The Trial of "The Most Happy"

On this day, 15th May 1536, Anne Boleyn and her brother George had their trial.

Anne's trial at the king's hall was a public spectacle, with over 2,000 attending.  A huge platform had been erected on which the trial would take place, to allow room for the spectators below. Her own uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, represented the king and was throned beneath a vibrant canopy which bore the royal arms. The four other men with whom she had supposedly adultured had already been tried and found guilty the day before.


She came to face her jury in a black velvet gown and scarlet damask, with a cap sporting a black and white feather on her head. Always known for her fashion and making an appearance, Lancelot de Carles described Anne’s entrance: “She walked forth in fearful beauty” and “seemed unmoved as a stock, not as one who had to defend her cause, but with the bearing of one coming to great honour.”


Crispin de Milherve, another witness, is quoted by Alison Weir who wrote that Anne “...presented herself with the true dignity of a queen, and curtseyed to her judges, looking round upon them all, without any sign of fear… She returned the salutations of the lords with her accustomed politeness… [after seeing her father] she stood undismayed, nor did ever exhibit any token of impatience, or grief, or cowardice.”


Anne was noted for her resolute and composed features as she plead "Not Guilty" to her charges of incest, adultery, promising to marry Norris after the King’s death, conspiring the King’s death and laughing at the King and his dress. She answred smoothly all her questions, kept her composure and was never ruffled. Yet the swordsman had already been sent for, and her accused partners in incest already found guilty and sentenced to die horribly. It was only logical that if they were guilty, she must be as well.


The Jury was unanimus in their verdict. Anne was guilty. Her title of Queen was never considered, never even mentioned at the trial. Her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk,  pronounced the sentence.


George Constantine, Sir Henry Norris’s manservant, later wrote of how the Duke wept as he sentenced his niece:

“Because thou hast offended against our sovereign the King’s Grace in committing treason against his person, and here attainted of the same, the law of the realm is this, that thou hast deserved death, and thy judgment is tis: that thou shalt be burned here within the Tower of London on the Green, else to have thy head smitten off, as the King’s pleasure shall be further known of the same.”

She was left to wonder whether she would be burned or, mercifully, beheaded.
Chapuys and others reported later that she remained composed and addressed the court, saying she was ready to die but regretted that innocent people had to die for her. There are many accounts of her speech, written after the fact to report the dramatic doings of the English court allover the world and most likely exaggerated. Alison Weir gives us Crispin de Milherve’s account of Anne's words after she received her sentence:

“My lords, I will not say your sentence is unjust, nor presume that my reasons can prevail against your convictions. I am willing to believe that you have sufficient reasons for what you have done; but then they must be other than those which have been produced in court, for I am clear of all the offences which you then laid to my charge. I have ever been a faithful wife to the King, though I do not say I have always shown him that humility which his goodness to me, and the honours to which he raised me, merited. I confess I have had jealous fancies and suspicions of him, which I had not discretion enough, and wisdom, to conceal at all times...As for ...those others who are unjustly condemned, I would willingly suffer many deaths to deliver them, but since I see it so pleases the King, I shall willingly accompany them in death, with this assurance, that I shall lead an endless life with them in peace and joy, where I will pray to God for the King and for you, my lords.”

Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, Anne’s girlhood sweetheart, collapsed and had to be taken out of the courtroom. Anne was escorted out by her jailer, with an axe turned against her to show she had been sentenced to death.

While Anne was taken back to the tower, it was George's turn to face the jury. According to court records, Anne“tempted her brother with her tongue in the said George’s mouth and the said George’s tongue in hers.”

Witnesses all reported that George was brave, witty and put up a good fight. But he too was sentenced to a traitor's death:

“that he should go again to prison in the Tower from whence he came, and to be drawn from the said Tower of London through the City of London to the place of execution called Tyburn, and there to be hanged, being alive cut down, and then his members cut off and his bowels taken out of his body and burnt before him, and then his head cut off, and his body to be divided into quarter pieces, and his head and body to be set at such places as the King should assign.”

And so it was that the mighty Boleyns fell.