Me, Scott and Emma

When the Red Rose Chain invited me to see their play Fallen in Love: The Secret Heart of Anne Boleyn, there was no way I could pass up the opportunity of seeing an Anne Boleyn themed play at the Tower of London on the anniversary of Anne Boleyn’s execution. So, off we went for a weekend in London!

The play was performed in the Banqueting Suite of the New Armouries, within the Tower confines, and the audience was limited to around 50 people all seated around a four-poster bed. The small audience, combined with the fact that there were only two actors and they were within your reach, gave the play an intimate feel. As an audience you were right in the middle of the action and as someone on the front row I could have touched the actors, never mind tripped them up! The set was simple – a four-poster bed, which was stripped at the end for another purpose. No complicated scenery and just two actors – Scott Ellis as George Boleyn and Emma Connell as Anne Boleyn – but what an impact the play had on me and, by the looks on their faces at the end, the entire audience.

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Here are the correct answers to the competition questions:

1. In what year did Claire Ridgway start The Anne Boleyn Files? – 2009
2. What nationality is Claire? – British
3. Who was Anne Boleyn’s Master of the Horse? – William Coffin ( I also accepted other variations of his surname)
4. Which ambassador referred to Anne Boleyn as “the concubine”? – Eustace Chapuys
5. How many Tudor books has Claire written? – 3 (The Anne Boleyn Collection, The Fall of Anne Boleyn: A Countdown, and On This Day in Tudor History)
6. Sandra Byrd’s To Die For tells Anne Boleyn’s story through which woman’s eyes? – Meg (Margaret) Wyatt
7. Where does Sarah Morris’s title Le Temps Viendra come from? – From Anne Boleyn’s inscription in her Book of Hours. I also accepted answers referring to Sarah Morris’s personal reasons for the use of the title.
8. Susan Bordo’s The Creation of Anne Boleyn is described as “Part biography, part …” (2 words) – Cultural History
9. Which Tudor queen did Katherine Longshore’s first Tudor novel feature? – Katherine Howard
10. Where is Anne Boleyn’s resting place (be specific)? In the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London.
11. Where was Anne Boleyn crowned queen? Westminster Abbey
12. Which movie had a scene in which Henry VIII visited Anne Boleyn in the Tower and Anne told Henry “MY Elizabeth SHALL BE QUEEN! And my blood will have been well spent!” – Anne of the Thousand Days

Thank you to all those who entered and to those who also sent messages regarding the website and the competition – you’re all lovely and I wish you could all win. I received exactly 250 entries!

Thank you once again to the authors who donated prizes for the competition.

Eustace Chapuys, the imperial ambassador, wrote to Seigneur de Granvelle informing him of the betrothal:

“Has just been informed, the bearer of this having already mounted, that Mrs. Semel [Seymour] came secretly by river this morning to the King’s lodging, and that the promise and betrothal (desponsacion) was made at 9 o’clock. The King means it to be kept secret till Whitsuntide; but everybody begins already to murmur by suspicion, and several affirm that long before the death of the other there was some arrangement which sounds ill in the ears of the people; who will certainly be displeased at what has been told me, if it be true, viz., that yesterday the King, immediately on receiving news of the decapitation of the putain entered his barge and went to the said Semel, whom he has lodged a mile from him, in a house by the river.¹

It is clear from Chapuys’ letter that the King’s relationship with Jane was hot gossip and that it had caused some suspicion because of the fact that it must have started before Anne was dead. Even Chapuys, who refers to Anne as “the putain” (whore) appears to disapprove of the King rushing to see Jane after he’d heard that Anne was dead. As to Chapuys’ views on Jane, here is what he said in a letter to Antoine Perrenot:

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Dressed in an ermine-trimmed, grey damask robe, with an English style gable hood and a crimson kirtle underneath, the slight, dark-haired woman took her final walk. She went out of the Queen’s Lodgings, past the Great Hall, through Cole Harbour Gate, and along the western side of the White Tower to the black-draped scaffold. The Constable of the Tower of London, Sir William Kingston, helped her up the scaffold steps and she stepped forward to address the waiting crowd. Her coal-black eyes flitted over the crowd. As her gaze met those of her enemies – Thomas Cromwell, Charles Brandon, Henry Fitzroy and Thomas Audley – she didn’t so much as flinch. The people fell silent as they gazed at their queen, Anne Boleyn, who one witness described as being “never so beautiful”. The Queen took a deep breath and spoke:

“Good Christian people, I have not come here to preach a sermon; I have come here to die. For according to the law and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak 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 nor a more merciful prince was there never, and to me he was ever a good, a gentle, and sovereign lord. And if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me.”

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Anne had prepared for her death. She had been praying since 2am with her almoner¹ and she celebrated mass with Archbishop Cranmer just after dawn. She asked Sir William Kingston to be present while she took the Sacrament, so that he would hear her swearing on the Blessed Sacrament that she had not been unfaithful to the King and pass the information on to Cromwell and the King. She swore on it twice, once before she took the body of Christ and once after.²

Anne then made arrangements for the customary distribution of alms using the £20 given to her by the King for this purpose, and then prayed as she waited for Kingston to come and escort her to the scaffold that had been built within the grounds of the Tower. 9am came and went, so a worried Anne sent for Kingston wanting to know if her execution would be at noon instead. Kingston knew, by now, that the execution was being postponed until the next day because he had received orders from Cromwell to clear the Tower of foreigners, but he did not tell Anne. He tried to comfort Anne, explaining that her execution would not be painful and that the blow was “so subtle”. To this, Anne replied with characteristic black humour, “I heard say the executioner was very good, and I have a little neck”, after which she put her hands around her throat and laughed heartily.³ Kingston reported Anne’s composure to Cromwell, saying that “thys lady hasse mech joy and plesure in dethe”.⁴

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George Boleyn’s signature

As today is the anniversary of the execution of George Boleyn, Lord Rochford, I wanted to remember in a positive way by remembering George the Poet. The following is an extract from Clare Cherry’s article “George Boleyn the Poet” – click here to read the full article.

From early on in his court career, George Boleyn was recognised as a talented court poet and musician. During his lifetime he received praise and respect for his accomplishments, and was considered by his contemporaries to be as talented as the renowned poets of the age, Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Unfortunately, we only know of George’s propensity for poetry from the writings and comments of various people living in the sixteenth century, many of whom knew George personally. The court chronicler Holinshed confirms of him, “He wrote divers songs and sonnets”¹. George Cavendish, gentleman usher of Cardinal Wolsey and hardly a supporter of the Boleyn’s, praised his skill in verse as well as his good looks and natural gifts:

“God gave me grace, dame nature did her part,
Endowed me with gifts of natural qualities:
‘Dame eloquence also taught me the art,
In meter and verse to make pleasant ditties.”²

John Bale talks of his, “rythmos elegantissimos” and, according to Bale, George was the author of some of the most elegant poetry of the age.³

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We do not know the grounds for the annulment. The Archbishop simply said that it was “in consequence of certain just and lawful impediments which, it was said, were unknown at the time of the union, but had lately been confessed to the Archbishop by the lady herself.”² Charles Wriothesley³ took this to mean that the Queen confessed to a pre-contract with Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. However, the Imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, believed that “the said Archbishop had pronounced the marriage of the King and Concubine invalid on account of the King having had connection with her sister, and that, as both parties knew of this, the good faith of the parents cannot make the said bastard legitimate.”⁴ Thus, the impediment referred to here was that of consanguinity. In other words, the marriage was deemed incestuous because the King had had a previous sexual relationship with Anne Boleyn’s sister, Mary Boleyn.

(Taken from The Fall of Anne Boleyn: A Countdown by Claire Ridgway)

Notes and Sources

1. LP x. 896
2. Wriothesley, Charles. A Chronicle of England During the Reigns of the Tudors, from A.D. 1485 to 1559, 41.
3. Ibid.
4. LPx. 909

The scaffold memorial at Tower Hill.

“These bloody days have broken my heart”, wrote the famous Tudor poet, Thomas Wyatt, after witnessing the executions of the five men, and then Anne Boleyn, from his prison in the Tower of London’s Bell Tower.

Those days of May 1536 were indeed “bloody” and the 17th May saw the executions of five men, all former royal favourites, for high treason. The men’s sentences were commuted by the King, in his mercy, from hanging, drawing and quartering at Tyburn to beheading at Tower Hill. It was a small mercy.

The men were led out of the Tower of London up to the scaffold site on Tower Hill. George Boleyn, Lord Rochford and brother of Queen Anne Boleyn, was the first to be beheaded due to his high rank. He climbed the scaffold and addressed the crowd before him:

“Christian men, I am born under the law, and judged under the law, and die under the law, and the law has condemned me. Masters all, I am not come hither for to preach, but for to die, for I have deserved for to die if I had 20 lives, more shamefully than can be devised, for I am a wretched sinner, and I have sinned shamefully, I have knowne no man so evil, and to rehearse my sins openly it were no pleasure to you to hear them, nor yet for me to rehearse them, for God knoweth all.

Therefore, masters all, I pray you take heed by me, and especially my lords and gentlemen of the court, the which I have been among, take heed by me, and beware of such a fall, and I pray to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, three persons and one God, that my death may be an example unto you all, and beware, trust not in the vanity of the world, and especially in the flattering of the court. And I cry God mercy, and ask all the world forgiveness, as willingly as I would have forgiveness of God; and if I have offended any man that is not here now, either in thought, word, or deed, and if you hear any such, I pray you heartily on my behalf, pray them to forgive me for God’s sake. And yet, my masters all, I have one thing for to say to you, men do come and say that I have been a setter forth of the word of God, and one that have favoured the Gospel of Christ; and because I would not that God’s word should be slandered by me, I say unto you all, that if I had followed God’s word in deed as I did read it and set it forth to my power, I had not come to this. I did read the Gospel of Christ, but I did not follow it; if I had, I had been a live man among you: therefore I pray you, masters all, for God’s sake stick to the truth and follow it, for one good follower is worth three readers, as God knoweth.”¹

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Sir William Kingston recorded his visit in a letter to Cromwell and also wrote of how at dinner that day, following Cranmer’s visit, Anne spoke of how she would be going to “anonre” (a nunnery) and that she was “in hope of life”. Did Cranmer offer Anne a deal? It appears that the main reason for his visit was to get Anne to confess to an impediment to her marriage to Henry VIII, so that the marriage could be annulled, so perhaps the deal was “confess to an impediment and you can avoid death and be sent to a nunnery instead”. It is impossible to know whether this was the case but something gave Anne renewed hope that day.

While Cranmer was visiting Anne in the Tower, Jane Seymour was settling into her new home at Chelsea and receiving guests there. Henry VIII, meanwhile, was signing death warrants. It was a busy day.

Notes and Sources

• LP x. 890

A portait of a man thought to be Sir Francis Weston.

On this day in 1536, the five men condemned to death for high treason prepared for their executions, which were scheduled for the following day.

Sir William Kingston wrote to Thomas Cromwell on 16th May regarding preparations for the building of the scaffold for Anne Boleyn’s execution and mentioning that the men were waiting to make their last confessions to “Doctor Allryge”.¹ We can assume that he turned up as Kingston was waiting for him to come.

Kingston also wrote of how he had seen the King that day regarding “the petitions of my Lord of Rochford”. George had fretted the whole time he’d been in the Tower. He wasn’t afraid of dying, but he was afraid that his debtors would not be paid and that those who owed him money would end up getting into trouble if they had to pay the King instead. So consumed with worry was George that Sir William Kingston wrote to Cromwell twice, firstly saying “The said Lord desires to speak with you on a matter which touches his conscience”² and then reiterating it in a second letter: “You must help my lord of Rochford’s conscience”.³ One person George was concerned about was a monk who, with Cromwell’s help, George had got promoted. The monk had paid George £100 and owed a further £100, but the Abbey had now been ‘suppressed’. The monk had no way of paying George back and George was worried that the Crown would demand the payment. Kingston begged Cromwell to step in and help George. We do not know if Cromwell ever visited George, but Kingston managed to speak to the King.

As Clare Cherry⁴ points out, George had good reason to worry about those who owed him money. Fast forward to 1538 and George Brown, Archbishop of Dublin, writes to Thomas Cromwell asking to be released of his debt of £400 sterling, which he had owed Lord Rochford.⁵ Fortunately for Brown, his debt was discharged.

In preparation for his death, Sir Francis Weston wrote a letter of farewell to his parents to send with a list of his debts:

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