Queen Anne Boleyn is arrested for High Treason
Queen Anne Boleyn is arrested for High Treason
Anne Boleyn’s fall from the king’s favour had been rapid, and exEcuted with Cromwell’s ruthless efficiency….
Her miscarriage of a boy in January 1536, probably clouded her relationship with Henry, and would have been a traumatic experience to recover from.
Although this would have been temporary, it reinforced the king’s difficulties in fathering a male heir.
Despite the setback, Henry VIII had continued to press for foreign recognition of his marriage to Anne.
Even in the weeks before her arrest, Henry was still interviewing the Spanish Ambassador Eustace Chapuys, in an effort to secure Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s acceptance of Anne’s status as queen.
For the king’s chief minister Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s preoccupation with his position as supreme head of the church in England and, more importantly, the validity of his relationship with Anne, threatened to stop all other royal diplomatic engagements.
Despite Anne being Cromwell’s former ally, especially in the area of religious reform, a struggle to influence the king put these powerful personalities on a collision course.
Anne voiced her opposition to Cromwell’s plans for the resources grabbed by the dissolution of the monasteries.
It seems likely that Cromwell decided to undermine the king’s confidence in Anne, primarily to clear the way for his own power to remain unchallenged.
Cromwell also needed to ensure that he could outmanoeuvre and dominate whatever groups formed around the king, after Anne’s removal.
The end to Anne’s influence had to be definitive and permanent, it needed to sweep away all her friends in high places ~ and weaken her family and Howard in-laws.
It was unclear at that stage, whether Cromwell planned to orchestrate her death, or if he simply intended to undermine Anne’s allies and power.
Cromwell soon devised a plan against the queen, that used promiscuousness, adultery and disloyalty as its basis.
This was guaranteed to arouse the worst elements of Henry’s characteristics of pride, anger and suspicion.
Cromwell used all his experience of the twists of Tudor power politics, to target the informal and playful aspects of Anne’s court.
He monitored and interrogated those who were on the periphery of Anne’s circle, such as the musician Mark Smeaton, or others like Henry Norris, who were familiar with Anne but who moved in and out of high favour.
A case of adultery and incest was assembled.
Her brother George Boleyn, and men of the king’s chamber ~ Francis Weston, William Brereton, Norris, and Smeaton, became her accomplices and swiftly, co-conspirators against King Henry.
Cromwell hid his machinations from Henry until 1st May 1536.
Cromwell revealed everything to Henry at the May Day jousts at Greenwich.
This very public celebration was quickly halted, while the full picture of truth and reality was worked out under Cromwell’s guiding hand….
Anne was arrested at Greenwich Palace, on 2nd May 1536.
She was taken by barge to the Tower of London, arriving at the private postern gate ~ now the Byward Tower.
Henry VIII, notoriously prone to suspicion, and now besotted with one of Anne’s own ladies-in-waiting, Jane Seymour, ignored the Queen’s protestations of innocence.
A sham trial filled with Anne’s enemies found her guilty, and she found herself a prisoner at the Tower of London, in the same royal apartment where, just three years before, she had awaited her coronation.
The nation was deeply shocked when Queen Anne was convicted.
Even if public opinion was still against Anne as a suitable choice for King Henry, the sentence of death was unprecedented for a crowned queen.
Anne had been condemned to die by a court of peers under the direction of her uncle, Thomas Howard ~ Duke of Norfolk.
The very man who helped orchestrate Anne into the king’s bed!
With the queen locked in the Tower, awaiting the king’s final decision on her fate, the officers of government were ready to do whatever the kings wishes were.
Or mostly, whatever Thomas Cromwell ordered them to do……
💔 Mark Rylance as Cromwell & Claire Foy as Anne Boleyn, in ‘Wolf Hall’