even in [a] place as it were consecrate to innocence,” pronounced George Wyatt.

After the burial, observed Lancelot de Carles, Anne’s ladies “were as sheep without a shepherd,” but they would not be left in that state for long because “already the King has taken a fancy to a choice lady. Other great things are predicted, of which the people are assured. If I see them take place, I will let you know, for never were such news. People say it is the year of marvels.”

“The Queen,” Husee reported only hours afterward, “suffered with sword this day … and died boldly.”
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Referring to all who had died, he added, “Jesu take them to His mercy.” Even Cromwell was impressed by Anne’s bravery, and that of Rochford, and “greatly praised the intelligence, wit, and courage of the Concubine and her brother.”
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“She had reigned as queen three years lacking fourteen days, from her coronation to her death,” Wriothesley observed. The Imperialist witness believed that he had “seen the prophecy of Merlin fulfilled.”
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Sometime after Anne’s execution, in his prison in the Byward Tower, a distressed Thomas Wyatt again put pen to paper to write of the woman he had once passionately courted, his verses an outpouring of woe at the unforeseen twists of fortune to which all human beings were subject, Anne more dramatically than most. It was a popular contemporary
theme, and Wyatt—who had been so closely caught up in this tragedy—expressed it very movingly, and captured the horror of Anne’s situation:

Writing on the day of her execution, Anne’s chaplain, Matthew Parker, was in no doubt that her soul was in “blessed felicity with God.” Her body, however, had been consigned to oblivion, for no provision was made for any stone or memorial tablet to mark the place where she lay.
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When Death Hath Played His Part

A
s Anne’s head fell in the straw, with her body tumbling beside it, a signal was given and the guns on the Tower wharf were fired, announcing her end to the world. She had been one of the most powerful women ever to occupy the consort’s throne, yet her rapid and cataclysmic overthrow illustrates just how fragile was the balance of power at the English court.

There had been no precedent for the trial and execution of an English queen, and Anne Boleyn’s fall, with its attendant purge of the Privy Chamber, had been nothing less than sensational. At a stroke, Cromwell had eliminated or neutralized a whole faction, and many were touched by the tragedy.

Anne had never been popular; the common people always disliked her. Just hours after her execution, Chapuys wrote from London, “I cannot well describe the great joy the inhabitants of this city have lately experienced and manifested at the fall and ruin of the Concubine.” He added that many were elated at the prospect of Lady Mary—whom they still regarded as the King’s lawful heiress—being restored to favor,
¹
for Anne’s enmity toward her had been well known.

It is evident from Chapuys’s dispatch that, at the time of Anne’s beheading, people were ready to believe anything of her. The parson of Freshwater, Dorset, who was hostile to Henry VIII, was nevertheless in
no doubt of her guilt: “Lo, whilst the King and his council were busy to put down abbeys and pull away the right of Holy Church, he was made a cuckold at home.”
²
Nicholas Shaxton Bishop of Salisbury, spoke for many when he wrote to Cromwell on May 23 of “the late Queen,” declaring that she had “sore slandered” the cause of reform, while “that vice that she was found faulty of hath not the like in Christendom.” The bishop did, in charity, pray that God would have mercy on her soul and pardon all her offenses.
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It was a credulous and superstitious age. One of Cromwell’s agents, John de Ponti, reported that the Master of Maison Dieu at Dover was telling people “that the day before the Lady Anne Boleyn was beheaded, the tapers that stood about Queen Katherine’s sepulcher kindled of themselves; and after Matins were done to
Deo gratias
, the said tapers quenched of themselves.” The King is said to have “sent thirty men to [Peterborough] abbey,” and they could see for themselves that “it was true of this light continuing from day to day.”
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The ignorant folk who observed this phenomenon would have regarded it as a sign that the Deity approved of the King’s punishment of the evil woman who had supplanted his true wife—Katherine of Aragon’s cause had not been so soon forgotten.

In Catholic Europe, most people shared the view of the Emperor that, in destroying Anne, God had revealed His will. Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, one of Charles V’s chief advisers, wrote rather callously to Chapuys that the news was good music to his ears, and a subject for joyful mirth.
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The papal nuncio in Lyons believed the Queen’s fate to be the judgment of the Almighty. At the court of James V in Edinburgh, Lord William Howard, Anne’s uncle, was shocked to see everyone so jubilant, and wrote urging Cromwell to tell him “the truth” so he should know how to deal with this.
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A week after the execution, the merchant and diplomat, Edmund Harvel, wrote from Venice to Dr. Thomas Starkey:

These were comparatively conservative reactions, for ever wilder rumors were now proliferating. Even Chapuys, the archdetractor of reform, did not swallow whole all he heard: “Although the matter is not much to be relied on, many think that most of the new bishops
ont d’avoir leur Sainte Martin
[meaning, perhaps, that there was a globe of fire suspended above their heads, as appeared in popular representations of the saint], because, having persuaded the Concubine that she had no need to confess, she grew more audacious in vice; and moreover, they persuaded her that, according to the said [Lutheran] sect, it was lawful to seek aid elsewhere, even from her own relations, when her husband was not capable of satisfying her.” Reflecting on Anne’s fate, the ambassador recalled how “the Concubine, before her marriage with the King, said, to increase his love, that there was a prophecy that about this time, a queen of England would be burnt, but, to please the King, she [said she] did not care. After her marriage she boasted that the events mentioned in the prophecy had already been accomplished, and yet she was not condemned. But they might well have said to her, as was said to Caesar, ‘The ides have come, but not gone.’”
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In the Privy Chamber, Sir Francis Bryan and his “fellows” rejoiced at Anne’s fall.
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Yet after her execution, increasingly, there emerged a strong sense that justice had been subverted, while reports of her dignity and courage on the scaffold gradually won her the latent admiration and sympathy of some who had previously reviled her. Even the unsympathetic George Constantine had “never heard of queens that they should be thus handled, but I promise you there was much muttering of Queen Anne’s death.” Alexander Aless, whose landlord had witnessed her execution, wrote that she had “exhibited such constancy, patience, and faith toward God that all the spectators, even her enemies and those persons who had previously rejoiced at her misfortune, testified and proclaimed her innocence and chastity.”

Aless’s landlord invited some of those spectators to dinner a day or so
later, and when these guests “were thus talking at table in my hearing, without being questioned, they themselves answered the accusations brought against the Queen. It is no new thing, said they, that the King’s chamberlains should dance with the ladies in the bedchamber. Nor can any proof of adultery be collected from the fact that the Queen’s brother took her by the hand and led her into the dance among the other ladies, or handed her to another. It is a usual custom throughout the whole of Britain that ladies married and unmarried, even the most coy, kiss not only a brother, but any honorable person, even in public. It is also the custom with young women to write to their near relatives when they become pregnant, in order to receive their congratulations. The King also was most anxious for an heir, and longed for nothing more than to know that the Queen was pregnant.” Some of these views must have been those of people associated with the court, who knew how things were conducted there.

“From such arguments as these, they affirmed that no probable suspicion of adultery could be collected, and that therefore there must have been some other reason which moved the King.” Aless thought it could have been “the desire for an heir” and his being “further strengthened in his desire for a new marriage by perceiving that all the male children to which the Queen gave birth came into this world dead. And further, the King was angry with the Queen because of the want of success which attended the embassy, which, at her instigation, he had dispatched into Germany.” People were also speculating that Henry had gotten rid of Anne out of fear that the Emperor, the Pope, and the Catholic princes of Europe would band together against him, and because he was “in danger from them on account of the change in religion.” There followed much speculation on what would happen to religion in England now that Anne was gone.

While Aless and his landlord’s guests were talking, “a servant of Cromwell’s arrived from the court and, sitting down at the table, asked the landlord if he could let him have something to eat, for he was exceedingly hungry. While the food was being got ready, the other guests asked him what were his news? Where was the King? What was he doing? Was he sorry for the Queen? He answered by asking why should he be sorry for her? She had already betrayed him in secrecy, so now was he openly insulting her. For just as she, while the King was oppressed with the heavy
cares of state, was enjoying herself with others, so he, while the Queen was being beheaded, was enjoying himself with another woman.”

His words provoked outrage. “While we were all astonished and ordered him to hold his tongue, for he was saying what no one would believe, and he would bring himself into peril if others heard him talking thus, he answered, ‘You yourselves will speedily learn from other persons the truth of what I have been saying.’” He was referring to the fact that the King was already betrothed to Jane Seymour. The landlord intervened, saying it was not fitting to discuss such things, and that he himself would “go carefully into these matters” when he next went to court. Cromwell’s servant retorted that “he had the King’s orders that none but that the councillors and secretaries should be admitted, and that the gate of the country house in which the King had secluded himself should be kept shut.” Undeterred, the landlord did go to court, and on his return he was able to tell Aless that the King would shortly afterward be married.