The Sudden Arrest of Anne Boleyn

Queen Anne Boleyn was arrested on 2 May 1536.

The befuddled queen was told she was suspected of adultery (which was treason) with Henry Norris, King Henry VIII’s friend and groom of the stool, and with lowly court musician Mark Smeaton, as well as one other unidentified man, but given no other details of her “crimes”. When she had seen her husband just the day before he had given her no hint she was no longer his beloved … or that he would have her legally murdered less than three weeks later.

Anne was shocked and devastated by her arrest. She was transported to the Tower from Greenwich in broad daylight so that everyone could witness her humiliation. She had no time to mentally prepare herself for the accusations, and her actions in the Tower speak of shock and bewilderment bordering on hysteria, rather than a woman trying to cover her tracks. When Henry’s counsellors, some of who had been her friends, had brought her into the Tower and handed her over to her jailer, Master Kingston, she went to her knees before them swearing her innocence and begging them to plead with Henry on her behalf (Ives, 2004). History has a fairly good record of the things Anne said while she was in custody, since Kingston reported every word she said to Cromwell.

When she arrived at the Tower, the queen asked Kingston, “Shall I go in to a dungeon?”, to which he replied that she would be given the rooms she had stayed in during her coronation. At this news Anne’s thin veneer of calm shattered, and she cried out, “It is too good for me. Jesu, have mercy on me!” Kingston said that Anne subsequently “kneeled down weeping a great pace, and in the same sorrow fell into great laughing”. He told Cromwell that Anne fell prey to that same combination of laughter and weeping “many times” during the time she was incarcerated.

Many people have interpreted Anne’s laughter as hysteria, a manifestation of her emotional trauma. Feminist philosopher Susan Bordo, however, argues that Anne’s laughter had an additional component: “Anne also laughed – in the same conversation with Kingston – when he told her that “even the King’s poorest subject hath justice”. It’s hard to read that laughter as anything other than mocking Kingston’s naivety about the king’s “justice”. Similarly, Anne’s laughter over being housed in her coronation room can be read as a reaction to the bizarre, bitter irony of her situation” (Bordo, 2013).

Her husband seems to have been convinced (arguably by Thomas Cromwell) that Anne had slept with several men and had plotted to do away with him. Three other men besides Smeaton and Norris who would be accused of adultery with the queen — were court flirt and bad-boy Sir  Francis Weston, a man who actively disliked the Boleyn family, William Brereton, and Anne’s own brother George.

With a grand total of five presumed lovers, including the incestuous relationship with her sibling, all of Europe seemed prepared to believe any calumny of Anne. There was nothing so evil to accuse Anne of that Henry wasn’t willing to believe it. Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys recorded that, “On the evening of the day on which the Concubine was sent to the Tower, the Duke of Richmond [Henry Fitzroy] went to his father to ask his blessing, according to the English custom. The King said, in tears, that he, and his sister the Princess, ought to thank God for having escaped the hands of that woman, who had planned to poison them.” He also seemed to believe that Anne had betrayed him with more than a hundred men.

The tales of Anne’s sexual excesses grew exponentially, and soon the Imperial ambassador to the French court reported that the king had actually caught Anne in bed with the royal organist. The French ambassador’s assistant claimed that when courtiers had to tell Henry that when he went to bed at night Anne already had “her toy boys [mignons] already lined up. Her brother is by no means last in the queue. Norris and [Smeaton] would not deny that they have spent many nights with her without having to persuade her, for she herself urged them on and invited them with presents and caresses”. One Spanish tale had Anne hiding Smeaton in the sweets closet of her antechamber, to be brought out for sexual dalliance by her attendant whenever she used the code of asking for marmalade. 

When a London merchant named John Husee wrote to Lord and Lady Lisle about Anne’s trial he claimed, “Madame, I think verily if all the books and chronicles were totally revolved and to the uttermost persecuted and tried, which against women has been penned, contrived, and written since Adam and Eve, those same were, I think, verily nothing in comparison of that which hath been done and committed by Anne the Queen, which though I presume be not all things as it is now rumored, yet that which hath been by her confessed, and other offenders with her, by her own alluring, procurement, and instigation, is so abominable and detestable, that I am ashamed that any good woman should give ear thereunto. I pray God give her grace to repent while she now liveth. I think not the contrary but she and all they shall suffer.” Husee later sent a letter to Lord Lisle, declaring “Here are so many tales I cannot tell what to write. Some say young Weston shall scape, and some that none shall die but the Queen and her brother; others that Wyatt and Mr. Page are as like to suffer as the rest. If any escape, it will be young Weston, for whom importunate suit is made”.

Why were the king and his court and the crowned heads of Europe so willing to believe such insane tales about Anne? It would have been almost impossible for Anne to find the time and privacy to have sex with one man, let alone dozens. Where did this drivel come from?

Part of the reason that so many people were willing to believe such blatant malarkey about Anne was because she was already decried for ‘unfeminine’ behavior. People were already mad at her for Henry’s decision to replace his first queen, for his cruelty toward his elder daughter Mary, and for his obvious enthrallment to Anne for the years of their engagement. On top of that, Anne had the audacity to usurp the many prerogative of having intelligence, strong opinions, and the ability to be strong willed and assertive. Anne was the opposite of the idealized meek womanly woman, and thus bad. As a bad women, she was de facto presumed to be a slut. The accusation that she had been promiscuous and adulterous provided her detractors the ‘evidence’ of her sexual immorality that they had believed in all along.

Anne would maintain her innocence to the last, although Mark Smeaton would confess to adultery with her. It should be noted that the other men with whom Anne was eventually accused of adultery were of too noble lineage to be tortured and none of them ever confessed. Like Anne, they died insisting they were innocent of the crime of which they were accused. Edward Baynton, who had served as Anne’s vice-chamberlain and had now turned firmly against her in her hour of need, was so worried that the lack of evidence would “touch the King’s honour” that he suggested to Thomas Cromwell that they should interrogate Anne’s ladies to find out if there was any more incriminating information.

Anne Boleyn was arrested for adultery and treason against her husband the king, but her true crime was breaking the rules of gender conformity by refusing to subjugate herself as a meek little woman and let men control her (or at least to think that they did). She fought like a man, and was given the greatest punishment possible for it.