The Creation of Anne Boleyn

by Susan Bordo

  Honor was chiefly a measure of one’s ability to conform to the ideals demanded of one’s gender. For a man, it meant exerting masculinity, imposing patriarchy, controlling the women in one’s household, maintaining a good reputation and demonstrating physical and sexual prowess . . . Anne’s very behavior, if assumed to be true, testified to the king’s lack of manliness, and, as if this weren’t enough, Anne and Rochford’s ridicule of the king on this very matter drove the point home.27

  It was out of a desperate need to feel himself a man that Henry both escalated the relationship with Jane and “felt the need to cavort himself with the ladies . . . [He] did it to restore the patriarchal order and to prove his manhood.”28

  On May 13 preparations were made for the trials of Anne and her brother. The grand juries were commanded to furnish the indictments, and Constable Kingston received a precept from Thomas Howard, the duke of Norfolk (Anne’s uncle), ordering him to bring the prisoners to trial on Monday, May 15. Norfolk also sent a precept to Ralph Felmingham, sergeant-at-arms, to summon at least twenty-seven “peers of the Queen and Lord Rochford, by whom the truth can be better made to appear.”29 While these official legal steps were being taken, physical preparations were also begun to make the King’s Hall in the Tower amenable to two thousand spectators, with benches lining the walls and a high platform for the interrogator and the condemned, so that all could see. “The King was determined,” Alison Weir writes, “that justice would be seen to be done” and was sure of the judicial strength of the evidence.30 Weir argues, as Lipscomb does, that he was honestly convinced that the charges were true and that “he had nourished a viper in his bosom” who had “betrayed and humiliated him, both as a husband and a king.”31 Other scholars are not so sure. But whatever his actual beliefs about Anne’s guilt or innocence, for Henry the outcome was such a foregone conclusion that on the same day that preparations were being made for the trial, he ordered Anne’s household dissolved and her servants discharged. On May 14 Jane was brought to Chelsea to be within quick reach when the sentence was pronounced on Anne. Henry, as always, was an excellent recycler of resources; Jane was installed in Thomas More’s former home, which Henry had taken over and lavishly redecorated after More was executed.

  In the Tower

  While Jane waited patiently in the various lodgings to which she had been moved, already being treated (and apparently regarding herself) as a queen, Anne was in the Tower of London. Her moods, according to Kingston, vacillated wildly from resignation to hope to anxiety. She had always had a wicked sense of humor, and no irony was ever lost on her. When taken to the Tower, she had asked, “Master Kingston, shall I die without justice?”32 He replied, “The poorest subject the king hath, had justice.”33 Hearing this, despite her fear, Anne laughed. She was too sophisticated and savvy about the dispensing of royal power to swallow the official PR. But she also seized on any glimmer of hope, and she had reason to believe that in the end she might be spared. She was the queen, after all, and no one in England had ever executed a queen. Isabella of Angoulême and Isabella of France, both married to English kings, had been adulterous, but only their lovers were executed. Even those who had been involved in acts of treason—the most famous of all being Eleanor of Aquitaine, who almost succeeded in toppling Henry II from his throne—were put under house arrest at most. It was almost unthinkable to Anne that Henry would have her put to death. But so, too, was her imprisonment, which had come so suddenly and seemingly without reason.

  Until very near the end, she still harbored the belief that Henry might pardon her. It was not an unreasonable expectation. The last-minute rescue of the condemned queen was a centerpiece of the romance of chivalry, which was still being avidly consumed at court via Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. In the Arthurian legend, Guinevere is condemned to death twice for treason (the second time for adultery with Lancelot) and both times is saved from the stake by Lancelot—with King Arthur’s blessings. Arthur had, in fact, suspected the queen’s infidelity for years, but because of his love for her and for Lancelot, had kept his suspicions a secret. When Modred and Agravain, plotting their own coup d’état, told the king about it, he had no choice but to condemn his queen, while privately hoping she would be rescued. It was a romantic fantasy—but one that Henry and Anne had grown up with and that had no doubt shaped their ideas about love. Henry had been an adroit and seductively tender courtier who had pledged himself Anne’s “servant” and swore his constancy. The pledges may (or may not) have been made manipulatively, but his infatuation was real and the gestures were convincing. Why wouldn’t Anne, whom Henry had, in fact, honored for six years as if she were Guinevere, cherish the hope that she, too, would be rescued from death?

  From the time she was taken to the Tower, then, a razor-thin edge separated hope and doom for Anne. She had been treated very gently and with great respect by Constable Kingston, and no doubt the fact that she was housed not in a dungeon but in the lodgings she had slept in before her coronation lent an ambiance of (mistaken) comfort to her stay in the Tower. After a visit from Cranmer on May 16, she appears to have been offered hints—or even proposed—some sort of “deal,” in which her admission of the illegitimacy of her marriage and Elizabeth might win her life in a nunnery instead of death. Cromwell had been working to find a way to annul the marriage and bastardize Elizabeth. Two likely “impediments” to the lawfulness of the marriage were a possible precontract with her young love Percy and the “consanguinity” of the king’s affair with Mary Boleyn. Percy denied the precontract, so Cranmer was sent to get Anne to admit that she knew of the relationship with Mary when she married Henry. Weir speculates—accurately, I believe—that Cranmer may have suggested to Anne that if she admitted to the impediment, the king might spare her life. After Cranmer left, Kingston reports that Anne was in a “cheerful” mood and talked about her hopes of being spared death. Instead, the only “mercy” Henry had planned was her death by a skilled French swordsman, who was on his way even before Anne’s trial.

  Anne’s emotional vacillations—from terror to prayerful resignation to black humor (speculating the night before her execution that her enemies would remember her as “la Royne Anne sans Tête”) suggest that the strangeness of what was happening to her was at times impossible for her to assimilate. Just a few short months before, she had been pregnant. Just a few weeks before, Henry had been insisting that Charles V acknowledge the legitimacy of their marriage. Now she was in the Tower, condemned to death. Her fortunes had turned around so swiftly and extremely that it must have been difficult to keep a steady grip on reality. Yet she managed, at her trial on May 15, after nearly two weeks in the Tower and the certain recognition, after the verdicts of the men accused with her, that she would be found guilty, to summon her renowned pride and dazzling confidence for the grim occasion. Dressed in black velvet over a scarlet petticoat, her cap “sporting a black-and-white feather,” she “presented herself with the true dignity of a queen, and curtseyed to her judges, looking round upon them all, without any sign of fear . . . impatience, grief, or cowardice,”34 according to Crispin de Milherve, whom Alison Weir cites as an eyewitness at the trial, but who may have been Lancelot de Carles. When it was time for her to speak, after hearing the full charges for the first time—including trivial, noncriminal but “atmospherically” damaging accusations that she had made fun of the king’s poetry and taste in clothing—she made such “wise and discreet answers to all things laid against her” that “had the peers given in their verdict according to the expectations of the assembly, she had been acquitted.”35 But, of course, the verdict was not dependent on the impression Anne made or how convincing her defense was. When she protested against Smeaton’s confession “that one witness was not enough to convict a person of high treason,” she was simply informed “that in her case it was sufficient.” Also “sufficient” were numerous bits of gossip that nowadays would be regarded as worse than hearsay, since they came from obviously prejudiced sources. George
Wyatt, writing about the trial later, says that he heard nothing that could be considered evidence. Instead, as author Jane Dunn described the case, it was “a ragbag of gossip, innuendo, and misinterpreted courtliness.”36

  Anne almost certainly expected the guilty verdict that followed, which makes her calm, clear, and highly intelligent (according to numerous observers) responses to the charges all the more remarkable. It is less likely that she expected the sentence that followed: “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.” On hearing the verdict, several onlookers shrieked, took ill, and had to leave the hall. But Anne, as Chapuys observed, “preserved her composure, saying that she held herself ‘pour toute saluee de la mort’ [always ready to greet death], and that what she regretted most was that the above persons, who were innocent and loyal to the King, were to die for her.”37 And then, as summarized by several onlookers but reported in the greatest detail by the witness identified by Weir (controversially) as Crispin de Milherve, she delivered the extraordinary speech that I quoted from briefly in the previous chapter.

  My lords, I will not say your sentence is unjust, nor presume that my reasons can prevail against your convictions. I am willing to believe that you have sufficient reasons for what you have done; but then they must be other than those which have been produced in court, for I am clear of all the offences which you then 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, and the honours to which he raised me, merited. I confess I have had jealous fancies and suspicions of him, which I had not discretion enough, and wisdom, to conceal at all times. 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 saveth from death hath taught me how to die, and He will strengthen my faith. Think not, however, that I am so bewildered in my mind as not to lay the honour of my chastity to heart now in mine extremity, when I have maintained it all my life long, much as ever queen did. I know these, my last words, will avail me nothing but for the justification of my chastity and honour. 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.38

  The clarity and confidence of Anne’s declaration here, her insight into her lack of humility, and her reference to “bewilderment” of mind are all, I believe, support for the theory, which many scholars have challenged, that a purported “last letter” to Henry written by Anne on May 6 is indeed authentic. The letter was found among Cromwell’s possessions after his death, apparently undelivered to the king. The handwriting doesn’t correspond exactly (although it is not radically dissimilar) to Anne’s other letters, but it could easily have been transcribed by someone else or written in Anne’s own hand, which could have been altered by the distress of her situation. On May 5 Anne did ask Kingston to “bear a letter from me to Master Secretary.”39 Kingston then said to her, “Madam, tell it me by word of mouth and I will do it.”40 She thanked him, and after that, we hear no more of it in Kingston’s reports, so we don’t know if the letter was ever written or dictated. But the one found among Cromwell’s papers, dated May 6, begins with a statement that is so startlingly precise in its depiction of Anne’s state of mind at the time that it’s hard to imagine anyone else, in the decades following her death, writing it.

  Your Grace’s displeasure and my imprisonment are things so strange to me, that what to write, or what to excuse, I am altogether ignorant. Whereas you send to me (willing me to confess a truth and so obtain your favour), by such a one, whom you know to be mine ancient professed enemy [Cromwell]; I no sooner received this message by him, than I rightly conceived your meaning; and if as you say, confessing a truth indeed may procure my safety, I shall, with willingness and duty, perform your command.

  But let not your grace ever imagine your poor wife will ever be brought to acknowledge a fault, where not so much as a thought ever proceeded. And to speak a truth, never a prince had a wife more loyal in all duty, and in all true affection, than you have ever found in Anne Bulen—with which name and place I could willingly have contented myself if God and your grace’s pleasure had so been pleased. Neither did I at any time so far forget myself in my exaltation, or received queenship, but I always looked for such alteration as I now find; for the ground of my preferment being on no surer foundation than your grace’s fancy, the least alteration was fit and sufficient (I knew) to draw that fancy to some other subject.

  You have chosen me from a low estate to be your queen and companion, far beyond my just desert or desire; if then you found me worthy of such honour, good your grace, let not any light fancy or bad counsel of my enemies withdraw your princely favour from me, neither let that stain—that unworthy stain—of a disloyal heart toward your good grace ever cast so foul a blot on me and on the infant princess, your daughter [Elizabeth].

  Try me, good king, but let me have a lawful trial, and let not my sworn enemies sit as my accusers and as my judges; yea, let me receive an open trial, for my truth shall fear no open shames; then shall you see either mine innocency cleared, your suspicions and conscience satisfied, the ignominy and slander of the world stopped, or my guilt openly declared. So that whatever God and you may determine of, your grace may be at liberty, both before God and man, not only to execute worthy punishment on me, as an unfaithful wife, but to follow your affection already settled on that party [Anne knew of Henry’s affection for Jane Seymour], for whose sake I am now as I am; whose name I could some good while since, have pointed unto: Your Grace being not ignorant of my suspicions therein.

  But if you have already determined of me, and that not only my death, but an infamous slander, must bring you to the enjoying of your desired happiness, then I desire of God that He will pardon your great sin herein, and, likewise, my enemies, the instruments thereof, and that he will not call you to a strait account for your unprincely and cruel usage of me at his general judgment-seat, where both you and myself must shortly appear; and in whose just judgment, I doubt not (whatsoever the world think of me) mine innocency shall be openly known and sufficiently cleared.

  My last and only request shall be, that myself may only bear the burden of your grace’s displeasure, and that it may not touch the innocent souls of those poor gentlemen, whom, as I understand, are likewise in strait imprisonment for my sake.

  If ever I have found favour in your sight—if ever the name of Anne Bulen have been pleasing in your ears—then let me obtain this request; and so I will leave to trouble your grace no further: with mine earnest prayers to the Trinity to have your grace in his good keeping, and to direct you in all your actions.

  From my doleful prison in the Tower, the 6th of May.

  Ann Bulen41

  Most of Anne’s modern biographers believe this letter to be a forgery, in part because it is so daringly accusatory of Henry and in part because the “style” is not like Anne’s. “Its ‘elegance,’” writes Ives, “has always inspired suspicion.”42 Well, not always. Henry Ellis and other nineteenth-century commentators believed it was authentic. And the “style” argument is an odd one, because we have so few existing letters of Anne’s and they are such businesslike affairs that it’s hard to see how anyone could determine a “style” from them. If Henry had saved her responses to his love letters, we might have a better idea of what Anne was like as a writer, but they were destroyed. As it stands, though, we do have the account of her speech at her trial, and it exhibits many of the same qualities as this letter. In both, Anne stands her ground bravely and articulately, but more striking, goes beyond the conventions of the time to venture into deeper “psychological” and politic
al territory: the insight into her lack of humility, the inference that this might have had something to do with her fall from grace, her reference to the “bewilderment” and “strangeness” of finding herself accused of adultery and treason.

  As to the letter’s bold attitude toward Henry, this was characteristic of Anne, and (as she acknowledged in her trial speech) she was aware that it overstepped the borders of what was acceptable. Her refusal to contain herself safely within those borders was what had drawn Henry to her; she could not simply turn the switch off when it began to get her in trouble. To do that would have been to relinquish the only thing left to her at this point: her selfhood. Ives says that it would “appear to be wholly improbable” for a Tudor prisoner to warn the king “that he is in imminent danger from the judgment of God.”43 But Anne was no ordinary prisoner; she had shared Henry’s bed, advised and conspired with him in the divorce strategies, debated theology with him, given birth to his daughter, protested against his infidelities, and dared to challenge Cromwell’s use of confiscated monastery money. Arguably, it was her failure to be “appropriate” that contributed to her downfall. Now, condemned to death by her own husband, to stop “being Anne” would have been to shatter the one constancy left in the terrible “strangeness” of her situation.

  I don’t know for certain, of course, that this letter is authentic. But I have to wonder whether skeptics have been influenced by Anne’s reputation as a woman known for her “feminine” vivacity, emotionality, and sexuality. Henry Ellis called this letter “one of the finest compositions in the English Language.”44 Ellis lived at a time when women writers had begun to come into their own. But perhaps not every historian has been as ready to acknowledge that Anne could possibly have written “one of the finest compositions in the English language.”