The Final Hours Of Anne Boleyn: The Most Shocking Execution In English History
It’s the early hours of the 19th of May, 1536. Four days ago, Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, was tried here at the Tower of London and found guilty of adultery, incest, and even worse, treason against her husband, King Henry VIII. She’s been condemned to die. It’s a stark reminder of just how quickly her star has fallen.
I’m historian Tracy Borman. Over three nights, I’m exploring the extraordinary story of Anne’s downfall. Look at that, it’s just exquisite. It’s wonderful, isn’t it? It all took place in the space of just 17 days. I studied Anne for most of my life. I think I know her well, but I’m going to do something that I’ve never done before.
I’m going to follow in Anne’s footsteps, take the journey with her hour by hour, join the three most important days from Queen to outcast to find the truth behind her downfall. That is incredible. Can I just put it in my pocket? I’ve already seen how Anne was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death. Now, in this final episode, I’m focusing on the darkest day of all, the 19th of May, 1536, the day Anne is set to be executed.
I’ll discover the order issued by King Henry VIII, which decides Anne’s fate. It’s sad that behind this very bureaucratic document is a real person who’s going to suffer a butchering, basically. Will the King grant her a last-minute reprieve? Or is this Anne’s final day? It’s the dead of night. Nearly all of London is asleep, but not quite everyone.
At the Tower of London, the Yeoman Warders are patrolling the grounds, their prisoners secure inside. Unsurprisingly, in the Queen’s apartments, where Anne is spending her final hours, everyone is awake. Although it’s just a few hours until Anne’s execution, she seems remarkably composed, even cheerful, laughing and joking with her ladies.
The Constable of the Tower, Sir William Kingston, reports that Anne’s mood swing between despair and hope. He writes, “I have seen many men and also women executed, and all they have been in great sorrow. But to my knowledge, this lady has much joy and pleasure in death.” Maybe Anne is thinking that King Henry will intervene and save her at the 11th hour.
Or perhaps, she’s just resigned to her fate. After all, her marriage is over. She’s lost all of her power and status. Her family has abandoned her, and she’s been found guilty of the most evil of crimes. Perhaps, she just wants to be put out of her misery. At his base in Austin Friars, the man who is determined Anne will die today is sleeping, the King’s chief advisor, Thomas Cromwell.
Just 3 years ago, Cromwell masterminded Henry’s marriage to Anne, hoping she’d give the King a son, but she hasn’t. Cromwell and Anne are now at loggerheads, giving him the perfect opportunity to get rid of her. Now, the final part of his plan is falling into place. Two days ago, the five men accused of adultery with Anne, including her own brother George, have been taken from inside the Tower up to Tower Hill, where they were executed in full public view.
Anne, on the other hand, is to have a private execution. She’s to be the first person to be officially executed inside the walls of the Tower. This means that they had to build a scaffold, and quickly. But why the need for such a rush? Cromwell wants to get Anne’s execution over and done with as quickly as possible, before the notoriously fickle King Henry changes his mind.
A short distance up river, at Whitehall, the King is sleeping in his private apartments. In a matter of hours, he hopes to be rid of Anne, the woman who has failed to give him a son. As King, he needs a male heir to continue the Tudor dynasty. Already waiting in the wings is the woman he hopes will replace Anne and provide him with a son, Jane Seymour, Anne’s former lady-in-waiting.
Over the last few weeks, Thomas Cromwell has been working tirelessly to make it happen. He’s managed to get Anne sentenced to death on trumped-up charges. Now, he has to make sure her daughter Elizabeth can never become Queen. But to do this, he must wipe the marriage from existence. It’s vital for Henry to have the marriage annulled. A divorce won’t do.
He wants it never to have happened in the first place. Nothing must get in the way of the male heir Henry now hopes to have with Jane Seymour. Three days ago, Cromwell persuaded the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, to write off Henry’s marriage to Anne. Even though Cranmer has serious doubts about Anne’s guilt, he agrees to Cromwell’s request, perhaps to save his own skin.
He says, “On the basis of some true, just, and legitimate causes recently brought to our attention, the marriage was null and void and had always been so, which made Anne’s daughter, henceforth to be known as the Lady Elizabeth, a bastard.” This is yet another blow for Anne, because it means that her precious daughter Elizabeth is now technically illegitimate and has no right to the throne.
It seems that Anne’s legacy will be completely destroyed. Today, 2 miles up river from the Tower, at Lambeth Palace, Thomas Cranmer, like Anne Boleyn, is unable to sleep. Cranmer is a firm supporter of Anne. Cranmer’s mind must be spinning. In a way, he knows Anne better than anyone, because he’s acted as her personal confessor. Anne is deeply religious.
If she had done anything wrong, she would have told Cranmer in order to seek forgiveness and be received into heaven. But even though he granted the annulment of her marriage to Henry, Cranmer is astounded at the charges. It’s interesting, because the fact that Cranmer is so shocked and distraught by the allegations must mean he believes her to be innocent.
In fact, he told Henry he is amazed, for I never had a better opinion of woman. He must be desperately hoping that the king will change his mind, but he’s also painfully aware that time is quickly running out. As Cranmer paces around his garden, a close friend, Alexander Ales, arrives by boat. Ales is in an agitated state.
He tells Cranmer that he’s been awoken by a terrible nightmare and recounts it all in gory detail. It was revealed to me, whether I was asleep or awake and no naught, the queen’s neck, after her head had been cut off. And this so plainly that I could count the nerves, the veins, and the arteries. Cranmer believes this is a premonition.
Ales has not left home for days, so how could he know Anne is about to be executed? He later recounted that Cranmer looked up to the sky and declared, “She who has been the queen of England upon earth will today become a queen in heaven.” He is now utterly overcome with grief. Despite believing Anne is innocent, Cranmer is losing hope that the king will grant a reprieve and save her from the sword.
Time is running out. Anne is just 6 hours from execution. It’s dawn. Anne is in the queen’s apartments at the Tower. She’s with her chaplain, receiving her final communion. But this is a repeat of what happened yesterday, when Anne was supposed to be executed. Yet it was postponed, not once,
but twice. Why is this? One theory is that Cromwell is worried there will be protests at the Tower in support of Anne. People are starting to mutter against the guilty verdict. And Cromwell needs time to clear them out of the Tower before the execution can take place. This is torture for Anne. They say hope is harder to deal with than despair.
And perhaps growing within her is a notion that the king is having second thoughts. Anne, still in her apartments, is preparing to face the world for the last time. Her distraught ladies-in-waiting dress her. Hi, Larry. Hi, Tracy. She carefully chooses every item of clothing to send a message to those watching her execution. And Larry Lynn is a world expert in Tudor clothing.
She’s reconstructing what Anne wore. Well, we know that she was wearing a red kirtle, so that’s what we understand to be a an underdress. A red kirtle was quite a sort of uh normal thing to wear in the 16th century. Peasants wore red scarlet petticoats. So, it may be that she was wearing it to appear humble, so she’s sort of one of the people.
But it also plays to that idea of humility, and that’s certainly what she wants to project now. Educated on the continent, Anne is famed for her flamboyant French style of dress. She usually wears rich, colorful, imported fabrics. But today, for her outer gown, she chooses something much more subdued. I think the choice of the the gray or the black fabric is quite important, because that is the color um of piety and sobriety at court.
It’s the color of the officials and the lawyers. All play to Anne trying to be quite meek, which is not what she’s known to be otherwise. I think what she’s actually doing here is dressing down. She’s using everything possible in her armory to try and get out of this. Anne is guilty of treason, punishable by death. But the jury didn’t specify the method of execution.
A queen of England has never before been sentenced to death, so this is new territory. Deep within the National Archives lies an extraordinary and rarely seen document that provides a glimpse into how the decision was made. Tucked away inside a 500-year-old book is something truly remarkable, a record of the execution warrant for Anne Boleyn.
It sets out how she’s to die. The penalty under the treason act that this all would have proceeded under for a woman would be to be burned, and for a man to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Burning is a slow, excruciating death. Beheading isn’t that much better, at least with an axe, because axes can be very blunt.
It can take several blows to sever a head. But the document reveals that for Anne, Henry chooses an alternative method of execution. So, they’ve made a record, and that’s where he says, “We, moved by pity, not wishing the Lady Anne to be burned, direct the Constable of the Tower that on the green within the Tower of London, the said Anne shall have her head cut from her body.
” Because, of course, Henry orders a a sword rather than an axe, the axe being blunter, more kind of brutal form of death. So, that that wording could be significant, cut away, not chopped away. Yeah, I think I think this is, again, some sense of of mercy in the king’s involvement in the process. When Anne is told of Henry’s decision that she’s to be beheaded by sword, she shows her dark sense of humor.
She puts her hands around her neck um and laughs heartily and says it’ll be a swift death because I have just a little neck. These instructions for Anne’s execution were sent to the Tower just yesterday, giving Sir William Kingston, the Constable of the Tower, little time to prepare. What this document does make very, very clear is the unprecedented nature of all of this.
That a queen of England has never been executed before. They have to get it right. And worryingly, for any future wives, now they know exactly what to do next time. Beheading by sword is a French method of execution. So, the king has summoned an expert swordsman from Saint-Omer in France. He arrived at the Tower yesterday, and soon he will have the daunting task of being the first man to execute an English queen.
There’s something quite intriguing about the timeframe here, because somebody would have had to have gone to summon the swordsman. You can’t just pick up a phone in those days, and obviously travel is a lot slower. So, they would have traveled down from London to Dover by horse, and then, of course, sailed over the Channel and on to Calais, and from there, it was a bit further on to Saint-Omer, where the swordsman was.
That would have taken at least 3 days, and then, of course, at least 3 days for the swordsman to travel back. That’s 6 days in total, at least. This is a damning piece of evidence because what it means is that, incredibly, the swordsman must have been summoned before the verdict of Anne’s trial was delivered just 5 days ago.
It was a foregone conclusion. Whatever Anne does or says, it seems she’s going to be executed. This is meant to be a private execution to preserve Anne’s dignity and to prevent anyone from trying to rescue her. So, the public were ordered to leave the Tower. But the gates have accidentally been left open. So, now crowds are gathering in anticipation of the execution.
A thousand people have come in, people of all ranks of society to witness what is about to unfold here on the scaffold. It seems incredible to think that people would willingly choose to come and watch as a person’s head is severed from their body, but it’s like the grim fascination we have with crime dramas or watching as the latest celebrity is shamed by the media. Only this is much worse.
Among those gathering are men from the King’s Council, including Anne’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. There is also the King’s illegitimate son, the Duke of Richmond. Well, he’s there perhaps as a reminder to Anne that the King has no trouble fathering sons. Then, the architect of Anne’s downfall arrives. Thomas Cromwell.
He’s about to witness the concluding part of his plan to dispose of Anne Boleyn. Everything is in place for the execution. Sir William Kingston now heads for the Queen’s apartments to summon Anne. Time is running out. At the Tower of London, in the Queen’s apartments, Anne Boleyn is dressed and waiting to be called.
It’s the job of the Constable of the Tower, Sir William Kingston, to make sure Anne’s execution all goes to plan. With the time approaching, he heads over to collect her. Kingston arrives at Anne’s door. You can only imagine what she’s thinking at this moment because on the one hand, it’s what she’s been dreading all along.
Perhaps she is hoping that, against the odds, Kingston has come with a message from the King informing her that he has come to his senses and she will be pardoned. Well, if she does hope that, it’s soon shattered when Kingston tells her to make ready for her execution. Anne replies calmly, “Acquit yourself of your charge, for I have long been prepared.
” It seems extraordinary that Anne is so ready to meet her fate, and it’s a real testament to her strength of character. Her great enemy, Ambassador Chapuys, once remarked, “She was braver than a lion.” His words were never more true than on this, the last day of her life. Upriver, at his palace in Whitehall, is the one man who can put a stop to the execution.
The King. But there’s no sign he’s about to change his mind. As he’s dressed by his gentlemen, he’s listening out for cannon fire from the Tower of London. This will signal that Anne is dead and he’s free to remarry. Anne is about to be led by Sir William Kingston from the sanctuary of her apartments through Coldharbour Gate to the scaffold on the other side of the White Tower, where she’ll be executed.
She is to be accompanied by her four ladies-in-waiting. There’s a terrible irony to all of this. The last time Anne was here was just 3 years ago for her coronation celebrations. Her story has come full circle. Anne, her ladies, and Kingston are met by a procession of 200 yeomen of the King’s Guard, followed by the officers of the Tower and her chaplain.
She’s escorted the short distance towards the Coldharbour Gate. She knows that what awaits her around that corner is the scaffold. The massed spectators are desperate to get a glimpse of the fallen Queen. And she also sees for the first time the scaffold where she’s to be beheaded. There’s a hushed silence as she walks through the crowds.
People comment that she’s never looked more beautiful. Even now, with time running out, Anne is looking all around her as if hoping to see a messenger from the King carrying a royal pardon. But there is no messenger. Among the crowd, Anne sees familiar faces. These are the men who once raised her to be Queen, her own uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, and the architect of her downfall, Thomas Cromwell.
They are here to make sure Anne’s life and her powerful influence are destroyed permanently. Kingston helps Anne to mount the steps onto the scaffold. She turns to her ladies, who are weeping, and comforts them. And then she sees the executioner, who’s looking apprehensive at what he is about to do.
What Anne doesn’t see is the sword, which is hidden underneath the straw so as not to alarm her. Anne asks Kingston for permission to speak. She doesn’t look like someone who’s about to be executed. Eyewitnesses say that she’s smiling, and it’s with such a cheerful countenance that she turns to address the crowds. “Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, for according to the law and by the law, I am judged to die.
Therefore, I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything that whereof I am accused and condemned to die. But I pray, God save the King and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never. And to me, he was ever a good, a gentle, and sovereign lord.
And thus, I take my leave of the world and of you all. And I heartily desire you all to pray for me. Oh Lord, have mercy on me. To God I commend my soul. Anne’s words reduce many spectators to tears. Well, this is an incredibly humble speech. Perhaps not what we expect of Anne, the woman renowned for her feistiness and outspoken manner.
What she actually saying here? Well, I think she’s trying to make the king look kindly on those whom she leaves behind. None more so than that daughter, Elizabeth. Then Anne is invited to confess the truth. But instead, she replies, I know I shall have no pardon, but they shall know no more from me. She is maintaining her innocence right to the very end.
The swordsman takes off his shoes so that Anne won’t hear him approach. Anne removes her headdress. One of her ladies hands her a linen cap. She tucks her hair inside so it won’t get in the way of the sword. The executioner steps forward, kneels before Anne, and begs her forgiveness for what he’s about to do.
He asks Anne to kneel and say her prayers. The crowd falls to its knees. It’s time for the execution. The executioner picks up his sword as Anne Boleyn kneels down on the scaffold. Her eyes are bandaged. Dazed, she says, “Jesu, have pity on my soul.”
The crowd falls completely silent. The next thing to happen is that the swordsman signals to an assistant who makes a noise distracting Anne. The executioner’s hands tremble in distress. And in that moment, the executioner swings his sword twice over his head to gain momentum, and then in one strike, severs Anne’s head.
Anne’s head falls to the straw on the scaffold. Horrified eyewitnesses claim they can see her lips still moving in silent prayer. People begin to weep. The Queen of England, as she was, is dead. One of Anne’s ladies bravely picks up her head and covers it in a linen cloth, the blood still dripping from it. The other three ladies, deeply distressed and refusing to let any man touch her, pick up her body, and together they carry Anne away.
Cannons at the Tower fire out, reverberating across London, announcing that the Queen of England is dead. At Whitehall, the king hears the cannons. It’s the signal he’s been waiting for. Henry takes no time to mourn Anne’s loss, or even to celebrate it with a great feast as he had the death of his first wife, Catherine.
Instead, he boards his royal barge and travels the short distance upriver to Chelsea and into the arms of the waiting Jane Seymour. At the Tower, Anne’s body is laid to rest. Not in a coffin, but in an old arrow chest. It’s been taken from the Tower’s weapon store, which is right next to the execution site. Well, you might think there isn’t room for a body in an arrow chest, but the arrows are actually laid end to end like this.
So, it is actually quite long, but it is also narrow, so it’s quite lucky that Anne was a very slender lady. But why hasn’t anyone prepared a proper coffin? Anne was once Queen of England. It could simply be because there was no time to source a coffin. After all, Cromwell had rushed through the Queen’s execution as quickly as possible. I wonder, though, if there is another reason.
Responsibility for the execution and all of the arrangements for it lies with William Kingston, Constable of the Tower. Is it possible that he, like Anne, didn’t really believe that Henry would go through with the execution? Anne’s body is brought here to the Tower Chapel, where it’s stripped of her jewelry and her expensive but blood-stained clothes.
Incredibly, Henry will pass the jewels and clothing of his dead wife onto his new wife, Jane Seymour. At midday, 3 hours after Anne’s execution, she’s buried in the chapel next to her brother, George. Every year, on May the 19th, the anniversary of Anne’s execution, an anonymous bouquet of red roses is delivered to the Tower.
They are to be laid just over there on the spot where Anne Boleyn was buried in 1536. It’s touching to think that Anne is still remembered almost 500 years after her death. In executing Anne, Thomas Cromwell has pulled off a massive coup. He has got rid not just of the Queen of England, but of all her faction.
Cromwell goes on to become the most powerful man in England after the king. But, as Anne Boleyn learned, no one is safe in the Tudor court. In a dramatic twist of fate, he falls from Henry’s favor. Four years later, he, too, is executed. There’s a final postscript to this story. After Anne’s execution, Henry and Cromwell tried to erase her from history.
Her letters and portraits were destroyed, and her initials and emblems that once adorned the royal palaces were removed. But there was one thing they couldn’t get rid of. Despite being Queen for just 3 years, Anne left England one of its greatest legacies. 22 years later, against all odds, her daughter was crowned Queen Elizabeth I.
She ruled for 44 years. At the Prime Minister’s country home, Chequers, is evidence that Elizabeth never forgot her mother. We now find ourselves in the great parlor. Curator Rodney Melville is giving me exclusive access to a ring worn by the queen that contains a secret. So, here we have Elizabeth’s ring. Oh, this is just incredible to see.
If you lift the E in diamonds, it’s so delicate. That’s incredible. There is Anne with her very characteristic French hood. And then, facing her, Elizabeth, her daughter. Look at that, it’s just exquisite. It’s wonderful, isn’t it? And the face shape, you can see um Anne had a very long, slim face, exactly as is shown here. But it’s just so intricate, isn’t it? It’s absolutely beautiful.
What a piece of history. I have written about this. I’ve never seen it in the flesh. As a historian, it doesn’t get much better than seeing this. So, thank you. Elizabeth kept her feelings about her mother private, but she cherished this ring. It’s said it was removed from her finger on her deathbed. If you look at the portrait of Anne Berlin, right at the bottom, there is a diamond.
Whereas, Elizabeth the First only has a ruby. Huh. So, her mother’s jewels are superior. Is this Elizabeth kind of deferring to to Anne? Very possibly. That’s remarkable. Yet another show of of respect, of reverence even, for her late mother. I think so. There’s one other intriguing aspect of this ring. Elizabeth wore pearls a lot.
It symbolized her her virginity, her her purity. And I think it’s quite interesting that this ring is fashioned from mother-of-pearl. That idea of purity, of innocence, and Anne is there. Elizabeth was said to rarely speak of her mother, but this ring speaks for her. It seems to show what Elizabeth really felt about the woman condemned as an adulteress.
What it also very, very clearly illustrates is Anne’s most valuable legacy, her daughter, of course, who was a disappointment at the time of her birth and really was the beginning of the end for Anne. But little did Henry know that it was his reviled second wife who would give him his most successful child. To think that this was on Elizabeth’s finger.
Yes. It’s amazing. When I set out on this journey to follow three very significant days at the end of Anne’s life, I had so many assumptions about Anne and her story. But re-examining the evidence in real time, rather than looking back, has shattered those ideas. Stripping back the layers of rumor and downright lies that have surrounded Anne for 500 years makes it clear just how groundless the case against her was and how courageous she was in the face of it all.
Well, living Anne’s story with her day by day and hour by hour has brought home to me just how deeply shocking it was to execute a queen of England. It’s also made me realize that most people didn’t really believe Henry VIII would go through with it, above all, Anne herself.
