Queen Anne Boleyn was put on trial on 15 May 1536.
According to Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys, she was tried “by a tribunal composed of the principal lords of the kingdom … the Duke of Norfolk presiding over it .” The trial took place in the Tower rather than in Westminster Hall, “yet the trial was far from being kept secret, for upwards of 2,000 people were present.”
Chapuys wrote that the “chief charge against the concubine was her having had [sex] with her own brother and other accomplices; having actually promised, to marry Norris after the King’s demise [the dead men’s shoes scandal], her having received from, and given to, the said Norris certain medals indicative that both were bound together and aimed at the King’s death; that she had poisoned the late Queen [Katherina of Aragon], and meditated doing the same with [Princess Mary]. These charges she obstinately denied; others she answered satisfactorily enough, though she confessed having given money to [Francis Weston] and to several other gentlemen.”
What was possibly worse, from King Henry VIII’s point of view, Anne was accused of, “having ridiculed the King … [and having] had made fun [of Henry musical ballads], as of productions entirely worthless … and laughed at his manner of dressing, showing in many ways that she did not love him, and was tired of married life with him.” Anne denied these charges, however, and they were not proven even in the minds of her greatest enemies. Nonetheless, the king seems to have believed every accusation against her.
As for the accusations of her adultery – the late, great historian Eric Ives rips the meager ‘evidence’ her to shreds. In most cases, Anne wasn’t even in the same geographical area as the men she was supposedly tiddling, and in at least one case she was recovering from childbirth. Ever given birth? The LAST thing you want is rumpy-pumpy a week after a baby comes hurtling out of your vagina. The king nevertheless insisted “that upwards of 100 gentlemen … had criminal connexion with her,” and that she was going to poison his son, the Duke of Richmond, to boot.
Even Chapuys, who hated Anne with the fire of Mt Vesuvius, knew the allegations against her were shady. He wrote, “Although the generality of people here are glad of the execution of the said concubine, still a few find fault and grumble at the manner in which the proceedings against her have been conducted, and the condemnation of her and the rest, which is generally thought strange enough.” Considering that Chapuys had assured the Emperor just a week before that “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,” the grumbling must have been loud indeed to drive him to even mention it.
The ambassador also reported that, “People speak variously about the King, and certainly the slander will not cease when they hear of what passed and is passing between him and his new mistress, Jane Seymour. Already it sounds badly in the ears of the public that the King, after such ignominy and discredit as the concubine has brought on his head, should manifest more joy and pleasure now, since her arrest and trial, than he has ever done on other occasions, for he has daily gone out to dine here and there with ladies, and sometimes has remained with them till after midnight.” Being Chapuys, a man who never referred to Anne Boleyn as anything but a harlot and Princess Elizabeth as anything but a bastard, the ambassador claimed King Henry’s behavior was “the joy and pleasure a man feels in getting rid of a thin, old, and vicious hack in the hope of getting soon a fine horse to ride.”
A gleeful Chapuys also assured the Holy Roman Emperor that, “You never saw a prince or husband show or wear his horns more patiently and lightly than this one does.” According to Chapuys, King Henry VIII “manifested incredible joy at the arrest of Anne” and even “predicted what would be the end of this affair” to the point that the king had composes a tragedy about it.
But how much can we trust Chapuys’s account? He was wrong on several issues in the same set of letters – the reinstatement of Princess Mary, the confession of George Boleyn to heresy, that Princess Elizabeth had been declared Norris’s bastard, the return of England to the Catholic Church – and may have outright lied on several other points to make himself look good.
What is most curious if that Chapuys, when having the opportunity to present Anne in the worst possible light, did tell the Emperor that when the Duke of Norfolk to the queen she was condemned for treason, Anne said “that she was prepared to die, but was extremely sorry to hear that others, who were innocent and the King’s loyal subjects, should share her fate and die through her.”
I wonder why he didn’t omit such a strong statement of innocence on Anne’s part? Was he sure the Emperor would have heard of it from one of the many other witnesses? Or did his conscience niggle at him as she waited to die? He hated Anne and blamed her for Henry’s first divorce, but did he think her actually guilty? Even though he was happy she was to die, did he at least need to acknowledge, no matter how second-handedly, that she was innocent of the crimes she was accused of?
