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RETHINKING THE FALL OF ANNE BOLEYN* GREG WALKER Abstract The lurid story of the fall of Anne Boleyn,

her trial and condemnation on charges of multiple (and in one case incestuous) adultery, has been used to support many different interpretations of the political and religious history of the reign of Henry VIII. This article argues that the fate of the queen and those accused with her was not the result of wider factional battles or a cynical sacrifice, either to appease a jaded king or enable a shift in religious or diplomatic policy. Nor was it a case of justice catching up with a libidinous woman who was guilty as charged. In fact Annes fall was far swifter and more dramatic than previous accounts have suggested, the result essentially of just two days of hectic activity at court and their aftermath. Anne fell, it is argued here, not as a result of what she did, but of what she said during the May Day weekend of 1536, in a series of incautious conversations with the men who were to be tried and executed with her. I In his timely address to the Royal Historical Society, published in 1995, Steven Gunn likened the current state of early-Tudor studies to trench warfare, with the subject of Anne Boleyn providing its most heavily contested salient.1 The analogy was an apt one. Fiercely defended positions, aggressive attempts to assault or undermine them, and rebarbative rates of attrition seemed the order of the day as scholars sought to partition the post-Elton empire, and nowhere more obviously than over the life and reputation of Henry VIIIs second queen.2 Was Henry a murderous tyrant, firmly in command of events, or a plaything of faction? Was he the driving force behind the religious changes of the early 1530s, or did he get his religious policy second hand from those around him? Aspects of Annes life have been cited as supporting evidence for each of these claims. In the past two decades her spectacular fall in May 1536 has been attributed to factional intrigue, diplomatic manoeuvring, theological battles, and supernatural paranoia, each claim carrying with it differing assumptions about the nature of Henrician political culture and the dynamics of English Reformation history. While there has been something of lull from the big guns since the early 1990s, no one has, as yet, proposed an armistice, or even an amicable game of soccer in nomans-land. It might thus seem somewhat foolhardy to venture over the parapet for another foray into the vexed question of Annes fall. But the circumstances do seem to warrant it. As Gunn suggested, entrenched positions can only be shifted by the discovery of new evidence or the application of new assumptions, and both of these criteria seem to apply, or at least, as I will suggest, the known evidence needs to be substantially rethought, and a less rigid approach to its implications adopted. Only then can the field be cleared for a more substantial reassessment of the political and religious history of the reign. When it comes to Annes fall, the alternatives, as Gunns analogy suggests, have always been assumed to be clear-cut and mutually exclusive. As Eric Ives set them out: If she was guilty, [w]e need look no further, but if not, then, as many have pointed out, Henry, Cromwell, and not a few prominent persons contrived or connived at cold-blooded murder, and the trials of her fellow accused must be a deliberate culling of the kings intimate attendants.3 Historians have tended to agree, dividing between those (a minority) who have accepted that she was guilty, and those who (in

far greater numbers) have opted for innocence, and consequently pursued various conspiracy theories to explain the motives for the murders. But the choice as outlined here is too reductive. Where human nature, and particularly human sexual relations, are concerned, explanations are rarely clear-cut, and blood rarely cold. What the evidence suggests, as we shall see, is neither obvious guilt nor a politically-motivated cull but a more confused, and consequently more terrifying situation. An enquiry, prompted by accusations that could not safely be ignored, unearthed seemingly compelling evidence of guilt on the part of the queen and her intimate circle; that investigation gathered a momentum of its own in an atmosphere of frenzied accusation and interrogation, driven by Henrys furious search for the truth, to the point at which any suggestion that the queen might be innocent seemed prima facie evidence of the speakers own guilt. Recognition of this Kafkaesque situation offers a path between the positions of Annes defenders and her accusers, a path that allows for the evident emotional engagement with which the king pursued the investigation, without requiring the queens guilt to justify it, and for the apparent innocence of Anne and her co-defendants, without necessitating a conspiracy to bring about her fall. II When it came, the queens fall from grace was, as Ives memorably described it, short, but incandescent.4 In fact it was probably briefer and more pyrotechnic than most accounts allow. The first sign of trouble is frequently identified as the appointment, on 24 April 1536, of commissions of oyer and terminer to investigate criminal activity, including unspecified treasons, in the counties of Middlesex and Kent. 5 As these commissions were subsequently to investigate Annes alleged crimes, it has been assumed that they were set up for that purpose. But there is no reason to assume this. As Ives suggested, such commissions were a normal part of the judicial apparatus, 6 so it may well be that they were established for quite other purposes, and became involved in the affair only because they happened to be the best judicial instrument to hand when the scandal broke. Similar questions surround the summoning of parliament on 27 April. Given that the Reformation Parliament had been dissolved as recently as 14 April, it seems logical that only the most pressing of reasons could have prompted the king to summon a new assembly so quickly. As G.W. Bernard has argued, the most obviously pressing business that the parliament was to consider was the legislation following from the condemnation of the queen, most notably the Succession Act that was to bastardize Annes daughter Elizabeth and invest the succession in the heirs of Henry and his new queen Jane Seymour.7 But, again, the fact that parliament was to perform this task is not proof that it was summoned for that purpose. Perhaps, as Ives suggested, the pressing need was the Act Extinguishing the authority of the bishop of Rome, which looks rather innocuous now, but may have appeared a necessary addition to Henrys anti-papal armoury at the time.8 What seems unlikely is that Henry would have summoned a parliament to condemn Anne before he had any clear evidence that she was guilty of offences that might require legislation, and such evidence only began to appear, as what follows will suggest, on 30 April, well after both the commissioners and parliament had been summoned. Henry was notoriously cautious in taking matters to parliament if he was unsure that they would be passed (his repeated consultation of expert opinion between 1528 and 1533 before he would risk taking his Great Matter there being only the most obvious case in point). Thus, unless the whole affair was a plot, carefully managed in advance, either by the king or with his connivance - and I shall argue that it was not - the dates of the establishment

of the commission and the calling of parliament do not necessarily have a bearing on Annes fall. The first unquestionable evidence that the queen was under investigation came almost a week later and is decisive. Mark Smeaton, one of the queens musicians, was arrested and taken for interrogation to Cromwells house in Stepney.9 On the following day, May Day, Smeaton was transferred to the Tower, and the king attended the traditional jousts at Greenwich, but suddenly left as soon as the competition had finished, arousing comment by choosing to travel over-land to Whitehall with a handful of close companions rather than take the royal barge as he usually did.10 As the chronicler Edward Hall noted, perhaps making the most of the benefit of hindsight, of this sudden departing many men mused, but most chiefly the queen.11 During that fraught journey to Whitehall, the king subjected Henry Norris, the chief gentleman of his privy chamber and his closest companion (who was still recovering from his exertions as the Chief answerer in the tournament) to a series of staggeringly personal questions. The precise details are unknown, but the devastating tenor of the interrogation is clear: what did he know about the queens sexual conduct? Was she an adulteress? Was he her lover? Henry allegedly offered Norris a full pardon if he would confess and reveal everything that he knew; but Norris steadfastly maintained his innocence. At dawn the next day he joined Smeaton as a prisoner in the Tower. 12 On the same day, Tuesday 2 May, the queen herself and her brother, George, Viscount Rochford, joined them. Two days later a further group of courtiers were arrested, members of the privy chamber, William Brereton, Sir Francis Weston, and Sir Richard Page, and Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet, while another of Henrys companions, Sir Francis Bryan would also be interrogated by Cromwell but subsequently released. On 9 May a grand jury was summoned, and on 10 May it indicted all of the accused, except Wyatt and Page, on charges of having committed adultery with the queen. On 12 May the commoners were tried at Westminster before the oyer and terminer commissioners. All except Smeaton pleaded not guilty. All were found guilty and sentenced to death. On 15 May Anne and Rochford were tried, before a reputed audience of two thousand, by a special court of their peers convened within the Tower and presided over by the Lord Steward.13 They too were found guilty and condemned. By 19 May all of them were dead. What is to be made of all of this? The guilty party have, by and large, chosen to accept the account of events provided by Cromwell on 14 May in a letter to Sir John Wallop and Stephen Gardiner, the English agents at the French court. In Cromwells version, Anne and her co-conspirators were indeed guilty of all the charges laid against them, and had been discovered when their behaviour became so scandalous that it could no longer be concealed.14 This account gained considerable contemporary support, even from some of Annes former allies. John Hussey, Lord and Lady Lisles London agent, was particularly lurid in his account of the queens crimes. If all the books and chronicles were totally revolved and tried, he claimed, which against women have been penned, contrived, and written since Adam and Eve, those same were, I think, verily nothing in comparison of that which hath been done and committed by Anne the queen...which is so abominable and detestable that I am ashamed that any good woman should give ear thereto. 15 Wolseys gentleman usher and first biographer, George Cavendish gave Anne an equally culpable role in his highly moralized Metrical visions. My epitaph shall be, the vicious queen Lieth here of late, that justly lost her head Because that she did spot the kings bed. (593-95)16

A number of evangelicals took a similar line. George Constantyne, a servant of Henry Norris, tacitly accepted the guilt of the queen and his master, when he later recalled of Brereton, By my troth, if any of them was innocent, it was he. For either he was innocent, or else he died worst of them all.17 William Thomas, the future Edwardian Clerk of the Privy Council, whose The pilgrim (1547) was an extensive (if at times curiously ambivalent) defence of Henrys kingship, described Annes liberal life as too shameful to rehearse. Her outward profession of gravity was to be marvelled at, he claimed. But inwardly she was all another dame than she seemed to be, for in satisfying of her carnal appetite she fled not so much as the company of her own natural brother.18 George Wyatt, the grandson of the poet, also saw a difference between the queens public and private personae, although he judged it less severely: But howsoever she outwardly appeared, she was indeed a very wilful woman, which perhaps might seem no fault, because seldom women do lack it, but yet that and other things cost her after dear.19 Lord Justice Spelman also reached a damning judgement on Anne, noting that the charges against her were all bawdy and lechery, so that there was never such a whore in the realm.20 Bishop Shaxton saw her misconduct as a slander to God,21 and even Archbishop Cranmer seems to have allowed for the possibility that his erstwhile patron might be guilty as charged. In a letter to the king that does little to enhance his reputation for personal integrity, he was more anxious to distance himself and the evangelical cause from the fate of the fallen queen than to defend her reputation or seek clemency on her behalf. If it be true that is openly reported of the queens Grace, if men had a right estimation of things, they should not esteem any part of your Graces honour to be touched thereby, but her honour only to be clearly disparaged. And I am in such a perplexity that my mind is clearly amazed; for I never had better opinion in woman than I had in her; which maketh me to think that she should not be culpable.... And as I loved her not a little for the love which I judged her to bear toward God and His Gospel; so, if she be proved culpable, there is not one that loveth God and His Gospel that ever will favour her, but must hate her above all other; and the more they favour the Gospel, the more they will hate her...Wherefore I trust that your Grace will bear no less entire favour unto the truth of the Gospel than you did before, forasmuch as your Graces favour to the Gospel was not led by affection unto her, but by zeal unto the truth. 22 The view that Anne was indeed culpable has, after roughly two centuries of scholarly scepticism,23 been recently revived in an important article. After a detailed rereading of all the surviving evidence, and a thorough reassessment of all the contended theories, Bernard has suggested that Anne might have been simply a loose-living lady after all, concluding that, perhaps the safest guess for a modern historian is that Anne had indeed committed adultery with Norris, and briefly with Mark Smeaton, and that there was enough circumstantial evidence to cast reasonable doubt on the denials of the others.24 But, if some contemporary observers seemed to accept that Anne was guilty, others were clearly convinced that she was not, or were at least sceptical concerning the convictions. The imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys observed that although everybody rejoices at the execution of the putain [whore], there are some who murmur at the mode of procedure against her and the others, and people speak variously of the king.25 George Constantyne recalled that there was much muttering at Annes death. Writing some years after the event, George Wyatt considered the whole scenario implausible and the alleged acts of adultery themselves impossible for a woman in Annes position to commit.26 John Foxe marvelled that parliament could have believed that Anne was guilty of incest, being so contrary to nature, that no natural

man will believe it and attributed her conviction to the kings having been influenced against her by crafty setters-on.27 Anne, and all her co-defendants except Smeaton, did, of course, roundly deny the accusations against them, both before and after sentencing. On her first entering the Tower, Anne is said to have declared to Sir William Kingston that she was as clear from the company of man as for sin as I am clear from you, and am the kings true wedded wife.28 And both before and after taking the sacrament on 16 May she asserted her innocency and swore on the damnation of her soul, that she had never been unfaithful to the king.29 Her anger at the allegations against her is also apparent from Kingstons reports. She claimed to have been as cruelly handled as ever was seen, and to have suffered treatment ill-befitting her dignity as a queen.30 When she demanded of her keeper shall I die without justice? his platitudinous reply, the poorest subject that the king hath hath justice, prompted only mocking laughter. 31 Why, then, did the queen and her co-accused not deny the charges on the scaffold, protesting their innocence in the most effective way possible? Despite Kingstons fear that Anne would declare herself to be a good woman for all men but for the king at the hour of her death, and so throw the equity of the process against her into doubt,32 both she and her brother made final statements that seemed to acknowledge the justice of their deaths. So much was this so, in fact, that some witnesses felt they had confessed to the crimes alleged against them. Reviewing the evidence later in the century, George Wyatt, the grandson of the poet, Thomas, concluded that all of the victims except Norris in a manner confessed, while Chapuys thought that Rochford had declared from the scaffold that he would no longer maintain his innocence, but confessed that he deserved death.33 Would innocent victims have made such statements? Perhaps to ask such a question is to look at the problem the wrong way around. It might be that, as Ives suggested, Anne and Rochford came as close to denying their guilt as convention allowed them to do. 34 There was a powerful compulsion within Tudor religious culture to die a good death, and this, for condemned criminals, included conforming to the model of the pious scaffold confession. Condemned men and women were supposed to behave as penitent sinners (for were not all mortals sinners in the eyes of God?), set a good example, and so make peace with the world, their accusers, and God. Hence Rochford presented himself as one who had come not...to preach, but to serve as a mirror and example, acknowledging his sins against God and the king...[and who] hoped that men would not follow the vanities of the world and the flatteries of the court, which had brought him to that shameful end.35 Weston likewise wished all other to take example at him, warning the spectators not to put off repentance until it was too late as he had, for I had thought to have lived in abomination yet these twenty or thirty years and then to have made amends. I thought little it would come to this. Interestingly only Smeaton said simply, Masters, I pray you all, pray for me, for I have deserved death.36 In this context Annes final words might be read as a model of restraint. Leaving open the question of her innocence, she made peace with her accusers and prepared to meet her God with a conscience clear of rancour. I do not intend to reason my cause, but I commit me to Christ wholly, in whom is my whole trust, desiring you all to pray for the kings majesty, that he may long reign over you, for he is a veray [i.e. true], noble prince and full gently hath handled me.37 Yet, if Anne and her co-accused were innocent, why were they brought down? A number of more or less ingenious conspiracies have been suggested to account for their destruction, none of which has, as Gunn observed, commanded general assent. 38

Was it the fact that her position as Henrys queen consort stood in the way of an imperial alliance that prompted either Cromwell, the supposed architect of that policy, or Henry himself, to bring her down, as Ives and others have claimed? The fact that Cromwell (acting surely with Henrys knowledge and connivance) worked strenuously to persuade Eustace Chapuys to acknowledge Anne over Easter 1536 suggests not. Evidently Henry was still committed to his marriage during April and sought to alter the diplomatic situation to accommodate it rather than vice-versa.39 Was it rather her religious sympathies that destroyed Anne? Had she, as Ives has argued more recently, launched a preaching campaign that threatened Cromwells plans to use the proceeds from the dissolution of the smaller monasteries to enrich the crown, thus provoking her former ally to move against her?40 The case for the preaching campaign is persuasive, but the suggestion that it brought down the queen less so. It is possible that Cromwells assumed irritation may have predisposed him to enquire into the queens alleged misdemeanours more rigorously than he might otherwise have done, but even this is speculation. As what follows will argue, Cromwell did not initiate the allegations against the queen, and once they had arisen, he had little alternative but to investigate them seriously. Yet Cromwell was subsequently to claim that he had planned the whole affair (a fantasier et conspirer le dict affaire)41 - although it is unclear whether he intended by this that he engineered the entire business ab initio, or that he had simply managed the investigative process from start to finish.42 It is true that Cromwell had begun the formal investigation when he arrested Smeaton and took him to his house in Stepney. But, to claim that this was part of a complex plot by the secretary first to destroy Anne and her allies, then double-cross her conservative opponents (what Ives has called an ingenious double reversed twist),43 seems to run well in advance of the evidence. As what follows will suggest, Cromwells action was, again, more plausibly a reaction to events rather than their cause. If Cromwell did indeed wish Chapuys to believe that he had devised the entire plot himself, the claim is more likely, as Bernard has suggested, 44 to have been an attempt to restore his own credibility in the eyes of the ambassador than a credible assertion. Far better to appear a clever Machiavell who could bring down queens and well-placed courtiers, than someone who had been as surprised by events as everyone else. Were conservative elements plotting to bring down Anne in order to restore Princess Mary to her former place in the succession? Chapuyss correspondence contains suggestions that Nicholas Carew and others hoped to make use of the queens loss of favour to further the Aragonese cause, but such limited moves as they made in this direction seemed to follow rather than prompt her fall.45 Was Anne a victim of a cull of influential men in the kings privy chamber? The allegations against her seem too extreme, and the choice of targets too haphazard to justify such a conclusion. Those men condemned with Anne do not suggest a plausible group or faction worth culling along with her, whether the supposed assassin was Cromwell or one of his conservative opponents. Norris, Brereton, Weston, and Smeaton do not seem collectively to have favoured a particular position on religion or foreign policy, and Mark Smeaton in particular seems to have had little influence of the sort that might have aroused resentment. Smeaton was the crucial figure in Annes destruction, yet he was both politically and socially marginal to the court circles in which he moved. This makes him the unlikeliest victim of a cull, but may help to explain his role in events, as what follows will suggest. If dramatic conspiracy theories cannot explain Annes fall, then, is a more basic explanation more plausible? Did Henry simply tire of Anne and dispose of her in the most ruthless manner imaginable in order to replace her with a more agreeable bride,

Jane Seymour? Again contemporary evidence can be found to support such a suggestion. Some people at court clearly thought that Henry was tiring of Anne in early 1536.46 And he certainly remarried with unseemly haste once Anne was dead. On the day of her execution the ever-obliging Cranmer provided the king with a special licence permitting the new marriage. While things may not have been quite as grotesque as they were to be depicted in Alexander Kordas influential 1933 film, The private life of Henry VIII (in which the king trotted directly from watching the execution to the chapel to marry his next bride),47 the funeral baked-meats might still, at a pinch, have furnished forth the marriage table on 30 May. Was Henrys desire for Jane Seymour, then, the key to Annes fall? Chapuys was speculating on the possibility of a new divorce as early as January 1536. And in February he reported that the king was showering Jane with gifts, and was so besotted with her that he could not bear to be apart from her even for an hour. 48 George Wyatt was in little doubt that advantage was taken of Annes pregnancy to undermine her in the kings affections and cement his relationship with Jane. She [i.e. Anne] waxing great [with child] again and not so fit for dalliance, the time was taken to steal the kings affection from her, when most of all she was to have been cherished. And, he once showing to bend from her, many that least ought shrank from her also, and some lent on the other side; such are the flexible natures of those in courts of princes for the most part. 49 On 1 April, it was reported, Jane had coyly refused a gift of a bag of sovereigns from Henry, saying she would not accept any such presents until God had sent her a good marriage: a response that had marvellously increased the kings love for her.50 While Anne was in the Tower awaiting trial, Henry conspicuously refused to give up on his courtship. Chapuys reported that already it sounds ill in the ears of the people that the king, having received such ignominy, has shown himself more glad than ever since the arrest of the putain; for he has been going about banqueting with ladies, sometimes remaining after midnight, and returning by river...which many interpret as showing his delight at getting rid of a maigre vieille et mechante bague with the hope of change, which is a thing specially agreeable to this king.51 By 19 May the ambassador was reporting that Henry had moved Jane to within a mile of his palace, where she was being served by the kings finest cooks and other officers. Chapuys concluded that Henry was certainly intending to marry her, and some thought the agreement and promises had already been made.52 As he reflected in a letter to Granvelle of the same day, you never saw prince nor man who made greater show of his [cuckolds] horns, or bore them more pleasantly. I leave you to imagine the case.53 Had Henry, then, simply come to hate Anne, as J.J. Scarisbrick suggested?54 Or was his rejection of the queen perhaps still more pointed, based upon more than personal desires? Was the king perhaps, as some scholars have suggested, convinced after her miscarriage on 29 February that Anne would never be able to bear him a male heir? A.F. Pollard argued that the miscarriage - Annes second - convinced the king that the God who had denied him a legitimate son during his marriage to Katherine of Aragon was still not satisfied with his marital arrangements. Henrys old conscience began to work again, and he reputedly complained to a member of his privy chamber that he must have been bewitched when he married Queen Anne (seduit et constrainct de sortileges), and so was legally free to marry elsewhere.55 MacCulloch imagined a still more accusatory response: since Henry had done all he could to put his private life in order in the sight of God, the fault must lie in someone else. The obvious person was Anne.56 But all this may be an over-reaction. Henry is said to have told Anne that he saw that God did not want him to have any male children, but both this remark and the

allusion to sortileges (if Henry made it) were angry outbursts rather than considered reflections on his condition with serious consequences. George Wyatts later account of the kings encounter with Anne, may give a clue to its flavour. Being thus a woman full of sorrow, it was reported that the king came to her, and bewailing and complaining unto her the loss of his boy [Wyatt says Henrys words were, I see God does not wish me to have a son by you], some words were heard break out of the inward feeling of her hearts dolours, laying the fault upon unkindness, which the king more than was cause (her case at this time considered) took more hardly then than otherwise he would if he had not been somewhat too much overcome with grief or not so much alienate.57 As Chapuys described it, Annes response to Henrys implicit rebuke was to reproach him that she had miscarried only because of her love for him, as her heart had been broken by the thought that he loved another (by implication, his latest mistress, Jane Seymour).58 At this Henry, like a guilty schoolboy, felt abashed, much grieved and stayed with her for a time to comfort her.59 On closer examination the evidence for Henrys hatred evaporates. As Bernard has argued, if Henry wanted to get rid of Anne, there were far simpler, and less humiliatingly intimate ways to do so than accusing her of multiple adultery, a charge that was certain to raise questions about both the succession and the kings capacities as a lover.60 Nor does the notion of a post-miscarriage falling-out fit the chronology of Annes fall. As Ives pointed out, the miscarriage itself did not doom the queen, at best it rendered her more exposed to her enemies. Crucially, as we have seen, Henry himself showed every sign of favouring her after the event. III How serious was Henry, then, about a new divorce? Ives claimed that on 27 April, the king consulted Stokesley to see if he could abandon Anne, citing a letter from Chapuys to Charles V written on 29 April.61 Such a move would indeed be crucial evidence of Henrys attitude towards the queen. As MacCulloch has pointed out, the fact that Henry chose the conservative Stokesley as his confidente, rather than Cranmer or another reform-minded bishop, might suggest much about his current mood and thinking. But is it clear that Henry did consult Stokesley on this issue? Chapuyss report does not support the interpretation that modern historians have placed upon it. Having noted that Henry was, according to his sources, as sick and tired of the Concubine as could be, Chapuys went on to observe that, The brother of Lord Montague told me yesterday at dinner that the day before, the bishop of London had been asked if the king could abandon the said Concubine, and he would not give any opinion to anyone but the king himself, and before doing so he would like to know the kings own inclination, meaning to intimate that the king might leave the said Concubine, but that, knowing his fickleness, he would not put himself in danger. There is nothing here to suggest that Henry himself spoke to Stokesley, indeed it is made clear that he did not. Stokesley would only give his opinion to the king in person, not to whoever approached him on the subject. Was that person inquiring on Henrys behalf, or did he claim to be doing so? Chapuys does not tell us. What he did do is place the enquiry in the context of the hopes of a number of conservative figures who were currently pushing Jane Seymour in Henrys direction, that they might soon make their enemies (by implication the queen and her allies) put water in the wine. The safest assumption would thus be that it was one of these figures who approached Stokesley (who was more likely to be sympathetic to efforts to undermine Annes

influence than most of the other available bishops) to seek his views, sounding out a like-minded expert witness if it was possible that, provided Jane played the role she was being coached for, she might end up at the altar rather than just in the kings bed. What the anecdote also suggests is that Annes opponents were not aiming to bring her down through allegations of adultery. If they were consulting a theologian, then it is clear that they were still puzzling over the niceties of the canon law concerning marriage: could Henry extricate himself from Anne on the grounds of her alleged precontract to Henry Algernon Percy? Or did the kings own earlier relationship with the queens sister Mary still provide viable grounds for an annulment? Had they had any inkling of the possibility of charges of adultery at this stage they would not have needed to seek expert advice on their consequences for the royal marriage. Henry may have been bored and frustrated with Anne, disappointed that she had again failed to provide him with the male heir he so urgently craved. He may even have begun to dislike her. But none of these things was likely to bring about her destruction. It seems that, after the passion of their early relationship had cooled, Henry made the mental adjustment necessary to see her no longer as the love of his life, but as his royal consort and the mother of his children (an adjustment that Anne herself was clearly having difficulties matching). The roles of mistress and lover were now being performed by other women, as they had been from soon after the wedding. What evidence there is suggests that, for all their heated squabbles, Henry was content with the way that Anne was performing her new roles. He had, after all, as Bernard has demonstrated, spent a great deal of time and effort engineering a formal acknowledgement of Annes status from the Spanish ambassador, hardly the actions of a man who was planning to destroy her.62 The most bizarre of the explanations for Annes fall also focuses on the miscarriage of 29 January, but reads it as rather more than simply a blow to Henrys hopes of a male heir. According to the American historian Retha Warnicke, this was no ordinary miscarriage, but the still-birth of a deformed foetus - an event so monstrous and unsettling that it was the sole reason for the kings setting in motion the process that led to Annes execution.63 Such a miscarriage would, Warnicke claimed, have suggested only one thing to the superstitious Tudor mind: witchcraft. Thus Henry had to be rid of Anne at once, and so hatched the plot to denounce her for multiple adultery and incest (in Warnickes view charges closely allied to the notion of witchcraft, as witches were reputed to indulge in orgiastic and unnatural sexual acts). Because the king could not be associated with the paternity of the foetus, a series of lovers was invented for the queen, and to give the charges an air of plausibility, those individuals chosen were all men with a reputation for lecherous habits.64 There is almost nothing to recommend this speculation, but it has proved a surprisingly persistent accretion to Annes story. The most recent textbook account of the period, for example, summarizes her fall in the following terms. When in January 1536 she miscarried what by all accounts was a deformed foetus, Henry instantly knew his second marriage to be damned.65 It is that by all accounts that is most unsettling, for the only account that Warnicke can cite that suggests that the foetus was in any way abnormal is that offered in 1585 by the catholic polemicist Nicholas Sander in his The rise and growth of the Anglican schism. Sander, amid a host of other calumnies designed to paint Anne in the worst possible light (and so denigrate at second hand his bete noir, Queen Elizabeth) states in passing that she had given birth to a shapeless mass of flesh. No evidence is cited by Sander for this claim, and no suggestion is offered by Warnicke to explain how Sander might have obtained eye-witness accounts of the birth. Similarly no attempt is made by Sander to link this statement to Annes fall, or to the notion of witchcraft.66 Indeed the phrase may have been intended merely

as a derogatory description of a foetus that was well short of full-term. Thus it is safest to conclude that the foetus itself was not deformed, and that, consequently, the was no serious suspicion that the queen was a witch, not least if, as Bernard has suggested, Warnicke has got her witch-lore wrong anyway, and nowhere in the works cited by Warnicke...is there any suggestion that witches...gave birth to deformed foetuses.67 IV In fact none of the grand and emotive themes evoked to explain her fall, the debates over the dissolution of the monasteries, the machinations of factions, the manoeuvrings of foreign policy, or the miscarriage of February can be shown to be responsible for the queens death. At most they predisposed the king to be more responsive to the accusations of adultery when they came. Annes fall, as what follows will suggest, was the result of a witch-hunt of a metaphorical rather than a literal kind, and as such it was horrifying enough, without the need to embroider it with superfluous supernatural elements. As we have seen, previous accounts have assumed that the attack on the queen was calculated, and so the timing of key events - the establishment of the oyer and terminer commissions on 24 April, or the summoning of parliament on 27 April - was crucial. But, if what follows is correct, these dates are irrelevant to the motives behind Annes fall. There was no long (or even medium) term planning. The vital events happened in just two explosive days over the weekend of 29-30 April. Contemporary rumours suggested various sources for the initial allegation of adultery. The Scottish evangelical Alexander Alesius was subsequently to claim that Stephen Gardiner had begun them, claiming falsely that they were circulating at the French court, where he was then on embassy.68 John Foxe took a similar line.69 But, as Bernard has argued,70 the most coherent and plausible account is probably that contained in a verse narrative of the events, the Histoire de Anne Boleyn jadis royne dAngleterre, written in 1535-6 by Lancelot de Carles, bishop of Riez, and published in Lyon in 1545.71 Despite its literary form, and the fact that the author was at times clearly shaping his material to fit his wider moral purpose (the depiction of Anne as a victim of fortune and pride),72 de Carless poem has a number of things to commend it as a source. It is the earliest detailed account of the fall, written by a witness to a number of the principal events (de Carles was in England at the time, acting as secretary to the bishop of Tarbes), and where its specific claims can be checked against other sources, they prove reliable. All of which justifies the conclusion that, as the record of an informed observer, [de] Carles work is invaluable.73 In de Carless version, the allegations against Anne came during the course of a private argument between one of Henrys courtiers (Bernard identifies him as Sir Anthony Browne (d. 1542)) and his sister, Elizabeth Browne, Lady Worcester (who was also half-sister to Sir William Fitzwilliam, treasurer of the royal household, a man who was to play a significant part in the investigations that followed). Browne, it is claimed, was berating his sister for her allegedly immoral behaviour - she was currently pregnant, so the argument may plausibly have concerned the identity of the father of her child. Was it perhaps not her husband, Henry Somerset, the second earl of Worcester, but an unknown lover (Bernard suggests, on rather flimsy evidence, that this might have been Cromwell)? In her defence, de Carles claimed, Lady Worcester lashed out dangerously: if sexual immorality was the charge, she was not the worst offender by any means, Browne should look to the queen herself; what about her relationships with Mark Smeaton, Henry Norris, or even her own brother (Cest que souvent son frere avec elle, / Dedans ung lit acointance charnelle).74

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Could de Carles have been sufficiently well-informed to have hit upon the truth? The naming of the three principal co-defendants at this stage perhaps smacks a little of hindsight, but there is enough supporting evidence from elsewhere to suggest that the poet may have got the broad details substantially correct. John Hussey, who was reporting events back to Lord and Lady Lisle in Calais, on two occasions named Lady Worcester as the source of the allegations,75 and Anne herself made some curious comments about her while awaiting her trial.76 The official version of events, provided by Cromwell in a letter of 14 May to Wallop and Gardiner at the French court, claimed that the queens incontinent living was so rank and common that the ladies of her privy chamber could no longer conceal it, and members of the Council were informed about her activities.77 The French poem provides a highly plausible account of how this initial angry outburst led to the investigation and trial of the queen. The courtier-brother, de Carles claimed, no doubt terrified of the implications of what he had been told, consulted two close companions of the king - perhaps, as Bernard suggests Fitzwilliam (an obvious sounding-board for fears concerning his half-sister) and Cromwell. These two then approached the king, who initially dismissed the claims as nonsense, but later told them to begin a discrete investigation. Should the allegations prove false, however, Henry warned, the perpetrators would themselves be punished.78 Some four years after the trial, the courtier John Gostwick offered his son some valuable advice on how to handle himself at court, stressing in particular how one should deal with dangerous information concerning the king or those close to him, without arousing suspicion or falling foul of the treason laws. Be true to God, the king, and your friend, he counselled, And if your friend do open his mind and secret counsel to you, I charge you...open [i.e. reveal] it not...unless your friend should open to you felony or treason, then I charge you not to keep his counsel, but [if you are in the country] open it to two or three of the next [i.e. nearest] Justices of the Peace which dwelleth next to you, or else [if you are at court] one or two of the kings most honourable Council, if you may get unto them. But in any wise, utter it as soon as possible, for the longer you keep it the worse it is for you, and the more danger toward God and the kings majesty.79 Browne seems to have been placed in precisely the situation that Gostwick envisaged, and it is interesting that he acted in just the way Gostwick advised.80 Once he had informed the two close companions of the king, matters were taken out of his hands. Cromwell seized Smeaton as the first suspect to question, perhaps because Lady Worcester had named him, perhaps also because, as a commoner, he was a softer target than the gentlemen of the queens circle, capable of being smuggled away for questioning without arousing comment. Perhaps he was chosen because he was an obvious suspect. As what follows will suggest, he clearly harboured amorous feelings for the queen, and may, as part of his role as a courtly musician, have fashioned a public image for himself as one of her suitors. What happened after he was arrested provides the key to everything that follows. For Smeaton confessed. Remarkably he admitted that he had committed adultery with the queen (he subsequently pleaded guilty to having sex with her on three occasions, perhaps as specimen charges).81 How long it took him to confess is not known. Ives claimed that he held out for twenty-four hours, but this is not a necessary reading of the evidence.82 It is possible that some kind of torture was used to secure the confession (sources differ over whether it was the rack or a rope tied round the head),83 and he was certainly ill-treated while he was in the Tower, being the only prisoner to be kept in irons (possibly, as Anne was to suggest, a consequence merely

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of his lowly social status, but perhaps because it was feared he might do himself harm if left free). But, if the confession was forced out of him, he never retracted it, nor sought to qualify the admission later. Why not?84 Again, if it is assumed that he was indeed guilty, then the confession needs no further explanation. But it is far from clear that he was guilty. As we shall see, Annes own testimony suggests that he was actually not close to her at all. As Ives has observed, the queens household was, conventionally, an arena for the masquerade of courtly love, an environment in which amorous poetry and music, and a good deal of more or less formal flirtation was an accepted part of the culture. 85 Poets praised the queens beauty, musicians wrote ballads and sonnets for her, and gentlemen callers sighed and treated her as if she were the light of their lives - for this was the way to secure patronage and reward, and, provided it was not pursued too ardently, to win the favour of the king. Mark Smeaton was himself a part of this world, albeit a rather peripheral one if the queen is to be believed. But was the flirting more than just conventional posturing? The most striking evidence that something more than convention was involved - at least on Smeatons part - is provided by Annes own anxious comments to her jailer, Sir William Kingston, who had been set to watch over her and record every potentially incriminating utterance while she was in the Tower awaiting trial. On a number of occasions she mentioned Smeaton, whom she had discovered was also imprisoned with her. She did not, however, seem to think that he posed any danger to her. When Mistress Stoner remarked that Smeaton was the worst cherished of any man in the house, for he wears irons, the queen replied that this was because he was no gentleman. But he was never in my chamber but at Winchester and there she sent for him to play on the virginals, for there my lodging was above the kings. For I never spake with him since, but upon Saturday before May Day, and then I found him standing in the round window in my chamber of presence, and I asked why he was so sad, and he answered and said it was no matter. And then she told him, you may not look to have me speak to you as I should do to a noble man, because you be an inferior person. No, no, madam, he replied, a look sufficed me; and thus fare you well.86 Such odd behaviour seems to go well beyond the conventions of courtly love. Indeed, telling the queen that it was no matter when asked a question, and then walking away without being dismissed, went well beyond the bounds of civil courtesy. The exchange suggests that Marks sense of appropriate behaviour was temporarily unsettled, perhaps as the result of (at best) a crush on Anne, or (at worst) a depressive obsession. Although Bernard raised the possibility that Mark had been jilted by the queen, suggesting that her words imply remarkable familiarity with him,87 Annes response suggests a far more distant relationship on her part. She was belittling him, denying rather than acknowledging a relationship between them. What precisely lay behind Marks sadness here is thus not easy to determine; but it remains highly suggestive. Might his mood explain his willingness to confess to adultery less than twenty-four hours later? Could he have been acting out of a desire for revenge for having been dismissed so peremptorily earlier? Or was his emotional instability more serious, producing the kind of inability to distinguish between fact and fantasy that prompts individuals today to confess to crimes that they did not commit?88 Either way, Smeatons confession dramatically altered the scale and intensity of the investigation, which thereafter took on a savage momentum of its own. Suddenly what had been merely rumour seemed to be fact, and the investigators had serious charges rather than merely innuendo to pursue. And, far from needing to be manufactured by Cromwell, suggestive supplementary evidence seems to have existed in abundance. It would have been fresh in witnesses memories, too, for Queen Anne had been behaving

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extraordinarily incautiously in the forty-eight hours immediately prior to Smeatons arrest. If Lady Worcester did indeed name Norris and Rochford, Cromwell now had enough evidence to interrogate them directly. Alternatively the names of these other guilty men might have been provided by Smeaton. Perhaps, as what follows will suggest, events in the queens household had been so extraordinary in the past two days that the name of Norris would already be on everyones lips. Either way the king had to be told about Smeatons confession, and this was almost certainly done at some point on Sunday afternoon. Thereafter Henry took control himself and decided that no further arrests should take place that night. He would question Norris himself the following day. What he did do immediately was at 11 oclock that night postpone for a week a planned trip with Anne to Calais that had been intended to start on 2 May.89 That he did so is clear evidence that he now suspected the queen might be guilty; but that he merely postponed the trip rather than cancelling it outright, suggests he had not entirely lost faith in her potential innocence. At this point the precise chronology becomes momentarily unclear. But it may be that some hint of what was afoot reached the queen during the course of Sunday. For an account survives of an angry encounter between Anne and Henry in a chamber overlooking the courtyard at Greenwich. The story is contained in a narrative provided for Queen Elizabeth by the Scottish evangelical Alexander Alesius, who had travelled to Greenwich that day seeking an authorisation from Cromwell for payment of a royal grant. He stumbled on a rather more dramatic encounter, however, on his way to see the Secretary. Never shall I forget he told Elizabeth, the sorrow which I felt when I saw the most serene queen, your most religious mother, carrying you, still a little baby, in her arms and entreating the most serene king, your father, in Greenwich Palace, from the open window of which he was looking into the courtyard, when she brought you to him. I did not perfectly understand what had been going on, but the faces and gestures of the speakers plainly showed that the king was angry, although he could conceal his anger wonderfully well. Yet, from the protracted conference of the council (for whom the crowd was waiting until it was quite dark, expecting that they would return to London), it was most obvious to everyone that some deep and difficult question was being discussed.90 That the confrontation concerned the allegations of adultery, rather than simply being another of the arguments which were a feature of Henry and Annes tempestuous marriage, is suggested by another, even more curious event that happened that day. For, as Anne was later to recall, Henry Norris had at some point during Sunday 30 April, gone at the queens behest to John Skyp, her almoner and chaplain, in order to swear on oath that the queen was a good woman.91 This remarkable behaviour had been prompted by an earlier encounter between Norris and the queen that took place possibly on the same day, possibly a little earlier. As Kingston later retold the story, Anne had recalled that, I bad him do so; for I asked him why he did not go through with his marriage [he was engaged to marry Madge Shelton, one of Annes ladies and the kings former mistress], and he made answer he would tarry a time. Then said she [i.e. Anne], You look for dead mens shoes, for if ought came to the king but good, you would look to have me. And he said if he should have any such thought, he would [wish] his head were off. And then she said she could undo him if she would, and then they fell out. 92 While it is difficult to pick up the precise nuances of Annes tone here (is she merely flirting, chiding, petulant, angry?), the general tenor of the conversation, and its

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implications, are clear. What the exchange does not do is provide evidence that Anne and Norris were lovers.93 She was taxing - perhaps teasing - him with the suggestion that he wished that they were, perhaps even holding out the possibility that one day they might be. But her words do not suggest that she already was his: everything is contingent upon the kings fate. It may be that Anne had explored the possibility of their marriage before, or it may be that she was here voicing for the first time a possibility that had long been implicit in their relationship. Alternatively, she may have been reading too much into Norriss behaviour towards her, and suggesting a motive that he had never seriously considered. If so, it may well be that the comments of another courtier, Sir Francis Weston, claiming that Norris harboured sexual ambitions towards her, prompted her words.94 Whatever the case, what is clear is that Anne had gone too far. In moving from the kind of abstracted conventional language that characterized the masquerade of courtly love to the pragmatics of what if...? - still more obviously when that what if...? involved speaking the unspeakable, What if the king should die? - Anne had transgressed the boundaries of both courtly etiquette and political safety. For even imagining the death of the king was high treason. 95 Hence Norriss immediate and horrified reaction, I would my head were off, for that would indeed be the penalty had he voiced such a thought. Annes threat that she could undo him if she would sounds very much like a nervous reaction to his response, a pre-emptive strike against any possible attempt to report her words to others: if you tell anyone what I have said, I will make sure that you are implicated too. The decision that Norris should go and put on record an oath affirming the queens sexual honesty, and to do so to John Skyp, the nearest trustworthy cleric (but otherwise a curious choice as recipient for such an oath) looks like an urgent piece of damage-limitation in the wake of this dangerous lapse of common-sense.96 What the sources do not tell us is whether Norriss visit to Skyp came before or after Annes angry confrontation with Henry on the same day. Some time clearly elapsed between Annes words and Norriss oath; Annes recollection that therewith they fell out [of conversation] suggests as much. But, did she then reach the decision that something must be done after reflecting alone, or was it only the public argument with the king that suggested to her that he had got wind of the exchange, and revealed just how serious the implications of her careless words could be? Certainly after that point Anne was running scared, and very conscious of the damage that her words to Norris might do her. Notably her immediate reaction on being taken to the Tower was to exclaim, O Norris, hast thou accused me? Thou art in the Tower with me and thou and I shall die together!. 97 Significantly she also feared that a third party might reveal potentially incriminating information about Norriss alleged feelings towards her, for she also told Kingston, she more feared Weston [than Norris], for on Whitsun Tuesday last...[Weston told her] that Norris came unto her chamber more for her than for Madge [Shelton]. And it is clear that news or rumours of Annes unwise words did indeed spread through the court, for Edward Baynton knew of the communication that was bet[ween] the queen and Master Norris later that week, and went to Skyp (Master Aumener) to pursue the matter. 98 That flirtatious talk was not uncommon in Annes chambers is suggested by other words, spoken by Weston himself, that the queen recalled as she scoured her memory for who or what might have brought her to the Tower. Sir William Kingston added a hurried postscript to his report in order to inform Cromwell that, Since the writing of this letter the queen spake of Weston, saying that she had spoken to him because he did love her kinswoman Mistress Shelton, and said he loved not his wife, and he made answer to her again that he loved one in her

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house better than both. And the queen said, Who is that?. It is yourself. And she defied him, as she said to me.99 While all of this falls well short of evidence of adultery (and Westons words are far easier to accommodate within the conventional language of courtly love than Annes to Norris), it does suggest that, as Eric Ives put it, pastime in the queens chamber... [had] got somewhat out of hand.100 Not only was the queen the subject of a good degree of amorous attention from a number of male courtiers, but one at least of her ladies (Madge Shelton) was also the subject of sexual interest from more than one quarter. All of this does not amount to very much if considered objectively, but examined from the viewpoint of an investigator who already had what seemed to be conclusive proof that the queen was an adulteress, things in Annes household might seem smoky enough to suggest a good deal of fire. Once Cromwell and Fitzwilliam, fortified with Smeatons confession, began to examine other witnesses, it would not have taken long for gossip to harden into circumstantial evidence, and for any attempt to deny that anything was going on to look suspicious.101 The pattern of arrests that followed seems best explained by just such a process of investigation and incrimination by association, rather than a politically-inspired purge. Anne herself was interrogated at Greenwich on 2 May by the duke of Norfolk, treasurer Fitzwilliam, and William Paulet, controller of the household, all three of whom were members of the oyer and terminer commissions. She was then moved to the Tower by river.102 Those men who had been part of Annes circle of courtly admirers were brought in next, then those who had been associated with her in the past, such as Wyatt. 103 Even Archbishop Cranmer and Sir Francis Bryan were summoned to court and questioned about what they knew of the situation. If, on closer examination, there appeared to be no case to answer, as with Wyatt or Sir Francis Bryan, then the suspect was eventually released (it may well have been that Cromwells intervention, prompted by the poets father, tipped the balance in his favour).104 But where any hint of guilt remained - and guilt by association now had a compelling force, given Smeatons confession - the prosecution was driven forward. Anne herself seemingly had a clear idea of which suspects might have something incriminating to tell and which had not. As we have seen, she was concerned from the outset that Norris might accuse her, and still more worried that Weston might betray them both. She was far less worried, it seems, by what Wyatt and Page had to say. A badly mutilated letter from Kingston to Cromwell relates her reaction to the news that various men had been arrested on Thursday 4 April. When I came to the Chamber the [queen heard] of me and sent for me, and said, I hear say my lord my [brother is] here. It is truth, said I. I am very glad, said sh[e that we] both be so nigh together. And I showed her here was...Weston and Brereton, and she made very good countenance...and I also said, Master Page and Wyatt was more; then she said, He ha...on his fist tother day, and ye here now but ma...I shall desire you to bear a letter from me [to Master] Secretary.105 V There is, then very little hard evidence to suggest that Anne was guilty of adultery. The charges against her may have an air of precision, mentioning specific sexual acts and suggested times and places at which they took place, but the evidence produced in court to back them up seems to have been far less specific and serious.106 Clearly the crown was trying to limit the amount of information leaking out about the trial. Constantyne could not discover what had been alleged against Brereton. Rumours

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abounded at court and in London concerning the likely fate of the defendants, but little hard information could be obtained.107 Even Cromwells account to Wallop and Gardiner refused to go into detail on the grounds that the crimes were so abominable that I think the like was never heard. He later confided to Gardiner that a great part of them were never given in evidence but kept secret. 108 But all the witnesses agree that, of all the defendants, only Smeaton confessed, as Sir Edward Baynton put it, of any actual thing. The others, as even Chapuys conceded, were condemned upon presumption and certain indications, without valid proof or confession (par presumption et aucuns indices sans preve ne confession valide).109 It seems that Norris may have been at one point manoeuvred into admitting something damaging (perhaps this happened during his dawn journey to the Tower on 2 May, as Constantyne describes it as happening by the way), but he later retracted it, saying it was extracted by trickery.110 Otherwise everyone steadfastly maintained their innocence, provoking Baynton to fear that the kings honour would be compromised if he pushed ahead with the trial with such slender evidence.111 Other than the allegations of sexual acts with her co-accused, which she denied and which no witnesses were brought forward to substantiate, the evidence against Anne seems to have been pretty paltry stuff and easily refuted. 112 She admitted that she had given money to Weston and some of the other young men who frequented her household. It was also alleged that she had plotted to kill Princess Mary and the kings illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, but the only evidence for this was said to be that she had received and passed on to Norris certain medals or coins (medailles), and she fiercely denied the accusation.113 The most substantial of the offences with which she was taxed was probably careless speech. The kind of flirtatious gossip what seemed to flourish in her household was in the end her undoing. It provided a running motif during her trial. She seems to have joked a good deal about the king and his inadequacies with her closest confidantes. She was accused of laughing with her brother at the kings ballads, calling them foolish. As Chapuys reported it, she and Rochford also laughed at the king and his dress, and she was said to have showed in various (again unspecified) ways that she did not love the king, but was tired of him. Most dangerously of all, she laughed at his sexual inadequacies, telling her brother and others that he had neither vigour nor virtue in bed.114 That it was unguarded speech and the gossip that it encouraged that condemned Anne, rather than actual adultery is suggested by the words of her aunt Lady Boleyn. When the queen complained about the women who attended her in the Tower, claiming that they could bring her no news from outside, Lady Boleyn was swift to turn the complaint back upon Anne. The queen said this night that the king knew what he did when he put such two about her as my Lady Boleyn and Mistress Cousins, for they could tell her nothing of my [lord her father, nor] nothing else. But she defied them all. B[ut upon this, my lady Boleyn] said to her, such desire as you have ha[d to such tales] has brought you to this.115 Involvement in derogatory sexual gossip at the kings expense was probably Rochfords downfall also. The evidence to substantiate the charges of incest against him seems to have been virtually non-existent. Chapuys observed that he was charged only on presumption, because he had once been a long time with Anne in her chamber, and other little follies. George Wyatt observed, [as] for the evidence [against Rochford], as I never could hear any, so small I believe it was, concluding that Annes accusers were driven for lack of other evidence, to take occasion at her brothers

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more private being with her. In the end, he suggested, the Viscount was condemned only upon some point of a statute of words then in force.116 Rochford had indeed been joining in the scandalous exchanges of words in Annes household, laughing and joking, as we have seen, about the kings lack of virility in a highly indiscreet way. Chapuys reported that Anne had told Rochfords wife (presumably with his connivance) that the king nestoit habile en cas de soy copuler avec femme et quil navoit ne vertu ne puissance, and he himself had suggested that Princess Elizabeth was not Henrys child. These were dangerous matters about which to joke, given that the succession depended on them. As William Thomas observed, adultery in a kings wife weigheth no less than the wrong reign of a bastard prince, which thing for a commonwealth ought specially to be regarded. 117 Moreover, Rochford compounded the offence at his trial by insisting on voicing the allegations again. When he was handed a piece of paper containing the charges and warned not to read them aloud, 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 kings issue.118 Notably he did not reply to the charge that he had doubted the identity of Elizabeths father. It my well have been that, as Bernard suggested, such obviously provocative behaviour was what convinced the jury that he might be capable of the other, far greater transgressions of civilized behaviour with which he was charged.119 VI What, then, finally, of the potentially most serious charges of all, those of conspiring to cause the kings death? How did these arise, and how might they be best understood? For a time they seemed to be central to the investigation. Cromwell listed them among the chief causes of Annes arrest, and later told Chapuys that they were crucial to the case, claiming, somewhat implausibly, to have been alerted to the possibility of a plot by a Flemish prognostication. William Thomas also thought the charge was important.120 But, by the time of the trial this had been somewhat confused, as we have seen, with a plot to poison the royal children, the only evidence for which was the alleged passing on of those enigmatic medals. Where did the idea of a plot originate, and why did no more details of it surface? The best clue probably lies in Chapuys account of the trial, which suggest that, once again, it was Annes fateful conversation with Norris that prompted the charges. The ambassador reported that Anne was charged that there was a promise between her and Norris to marry after the kings death, which it thus appeared they hoped for.121 There was also a more general allegation that her adultery and lack of regard for Henry had themselves made him ill and threatened his life.122 These things, Chapuys duly noted, she totally denied, and gave to each a plausible answer.123 But again, it seems that Anne was not able to convince her judges. Given that Smeatons confession offered seemingly irrefutable proof of her guilt, her continued denials would have had little effect. The reasoning, if spurious, seems inevitable.124 She had discussed marriage with Norris in the event of the kings death (the teasing hint of c.29 April having now hardened in the retelling into a promise), therefore she had imagined the death of the king. If she and Norris had imagined it, they must have wanted it; and if they wanted it, ergo there was a plot to kill the king. What of the kings role in the allegations? Despite attempts by scholars to minimize the royal involvement in the investigation, Henrys own intense emotional investment in the matter is evident from first to last. Ives argued that Cromwell had bounced Henry into action against Anne.125 Among a barrage of questions aimed at

17

undermining the traditional account of the arrests that placed Henry in charge, he asked: if the decision to destroy Anne had been taken on 24 April, why was there a delay of eight days before her arrest?; Why did the arrests take place piecemeal? Suspects were still being discovered a week later. Why did he [Henry] confront Norris with the accusations, when the uniform practice of the day was to keep suspects away from the king and the chance to influence him? But the weight and logic of Ives own questions argue for a rather different interpretation. They suggest that the whole affair had not been planned, that the investigation was, once Henry became involved, an urgent and unpredictable process, in which the scope of the crimes which were to be discovered was not known in advance. Most obviously the evidence suggests that it was Henry who was the driving force in the whole affair. Ives is correct to note that it was usual to try to keep those accused of treason away form the king, but only in those cases where the accusations were malicious and came from third parties, and it was those parties who desperately tried to keep their victims away from Henry, for fear that they might secure his mercy, or even turn the tables and convince the king that their accusers were the real offenders. This was the logic of the treason investigations that Henry was later to explain for Cranmers benefit, when the archbishop found himself the subject of hostile accusations from his conservative opponents.126 In such cases the burden of proof lay with the accusers, and it obviously aided their cause if witnesses for the prosecution were the only voices that the king would hear. In Annes case, it is clear that Henry was playing the role not only of judge, but of chief investigator too, hence his decision to take Norris with him by horse to Whitehall after the joust. As Henry pursued the matter, his suspicions were fuelled by both his intense paranoia and what appeared to be a conspiracy of silence among the accused. As further suspects and further crimes suggested themselves, the investigation gathered a dizzying momentum of its own. This was too close a matter for Henry to delegate to his Councillors to investigate, as he had the affair of the Minions in 1519.127 He took charge of the questioning himself, and with a characteristically demonic zeal, only handing over to others once he was convinced of the queens guilt.128 Once Smeaton had confessed, Henry became increasingly convinced that Anne was guilty (and, if Norris had been tricked into offering some form of confession too, that would only have strengthened his conviction). His tearful declaration to Henry Fitzroy on 2 May that he and his sister owed God a great debt for having escaped death at the hand of that cursed and poisoning whore, reveals the strength of the revulsion he began to feel for her, just as the subsequent assertion that she had been unfaithful to him with one hundred men suggests the extremes to which his anger and self-pity would take him. No crime was unthinkable in a woman who could betray him.129 It was this personal sense of injury and dishonour that drove Henry to root out the whole story and pursue the offenders to the death. What are we to make, then, of the queens fall? We are left with a lot of smoke but precious little fire, and once the smoke has cleared the battleground seems rather less menacing than it once did. The big battalions clashing by night that were thought to be instrumental in Annes destruction (whether they were political, theological, or supernatural) have proved to be illusory, as have the charges of sexual misconduct levelled against her. It seems clear that, as Bernard argued, Henry did not invent the charges. He was shocked by the accusations, but fully persuaded by them. He was convinced, not because he wanted to be, but because the depositions struck him as devastating.130 But they were devastating, not because they were true, but because there was sufficient smoke around Annes household over the weekend of 29-30 April to give them credibility, credibility that was seemingly cemented by Mark Smeatons

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confession. And the evidence that convinced Henry also convinced the courts. Anne was convicted, not because of what she had done, but of what she had said: to her brother, as they laughed about the kings sexual inadequacies and other foibles, to Mark Smeaton, when she snubbed him publicly less than twenty four hours before he was arrested, and most obviously to Henry Norris when she foolishly joked about the sacrosanct subject of the kings death.

19

Notes

20

I am grateful to Mrs Iola Treharne and my colleague Dr Elaine Treharne for their generosity in reading through drafts of this essay and offering help and advice with various aspects of its argument and apparatus. The essay also benefited greatly from the astute reading and comments of the two anonymous readers for the HJ. I am very grateful for their suggestions. Most of all I would like to thank the members of the AHRB Research Leave awards panel and the University of Leicester Study Leave scheme for supporting the extended sabbatical during which the paper was written. As readers will quickly realise, this article builds upon the foundations laid down by other scholars, chiefly Eric Ives and G.W. Bernard. Although I differ markedly, if to varying degrees, with each of them in what follows, it could not have been written without them; and I should like to record my indebtedness to their work here. 1 Steven Gunn, The structures of politics in early Tudor England, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series, 5 (1995), pp. 59-90, 59. 2 See E.W. Ives, Faction at the court of Henry VIII: the fall of Anne Boleyn, History 57 (1972), pp. 169-88; Retha M. Warnicke, The fall of Anne Boleyn: a reassessment, History, 70 (1985), pp. 1-15; E.W. Ives, Anne Boleyn (Oxford, 1986), Retha M. Warnicke, Sexual heresy at the court of Henry VIII, Historical Journal, 30 (1987), pp. 247-68; Retha M. Warnicke, The rise and fall of Anne Boleyn: family politics at the court of Henry VIII (Cambridge, 1989); G.W. Bernard, The fall of Anne Boleyn, English Historical Review, 106 (1991), pp. 584-610; E.W. Ives, The fall of Anne Boleyn Reconsidered, English Historical Review, 107 (1992), pp. 651-64; G.W. Bernard, The fall of Anne Boleyn: a rejoinder, English Historical Review, 107 (1992), pp. 665-74; R.M. Warnicke, The fall of Anne Boleyn revisited, English Historical Review, 108 (1993), pp. 653-65. 3 Ives, Faction, p. 170. 4 Ibid., p. 169. 5 J.S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, and R.H. Brodie, eds., Letters and papers, foreign and domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII [hereafter LP] X 848 and 876. 6 D. Hamilton, ed., A chronicle of England during the reigns of the Tudors, Camden Society (2 vols., London, 1875) [hereafter, Wriothesleys chronicle], I, pp. 189-91 and 205. Ives, Anne Boleyn, p. 361, argues that the establishment of the commissions was a routine measure; Henry did not even have to sign the warrant (it was witnessed at Westminster, not Greenwich, were Henry was), and Henrys letter to Richard Pate of the following day showed no hostility regarding Anne at all. Ives concludes on the strength of this information that the commissions were thus established by Cromwell, without Henrys knowledge, as part of his plan to destroy the Queen. Bernard (Rejoinder, pp. 669-70) disposes of this suggestion, but concludes that the commission must have been set up with Annes crimes in mind. Commissions of oyer and terminer could, however, be given wide-ranging briefs to investigate unspecified treasons within one or more counties (see G.R. Elton, Policy and police: the enforcement of the Reformation in the age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge, 1972), p. 296.) The conventional wording of the commissions of 24 April leaves open the possibility that these were general rather than specific investigations. They were to investigate misprisionibus, proditionum, rebellionibus, feloniis, murdris, homicidiis, riotis, routis, conventiculis illicitis, insurrectionibus, extortionibus, oppressionibus, contemptis, concealmentis, ignorantiis, negligentiis, offensis, mesprisionibus, falsitatibus, deceptis, confederationibus, conspirationibus, necnon accessariis eorundum, ac aliss transgressionibus et offensis quibuscumque infra comitatum praedictum per quoscumque habitis, factis, perpetratis sive commissis et per quos vel peer quem, cui vel quibus, qualiter et quomodo.. Wriothesleys chronicle, p. 190. 7 Bernard, Fall, pp. 590-1. 8 LP, X 736; Ives, Anne Boleyn, p. 362; S.E. Lehmberg, The later parliaments of Henry VIII, 15361547 (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 25-28. Alternatively, the fraught negotiations over foreign policy conducted during April may have prompted Henrys decision. See, for example, LP, X 699, 726, 752. 9 T. Amyot, A memorial from George Constantyne to Thomas, Lord Cromwell, Archaeologia 23 (1831), pp. 50-78, p. 64. The first that was taken was Markys, and he was at Stepney in examination on
*

May Even. 10 E. Hall, The union of the two noble and illustre houses of Lancaster and York Ashgate Facsimile Reprint (Aldershot, 1970) [hereafter, Hall, Chronicle], sig. CCXXVII(v); Amyot, Memorial, p. 64. 11 Hall, Chronicle, sig. CCXXVII(v). 12 Amyot, Memorial, p. 64. All the way, as I heard say, [the king] had Master Norris in examination, and promised him his pardon in case he would utter the truth. But whatsoever could be said or done, Master Norris would confess nothing to the king, whereupon he was committed to the Tower in the morning. 13 LP, X 908; Ives, Anne Boleyn (Oxford, 1986), p. 383. The queens indictment claimed that whereas Queen Anne has been the wife of King Henry VIII for three years and more, she, despising her marriage, and entertaining malice against the king, and following daily her frail and carnal lust, did falsely and traiterously procure by base conversations and kisses, touchings, gifts, and other infamous incitations, divers of the kings daily and familiar servants to be her adulterers and concubines, so that several of the kings servants yielded to her vile provocations. The charges covered a period stretching back to October 1533. LP, X 876 (7). 14 LP, X 873. 15 M. St. C. Byrne, ed., Lisle letters (6 vols., London, 1981); IV, 845a; LP, X 866. 16 Cavendish, Metrical visions, ed. A.S.G. Edwards (Columbia, SC, 1980), p. 53. 17 Amyot, Memorial, p. 65. 18 William Thomas, The pilgrim, ed., J.A. Froude (London, 1861), p. 56. 19 D.M. Loades, ed., The papers of George Wyatt, Camden Society, 4th series, 5 (London, 1968), pp. 141-43, cited in Ives, Anne Boleyn, p. 62. 20 Cited in Ives, Anne Boleyn, pp. 306-7. The possibility that Spelman intended the remark to be read ironically cannot, however, be entirely discounted. 21 LP, X 792. 22 LP, X 792; D. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer (New Haven, 1996), p. 157. On the day of her death, however, Cranmer is said to have wept. Pacing in his garden at Lambeth he comforted himself with the thought that she who has been the queen of England shall become a queen in heaven. J. Stevenson, et al, eds. Calendar of state papers, foreign series, 1558-59 (London, 1863-1950) p. 528; MacCulloch, Cranmer, p. 159. 23 Sir John Neale raised the possibility that Anne might have been driven to commit adultery in an attempt to conceive a male heir, knowing that Henry was virtually impotent (cited in Bernard, Fall, p. 609). Neale was reviving a view first voiced in the Elizabethan Catholic tract, La Vie de Anne Boulein, for which, see Maria Dowling, ed., William Latymers cronickille of Anne Bulleyne, Camden Miscellany 30 (London, 1990), pp. 23-66, p. 40. A.F. Pollard hedged his bets, concluding that no jury would have convicted Ann of such crimes without some colourable justification. To assume that Henry sent four needless victims to the block is to accuse him of a lust for superfluous butchery of which even he in his most bloodthirsty moments was not capable. A.F. Pollard, Henry VIII, pp. 276-7. 24 Bernard, Fall, pp. 605-6 and 609. 25 LP, X 908. 26 Amyot, Memorial, p. 64; S.W. Singer, ed., The life of Cardinal Wolsey (London, 1925), p. 45. 27 John Foxe, Acts and monuments, ed., J. Pratt (8 vols., London, 1877), VI, p. 136. 28 Singer, Wolsey, p. 452; LP, X 793. 29 Singer, Wolsey, p. 461; LP, X 908 and 910. 30 British Library Cotton MS Otho C X, f. 224v; Singer, Wolsey, pp. 456-7. 31 Singer, Wolsey, p. 452. 32 Singer, Wolsey, p. 461; LP, X 910. 33 For Wyatt, see Amyot, Memorial, p. 65. That he was an eye-witness is made clear by his claim that Mary, I heard them and wrote every word that they spake. For Chapuys, see LP, X 908. 34 Ives, Faction, pp. 171-2; idem, Anne Boleyn, pp. 392-3.

LP, X 911. For an alternative account of the speech, see Wriothesleys chronicle, I p. 33 Amyot, Memorial, p. 65. 37 Ibid., p. 65. George Wyatt had her say, somewhat more sparkily, Christian people! I am come to die, and according to law, and by law I am judged to death, and, therefore, I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to criticise no man, nor to speak anything of that whereof I am accused and condemned to die. But I pray God save the king, and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler and more merciful prince was there never, and to me he was ever a good, a gentle, and sovereign lord. If any person will meddle of my cause, I require him to judge the best. Singer, Wolsey, p. 448. 38 Gunn, Structure, p. 59. 39 LP, X 575, 699. For the idea of a conspiracy based upon foreign policy, see Ives, Anne Boleyn, pp. 340-1. This idea was also mooted by Douglas Hamilton (see Wriothesleys chronicle, pp. xxiii-iv). For the effective counter-case, see Bernard, Fall, pp. 592-3. 40 E.W. Ives, Anne Boleyn and the early Reformation in England: the contemporary evidence, Historical Journal, 37 (1994), pp. 389-400, especially p. 397: The danger that this interventionist queen consort might continue to use her influence to poach the gains from the dissolution may appear an undeniably compelling motive for the minister to move against her. 41 G.A. Bergenroth, et al, eds., Calendar of state papers, Spanish (13 vols. in 20 parts, London, 18621954) [hereafter, Spanish calendar], V (ii), p. 137; LP, X 1069. Writing on 6 June Chapuys reported He [Cromwell] said it was he who had discovered and followed up the affair of the Concubine, in which he had taken a good deal of trouble, and that, owing to the displeasure and anger he had incurred upon the reply given to me by the king the third day after Easter, he had set himself to arrange and plot ( a fantasier et conspirer led[ict] affair), and one of the things which had roused his suspicions or made him enquire into the matter was a prognostic made in Flanders threatening the king with a conspiracy of those who were nearest his person. 42 Bernard, Rejoinder, p. 668. 43 Ives, Anne Boleyn, p. 356ff. 44 Bernard, Fall of Anne Boleyn, p. 594 45 For the suggested plot, see Ives, Anne Boleyn, pp. 346-8; idem, Faction, pp. 181-4; MacCulloch, Cranmer, p. 154, Wriothesleys chronicle, pp. xxiii-iv. Again, the best refutation is Bernard, Fall, p. 592. See LP, X 753, 1134 (4); Spanish calendar V (ii) 47, p. 106. 46 See, for instance, LP, X 720. I am grateful to the anonymous HJ reader for suggesting that I reconsider the question of Henrys attitude towards Anne in these months. 47 The scene was revisited still more comically in Gerald Thomass Carry on Henry (1971). 48 Spanish calendar V (ii) 21, pp. 39-40; and 59. 49 Singer, Wolsey, p. 443. 50 Spanish calendar V (ii), 43, pp. 84-5; LP, X 601. 51 LP, X 908. 52 Ibid., 908. 53 LP, X 910. 54 J.J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (second ed., London, 1997) Foreword, p. xii. No doubt Henrys court, like most royal courts before or since, was riven by intrigue and factional struggles. But we must resist the temptation to make these...explain too much. I still believe that the chief explanation for Anne Boleyns fall and judicial murder is the obvious one. By 1536 Henry hated her. What had once been devastating infatuation had turned into bloodthirsty loathing, for reasons we will never completely know. 55 A.F. Pollard, Henry VIII, p. 274. Spanish calendar V (ii), 13, pp. 28 and 39, LP, X 199; Ives, Anne Boleyn, p. 343. But, as Bernard noted, Chapuyss sources for this story were the marquis and marchioness of Exeter, resolute critics of the Queen and so hardly disinterested observers; and Chapuys himself was to observe La chose mest bien dificille a croyre oyres quelle soit venue de bon lieu. Bernard, Fall, p. 585. For a similar explanation, see Wriothesleys chronicle, I, p. xxiv.
35 36

56

MacCulloch, Cranmer, p. 149. See also D.R. Starkey, The reign of Henry VIII: personalities and politics (London, 1985), p. 59. As MacCulloch has noted (Cranmer, p. 149), Catherines death had also shifted the nature and dynamic of Henrys relationship with Anne. While Catherine lived, Henry was more or less committed, psychologically and emotionally as well as politically, to Anne despite all criticism, and however much he may have been having second thoughts about their marriage. Once Catherine was dead, there was no implicit humiliation, and no risk of having to return to Catherine, should he decide to repudiate the Boleyn marriage. Henry became, if not exactly a free agent, at least potentially free, for the first time since his scruples first began. 57 Singer, Wolsey, pp. 443-4 58 Wyatt gives a similar account, claiming that Annes chief fault here was her excess of love for Henry, which meant she was unable to cope with his defect of love - his pursuit of mistresses - in the way that Katherine had. Singer, Wolsey, p. 444. 59 Spanish calendar V (ii) 29, p. 59; LP, X 351. 60 Bernard, The Fall, p. 584. Scarisbricks psychological interpretation of the kings behaviour (Henry could have shed Anne quietly...Instead he wanted to destroy her and prevent anyone else possessing her. Catherine Howard was a similar victim...She was visited by the same brutal urge to humiliate and destroy that which had once been the object of a passionate desire to possess (Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p. xiii)) does not seem to square with Henrys behaviour during March and April 1536. 61 Spanish calendar V (ii) 47, p. 106; LP, X 752. 62 Bernard, Fall, p. 593. 63 Warnicke, Rise and fall, p. 191. 64 Ibid., p. 223. 65 John Guy, Tudor England (London, 1988), p. 141. 66 The logic of Warnickes argument seems somewhat suspect at this point. Having criticised Sanders testimony concerning Annes physical appearance on the grounds that he was seeking to portray her as a witch (Sander chose to give her [Anne] the features of a witch, as he perceived such people. Anne had, he asserted in his posthumously published study of the divorce in 1585, a monstrous appearance, including a tumour on her neck and a sixth finger on her right hand., Warnicke, Rise and fall, p. 3.), she does not explore the possibility that the detail of the deformed foetus - if that is what Sanders intended to imply, and if it really was associated in the Tudor mind with allegations of witchcraft - might have been invented for that same purpose. Sanders own explanation of Annes fall centred on the rather more earth-bound matter of a glove dropped by the Queen and picked up by one of her lovers during the May Day tournament, which aroused Henrys jealousy. Nicolas Sander, The rise and growth of the Anglican schism, ed., D. Lewis (London, 1877), p. 133. All other accounts of the miscarriage describe it as an unfortunate but otherwise entirely normal event. Chapuys, who was always on the look out for stories or hints with which to denigrate the Concubine, reported only that she had been delivered of a child, who had the appearance of a male about three months and a half old. The protestant George Wyatt, observed that the Queen had miscarried of a male child, dead born, to her great and more extreme grief (Spanish calendar V (ii) 21; Singer, ed., Wolsey, p. 443. Wriothesleys chronicle, I, p. 33 noted merely that Queen Anne was brought abed and delivered of a man child, as it was said, afore her time, for she said that she had reckoned herself but fifteen weeks gone with child). Clearly Wyatt did not see Sanders allusion to a shapeless mass of flesh as a noteworthy slur upon the Queens character, still less the kind of overt allusion to witchcraft that Warnicke claimed, which would have required lengthy refutation (he was to take an entire paragraph to counter the suggestion that Anne had a deformed hand, six pages to refute the claim that Thomas Wyatt had told the king she was a loose woman). 67 Bernard, Fall, pp. 585-6. 68 Alesius , Letter, pp. 525-7; Calendar of state papers, foreign, I, 1303. 69 Foxe, Acts And monuments, VI, p. 136. 70 Bernard, Fall, pp. 597-8

71
72

See Georges Ascoli, La Grande-Bretagne devant lopinion Franais (Paris, 1927). Dowling, Cronickille, p. 37. 73 Ibid., p. 37. 74 Bernard, Fall, p. 597. 75 LP, X 953 and 964. Hussey mentioned three informants from among Annes ladies, My Lady Worcester, Lady Cobham, and a third anonymous woman (whom Ives suggests was probably Margery Horsman. Ives, Anne Boleyn, p. 381). He stressed that Lady Worcester was the first accuser and the first ground of the allegations. 76 Sir William Kingston reported that, while she was in the Tower, Anne said she much lamented my Lady of Worcester for because her child did not stir in her body, and my wife said what should be the cause. She said for the sorrow she took for me. LP, X 793. Bernard interprets this to mean that Anne thought the countess was grief-stricken at Annes arrest (with guilt at having accused her falsely?), and so feared for the safety of her own pregnancy, noting that the countess did give birth to a daughter, named Anne (perhaps named, penitently, after the Queen?) before Michaelmas 1536. Bernard, Fall, p. 597. 77 LP, X 873. 78 Bernard, Fall, p. 597. 79 Cited in Ives, Faction, p. 185. 80 Cromwell told Wallop and Gardiner that news of the Queens incontinent behaviour had come to the ears of some of the Council, who told his majesty, although with great fear, as the case enforced. Certain persons of the privy chamber and others of her side were examined, and the matter appeared so evident that, besides that crime, there broke out a certain conspiracy of the kings death. LP, X 873. 81 Spanish calendar V (ii), 55, p. 125; LP, X 848 (ix); 908; Ives, Faction, p. 187. 82 Ives, Anne Boleyn, p. 359. 83 George Constantyne reported in 1540 that he had heard that Smeaton had been grievously racked, but added which I never knew of a truth. Amyot, A Memorial, p. 64. The more lurid account in The Spanish chronicle has six men hold the musician down while Cromwell twisted a knotted rope about his head (M.A.S. Hulme, ed., A chronicle of King Henry VIII of England (London, 1889), p. 61. The French poem, however, stated specifically that no torture was used (Bernard, Fall, p. 600). Ives noted that, if the rack was used, it would have to have been done in the Tower rather than in Cromwells house, and this would suggest that he had not confessed before he was transferred to the Tower on May Day morning. Ives, Anne Boleyn, p. 187. But Constantynes account does not rule out the possibility of other forms of torture having been used earlier, prompting a confession, with Cromwell moving him to the Tower the following day in order to apply more serious (and proper) methods and extract any further information that could be gained. 84 Warnickes suggestion that Smeaton confessed because he feared that otherwise he would be exposed as a homosexual, and tried for sodomy on the basis of a sexual relationship with Lord Rochford (a possibility suggested to Warnicke by the fact that both men seemed at different times to have owned a manuscript containing a text critical of marriage) does not seem convincing. Warnicke, Rise and fall, pp. 218-9. 85 Ives, Faction, p. 172. 86 Singer, Wolsey, pp. 455; LP, X 797, 798; Ives, Anne Boleyn, p. 367. 87 Bernard, Fall, p. 601. Had Mark been jilted after a brief affair that meant more to him than it did to her? 88 Wriothesleys chronicle, I, pp. xxxiv and xxxvi. 89 Ives, Anne Boleyn, p. 364 90 Calendar of state papers, foreign, 1558-59, 1303 (pp. 524-34); Ives, Anne Boleyn, p. 364. 91 Kingston reported to Cromwell that she [Anne] said Master Norris did say on Sunday last unto the Queens Almoner that he would swear for the Queen that she was a good woman. And then said Mistress Cousins, Madam, why should there be any such matters spoken of? Mary, said she, I bad

him do so.... LP, X 793; Singer, Wolsey, pp. 451-3. 92 H. Ellis, ed., Original letters illustrative of English history (11 vols. in 3 series, London, 1824-26), I (ii) 54-6; LP, X 793 93 Bernard (Fall, p.604) sees this as highly flirtatious, and concludes that while it cannot be conclusive, but it does allow the possibility that Anne and Norris were indeed lovers. 94 See below, p. 000. 95 The 1534 Treason Act declared it to be treason if any person or persons...do maliciously wish, will, or desire by words or writing, or by craft imagine, invent, practise, or attempt any bodily harm to be done to the kings most royal person. G.R. Elton, The Tudor constitution (2nd ed., Cambridge, 1982), p. 63. 96 Ives, Anne Boleyn, p. 365. 97 Singer, Wolsey, p. 452. 98 BL MS Cotton Otho C X, f. 209v; Singer, Wolsey, p. 458. See Ives, Anne Boleyn, p. 365. 99 Singer, Wolsey, pp. 453; LP, X 793 100 Ives, Anne Boleyn, p. 398-9. To claim that Annes words in the Tower were damning (Bernard, Fall, p. 600) seems to go too far. As suggested above, she passionately declared her innocence on a number of occasions, and was clearly at first confused about what precisely she was accused of (Do you know why I am here? she asked Kingston, on first entering the Tower, and then a little later said, I hear say...that I should be accused with three men, and I can say no more but nay, without I should open my body. MS Otho C X f. 225; Singer, Wolsey, p. 451.). Subsequently she tried to recall anything that might have given rise to such allegations (hence the references to the conversations with Smeaton, Weston, and Norris), while all the time trying to control the kind of violent mood-swings that were entirely predictable, given her predicament. At times, as Kingston noted, she appeared merry, at others she wept or laughed uncontrollably, at times she convinced herself that the king was merely testing her, at times she was resigned to death, or issuing empty threats of what would happen if she was condemned, claiming that the majority of the realm was praying for her. None of this seems to approach proof of guilt. See MS Otho C X f. 222-25v; Singer, Wolsey, pp. 451-60. 101 Ives, Anne Boleyn, p. 369. 102 Singer, Wolsey, p. 451. 103 Bernard, Rejoinder, p. 667. For a (highly sympathetic) account of Wyatts relationship with Anne, see Singer, Wolsey, pp. 425-7, 430-33. 104 Bernard, Fall, p. 606; LP, X 798, 840; XI 1492. 105 BL MS Cotton Otho C X, f. 222; Singer, Wolsey, pp. 454. 106 See Wriothesleys chronicle, I, pp. 189-226. 107 See, for example, LP, X 865. 108 For Brereton, see Amyot, Memorial, p. 65; for Cromwell, LP, X 873 and XI 29. Wriothesleys chronicle, I, p. 39, states that Rochford made answer so prudently and wisely to all articles against him, that marvel it was to hear; and never would confess anything, but made himself as though he had never offended. 109 For Baynton, see Singer, Wolsey, pp. 458-9; for Chapuys, LP, X 908; Bernard, Fall, p. 603. 110 Constantyne, noting Norriss move to the Tower, claimed that, by the way, as his chaplain told me, he confessed, but he said at his arraigning, when his own confession was laid before him, that he was deceived to do the same by the earl of [South]hampton that now is [i.e. Fitzwilliam]. Amyot, Memorial, p. 64. 111 Singer, Wolsey, pp. 458-9. 112 Wriothesleys chronicle I, p. 36. 113 Spanish calendar V (ii) 55, p. 126; LP, X 908. 114 LP, X 908, 901. 115 MS Cotton Otho C X, f. 222; Singer, Wolsey, pp. 454.

LP, X 908; Singer, Wolsey, p. 446 and 447, Constantyne had heard that Rochford had been condemned because of a letter. Amyot, Memorial, p. 66. Wyatt also mentioned that Rochfords wife testified against him (perhaps merely to pass on the gossip mentioned below, p. 000), but he thought that this was more to be rid of him than on true grounds against him. 117 LP, X 908; Thomas, The pilgrim, p. 56. 118 LP, X 908. Warnickes curious claim that Henry fostered rumours that she [Anne] had afflicted him with impotence thus misreads the evidence. The crown lawyers actually tried to suppress all reference to allegations of royal impotence at the trial. Warnicke, Rise and fall, p. 4. 119 Bernard, Fall, p. 602. As Bernard claimed, Tudor juries often faced the problem of determining the truth of charges which rested on circumstantial evidence or on the word of one person against another. In such circumstances much depended upon the deportment and apparent trustworthiness of the defendant(s). 120 For Cromwell, see LP, X 873 and 1069, for Thomas, The pilgrim, pp. 56-7: it was laid to her charge that she, along with some of the rest, had conspired the kings death, to avoid the danger of the wickedness which they perceived could not long be kept secret. 121 The indictments recorded that the Queen and other the said traitors jointly and severally [on] 31 October 27 Henry 8 [1535], and at various times before and after, compassed and imagined the kings death, and that the Queen had frequently promised to marry some one of the traitors whenever the king should depart this life, affirming she could never love the king in her heart. Wriothesleys chronicle, p. xxvii. 122 Furthermore, that the king, having come to the knowledge of, and meditating upon, the false and detestable crimes, vices, and treasons committed against him within a short time now passed, had conceived and taken to heart a sorrow and sadness by reason of the coldness of the Queen towards him, and her adulterous conduct, so that many injuries, evils, and perils have accrued and supervened therefrom to his royal body. Wriothesleys chronicle, p. xxvii. 123 LP, X 908. 124 Ives, Anne Boleyn, pp. 393-4. 125 Ibid., p. 360. 126 For this affair, cited by Ives as analogous to Annes, see Ives, Faction, p. 185. 127 See Greg Walker, The expulsion of the minions of 1519 reconsidered, Historical Journal 32 (1989), pp. 1-16, reprinted in Walker, Persuasive fictions: faction, faith and political culture in the reign of Henry VIII (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 37-53. 128 Spanish calendar V (ii) p. 121; LP, X 909. 129 LP, X 908; Spanish calendar V (ii) 121. Bernard, Fall, p. 599. 130 Bernard, Rejoinder, p. 671.
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