The Curfew Tower, from the Moat
Knighton’s wife, whose husband was the Constable of the Tower, was set to watch the Queen, and repeat all she said to her husband, who was in correspondence with Cromwell. In writing to the latter, Knighton says that Lady Boleyn (Anne’s aunt) and a “Mestrys Cosyn” were kept in the same room with the Queen; both of these ladies were Anne’s bitter enemies, and they acted as spies upon the unhappy prisoner. “I have,” writes Knighton, “everything told me by Mestrys Cosyn that she thynks mete for me to knowe.”
The trial was held in the large room, called at that time the King’s Hall, which is on the second floor of the White Tower, adjoining the Chapel of St John’s. Here a gallery had been erected for the judges, and seats and benches for the Lords. The Duke of Norfolk, who presided, sat under the “clothe of estate,” and represented the King as High Steward of England. By a singular coincidence Norfolk was uncle to both Anne Boleyn and the second wife whom Henry beheaded, Catherine Howard. At Norfolk’s feet sat his son, the Earl of Surrey, both holding staffs in their hands—Norfolk that of the Lord High Steward, Surrey that of Earl Marshal. On the Duke’s right hand sat the Lord Chancellor, and on his left the Duke of Suffolk, the peers occupying seats on either side of the chamber, in the order of their degree. Led by the Constable of the Tower and the Lieutenant (Sir Edmund Walsingham), the Queen was brought to the bar. Anne Boleyn’s defence was admirable, and must have greatly disconcerted her judges, who knew that no defence, however convincing, could avail her; she was already sentenced by the King. Not one of these men, with their high-sounding names and titles, dared to give their vote in her favour. All, to a man, declared on their consciences that the Queen was guilty. Surely some of the innocent blood counted against these noble cowards as well as against their master, when their day of reckoning arrived. Norfolk, whose tears appear always to have been at command, wept “so that the water,” writes Constantyne in his Memorial, “roune in his eyes,” when he pronounced the sentence, which ran thus: “Because thou hast offended our Sovereign the King’s Grace, in committing treason against his person, and here attainted of the same, the law of the realm is this; that thou shalt be burnt here within the Tower of London, on the Green, else to have thy head smitten off as the King’s pleasure shall be further known of the same.”[9]
According to Froude, Anne Boleyn’s trial was conducted “with a scrupulousness without a parallel in the criminal history of the time.” One can only wonder what kind of a trial that would be which was not conducted with the “scrupulousness” that characterised the proceedings in the King’s Hall, under the Duke of Norfolk, when Anne Boleyn was condemned to die.
On the 17th of May the Queen was taken to Lambeth Palace, where she made her confession to Archbishop Cranmer, but, according to Bishop Burnet, any statements that she made then were induced by the prospect of saving her life; but this cannot be proved.
Up to the last Anne appears to have maintained her cheerfulness and lightness of heart. Knighton writing to Cromwell tells him that, whilst dining with him, the Queen had announced her intention of going to Antwerp, as if she fully expected to be released. Another time she said to him, “If any man accuse me, I can say but nay, and they can bring no witness”; and also, “I think the King does this to prove me.” In Burnet’s “History” the following incident, which took place shortly before Anne’s execution, and which I think goes far to prove her innocence of the charges brought against her, is recounted: “The day before she suffered, upon a strict search of her past life, she called to mind that she had played the step-mother too severely to Lady Mary (afterwards Queen Mary), and had done her many injuries. Upon which, she made the Lieutenant of the Tower’s lady sit down in the Chair of State; which the other, after some ceremony, doing, she fell down on her knees, and with many tears charged the lady, as she would answer it to God, to go in her name, and do, as she had done, to the Lady Mary, and ask her forgiveness for the wrongs she had done her.” Speede, alluding in his “History” to this scene, says, “as she cleared her conscience of the lesser crimes, so undoubtedly could she have done of the greater, if any had been committed.”
In a long letter Knighton wrote to Cromwell on the 18th of May, he says that the Queen had sent for him to be present when she received the Sacrament in her prison. “And at my commyng,” he writes, “she sayd, ‘Mr Knighton, I hear say that I shall not dye affore noon, and I am very sory therefore; for I had thowtt to be ded by thys time and past my payne.’ I told hyr it should be no payne it was so suttel, and then she sayd, ‘I have heard say the executioner was very good and I have a lyttel neck,’ and put her hand about it lawying hartely. I have seen many men and also women executed, and that they have been in grate sorrow; and to my knowledge thys lady hasse muche joy and plesur in dethe.” One may infer from the tone of this letter that Knighton did not believe in Anne’s guilt.
A little before noon on the 19th May, Anne Boleyn, accompanied by four of her ladies, came out of her prison on to Tower Green, attended by Sir William Knighton. Near the scaffold stood the Duke of Suffolk and the Duke of Richmond, the latter a natural son of the King’s; there also were the Lord Chancellor and Secretary Cromwell, the Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs of London and Westminster; in all, about thirty persons gathered at the Tower that bright May morning to behold a sight that had never been witnessed in England before—the execution of a Queen. Henry had given orders that the execution should be as private as possible, fearing the effect of the public sympathy with his victim, if many persons were admitted to see her die. To the very last Anne showed a steadfast courage, and may be said to have looked death fearlessly and without faltering in the face. After a few words full of resignation to her fate, and of forgiveness for those who had brought about her death, even for the chief of these, she said: “And thus I take my leave of the world, and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me.” After she had finished speaking her ladies came to her and placed a bandage over her eyes, and left her, all weeping bitterly. Kneeling, but keeping her upright position of body, for on this occasion no block was used—and the headsman, who had been specially brought over from Calais, did his work with a sword—she received the stroke of death “with resolution,” writes a contemporary and eye-witness, “and so sedately as herself to cover her feet with her garments.” And thus, and without more to say or do, was her head stricken off, she making no confession of her fault, and only saying, “O Lord God, have pity on my soul.”
Traitors’ Gate, from the River