CHAPTER 11

Fighting Without a Weapon

Jane Seymour did not appear in public on the day of Anne’s trial, but stayed indoors with her family at Chelsea. She was agitated about the outcome of the proceedings and was anxiously awaiting the return of Chapuys with news of the verdict. But according to the ambassador, “one of her relations, who was with her on the day of the condemnation, told me that in the morning, the King had sent that morning to tell her that he would send her news at three o’clock in the afternoon of the condemnation of the Concubine.” Clearly Henry had made his will in the matter plain, and expected the verdict to be a foregone conclusion.

“On Monday, the fifteenth of May 1536, there was arraigned within the Tower of London Queen Anne, for treason against the King’s own person.” The court being assembled, the proceedings opened with the Crown’s commission being read aloud.¹ Then silence was called for and the Duke of Norfolk cried, “Gentleman Gaoler of the Tower, bring in your prisoner.”²

“Summoned by an usher,”³ the Queen was brought forward, having been escorted through the waiting crowds in the Tower precincts and into the great hall by Sir William Kingston and Sir Edmund Walsingham.⁴ “She walked forth in fearful beauty” and “seemed unmoved as a stock, not as one who had to defend her cause, but with the bearing of one coming to great honor.”⁵ Wearing a gown of black velvet over a petticoat of scarlet damask, and a small cap sporting a black and white feather,⁶ she advanced attended by Lady Kingston, Lady Boleyn, and “her young ladies.”⁷ It would appear that these young ladies, probably four in number, had served as maids-of-honor in the Queen’s household, and retained to attend her at her trial and afterward.

Beside Anne, according to custom, walked the Gentleman (or Yeoman) Gaoler of the Tower carrying his ceremonial axe,⁸ its blade turned away from the prisoner, to signify that she was as yet uncondemned. This was not Sir William Kingston, the constable, but the Tower officer who had overall supervision of the prisoners and their warders and occupied the house on Tower Green that lay between the Lieutenant’s Lodging and the Beauchamp Tower.

The Queen “made an entry as though she were going to a great triumph,” carrying herself with calm poise as she was brought to the bar. “She presented herself with the true dignity of a queen, and curtsied to her judges, looking round upon them all, without any sign of fear,” wrote Crispin de Milherve, an eyewitness at the trial. “She returned the salutations of the lords with her accustomed politeness,”⁹ and even when she saw her father among them, “she stood undismayed, nor did ever exhibit any token of impatience, or grief, or cowardice.”¹⁰

Anne’s composure was clearly admirable: there was no hint of the hysteria she had shown earlier. Cromwell, by contrast, was tense, concerned lest “the sense, wit, and courage of Anne would go against him”¹¹ and secure an acquittal—with goodness knew what dire consequences for himself.

A chair had been placed before the bar on the raised platform in the center of the hall, and Anne now “took her seat” with notable elegance.¹² Common prisoners stood to hear the charges read, but this was after all the Queen of England, and due ceremony was observed.

“Then her indictment was read before her”¹³ in all its embarrassing detail by Sir Christopher Hales, the Attorney General, but Anne’s face betrayed no shame as she heard it alleged against her “that she had procured her brother and the other four to defile her and have carnal notice of her, which they had done often; and that they conspired the death of the King, for she had said to them that she had never loved the King in her heart, and had said to every one of them by themselves that she loved them more than the others, which was to the slander of the issue that was begotten between the King and her, which is made treason by the statute of the twenty-sixth year of the King that now is.”¹⁴

Anne sat patiently, listening to the indictment. “Her face said more than words, for she said little; but no one looking at her would have thought her guilty. She defended herself soberly against the charges,”¹⁵ and as each was put to her, she put up her hand, pleaded, “Not guilty,”¹⁶ and “firmly denied” them all, giving to each what Chapuys felt to be “a plausible answer.”¹⁷

The Attorney General then argued the case for the Crown, ably assisted by Cromwell, who was acting as counsel for the King. The substance of their accusations, which were not all grounded in the indictment, was reported by Chapuys on May 19: “What she was principally charged with was having cohabited with her brother and other accomplices; that there was a promise between her and Norris to marry after the King’s death, which it thus appeared they hoped for; and that she had received and given to Norris certain metals,¹⁸ which might be interpreted to mean she had poisoned the late Queen and intrigued to do the same to the princess”¹⁹—although this was probably the construction that Chapuys himself placed upon that last charge. Dr. Ortiz, in far-off Rome, later noted, “It is said that the process against her states that she poisoned the Queen.”²⁰ However, there is no charge to that effect in the indictment, and Ortiz may have gotten his information from Chapuys.

It would appear from Chapuys’s report that less emphasis was laid on the more serious charge that Anne had “conspired the King’s death,” possibly because the evidence to support it was shaky. Specifying that she had promised to marry Norris, rather than each of her coaccused, as was alleged in the indictment, suggests that a sinister meaning deliberately had been construed from Anne’s compromising conversation with Norris on April 30. It seems the Crown was implying that Anne’s relationship with Norris was far more serious than the casual affairs she supposedly had with the other accused, and that the latter were to be merely accessories to regicide.²¹

Aless reported further details of the evidence, such as it was. “The Queen was accused of having danced in the bedroom with the gentlemen of the King’s Privy Chamber, and of having kissed her brother, Lord Rochford. When she made no answer to these accusations, the King’s syndic or proctor, Master Polwarck [Sir Richard Pollard], produced certain letters and bawled out that she could not deny she had written to her brother, informing him that she was pregnant.” The implication, of course, was that Rochford was the father of the child. “Still she continued silent.”

Chapuys also states that Anne, ludicrously, “was also charged, and her brother likewise, with having laughed at the King and his dress” and making fun of his poetry, “which was objected to them as a great crime;” in sum, “she showed in various ways she did not love the King but was tired of him.”²² This, of course, was not a crime either, but it was portrayed as shocking in a woman whom the King had honored with marriage. Dr. Ortiz later reported that “it was proved at the trial that she had behaved in this way before the conception of the child which the King thought to be his.”²³

Anne put up a spirited defense, and “made so wise and discreet answers to all things laid against her, excusing herself with her words so clearly, as though she had never been guilty of the same.”²⁴ “She positively denied that she had ever been false to the King, but being told that Norris, Weston, Brereton, and Smeaton had accused her”—which was substantially untrue, except in the case of Smeaton—“she said she ought not to conceal certain things which had passed between her and them,”²⁵ which would explain why the Crown had jumped to false conclusions. Among them, probably, were the flirtatious interchanges that Anne had described only days before. She also “confessed she had given money to Weston, as she had often done to other young gentlemen,”²⁶ but she insisted she had maintained her honor and her chastity all her life long, “as much as ever queen did.”²⁷ The case against her, it would seem, consisted of what has been described as “a ragbag of gossip, innuendo, and misinterpreted courtliness.”²⁸

By all accounts Anne defended herself with such clarity and good sense that her innocence, which she protested vehemently, seemed manifest to many who heard her, and some began to have doubts and suspicions in regard to the prosecution’s case. “The Queen, sitting in her chair, having an excellent, quick wit, and being a ready speaker, did so answer to all objections that, had the peers given in their verdict according to the expectation of the assembly, she had been acquitted.”²⁹ Strickland, without identifying the source, claims that Anne, referring to Smeaton’s confession, protested “that one witness was not enough to convict a person of high treason,” but was informed “that in her case it was sufficient.”

The account of the trial in the Harleian manuscripts states that, after “the accusers had given in their evidence, the witnesses were produced.” This cannot be accurate, because Chapuys was to state on May 20 that “no witnesses were produced against her, as it is usual to do, particularly when the accused denies the charge.”³⁰ What were probably produced were the statements made under examination by those who had testified against Anne, which, as has been noted, do not survive.

Sir John Spelman, a member of the jury and a justice of the King’s Bench, later recorded that “all the evidence was of bawdery and lechery, so that there was never such a whore in the realm” as the Queen. Yet if Anne’s conduct had indeed been so blatant as to give rise to such comments, it is strange that there is no abundance of evidence—or, in fact, no evidence at all—for it in other sources.

The Crown certainly stooped to relying on hearsay. Spelman wrote skeptically: “Note that this matter was disclosed by a woman called the Lady Wingfield, who had been a servant to the Queen and shared the same tendencies; and suddenly the said Wingfield became ill, and a little time before her death she showed the matter to one of those, etc.;” as we have seen, this word “etc.,” which has often been incorrectly thought to have been inserted because the page was (perhaps deliberately) torn off here, in fact refers to the witnesses. Lady Wingfield, of course, was the person whose dying words had been repeated to Cromwell by an unidentified informant. Unfortunately, she was now dead and could not confirm her testimony, nor do we know what it was;³¹ given that she probably died by 1534, it perhaps related to offenses allegedly committed by Norris and Brereton in 1533, or it could even have had something happened years before, the importance of which had been deliberately exaggerated.³² In the absence of other witness testimony, it would appear that such evidence as this, along with that of Lady Worcester, Nan Cobham, and another maid-of-honor, as well as the Queen’s own indiscreet utterings in the Tower, constituted the case for the Crown.

“For the evidence,” wrote George Wyatt, “as I never could hear of any, small I believe it was. The accusers must have doubted whether their proofs would not prove their reproofs.” That would appear to be corroborated by other evidence.

Following sixteenth-century legal practice, the Queen was not allowed to question any of the Crown’s witnesses (had there been any), summon any to speak for her, or give evidence on her own behalf, nor, having been indicted for treason, was she permitted to have any legal counsel for her defense. As her cousin, the fourth Duke of Norfolk, would complain at his trial in 1572, “I am brought to fight without a weapon.”³³ Nevertheless, Anne had spoken out boldly, stoutly pleading that everything alleged against her was untrue and that she had committed no offense.³⁴ Yet when it came to the point where she was “put to the trial of the peers of the realm,” the judgment of her peers was unanimous. “After they had communed together, the youngest lord [the Earl of Surrey] was called first to give verdict, who said Guilty, and every lord and earl after their degrees said Guilty to the last, and so condemned her.”³⁵ Against each name on the list of peers appears the abbreviation Cul for “culpable,” meaning guilty.³⁶ “Had the peers given their verdict according to the expectation of the assembly, she had been acquitted; but they, amongst whom the Duke of Suffolk was chief, and wholly applying himself to the King’s humor, pronounced her guilty.”³⁷ It was “a purely political verdict.”³⁸

Standing to receive judgment, Anne betrayed no emotion; she appeared “unmoved as a stone, and carried herself as if she was receiving some great honor.” Excited murmurs were rippling through the assembled spectators at this sensational development, and in the general hubbub, some were unable to tell whether the Queen had been found innocent or guilty. Covertly, some of the peers who had condemned her “did not forbear to deliver out voices that caused everywhere to be muttered abroad that that spotless Queen in her defense had cleared herself with a most wise and noble speech,” and this “was reported without the doors” to the waiting crowds.³⁹

Nevertheless, those same peers now told Anne “she must resign her crown to their hands, which she did at once, without resistance.”⁴⁰ This implies either that she was actually wearing a crown at her trial, which is highly unlikely, or that it had been placed at hand in the hall, probably on a cushion. Her being ceremonially divested of it would prove dramatically symbolic of her disgrace. Burnet says that as she formally gave it up, she protested that she was innocent of having offended against the King.

In Tudor times, crowns were customarily worn at coronations and on the great festivals of the Church. The crown made for Anne Boleyn’s coronation in 1533 was of gold studded with sapphires, balas rubies, and pearls, with crosses of gold and fleurs-de-lis around the rim;⁴¹ probably it had been brought from the Jewel House across the courtyard for her trial, for although queens also wore smaller crowns and coronets on top of their headdresses, as appears in many portraits of the period, Anne is recorded as wearing a cap with a feather for her trial.

“She was then degraded from all her titles, countess [sic.], marchioness, and princess, which she said she gave up willingly to the King who had conferred them.”⁴² Dr. Ortiz and the Bishop of Faenza also reported that Anne was sentenced first to be degraded.⁴³

Significantly, the title of Queen was not mentioned. Wriothesley asserted that after that symbolic act, and the dissolution of her marriage two days later, Anne “was never lawful Queen of England,” and many historians still accept that. Yet though she had been ceremonially stripped of her royal insignia, she was never officially deprived of the title of Queen, which was hers under the Act of Succession of March 1534, which made her queen by statutory right, and not by right of marriage to the King. This act was not repealed, only superseded by the 1536 Act of Succession, passed after Anne’s death, which just ratified the annulment of her marriage,⁴⁴ and left her in the unusual position of being Queen without ever having been the King’s lawful wife.

That Anne remained Queen of England after her condemnation is clear from the wording of the 1536 act, in which she is referred to as the “late Queen Anne,” as compared with Katherine of Aragon, who is called merely the “late Princess Dowager,”⁴⁵ while Cranmer, when annulling her marriage, called her “Queen Anne,”⁴⁶ and Sir William Kingston certainly did so in his letters. People generally would continue to refer to her as Queen, and it was as a queen that Anne Boleyn would go to the scaffold.

It was reported that throughout her trial Anne thought herself “safe from death”;⁴⁷ her mood had perhaps swung again from pessimism to optimism, and given the precedents, and the humor of the court, she may have been justified in thinking that, at the very worst, divorce and imprisonment would be her fate. She was the Queen of England, and no Queen of England before her had been put to death. But now she was forced to suspend that belief.

A hush descended as the Duke of Norfolk, “bound to proceed according to the verdict of the peers,”⁴⁸ pronounced the dread sentence. He and his niece had been estranged for months, but Constantine noted that tears ran down his cheeks as he addressed her, his own sister’s child, although of course his tears could have been for his family’s lost honor and status, and the jeopardizing of his own career, rather than for Anne.⁴⁹ He told her gravely: “Because thou hast offended against our sovereign the King’s Grace in committing treason against his person, the law of the realm is this, that thou hast deserved death, and thy judgment 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.”⁵⁰ As Spelman noted, burning at the stake was “the judgment against women in treason, but because she was Queen, the steward gave judgment that she should be burned or beheaded at the King’s pleasure.”⁵¹

On hearing the terrible words spoken by Norfolk, Anne’s old nurse, Mrs. Orchard, watching from the gallery, “shrieked out dreadfully.” The ailing Earl of Northumberland “was suddenly taken ill,”⁵² and had to be assisted from the hall. Traditionally, it has been assumed that he was overcome by grief for the woman he had once loved, but—as has been shown—that is unlikely. On May 19, John Husee informed Lord Lisle: “It is said my lord of Northumberland is dead, but I cannot certify it.”⁵³ The earl was in fact mortally ill, and was to die just over a year later.

Chapuys reported that “when the sentence was read to [Anne], she preserved her composure, saying that she held herself always ready to greet death, but was extremely sorry to hear that others, who were innocent and the King’s loyal subjects, should share her fate and die through her. She asked only for a short space for the disposing of her conscience.”⁵⁴

Aless stated that “when the sentence of death was pronounced, the Queen raised her eyes to Heaven, nor did she condescend to look at her judges.” Lancelot de Carles wrote that, on hearing her fate, “her face did not change, but she appealed to God whether the sentence was deserved; then, turning to the judges, she said she would not dispute with them, but believed there was some other reason for which she was condemned than the cause alleged, of which her conscience acquitted her, as she had always been faithful to the King. But she did not say this to preserve her life, for she was quite prepared to die.”

Crispin de Milherve gave a more detailed version of this speech, and his account also shows that Anne believed she was being done away with for reasons other than the crimes alleged against her, and that she knew others were bent on her death.

He too referred to her raising her eyes to Heaven as she declared, “O Father, O Creator, Thou who art the way, the life and the truth, knowest whether I have deserved this death.” Then she turned to her judges:

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, as 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.

In Chapuys’s report of this speech, Anne ended with these words: “The Judge of all the world, in Whom abounds justice and truth, knows all, and through His love I beseech that He will have compassion on those who have condemned me to this death.” “Her speech made even her bitterest enemies pity her.”⁵⁵

Various versions of the sentence would be circulated in Europe; on May 24 the Bishop of Faenza wrote from Paris: “On the fifteenth instant, the Queen was degraded, and the following day was to be executed, either burnt or beheaded. But first, her brother, four gentleman [sic] and an organist, with whom she had misconducted herself, were to be quartered in her presence.” In June, Dr. Ortiz, writing from Rome, informed the Empress that Anne was condemned to be “beheaded and burnt, seeing the others suffer the same death, with the exception of the one who revealed the crime.”⁵⁶

Spelman and his fellow justices were clearly unhappy about the sentence, and “murmured at this judgment against the Queen, for such a judgment in the disjunctive,” meaning that it was unfair to sentence a prisoner to either burning or beheading.⁵⁷ However, as would soon become clear, the form of sentence, and the method of execution, had been decided upon beforehand, for the King needed a means of persuading Anne to agree to the annulment of her marriage. All that Norfolk would say to her, in the face of the judges’ mutterings, was that “according to the old customs of the land, she should be burned, but nevertheless it should stand in the King’s commandment.”⁵⁸

“The sentence being denounced, the court arose.” Anne curtsied to the peers, then was escorted by Sir William Kingston from the hall, with Lady Kingston and Lady Boleyn following.⁵⁹ The Gentleman Gaoler walked alongside, his ceremonial axe now turned toward the prisoner, to show the waiting crowds that she had been condemned to death. Although Lord Rochford’s trial was to follow almost at once, Anne and her brother “did not see each other” as she made her departure.⁶⁰

After the condemned woman left the court, it erupted in a buzz of conversation as the observers expressed their views on the trial. The Lord Mayor of London openly declared, “I could not observe anything in the proceedings against her, but that they were resolved to make an occasion to get rid of her at any price.” Even Anne’s old enemy Chapuys thought she had answered the charges “satisfactorily enough” and believed that, like her coaccused before her, she had been “condemned upon presumption [of guilt] and certain indications, without valid proof or confession.” Norris’s servant, George Constantine, later wrote to Cromwell: “I never heard [that] queens should be thus handled … I never suspected, but I promise you there was much muttering of Queen Anne’s [being sentenced to] death.” Chapuys reported that Londoners “spoke strangely” of her trial and the speed of her fall. In a book of hours associated with Anne, next to a picture of Christ before Caiaphas, someone wrote, “Even so will you be accused by false witnesses.” William Camden, whose life of Elizabeth I was published in 1615, wrote, “The spectators deemed Anne innocent, and merely circumvented.” It is a view that persists to this day, and with good reason.

It is true that there is no evidence that the Crown had brought pressure to bear to secure a conviction. On the contrary, the letter of the law, as it stood then, was scrupulously adhered to, and the trial had been superficially fair. Ninety-five jurors, including the commissioners, found the Queen and her alleged lovers guilty of treason. Yet the composition of the juries had been bound to prejudice the verdicts, and also an awareness of the King’s will in the matter. As we have seen, Henry was expecting a guilty verdict. As soon as news of it came, he sent Sir Francis Bryan “in all haste” to Chelsea to inform Jane Seymour.⁶¹ “To judge by appearances,” Chapuys wrote, “there is no doubt that he will take the said Seymour to wife; and some think the agreements and promises are already made.”⁶²

After her condemnation, Anne was “conveyed back to her chamber,” attended by Lady Kingston, Lady Boleyn,⁶³ and her four young ladies. Tradition has long had it that, as an adjudged traitor, she was now moved from the Queen’s apartments in the Tower palace to the “Lieutenant’s Lodging,” as the Queen’s House was called until around 1880; it is now the official residence of the Governor of the Tower and known as the Queen’s House or the King’s House, depending on the gender of the reigning monarch.

The Lieutenant’s Lodging was a half-timbered building that was still in the early stages of reconstruction. Replacing a medieval house that stood between the Garden (later known as the Bloody) Tower and the Bell Tower, it was begun—or rather the first payments for it had been made—in 1533, and would not be completed until the 1540s. It faced Tower Green (or East Smithfield Green, as it was then known) and the royal chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula. The house has since been much restored and altered, but two linenfold-oak-paneled first-floor rooms said to have been occupied by Anne Boleyn have been preserved; one, a bedroom fourteen feet square, with a ceiling just eight feet high, boasts a handsome four-poster bed. A rough carving of the name ANNE survives in the stonework of the large fireplace. Originally, the house also boasted a spacious hall two stories high, the upper part of which later became the Council Chamber.

That carving is probably not contemporary, and there is no other evidence in primary sources that Anne was moved here. Elizabeth Benger, in her Memoirs of the Life of Anne Boleyn, published in 1821, incorrectly inferred from Kingston’s letters that since his wife was attending the Queen, the latter was accommodated in the Lieutenant’s Lodging, regardless of the fact that Kingston was the constable, not the lieutenant; prior to 1821, as Benger states, an unsupported tradition had it that Anne was held in the Beauchamp Tower, where a carving of her falcon badge can still be seen. Benger’s misconception was enshrined in William Harrison Ainsworth’s enormously popular book, The Tower of London, in 1840, and was soon widely accepted as fact. Only gradually are historians rejecting the tradition of Anne being imprisoned in the Lieutenant’s Lodging,⁶⁴ while it is still believed by the public at large. It is now thought that the rooms alleged to be hers were only built in 1540. Given that Kingston expected Anne to be executed within a day or so of her trial, it was hardly worth the effort to move her and her attendants, while the lieutenant’s half-built house was in no fit state for housing the woman who was still Queen of England: in 1539, among Cromwell’s “remembrances,” is a note to himself about the Lieutenant’s Lodging, “which will fall down.”⁶⁵ Since Anne was conveyed “back to her chamber,” she must have returned to the Queen’s lodgings after her trial.

“And so she was brought to ward again, and two ladies waited on her, which came in with her at the first, and waited still on her, the Lady Kingston and the Lady Boleyn, her aunt.”⁶⁶ At least Anne was now spared the company of the tart and perhaps resentful Lady Shelton, and Mrs. Coffin, who had also been dismissed.

“Immediately” after Anne Boleyn’s trial,⁶⁷ “the Lord of Rochford, her brother, was arraigned for high treason, which was for knowing the Queen his sister carnally, most detestable against the law of God and nature also, and treason to his prince; and also for conspiracy of the King’s death.” Having stood at the bar, held up his hand and pleaded not guilty, “he made answer so prudently and wisely to all articles laid against him, that marvel it was to hear, but never would confess anything, but made himself as clear as though he had never offended.”⁶⁸ Lancelot de Carles speaks of “his calm behavior and good defense. [Sir Thomas] More himself did not reply better.”

With regard to the main charge—that of treasonable incest—the Crown’s case appears to have rested solely on the deposition of Rochford’s wife, Jane,⁶⁹ and to have related chiefly to an occasion when he was alone in private with Anne.⁷⁰ Burnet says that in making a request to her, he was said by bystanders to have leaned over her bed and kissed her, but this cannot have been on the occasion when they were alone, so either Burnet’s information is apocryphal, or he had access to sources now lost to us. Even so, this was an age in which queens and great ladies would receive guests as they lay on their beds, attired in rich nightgowns in heavy fabrics, and the custom of kissing ladies on the mouth on greeting was widespread in England among all classes, as the humanist Erasmus delightedly noted on his first visit. So Anne’s conduct would hardly have been remarkable. The author of the “Spanish Chronicle,” never reliable and inclined to embroider or make up details, claims that Rochford had been espied leaving her bedchamber in his night robe on several occasions.

Spelman and Anthony do not refer to any of this testimony, but their accounts survive only in part. Chapuys reported that Rochford “was charged with having cohabited with her upon presumption, because he had once been found a long time with her, and with certain other follies.” He states that Lady Rochford had divulged their “accursed secret” in a letter.⁷¹ The “Spanish Chronicle” states that George Boleyn “had been seen on several occasions going in and out of the Queen’s room dressed only in his night clothes,” but it is not a reliable source, and is here probably only repeating gossip. George Wyatt, writing six decades later, refers to this testimony of Rochford’s “wicked wife,” but states that she was “brought forth” to accuse him, a common misconception, for there is no record of her actually being in court, and Chapuys says that, again, no witnesses were called.⁷² But Jane’s deposition was sufficient, and when it became clear that no one else was to testify, Rochford protested to his judges, “On the evidence of only one woman, you are prepared to believe this great evil of me!”⁷³ The anonymous Portuguese observer, whose account was written in May 1536, felt that Lady Rochford, in betraying “this accursed secret and together with it the names of those who had joined in the evil doings of the unchaste Queen,” had acted “more out of envy and jealousy than out of love toward the King.”⁷⁴

It has been argued that had Rochford been suspected of homosexual conduct, as Warnicke suggests, political capital would have been made of it at his trial, at which the details would have come out.⁷⁵ Yet that argument fails to take into account the fact that a charge of homosexuality would have undermined the main accusation of incest with his sister. Even if Rochford was known to have indulged in homosexual acts, it would not have been in the Crown’s interest to draw attention to the fact.

But there were more explosive revelations to come. Chapuys wrote circumspectly to the Emperor:

I would not wish to omit that, among other things that were charged against [Rochford] as a crime, it was also objected against him that his sister the Concubine had told his wife that the King has not the ability to copulate with a woman, for he has neither potency nor vigour. This he was not openly charged with, but it was shown him in writing, with a warning not to repeat it. But he immediately declared the matter, in great contempt of Cromwell and some others, saying he would not in this point arouse any suspicion which might prejudice the King’s issue. He was also charged with having spread reports which called in question whether his sister’s daughter was the King’s child, to which he made no reply.⁷⁶

Why should Rochford have wished to impugn the legitimacy of a royal heir with Boleyn blood?⁷⁷ It would not have been in his, or his family’s, interests to do so. But that was beside the point. His accusers seem only to have been concerned with crediting him with treachery, for to say such things of the sovereign was not only shocking, but also—under the provisions of the 1534 act—high treason, in that they impugned the King’s issue.⁷⁸

There was an accepted medieval belief, still widely prevalent in the sixteenth century—that impotence, temporary or otherwise, was often caused by magic, as was alleged in many requests for marriages to be annulled. This might explain the discreet assertion in the indictment that certain harms and perils had befallen the King’s body,⁷⁹ which implied that the harm done to the man imperiled both his dynasty and his kingdom. So entrenched in society was the assumption—and awareness—that most cases of impotence were brought about by witchcraft,⁸⁰ that the fact did not even need to be stated in the indictment. And although this was a far cry from Henry’s reported belief that he had been seduced into this marriage by witchcraft, which was why it was barren of sons, it was but a short step from that suspicion to the conviction that Anne had taken things a stage further and used magic to prevent her husband from impregnating her. It did not matter that the Queen, in confiding this matter to her sister-in-law—if she ever did so—had perhaps been expressing her fears about not being able to conceive, nor that her very future depended on her bearing Henry an heir. Once she was suspected of witchcraft, people would have been ready to believe anything of her, however irrational; and such a charge would have made sense in the light of her alleged plot to murder the King, marry one of her lovers, and rule in Elizabeth’s name.

However, it is unlikely that Anne ever made that unguarded remark to Lady Rochford. By the summer of 1535 they had almost certainly fallen out, and Jane had switched her allegiance to Katherine and Mary. If Anne had confided in Jane prior to that date, and her assertions about the King were true, his incapacity must have been temporary, for he had begotten a son on her in October that year. It is highly implausible that Anne would have trusted Jane with such sensitive information after their estrangement, and therefore unwise to accept this evidence for Henry VIII’s supposed impotency at face value.

It has been suggested that Henry’s embarrassment about his poor sexual performance, and his suspicion—or awareness—that Anne despised him for it, may have been a fundamental cause of her fall.⁸¹ Yet there is little evidence to support the widely discussed modern theory that Henry VIII suffered from erectile problems. In 1532, lamenting the fact that he had waited so long to marry Anne Boleyn and still did not have a son to succeed him, Henry himself told Parliament, “I am forty-one years old, at which age the lust of man is not so quick as in lusty youth.”⁸² This was a strange remark from the man who had been waiting for more than six years to marry Anne, and was supposedly desperate to bed her, but it was probably made to justify the speedy putting away of Katherine of Aragon.⁸³ Eight years after the King uttered it, even when he had become ill, incapacitated, and grossly obese, he was to tell his doctor that he was still having wet dreams twice nightly; at that time—1540—he insisted that he was unable to consummate his marriage to Anne of Cleves, who revolted him in various ways, but that because of his “nightly emissions,” he felt himself capable of intercourse with other ladies. It would therefore appear that the King’s remark to Parliament in 1532 was merely made to curry sympathy and emphasize the urgency of the situation.

Then there was that touchy response made to Chapuys in 1533, “Am I not a man like other men? Am I not? Am I not?”⁸⁴ though perhaps we should not attach too much significance to that, for it was made in response to the ambassador’s suggestion that the King might never have sons. The fact that Anne Boleyn conceived four times in three years, and that Jane Seymour was to become pregnant after only six months of marriage, is proof that Henry VIII functioned sexually as normally as any man of his age.

Whether Anne actually complained of Henry’s impotence to Lady Rochford is immaterial, for the real purpose of this evidence was probably to reinforce the implication in the indictment that Henry VIII had not fathered the child of which Anne miscarried.⁸⁵What is strange, though, is why the Crown was being so coy about this, and did not openly accuse Anne of impugning the royal succession by foisting a bastard on the King; and why it took a gamble that Rochford would not disobey orders and read out loud what was supposed to be kept secret.

Rochford’s answer, followed by his silence, made plain to everyone listening the thrust of the evidence, and its effect was to create a sensation, while every foreign ambassador was to report it in gleeful detail.⁸⁶ Too late, Rochford protested, “I did not say it!” No one was willing to listen.

He responded better to the other charges, replying “so well that several of those present naively wagered ten to one that he would be acquitted, especially as no witnesses were produced against him.”⁸⁷ George Constantine told Cromwell that “there were [those] that said that much money would have been laid that day, and that at great odds, that the Lord Rochford should have been quit.”

Even “the judges at first were of different opinions, but at last one view overturned the other” and the twenty-six peers (Northumberland being absent) came to a unanimous decision: when Norfolk “asked them if he was guilty or not, one (speaking for them all) replied, ‘Guilty.’”⁸⁸ The duke then had to sentence his nephew to the full horrors of a traitor’s death: “That he should go again to prison in the Tower from whence he came, and to be drawn from the said Tower of London through the City of London to the place of execution called Tyburn,⁸⁹ and there to be hanged, being alive cut down, and then his members [genitals] cut off and his bowels taken out of his body and burnt before him, and then his head cut off, and his body to be divided in quarter pieces, and his head and body to be set at such places as the King should assign.”⁹⁰ Hearing these dread words, Rochford observed that every man was a sinner and that all deserved death.⁹¹ According to Chapuys, he “said that, since he must die, he would no longer maintain his innocence, but confessed that he had deserved death.” He only “requested the judges that they would beg the King that his debts, which he recounted, might be paid out of his goods.”⁹²

Effectively, unless Chapuys got it wrong, Rochford confessed that he was guilty as charged, and that his sister was guilty by implication. It would have been unusual for a man facing imminent divine judgment to confess an untruth, but Rochford perhaps made this declaration with a view to protecting the surviving members of his family, for on the scaffold he was to protest that he had never offended the King and, according to Chapuys himself, “disclaimed all that he was charged with.”⁹³

Plainly, people did believe him innocent. “By the common opinion of men of best understanding in those days,” George Wyatt later wrote, Rochford was “condemned only upon some point of a statute of words then in force.” Wyatt, like others, was clearly not impressed by Lady Rochford’s evidence. “I heard say he had escaped, had it not been for a letter,” Constantine recorded. He did not specify whether this was his wife’s letter detailing his crimes, or the letter produced at the Queen’s trial as evidence that he had fathered her child. Had Rochford not been so proud, the poet Wyatt wrote later, every man would have bemoaned his fate, if only for his great wit. But he had made so many enemies through his arrogance that there were few willing to speak up in his favor, however much they had admired his courage during his trial.

“After this, the court broke up.”⁹⁴ It had been one of the most momentous days in English judicial history.

Afterward, news of the verdict was speedily conveyed to the King. On May 19, Chapuys reported that Henry had “supped lately with some ladies in the house of John Kite Bishop of Carlisle.”⁹⁵ This would have been on one of the evenings after the trial, perhaps May 15 itself. The Bishop of Carlisle’s Inn (later Russell House) stood by Ivy Bridge in the Strand, next to the Savoy Hospital; part of this house was currently being leased to Sir Francis Bryan.

Bishop Kite told Chapuys the next morning that Henry had “shown an extravagant joy” at dinner, and was “heard to say that he believed upward of a hundred men had had to do with [Anne], and said he had long expected the issues of these affairs, and that thereupon he had before composed a tragedy, which he carried with him; and so saying, the King drew from his bosom a little book written in his own hand; but the bishop did not read the contents,” probably because it was not the occasion for it. Chapuys gained the impression that the book may have contained “certain ballads that the King has composed, at which the Concubine and her brother laughed as foolish things, which was objected to them as a great crime.”⁹⁶ Henry added that Anne only kept his love through practicing her spells and enchantments.⁹⁷ His conviction that she had bewitched him was probably genuine, and would go a long way toward explaining his ill-advised passion for her, and prevent him from losing face in the light of recent events. Whether Henry really believed that Anne had been rampantly promiscuous with more than a hundred men is dubious: if he had long expected something of that nature, why had he not acted on his suspicions before? No, this was probably another blustering, face-saving remark.

Chapuys sought out Henry that evening to offer his commiserations on the Queen’s treachery, upon which Henry observed complacently that “many great and good men, even emperors and kings, have suffered from the arts of wicked women.” He did not appear to be suffering very greatly. “You never saw a prince or husband make greater show or wear his horns more patiently and lightly than this one does,” Chapuys observed with irony to the Emperor. “I leave you to imagine why.”⁹⁸

The reason for Henry’s complacency was staying a mile or so along the river, at Chelsea, where Henry had himself rowed after dinner. That night, he stayed up late with Jane Seymour, enjoying a supper prepared by his own master cooks. The next day, May 16, Chapuys noticed that the courtiers were visiting Chelsea in increasing numbers to pay their respects to Jane, whom they expected would soon become their queen. The common people were aware of this too, and crowds were gathering outside the gates in the hope of catching a glimpse of her. Their mood was not entirely approving; at least one defamatory ballad about Jane was already circulating in London, much to the King’s annoyance.

The cynical Chapuys was doubtful that Henry’s love for Jane would last. “He may well divorce her when he tires of her,” he opined, doubtless thinking of the King’s two failed marriages. But for now Henry was an amorous suitor, as is apparent in this, the only one of his letters to Jane Seymour to survive; it must have been sent around this time, and refers to one of the scurrilous ballads:

My dear friend and mistress,

The bearer of these few lines from thy entirely devoted servant will deliver into thy fair hands a token of my true affection for thee, hoping you will keep it for ever in your sincere love for me. Advertising you that there is a ballad made lately of great derision against us, which if it go abroad and is seen by you, I pray you pay no manner of regard to it. I am not at present informed who is the setter forth of this malignant writing, but if he is found out, he shall be straitly punished for it. For the things ye lacked, I have minded my Lord [Treasurer] to supply them to you as soon as he could buy them. Thus hoping shortly to receive you into these arms, I end for the present, your own loving servant and sovereign,

H.R.⁹⁹