Home » History » Tudor History » The Rise, Reign and Fall of Anne Boleyn, Part V

The Rise, Reign and Fall of Anne Boleyn, Part V

© Ellen McDaniel-Weissler

The crisis came with Anne's third and last pregnancy. In early 1536 she was delivered of the prayed-for son - but it was born dead. The Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Howard, Anne's uncle on her mother's side, neatly summed up the situation when he heard the news. "She has miscarried," he said, "of her savior." Henry stormed from the room, ordering Anne to come near him no more for "you will have no more sons by me!" Thus began the open estrangement which culminated in Anne's road to indictment, imprisonment and, finally, the block.

Who it was that first hit upon the idea of treason as a solution for Henry's dilemma is uncertain, but it didn't take long for the idea to appeal to Henry. It may have been that unscrupulous opportunist, Thomas Cromwell, a protégé of Wolsey's who had managed to rise even as Wolsey fell, and who was now one of the king's closest advisors. Whether or not Cromwell was the instigator, he was indeed a tool of the scheme, gathering the necessary evidence and drawing the net tighter and tighter around Anne and her hapless fellow-accused.

For Anne to commit adultery was only a treasonable offense for those who slept with her; but the crime of "imagining the king's death" - that is, discussing or even admitting the possibility that the king would die someday, much less plotting to murder him - did constitute treason. Along with the adultery, Cromwell meant to accuse Anne of this ultimate offense.

Anne was arrested without warning and taken to the Tower of London on 2 May, 1536. We will never know if Henry genuinely believed the charges which were brought against her, but it seems unlikely. The queen was so closely attended - and this one was so greatly disliked that she was scrutinized as no other English queen had been - that it would have been suicide for her to risk a casual liaison right under the nose of king and court. Some have suggested that Anne was so desperate to conceive a child that she might have turned to lovers to help gain that end - but there is no evidence to support the idea that Henry was unable to father a child. He had gotten his first wife pregnant repeatedly, and had done the same with Anne.

None of her accused lovers confessed except for the musician Mark Smeaton, and historians are almost unanimously convinced that he did so only under torture. Henry's desire to be rid of Anne was by this time so great that he was willing to strike at even his closest friends in order to separate himself from her, and the men accused with her, with the exception of Mark Smeaton, were all close friends of the royal couple. To make the accusations the more appalling (and possibly to ensure the Boleyn family's downfall) Cromwell included incest in the charges when he arrested Anne's brother, George, Lord Rochford. Arrested with him were the courtiers Sir Henry Norris, Sir Francis Weston, and William Brereton, all members of the king's privy chamber. The commoner musician, Mark Smeaton, was also arrested.