Anne Boleyn: A King's Obsession

by Alison Weir

  “I am sorry, madam, but your execution has had to be postponed until noon.”

  “Oh, no!” Anne gasped. Three hours was a horribly long time to prolong this agony of waiting. “Why?”

  “My husband has just received orders to have foreigners conveyed out of the Tower, and has had to send for the Sheriff of London to see that this is done. He knows you will be upset by the delay, but he cannot help it.”

  “Indeed I am! Pray send him to me when he has a moment free.”

  Anne summoned Father Skip. She had never felt more in need of spiritual support, and she gripped his hands tightly as they kneeled and prayed in her closet, she beseeching God to sustain her courage for a little longer.

  Kingston came to her not long afterward. By then, she was becoming agitated and panicky.

  “Master Kingston,” she addressed him, “I hear that I shall not die before noon, and I am very sorry for it, for I thought then to be dead and past my pain.”

  “There should be no pain, madam,” Kingston reassured her. “It is so subtle a blow.”

  “I have heard you say the executioner is very good, and I have a little neck.” She put her hands around it, and laughed nervously.

  “I have seen many men and women executed,” he told her, “and they have all been in great sorrow, but I can see that your Grace has much joy and pleasure in death.”

  “There is nothing left for me in this world,” she told him. “I do long to die, but my poor flesh shrinks from it, so I am heartily glad it will be over quickly.”

  “It will be,” he said, and reached out to squeeze her hand.

  This unexpected and unorthodox kindness nearly broke her. “I should be grateful if no one would trouble me when I make my devotions this morning,” she said, blinking back tears. Kingston promised she would be left alone with her almoner, and departed.

  Time dragged. Throughout that dreadful morning she found herself constantly striving for calm. Noon came and went. She was now in an agony of suspense.

  Belatedly Kingston arrived. “I am so very sorry, madam. Your execution has now had to be postponed until nine o’clock tomorrow morning. We need more time to give people notice to attend.”

  “Oh, Master Kingston, I am deeply sorry to hear that,” Anne lamented, tears welling in her eyes. “I entreat you, for the honor of God, to beg the King that, since I am in a good state and disposed for death, I might be dispatched immediately. I had thought myself prepared to die, and fear that the delay might weaken my resolve.”

  Kingston looked deeply distressed. “Madam, I have my orders. I can only exhort you to pray for the strength to endure longer.”

  —

  It was her strong will and her faith that sustained her through those terrible final hours. Again she sought fortitude in prayer. The hardest times were when her ladies and maids burst into tears and she had to console them.

  “Death is not a thing to be regretted by Christians,” she reminded them. “Remember, I shall be quit of all unhappiness.”

  It seemed strange to be doing all the normal things—eating meals, or rather, picking at them, going to the stool chamber, sipping wine—when the dread and horribly final event of the morrow approached ever nearer. After dinner, as they all sat together around the table sewing, Anne finished her embroidery, the last she would ever complete, laid it down, and did her best to make cheerful conversation with her attendants. She even attempted a jest.

  “Those clever people who invent names for kings and queens will not be hard put to it to invent one for me. They will call me Queen Anne Lackhead!” She laughed nervously, and the ladies gave a weak response.

  “You know,” she told them, “I never wanted the King. It was he who pursued me all along.”

  They did not answer—it was too dangerous a subject for them.

  “There is one thing I really do regret,” she said. “I do not consider that I have been condemned by Divine Judgment, except for having caused the ill-treatment of the Lady Mary and having conspired her death. I would make my peace with her. Lady Kingston, would you carry a message for me?”

  “Yes, I can do that,” Lady Kingston agreed.

  “Then come with me into my great chamber,” Anne bade her. “I would unburden myself in private.”

  She led Lady Kingston into the next room and locked the door behind them. Her chair of estate was still there, under the canopy. Neither had been removed.

  “Please sit there.” Anne indicated the chair.

  Lady Kingston looked shocked. “Madam, it is my duty to stand, and not to sit in your presence, especially upon the Queen’s seat of estate.”

  “I am a condemned person,” Anne said, “and by law have no estate left me in this life, but for the clearing of my conscience. I pray you sit down.”

  “Well,” Lady Kingston replied, “I have often played the fool in my youth, and to fulfill your command I will do it once more in my age.” And she sat down.

  Anne knelt humbly before her and held up her hands in supplication, as the good lady looked down at her, astonished. “I beseech you, Lady Kingston, as you will answer to me before God and His angels when you appear at His judgment seat, that you will fall down in my place before the Lady Mary’s Grace and, in like manner, ask her forgiveness for the wrongs I have done her, for until that is accomplished, my conscience cannot be quiet.”

  “Be assured, madam, I will do it,” Lady Kingston promised. “Now, madam, please get up and let us join the others.”

  —

  As darkness fell, Anne sat at table, writing farewell letters to Mother and Mary, begging forgiveness from the latter.

  She laid down her pen and thought back over all she had achieved in her time. What would posterity say about her? Future generations should say that she had influenced monumental change, and for the better. She had helped to free England from the chains and corruption of Rome, and to make the Bible available to ordinary Englishmen in their own tongue—no mean achievement, that. Without her, none of it might ever have happened.

  But few would acknowledge that debt to her now. All her achievements had been eclipsed by her disgrace, and no doubt she would be remembered more for that, and a bloody scene on a scaffold. Her daughter would grow up living with that horror, thinking ill of her.

  She shuddered. In a few short hours…

  To take her mind off her fate, she set herself to composing a poem. It helped to get her thoughts down on paper. The words flowed.

  O Death, rock me asleep,

  Bring me to quiet rest,

  Let pass my weary, guiltless ghost

  Out of my woeful breast.

  Toll on, thou passing bell,

  Ring out my doleful knell,

  For the sound my death doth tell.

  Death doth draw nigh,

  There is no remedy.

  Farewell, my pleasures past,

  Welcome, my present pain,

  I feel my torments so increase

  That life cannot remain.

  Cease now, thou passing bell,

  Rung is my doleful knell,

  For the sound my death doth tell.

  Death doth draw nigh;

  Sound the knell dolefully,

  For now I die.

  —

  That night, sleep was impossible, so she got up, tiptoed through the dark chambers to her closet, and tried to focus on God and the hereafter. “Give me strength to bear my ordeal!” she beseeched Him.

  The first golden streaks of a May dawn were lightening the sky when she rose and returned to her bedchamber. She sat down on the bed and waited. God had been merciful. She was calm and composed, her courage high. She was ready.

  FRIDAY 19, MAY 1536

  Her maids dressed her in a beautiful night robe of gray damask. Beneath it was the low-necked red kirtle she had worn on the night before her arrest. Then Aunt Boleyn placed a short white ermine cape around her shoulders.

  “In case it is chilly outside,” she said. A change had co
me over Aunt Boleyn since Anne’s condemnation. She had become kinder, more respectful, and now she looked quite emotional.

  “Lady Kingston and I will not be attending you,” she said. “The young ladies are to have that honor.” They looked terrified.

  She bound up Anne’s hair, piling the plaits high above her neck, and placed a gable hood on her head. Then she handed a white linen coif to Nan Saville. “Put it in your pocket,” she said. “You know what it is for.”

  “Do I look presentable?” Anne asked. “I am told that the people are being allowed in to watch.”

  “You look every inch the Queen!” Aunt Boleyn told her.

  Father Skip came soon afterward to celebrate Mass. After receiving the sacrament, Anne toyed with her breakfast, nibbling on a piece of manchet bread to please her ladies, but she had no appetite. She kept having to visit the stool chamber. Nerves had made her bowels run to water. She felt light-headed after having had so little sleep.

  At eight o’clock, Kingston appeared at the door.

  “Madam, the hour approaches,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion. “You should make ready.”

  “Acquit yourself of your charge,” she told him, “for I have long been prepared.”

  He gave her a purse. “It contains twenty pounds for you to give in alms.” It would be her last queenly act.

  He cleared his throat. “Madam, a word of advice. When you are asked to kneel, you must stay upright and not move at all, for your own sake. Do you understand me? The executioner is skilled, but if you move, the stroke may go awry.”

  “I will stay still,” she vowed, trying desperately not to think about it.

  “We must go now,” he said.

  Lady Boleyn hugged her tightly. “God be with you,” she said fervently.

  Lady Kingston patted her arm as she passed. She was so obviously trying not to cry. As Anne descended the stairs, she could hear the four young ladies behind her weeping and bewailing bitterly her fate.

  In the inmost ward, two hundred Yeomen of the King’s Guard were waiting to conduct her to her execution. She had not expected such ceremony. As soon as she appeared, they began their slow march toward the Coldharbour Gate, followed by the officers of the Tower. Kingston walked with Anne behind them, and the maids of honor and Father Skip brought up the rear.

  As she passed between the massive twin towers of the Coldharbour Gate, Anne could see the waiting crowds around the scaffold ahead of her, which stood on the Green before the House of Ordnance. It had been built high, and it was draped in black material.

  A great murmur rose from the crowd when they saw her walking slowly toward them. Although her instinct was to run, she took care to carry herself in a queenly fashion. It suddenly occurred to her that, even now, Henry might grant her a reprieve. This whole macabre charade might have been staged for the purpose of allowing him to make a grand gesture of mercy and so win credit with his people.

  As she distributed the alms she had been given to the poorest-looking spectators, she could hear her maids still weeping in her wake, and turned round several times to hush them. Her ears remained alert for the sound of a royal messenger galloping into the Tower with a pardon. But there was nothing. She knew in her heart there would be no reprieve.

  There must have been a thousand people waiting on the tournament ground. Nearing the front, she saw Lord Chancellor Audley and Master Secretary Cromwell standing with Henry’s bastard, the Duke of Richmond—come to report back to his father, no doubt. Well, Henry should hear only of her courage. She would not criticize him or his justice—she had made her peace with God, and she wanted no retribution to fall upon her family.

  She caught young Richmond smiling at her maliciously. Norfolk and Suffolk were there, with many nobles, and the Lord Mayor of London with the aldermen and sheriffs—but she looked in vain for her father.

  They had reached the scaffold now. Sawdust had been strewn over it, and several men were standing on it awaiting her. They wore ordinary dress, so she could not tell which one was the executioner. She could see no sign of his sword. On the ground to the far side she glimpsed a wooden chest. Sweet Jesus, it was her coffin! She forced herself to stay calm. She did not have to be brave for much longer.

  Kingston offered her his arm and assisted her up the five wooden steps, her four maids following. She stood on the scaffold, looking down on the crowd, trying hard to smile and show them that she felt no fear.

  She turned to Kingston. “May I have leave to speak to the people? I promise I will not say anything contentious. And I beg you not to hasten the signal for my death till I have spoken that which I have a mind to say.”

  He nodded. “Please speak now, and be brief.”

  She turned back to the crowd, breathless with nerves. “Good Christian people, I am come here to die, according to the law, for by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I come here only to die, and to yield myself humbly to the will of the King, my lord. And if, in my life, I did ever offend the King’s Grace, surely with my death I do now atone.” She bowed her head, her heart racing, for when she finished speaking, only death awaited her. She forced herself to continue, praying that her voice did not betray her fear.

  “I come here to accuse no man,” she declared, “nor to speak anything of that of which I am accused. I pray and beseech you all, good friends, to pray for the life of the King, my sovereign lord and yours, who is one of the best princes on the face of the earth, who has always treated me so well that better could not be found, wherefore I submit to death with a good will, humbly asking pardon of all the world. If any person will meddle with my cause, I require them to judge the best. Thus I take my leave of the world, and of you, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me.”

  At a nod from Kingston, her young ladies stepped forward, but they were in such anguish that she had to help them remove her cape, her night robe, and her hood, leaving her standing there in her red kirtle. Nan Saville drew the linen coif from her pocket and gave it to her. She pulled it over her head, making sure that all her hair was tucked in, and was dismayed to find that one plait kept sliding down. She pushed in the clips and prayed it would stay in place. Nothing must be allowed to impede the sword.

  “Pray for me!” she beseeched her maids. “I beg your pardon for any harshness I have shown toward you, for while I lived, you have always showed yourselves diligent in my service, and now you are present at my last hour and mortal agony; as in good fortune you were faithful to me, so even at this, my miserable death, you do not forsake me.” They were looking pitifully at her, tears streaming down their cheeks. Anne smiled faintly at them. “As I cannot reward you for your true service to me, I pray you take comfort for my loss,” she said. “Be not sorry to see me die. Forget me not, and always be faithful to the King’s Grace and to her whom with happier fortune you may look to have as your Queen and mistress. And always esteem your honor far beyond your life, and in your prayers to the Lord Jesus forget not to pray for my soul.”

  A big, brawny man in a sober but well-cut suit of clothes stepped forward and knelt before Anne. As he spoke, in heavily accented English, she realized it was the executioner. Her heart began pounding furiously.

  “Madam,” he said, “I crave your Majesty’s pardon, for I am ordered to do my duty.”

  “I give it willingly,” she told him.

  “Madam, I beg you to kneel and say your prayers,” he instructed.

  This was the moment. She knelt in the sawdust, taking care to remain upright, as Kingston had exhorted her.

  “Please allow me a little time for prayer,” she asked, arranging her skirts modestly about her feet, so that when her body fell, it would not be exposed.

  “O Christ, receive my spirit!” she entreated, over and over again. Below her the Lord Mayor cried, “All kneel in respect for the passing of a soul!” The crowd fell to its knees. Only Suffolk and Richmond remained standing. Anne tried to pray, but she was frightened that the
blow would come when she was not ready, and kept looking fearfully around her.

  “Madam, do not fear. I will wait till you tell me,” the executioner said.

  She touched her coif, checking that her plait was still in place, as she continued her prayers. Nan Saville came forward, weeping uncontrollably, with a linen cloth to blindfold her, but her fingers were trembling so much that Anne took the cloth from her. She looked for a final time upon the world and the sea of faces gazing up at her, then covered her eyes. The last thing she saw before doing so was the sunny sky above the Tower roofs.

  “Jesu, have pity on my soul! My God, have pity on my soul!” she prayed fervently. “To Jesus Christ I commend my soul.” She heard the executioner quietly bid her maids stand out of the way, and there was a shuffling and a fresh outbreak of loud weeping. It was terrifying not being able to see what was happening around her.

  “Strike now!” she cried, her heart hammering so hard and painfully in her chest that she thought there might be no need for any headsman. “O Lord God, have pity on my soul! To Christ I commend my soul!”

  She heard the executioner say, “Bring me the sword!” There was a movement in the direction of the scaffold steps, and she blindly turned her head that way.

  She had believed Kingston when he had said there would be no pain, and prayed that the blow would be instantaneous and bring immediate oblivion, but when it came there was a choking explosion of searing agony and a dreadful warm gush of blood. She was aware of tasting it in her mouth and of its flooding her nostrils as she felt her head, horribly light now, hit the scaffold with a painful thud and the blindfold fell away. She would have cried out, yet no sound came apart from a terrible, silent gurgling, and she wanted to clamp her hands to the mortal wound that had been dealt her, yet she had no hands anymore. They were attached to the dark, bloodied, crumpled thing that lay on the scaffold next to her. She blinked and tried to look away. Through her torment she could still see the blurred shapes of people around her on the scaffold. And then her eyes dimmed and the merciful darkness descended.