The Plot Against Anne Boleyn

On the surface Anne Boleyn’s judicial murder seems quite straightforward.

Henry VIII wanted to marry a new, hopefully more fertile, son producing wife, and so he ordered Thomas Cromwell to rid him of his troublesome and miscarrying second queen. Cromwell, a brilliant legal mind, soon came up with a way to dispatch Anne and a few others who were annoying him at court. By 20 May 1536, Anne and several men were dead, and Henry was engaged to Jane Seymour. Problem solved, task completed.

But was it really so simple as it appears?

First, I think the seeds of Anne’s destruction were sown by Cromwell, not the king. There is no sign the king was coming for her until just before her sudden arrest. Even after she ‘miscarried of her savior’ in January of 1536, Henry continued to fight to have Anne recognized as queen by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. They were frequently described as being “merry” together. Just two weeks before her arrest she and Henry worked together to ‘trick’ imperial ambassador Eusatace Chapuys into bowing before her as queen. Other than rumors of discontentment from Chapuys, the king appeared to be just as twitterpated with Anne as ever.

Evidence suggests that Cromwell was the true enemy of the queen. She was fighting with him over several reformist points, and especially over the dissolution of monasteries. Cromwell, either from religious fervour or the more mundane desire to fill the king’s coffers, wanted to destroy every monastery and confiscate their riches for the crown. Anne wanted some of them left intact and used to promote learning and to produce scholars who would spread the gospel throughout England. Anne had already threatened Cromwell; according to Chapuys the queen had told Cromwell that she “would like to see his head off his shoulders” for his sass. She had made him, could she really undo him?

On the first Sunday of April that year Anne went on the attack against Cromwell. Her almoner (the chaplain who advised her and distributed charity in her name), John Skip, gave a sermon in the King’s chapel “on the text Quis ex vobis arguet me de peccato? defending the clergy from their defamers … He insisted upon the example of Ahasuerus, who was moved by a wicked minister to destroy the Jews. He urged that a King’s councillor ought to take good heed what advice he gave in altering ancient things, and that no people wished to take away the ceremonies of the Church, such as holy water, holy bread, &c. That alterations ought not to be made except in cases of necessity.” Skip also “insisted on the need of a King being wise in himself, and resisting evil counsellors who tempted him to ignoble actions.”

The evil counsellor, the Haman to the king’s Ahasuerus and the queen’s Ester, was obviously Cromwell. The sermon was a warning to Cromwell he’d better stop his evil advice or Ester would stop him. Cromwell had to either change his plans or destroy the queen before she could destroy him. Rather than back down about the need for religious structure in England, Cromwell leagued with Jane Seymour’s brothers and the Catholic faction of the court to bring down Anne Boleyn.

Then came Anne’s slip of the tongue to Henry Norris regarding dead men’s shoes. On 29 April 1536 the queen asked Henry Norris, who was a groom of the stool and engaged to her cousin Madge Shelton, when he planned to wed. Norris hedged that he would wait just a bit longer. This irritated Anne. In her anger she told him he was looking for “dead men’s shoes, for if ought came to the King but good, you would look to have me” (Walker, 2002:21). This was a major blunder. It was treason to even think about the death of the King, let alone to talk about what a new romance after his demise. Anne knew almost immediately that she had said something dangerous. She sent Norris to John Skyp to swear to her chaplain that she was faithful to the King, or “a good woman”.

It didn’t help. Within hours Cromwell had brought the news to Henry. The king interrogated both Norris and the queen, but in spite of their assurances of innocence, he was convinced Anne was in a plot to kill him. Henry — paranoid from either McLeod Syndrome or chronic traumatic encephalopathy – soon convinced himself that the woman he once loved so passionately was a would-be poisoner who had slept with 100 men.

Andy Holroyde, a historian at at the University of Huddersfield, argues that “Cromwell undertook an investigation into Anne’s circle based on a prophetic warning of danger to the king.” Holroyde believes that Anne Boleyn’s determination to save most monasteries from dissolution – so that they could continue to function as charitable intuitions – was taken by Cromwell as a sign she was involved in a ‘secret treason’ of those sympathetic to the ‘shaven Madianites’ of the Roman Catholic Church. Thus, Cromwell believed it to be his patriotic and religious duty to bring Anne down.

I am not so generous to Cromwell. I think his nattering on about a prophesy that Henry was in danger from Catholic sympathizers was either a sham or the normal psychological response of self-justification. No one admits they are wrong or evil. If what they want or what they have done is against the moral code they’ve been taught, it causes cognitive dissonance, and people resolve that cognitive dissonance by spinning self-delusions (lies, in other words) about how they had no choice in their actions. Humans find a way to excuse their actions. Pope or pauper, we come up with a way to make our behavior seem ‘right’ no matter how wrong it is.

Frankly, I believe Cromwell needed  to see himself as in the right. I doubt he thought, “Right. Anne is blocking me from dissolving monasteries that will make both myself and the king rich. She’s gotta go.” He’s much more likely to have told himself that, “Anne is my enemy and trying to prevent me from dissolving the monasteries. She is clearly pro-Catholic and out to get me because I am a reformer. She must be stopped.” It is that easy for an act of great evil to be turned into a ‘needful act’ for the ‘greater good’ in someone’s mind.  It is how Thomas More excused burning his former friends alive, and how Henry VIII would later excuse himself for judicially murdering Cromwell in turn.

I cannot feel to sorry about Cromwell’s death. He made his choices, and then they unmade him.