Anne Boleyn, a King's Obsession

by Alison Weir

  “Never!” she declared. “This is utter calumny.”

  Sir Christopher, in full flight, was not to be deterred. “My lords, think of the effect of all this upon our sovereign lord the King. Having come only a short time ago to hear of these false and detestable crimes, vices, and treasons committed against himself, he has suffered such inward displeasure and heaviness that certain harms and perils have befallen his royal body, to the scandal, danger, and detriment of the heirs of the King and Queen.”

  Henry was suffering? What about her, having all these vile, unjust accusations flung at her in public? It was hard to sit there patiently, listening to them, while trying to look like the innocent person she was. She felt dirty, sullied, almost as if she were guilty.

  At last Sir Christopher stopped speaking. “You may answer the charges now, madam,” he told her.

  It was important to stay calm and not protest too much, but this was the moment she had longed for. She looked around the hall at all the people staring at her expectantly. “I have never been false to the King,” she insisted. “I remember well that, on about half of the days on which I am charged with adultery, I was not even in the same house as the gentleman concerned, or I was with child, or had recently given birth. Ask your wives, my lords, what woman wants dalliance with a man at such a time?” There was a murmur of laughter. Good. She had some of them, at least, with her.

  “But think: what does charging me with adultery on these dates imply?” she went on. “It is a foul slur on my issue with the King, a hint that he did not sire my children, and I find that shocking. Impugning the royal succession is treason—and in making these charges my accusers are guilty of it! And on at least one of the days I am supposed to have seduced my paramours, I knew myself to be under constant surveillance. My lords, I am not that much of a fool.” There was more laughter.

  She waited until it had died down. “But now I must refute the serious charge of conspiring the death of the King. It is the most heinous of them all, and high treason of the first order. If I were guilty of it, then I should say that I deserved to die. But when I allegedly first plotted this treason, the Princess Dowager was yet alive, and what would it have availed me? For if the King had died then, there might well have been a rising in favor of the Lady Mary, or even civil war.” She paused to let that sink in. “What would it have profited me to kill my chief protector and ally myself in marriage with any of those men? None of them could have given me what the King gave me.”

  She braced herself to go on. “As for the charge of incest, it is plain that my enemies have conjured it purely to arouse outrage and revulsion against me. And in regard to all the accusations of adultery, committing that crime would have been impossible without the connivance of the ladies waiting on me, who are witnesses to my private doings. And yet none have been charged with misprision of treason.” She looked defiantly around the court, gratified to hear some murmurs of assent. “Moreover,” she went on, emboldened, “I knew I stood in danger from my enemies. I could not have been more wary and wakeful, for I knew their eyes were everywhere upon me, and that their malicious hearts were bent on making some mischief where they found none. What half-wit would commit misconduct knowing they were so closely watched?”

  The Attorney General and Cromwell stood up.

  “Admit it, the charges are all justified,” Sir Christopher barked.

  “I refute them utterly,” she insisted.

  Cromwell spoke. “There was a promise, was there not, between you and Norris to marry after the King’s death, which you hoped for?”

  “No, there was not.” She would not deign to look at him.

  “You danced in your bedchamber with gentlemen of the King’s Privy Chamber?”

  “I danced with them in my privy chamber, and my ladies were always present.”

  “You were seen kissing your brother, Lord Rochford.”

  “My lords, I do protest!” Anne cried. “Which of you have wives, sisters, and daughters who do not kiss their brothers from time to time?”

  Cromwell ignored that. “You cannot deny that you wrote to your brother, informing him that you were with child?”

  “Why should I not? I informed all my family. Since when has it been a crime?”

  “Some might see it as proof that your brother had fathered your child.”

  She responded to that with the contemptuous silence it merited, raising her eyebrows.

  Sir Christopher returned to the attack. “You and your brother laughed at the King’s attire and made fun of his poetry.”

  She would not deign to answer that either. They really were raking for muck.

  “You showed in various ways that you did not love the King and were tired of him. My lords, is this not shocking conduct in a woman whom the King had honored by marrying her?” The lords nodded sagely.

  “I love my lord the King, as I am by honor and inclination bound to do,” Anne protested in a loud voice. “I have maintained my honor and my chastity all my life long, as much as ever a queen did. This case you have constructed against me is nothing but calumny!”

  That set many to murmuring, and she sensed that they were expressing doubts and suspicions in regard to the prosecution’s case. Some were looking at her and nodding approvingly.

  “But your paramours have confessed.”

  “Four of them pleaded not guilty,” she reminded them. “That leaves the wretch Smeaton. One witness is not enough to convict a person of high treason.”

  “In your case it is sufficient,” Cromwell said. “Besides, we have the witness depositions. Let them be read.”

  They added nothing new to the Crown’s case, but Anne was deeply hurt to hear that Lady Worcester had testified to her alleged relations with George and Smeaton, and Lady Wingfield had confided to a friend that the Queen was a loose woman.

  “But Lady Wingfield is dead,” Anne objected, “so her testimony can only be hearsay, which I believe is inadmissible as evidence. I repeat, everything you have alleged against me is untrue. I have committed no offense.”

  The Attorney General looked at her as if she were speaking in a foreign tongue. “That concludes the case for the Crown,” he intoned. “My lords, will you consider your verdict?”

  The lords nodded their assent, and began conferring with each other. Hardly able to bear the tension, Anne watched as several walked over to commune with their fellows on the other side of the hall. She searched their faces for some sign of what they were thinking, but it was impossible to tell. They were giving nothing away. Her mouth felt dry and her hands clammy. All she wanted now was for this ordeal to be over.

  Eventually Suffolk signaled to Sir Christopher Hales.

  “My lord of Surrey, I call upon you first to give your verdict,” the Attorney General said.

  “Guilty!” Surrey declared.

  “My lord of Suffolk?”

  “Guilty!”

  “My lord of Worcester?”

  “Guilty!”

  “My lord of Northumberland?”

  Harry Percy stood up. His face was deathly pale, but his voice was strong. “Guilty!”

  And then—what else had she expected?—every other earl and baron among them stood up, each in his turn, and said the same, until Sir Christopher came to her father, who looked like a broken man.

  “My lord of Wiltshire?”

  Father rose slowly to his feet. He was struggling to speak.

  “My lord?”

  “Guilty,” he muttered.

  They had forced him to this, Anne knew, even as she was horrified that he had condemned her. He had bought his safety by betraying his children. That was more terrible to her than her own peril. And yet he had Mother to think of. He was salvaging what he could of his life—but he would have to live with what he had done.

  Sir Christopher Hales was regarding Anne sternly. “Prisoner at the bar, you will stand to receive judgment.”

  She stood up. Everything seemed unreal. She was barely aware of the
speculative murmurs rippling along the benches.

  Suffolk came to the bar and addressed her. “Madam, you must resign your crown into our hands.”

  By that she knew the worst. She lifted the crown and gave it to him, aware that in this symbolic act she was ceremonially divesting herself of the trappings of her rank. All her power had come to this.

  “I am innocent of having offended against His Grace,” she declared, but Suffolk remained impassive.

  “In the name of the King, I degrade you from your title of lady marquess,” he proclaimed.

  “I give it up willingly to my lord my husband who conferred it,” she replied, aware that the title of queen had not been mentioned. They could not take that away—at least, not now. It was hers under the Act of Succession, which had named her Queen by statutory right, not just by right of marriage to the King.

  A hush descended as Norfolk sat up straight in his chair. She was astonished to see tears streaming down his cheeks. No doubt they were for his family’s lost honor and status, and the jeopardizing of his own career by this scandal, rather than for her.

  He fixed his martinet gaze on her. “Because you have offended against our sovereign lord the King’s Grace in committing treason against his person, the law of the realm is this, that you have deserved death; and your judgment is this: that you shall be burned at the stake here within the Tower of London on the Green, or you will have your head smitten off, according to the King’s pleasure.”

  There was a shriek from the back of the stands, and Anne glimpsed Mrs. Orchard in a state of unspeakable distress. The justices were muttering indignantly, clearly unhappy about the sentence. “It should be one thing or the other,” she heard one say. “It is unfair on the prisoner.” Norfolk glared at him. Suddenly Harry Percy slumped in his chair, apparently unconscious. The lords nearby moved to help, and ushers came hastening to carry him out. Had it been too much for him, knowing that the girl he had once loved was the woman he had just condemned to a terrible death?

  They were waiting for her to speak now. She still felt calm. She could not connect these dread events to herself. It was as if the whole trial had taken place in a dream. She looked down at her skirts, wondering if they would expect her to go royally garbed to her burning. What a waste of good clothes that would be.

  And then the awful realization of what lay in store for her sank in.

  “O Father, O Creator, Thou who art the way, the life, and the truth knoweth whether I have deserved this death,” she cried out, raising her eyes to Heaven. She looked desperately at her judges. “My lords, I will not say your sentence is unjust, nor presume that my defense can prevail against your convictions. I am willing to believe that you have sufficient reasons for what you have done; but they must be other than those which have been produced in court, for I am clear of all the offenses laid to my charge. I have ever been a faithful wife to the King, though I do not say I have always shown him that humility which his goodness to me merited. I confess I have had jealous fancies and suspicions of him, which I had not discretion and wisdom enough to conceal at all times.”

  She paused, bowing her head in humility, then her voice rang out strong and true. “But God knows, and is my witness, that I have not sinned against him in any other way. Think not I say this in the hope to prolong my life, for He who saves from death has taught me how to die, and He will strengthen my faith. I know these, my last words, will avail me nothing but for the justification of my chastity and honor.” She looked directly at her father, who would not meet her eye. “As for my brother and those others who are unjustly condemned, I would willingly suffer many deaths to deliver them, but since I see it so pleases the King, I shall willingly accompany them in death, with this assurance, that I shall lead an endless life with them in peace and joy, where I will pray to God for the King and for you, my lords.”

  Silence greeted her impassioned words. The peers had the grace to look chastened. She wondered if, in their hearts, they believed her guilty. It did not matter. It was Henry, clearly, who had been convinced of it, and once his will had been made plain, no one would dare contravene it. She looked at her accusers again, her gaze taking in Hales and Cromwell. “The Judge of all the world, in Whom abounds justice and truth, knows all,” she reminded them, “and through His love I beseech that He will have compassion on those who have condemned me to this death.” She paused. “I ask only for a short space of time for the unburdening of my conscience.” She could hear more than one person sobbing. Norfolk was weeping again. Even Cromwell had pity in his eyes.

  The court rose. Anne curtseyed to the peers, then Kingston came forward to escort her from the hall, with Lady Kingston following. The Gentleman Jailer walked alongside, his ceremonial ax now turned toward her, to show the waiting crowd outside that she had been condemned to death.

  She had been told that her brother’s trial was to follow, and was praying that she might catch a glimpse of him and even offer him some words of comfort, but there was no sign of him. As she left the hall, a buzz of conversation erupted behind her.

  Back in her chamber, she was relieved to learn that only Lady Kingston, Aunt Boleyn, Mrs. Orchard, and her four maids were to attend her from now on. Lady Shelton and Mrs. Coffyn had been dismissed.

  She sank down on her bed, and it was only now that she gave herself up to terror, shrinking in her mind from the heat of the flames, the scorching of her flesh, and the unimaginable agony and horror of being burned to death. She stuffed the sheet in her mouth to stop herself from screaming.

  —

  George had been condemned too—in his case to a traitor’s death.

  “But because he is a nobleman, the King will almost certainly commute it to beheading,” Kingston said, his tone gentle. He had been treading warily around Anne since she had emerged, drained and fragile, from her bedchamber.

  “Did he deny the charges?” She was desperate to know.

  Now that judgment had been passed, the Constable seemed willing to talk.

  “He did, and he answered them so prudently and wisely that it was a marvel to hear. He never confessed to anything, but made himself clear that he had never offended. Sir Thomas More himself did not reply better.”

  Brave George! He had not played the craven and let her down.

  “It was his wife who deposed against him in regard to the incest,” Kingston told her. Jane, that little hellcat! What a vile revenge she had wreaked for George’s base use of her, and for Fisher’s death.

  “It seems that it was more out of envy and jealousy than out of love toward the King that she betrayed this accursed secret,” Kingston added.

  “Why should she be jealous?” Anne cried.

  “It seems she thought her husband loved you more, madam.”

  “That’s what she wants the world to think. No, she is for the Lady Mary. She means to destroy me and my blood.”

  “I think many agreed with your Grace,” Kingston revealed. “Some said much money would have been won, at great odds, if Lord Rochford had been acquitted.”

  “How did my brother take the sentence?” she asked.

  “Bravely. He observed that every man was a sinner and that all merited death. Then he said that, since he must die, he would no longer maintain his innocence, but confess that he had deserved to die.”

  Anne was about to protest that George would never have incriminated them both by saying such a thing, and then it dawned on her. He had not been talking about incest, but about murder.

  —

  Mrs. Orchard, who had stayed in the hall to watch George’s trial, came to offer comfort.

  “He won’t let them kill you,” she said, holding Anne to her ample bosom, just as if she were a child again. “When it comes to it, you’ll get a reprieve, you’ll see.”

  “Yes,” Anne sobbed. “I pray you are right.”

  “Something strange happened at your brother’s trial,” Mrs. Orchard told her.

  Anne sat up. “What?”

&
nbsp; “They accused him of putting it about that you had told Lady Rochford something secret about the King. They wouldn’t say what it was, but wrote it down and showed it to Lord Rochford, ordering him not to repeat it. But he did. He read out that you had told Lady Rochford that the King wasn’t able to copulate with a woman, for he had neither potency nor vigor.”

  “I never said that!” Anne flared. “It’s not true, so why would I say it?” But she knew the answer. If Henry could not have sired her children, because of impotency, some other man must have. And there might be another, more sinister, explanation, for all the world knew that impotency was caused by witchcraft. That might explain Sir Christopher’s strange claim that harms and perils had befallen the King’s body. Were they really implying that she herself had cast an enchantment on Henry to make him incapable of siring the sons she had so desperately longed for? It defied all reason.

  “That’s what your brother told them. He said, ‘I did not say it!’ He insisted he would never arouse any suspicion that might prejudice the King’s issue.” No, he would not—but others were striving their best to do just that. Anne dared not think of what the consequences would be for Elizabeth. In fact, she dared not think of Elizabeth, for that way lay madness.

  —

  On the day after the trial, Kingston informed Anne that he was going to Whitehall to see the King. A little hope sparked in her, especially when he told her that the condemned men were to die the next day, but no instructions had been sent, nor any date set, for her own execution.

  “Sir William, have you been told how…how I am to die?” she faltered.

  “No, madam. Today I mean to discover the King’s pleasure concerning you, in regard to your comfort and what is to be done with you.”

  “I pray he will put me out of this misery. It’s not knowing what will happen that torments me the most. If I know my fate, I can prepare myself to face it.”