ANNE BOLEYN’S EXECUTION OUTFIT | How to dress for death in Tudor England | Six wives documentary

if you were going to be executed tomorrow morning at the tar of london on the orders of your spouse in front of a couple of thousand people for crimes you didn't commit what would you wear that was a question facing queen anne boleyn second wife of henry viii in the hours before her death on the 19th of may 1536 and in this video from history calling i'm going to tell you not just what she chose but why she choose it because believe it or not there was a whole etiquette around how to dress for death in tudor england if you were a member of the elite and going to the scaffold anne's outfit from the fabric she chose to the style of her hood and the cut of her dress tells us a lot about her self-image and her understanding of how clothing was used to communicate to an audience furthermore it shows that this famously fashion savvy queen knew how to make a statement right up to her dying breath [Music] ann berlin was sentenced to death on the 15th of may 1536 and had a few days to prepare herself as best she could for what was coming along with praying for forgiveness for her sins taking the sacrament and deciding what her final words would be she also had to choose the clothes she would die in she'd been imprisoned in the tower since her arrest on the 2nd of may and had a smaller than usual wardrobe with her to pick from when she stepped out of her lodgings on the morning of the 19th to be executed on a scaffold built here next to the white tar the spectators got their first look at what she had selected we have several descriptions of what she apparently wore the first source is known as the spanish chronicle because it was originally written in spanish by an anonymous author it says that she wore quote a night robe of damask with a red damask skirt and a netted koif over her hair this document is notoriously unreliable though the account it gave of her final speech which you can hear all about in my video on the execution of anne berlin linked on screen and in the description box is vastly different to what other sources record for instance and it also claimed that anne's father died of grief several days after her when in fact thomas berlin lived until 1539 next we have a document also originally written in spanish by an anonymous imperialist writer which we can tell in part not just by the language but by their hostility to anne who they refer to as having been unjustly called the queen its real date is unclear it's dated the 16th of may which can't be correct because that was before the executions it describes of anne's brother george and the queen herself but the level of detail it contains suggests that it was composed by an eyewitness not long after her death it says that after she had made her final speech quote she was then stripped of her short mantle furred with herman's and afterwards took off her hood which was of english make herself a young lady presented her with a linen cap with which she covered her hair and she knelt down fastening her clothes about her feet and one of the sad ladies bandaged her eyes this source seems much more reliable than the spanish chronicle and i would be inclined to take its information as being mostly true making allowances for some small details which the author may have forgotten to include or misremembered finally we have a letter written on the 10th of june 1536 in portuguese and sent to a man in lisbon which also describes george and anne's deaths the author tells us that anne was quote wholly habited in a robe of black damask made in such guys that the cape which was white did fall on the outer side thereof this same writer continues that after she had made her final speech she took her coifs from her head which i suspect is a reference to her hood and delivered them to one of her ladies then put on a little cap of linen to cover her hair just before she was killed her ladies wrapped a bandage around her eyes this source's main weakness is its obvious hostility to anne and the inaccuracies it contains for it falsely states elsewhere that the privy council had declared her daughter elizabeth to be the child of her brother george berlin and attributes a second speech to her married to her ladies just before she died but which no other source mentions that said its date of the 10th of june places it barely three weeks after her death other details such as her main speech tally with other sources and crucially it's a kind of her outfit chimes very well with the imperialist source i just mentioned there would also be little reason to lie about her outfit whereas the inaccurate details regarding her speech and the paternity of elizabeth were useful as ways to slander her so if we bring these descriptions together and look at where they overlap what we get is a picture of anne wearing a dark colored dress probably grey or black to mask with a short fur lined cloak over the top this cloak was probably irman as the imperialist writer says because that tallies with the portuguese writer's description of it as being white and if the fur of a stood which is what herman is is taken from it in winter and it is indeed white she had an english style gable hood on like the one you see her wearing in this image and after she removed it she put a linen coif of unknown color over her hair to hold it in place that quite probably resembled the cap you see in this image which is supposedly of her the final piece of clothing if we could call it that that she ever donned was a blindfold or a bandage around her eyes despite what you see in movies and tv shows about her life there is no suggestion that she was wearing any jewelry that she had to take off before her death though if you are interested in her jewels do check out my video on her famous bee necklace which i'll leave linked for you personally i doubt the spanish chronicler's assertion that her skirt was red no one else mentioned it and had she worn red i think they would have as that was the color of catholic martyrdom and it really would have stood out on a proto-protestant like anne mary queen of scots wore red to her execution for instance and the point she was making about being unjustly killed for her faith was immediately picked up on by those who saw her see my video on her execution for more details again i'll leave it linked for you for now though let's analyze what anne's choice of clothing tells us just before i do that though if you're enjoying this video please remember to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel with notifications switched on so that youtube lets you know every time i upload you can also follow me on instagram and check out my patreon page both of which are linked in the description box below and now back to am starting from the top anne's choice of an english-style gable hood suggests that she sought to emphasize her position as an english woman she had spent much of her life in france was being executed in the french manner with a sword rather than an axe and by a french executioner and was famous for having popularized the french hood at the english court which sat further back on the head and showed off the wearer's hair yet she did also wear english hoods as this portrait medal of her struck in 1534 shows and at the last she chose to identify with england the country she had been crowned queen of next we have the dress maria hayward has noted in her article on the clothing worn to elite executions during the tutor period details of which are in the description box that the most popular colors for clothes to die in were black gray and red black was an expensive color which suggested the condemned social position but which was also in line with the mournful tone of the occasion hayward also argues that grey was a neutral colour which quote may be an indication of the accused acknowledging their liminal legal position once they had been condemned red as i've already mentioned could be construed as the color of catholic martyrdom but hayward also contends that given its expensive nature it also allowed the victim a last flamboyant act on a more practical note a dark color or red were also wise choices as they would help to disguise the blood stains once the person's head was off perhaps making the job of those who had to deal with their bodies slightly less gruesome it would also have made the garment easier to clean and repurpose but we'll come to that in a minute the neckline at the back of the dress is not mentioned in the sources but tudor dresses of this era tend to have square necks like the ones you see on some of these wax works of henry viii and his wives and we can assume as anne's biographer eric ives has done that the neckline of her dress was cut in that manner had it been higher and presented an impediment to the sword she likely would have needed to disrupt further as hayward also explains when necklines were high the condemned often had to quote remove a number of items in the hope of a swift death the fabric of the dress seems to have been damask showing and status as this was an expensive material i couldn't find an image of a tutor era damask dress no doubt because so few clothes survived from that long ago but the brown material you see on this 18th century example is made of that fabric and gives you a very good idea of how luxurious it was the fur of the cloak is likewise very significant not only was irman expensive sanctuary laws in force during this era meant that most people were not allowed to wear it and by donning it anne made another subtle reference to her high rank and position as queen what would have happened though to these expensive garments after her death when ann berlin was dug up by the victorians in the 1870s which i have a whole video on that you can check out later no remnants of any clothing were found with her though that in itself doesn't tell us what she was or wasn't wearing when she was placed under the floor of the chapel of saint peter advincula she'd been disinterred at least once before in the 1750s which we know because a woman who died at that point was found buried underneath her by the victorians so even if there were any scraps of material left at that stage they might well have been taken as souvenirs more likely though anything she was still wearing had long since rotted away it's unlikely however that she was wearing very much certainly her expensive hood and cloak removed before her death would not have been buried with her as hayward explains given the value of the fabric and perhaps embellishments on the garments worn by elite execution victims their clothes generally went to the executioner as a kind of perk of the job and it is highly possible that the headsman of calais who executed anne was allowed her remits certainly when mary queen of scots was beheaded and all her clothes were burnt to prevent them from being used as relics the fact that the executioner and his assistant did not get them and were instead given a cash bonus was thought unusual enough to be remarked upon the alternative in anne's case is that her ladies kept the items having removed her dress and whatever footwear she had on before burying her but again this would have been highly irregular and there's no reason to suppose it happened we can say though that it's quite likely that anne went into the ground in just her smock however there's no definitive evidence one way or the other and we could equally argue that given her position as a queen or former queen she would spare the indignity of being stripped for burial in short we'll never know now we come to modern on-screen depictions of anne's final outfit i don't have space to include every actress who's ever played her here but i've put together images from eight different shows or movies which cover her execution so that we can have a look at how her final outfit has been shown and which production did the best apologies for the fact that some of these images are a little bit blurry they're screenshots so i just had to work with what i could find up first we have merle oberon from the 1933 movie the private life of henry viii the costume department here have created an almost exact replica of the dress and wears in her famous b necklace portraits and actually it's not bad as a representation of her execution outfit it's a black dress in the appropriate style and she wears a hood though it's a french hood rather than an english one there is no cloak however and i don't think this movie showed her with a linen cap or blindfold either but i couldn't watch the whole thing online so do let me know if i'm wrong next up we have genevieve bushold in the 1969 film and of the thousand days the color and neckline of the dress are good and it has large sleeves which is period appropriate miss bujold does also wear a linen cap though she has this on before she ascends the scaffold steps she never wears a hood however her cloak is not made of fur and there's no blindfold the movie is brilliant as is her performance and the costume department were generally on fire but there are quite a lot of errors and omissions in this particular outfit this is helena bonham carter in the 2003 tv show henry viii the most startlingly inaccurate thing here is the color of the dress which is pure white presumably this was to highlight anne's innocence but it's completely at odds with the real woman's outfit and i find it even stranger because miss bonham carter was pregnant at the time of filming and darker colour would have helped to disguise her bump more she's also missing a cloak on the upside the square neck and large skirt on the going are correct as are the cap and blindfold but the sleeves are too fitted and there's never a hood we now come to natalie portman in the 2008 film the other berlin girl the sleeves and skirt of her dress are too fitted for the tutor era but otherwise the costumer here did a pretty great job miss portman wears an english style gable hood the only actress in our group who does so has a dark colored dress with a low-cut back and a short white fur cloak over the top she has a white koiff over her hair though this is already on under her hood and not put on on the scaffold and my only other gripe is the lack of a blindfold but i can understand that actors like to have the use of their eyes in a scene to communicate with the audience next we have another natalie this time being natalie dormer in the tv show the tudors and i think this particular episode at the end of season two also aired in 2008. this show has always been a guilty pleasure of mine and actually stays far closer to the historical record than a lot of people give it credit for but an area in which it was consistently inaccurate was the costumes and this one is no exception the color of the dress is all wrong as miss dormer is in a kind of lilac shade but the general silhouette isn't too bad as it has a square neckline cut low at the back too and slightly flared sleeves though this should have been taken further the cloak is present and furred which is good but it's full length and mainly red rather than white there's no hood or blindfold though miss dormer's anne does put on a coiff before the execution we now come to claire foy in the bbc's 2015 adaptation of wolf hall the colour of the dress is good but the skirt and sleeves are too fitted and i've never understood what happened with her hoot here what she's wearing is neither a french nor an english hood but what looks like a modern hairband with a veal stuck to the back of it it's especially odd as this show had plenty of its cast members wearing period correct hoods but anyways she has a fur trimmed cloak which is good though it's full length again instead of cropped and only the trim is white later in the scene she wears both a koif and a blindfold which is also very good finally she is one of the few actresses who doesn't have to take off a load of jewelry before the execution which is a nice authentic touch because as we've already seen there's no evidence that anne was wearing jewelry immediately before or when she died moving on to the tv show rhian in which kristen pellerin plays anne very briefly in a dream sequence this show was renowned for the completely inaccurate costumes it often displayed especially in the earlier episodes and though this is nowhere near as bad as some of the other supposedly 16th century outfits it put its cast members in it doesn't have much to recommend it as a depiction of anne's final ensemble it's black with a square neckline which is good but there's no cloak no hood no coif no blindfold and the cut of the dress is all wrong for the mid-shooter era i am prepared to give this scene a bit of a pass though as it is a dream sequence so perhaps the sleeping queen elizabeth the first just imagined her mother in this very odd outfit last but not least we have judy turner smith in channel 5's and berlin the outfits in this shoe were actually pretty good as regards the silhouettes even if i have always felt that anne should have been more elaborately dressed just to set her apart from the other ladies at court but the costume department haven't done a bad job here the dress is the correct color and cut and miss turner smith did wear a hood though it was actually a french hood with a white veal over her face which wasn't accurate there's no coif over her hair but she had a third cloak even if it was too long and the blindfold is present overall this was a pretty decent effort especially for a show which i don't think had a big budget so what's my verdict then which depiction of anne's outfit is the best in my opinion well for me it's definitely natalie portman's in the other balloon girl that movie had its problems when it came to historical accuracy but the costume for this scene wasn't really one of them other than the fitted sleeves and skirt and the lack of a blindfold it was very well done and if you're trying to imagine anne's clothes in her final moments this is the visual i would advise you to aim for at least until someone else does it better and that my friends brings us to the end of this study of ann berlin's final outfit as always a big thank you to my patrons for supporting my work and helping me to be able to keep making videos for you if you'd like to become a patron and get some history calling perks head on over to my patreon page by clicking the link in the description box and check it out there's a two-minute video available on that page which will explain how everything works for you i know some of you prefer to make a one-off donation and for that there's a thanks button underneath the videos which lets you give a preset amount and get a brightly colored customizable comment under the video and a one-time animation over the top of it again if you opt to do this thank you so much for your generosity but please no would feel obliged to donate in either of these ways let me know in the comments below which of the on-screen versions of anne's final outfit you like the best and if you need another ann berlin or fashion history hit right away try one of these options next whatever you select please enjoy and until next time keep learning

Channel: History Calling

Views: 185,613

Keywords: how to dress for death, how clothing was used to communicate, how to make a statement with clothing, most famous executions in history, Six wives documentary, History versus Hollywood, historical fashions, clothes to die in, execution of a queen, famous royal executions, Anne Boleyn's execution on screen, Anne Boleyn’s appearance, what happened to an execution victim's clothes, History Calling, Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII, Henry 8th, Henry eighth

Id: N-uSu7zY_m4

Length: 19min 27sec (1167 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 23 2022