Claire Ridgway - Annes Execution and Resting Place

hi I'm Claire Ridgeway I'm the author of the fall of amberle in a countdown and various other Tudor history books and also creator of the Amblin falls and Tudor society websites I'm here today to talk to you about amberle in with it being the 19th of May which is the four hundred and eightieth anniversary of her execution in 1536 now as it's the 19th of May today I thought I would actually share with you an extract from my book and my book actually counts down the whole of Anne's fall day by day it never fails to have an impact on me I mean I write articles every year for the ambolyn Falls about the events leading up to Ann's execution and it never fails to have this massive impact on me just you know I get the idea of what shocking events they were and how fast it all happened and of course it culminated in her awful execution the execution of Queen Anne Boleyn at dawn on the 19th of May 1536 Queen Anne Boleyn celebrated the mass for the last time receiving the sacrament from her almoner John skip she then at breakfast and waited to hear Sir William Kingston's footsteps outside her door at 8:00 a.m. the constable appeared in forming an that the hour of her death was near and that she should get herself ready but Anne was already prepared she'd taken special care with her outfit the ermine trim symbolized royalty and crimson the color of her kurtal was associated with martyrdom her hood was the traditional English gable hood rather than her usual stylish French hood and left the sumptuous royal palace for the last time walking past the Great Hall through Coal Harbour gate and along the western side of the White Tower there ahead of her was the newly erected black draped scaffold Kingston helped his prisoner at the scaffold steps and Anne stepped forward to address the crowd the crowd fell silent as they gazed their queen a woman with an untroubled countenance and then delivered her final speech good Christian people I have not come here to preach a sermon I've 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 where of 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 were medal of my cause I require them to judge the best thus I take my leave of the world and of you all and I heartily desire you all to pray for me now this speech is corroborated by Edward hall the chronicler George Wyatt John Fox and Lord Herbert of Chur Barry unlike her brother George Boleyn Lord Rochford and did not protest her innocence and preach to the crowd she simply did what was expected of her executions were carefully choreographed with a set format for execution speeches which Anne followed to the letter there was no way that she would risk her daughter's safety by defying the king and proclaiming her innocence Elizabeth's safety and her future relationship with her father the King were paramount in Anne's mind as she prepared to meet her maker and paid the de-stressed executioner who asked Anne's forgiveness her ladies then removed Anne's mantle and Anne lifted off her gable hood it is said that 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 said ladies bandaged her eyes the crowd who would have been well used to executions by this time were moved by the Queen's plight many of them crying as Anne sank to her knees in readiness the crowd too sank to its knees following the example of Sir John Alan the Lord Mayor it is said that only Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk and Henry Fitzroy Duke of Richmond remained on their feet as Anne waited for the executioner to strike she started praying oh lord have mercy on me to God I commend my soul to Jesus Christ I commend my soul Lord Jesus received my soul historian Eric Ives writes that her only show fear was the way that she kept looking behind her to check that the executioner was not going to strike the fatal blow too soon as Anne prayed the executioner all doubt his assistant to pass him his sword as an moved her head to follow what the assistant was doing the executioner came up unnoticed behind her and beheaded her with one stroke of his sword it was over as the shocked crowd dispersed and ladies who were described as bereft of their souls such was their weakness wrapped her head and body in white cloth and took them to the chapel of st. Peter Advan killer for burial no casket had been provided so yeoman warder fetched an old elm chest which had once contained boughs days from the tower Armory Anne Boleyn Queen of England and mother of Queen Elizabeth first was then buried as a traitor in an unmarked grave the tower cannons fired to tell London that its Queen was dead Sir William Kingston was paid 100 pounds by the crown for amber Lynn's jewels and apparel and that was that one Queen was dead and another was about to take her place Sir Francis Bryan took the news of Anne's death to her replacement Jane Seymour who knows what she thought of the bloody events of the past few days Scottish theologian Alexander Elysia saw Alexander ales had woken up in the early hours of the 19th of May from a nightmare about the Queen's severed neck in which he could count the nerves the veins and the arteries he went to visit his friend Archbishop Cranmer in his garden at Lambeth Alise dias was unaware of Anne's imminent execution having remained at home since the day of Anne's imprisonment but as he told the Archbishop of his dream Kremlin raised his eyes to heaven and said she who has been the Queen of England upon earth will today become a queen in heaven so great was his grief that he could say nothing more and then he burst into tears the archbishop who owed his rise to the patronage of Queen Anne Boleyn and her family was a broken man and perhaps he felt some guilt for his part in recent events it is hard to imagine how he would have felt on hearing the cannons rang out over London announcing Queen's death Queen Anne Boleyn was gone gone to a better place now Anne Boleyn was executed at the Tower of London we now know Eric Ives did some marvelous work for his biography the life and death of Anne Boleyn we now know that she wasn't executed in the spot where the modern glass memorial stands today but she was actually executed on the spot what is actually a parade ground between the White Tower and the present entrance of the crown jewels so on that large parade ground there was an erected a new scaffold particularly for especially for Anne Boleyn now her body as I said was taken to the chapel of st. Peter at vinculum royal of the Tower of London and you can go there yeoman warders tools tend to end there or you can wait until after the yeoman warders tools of the day are over it's generally about 4:35 and then it is open to the public for you to go in sort of quietly and see Ambulance memorial tile in there and because her memorial tile dates back to 1876 1877 because at that time there was some restoration work going on with the chapel it was seen to be in a very poor dilapidated State and Queen Victoria decided that you know this Chapel Royal really needed restoring now the idea was to leave the chancel area alone because of these important burials I mean you've got Queen amberle in there you've got Lady Jane Grey there you've got Dukes and lots of important people there it was decided to leave you know then in rest if it if I could unfortunately the pavements there was sinking I think some of the coffins sort of underneath had to have you know deteriorate and cause the floor to sink so it was decided that it had to be restored and therefore the remains in that area needed to be exhumed now there is a wonderful book I got it's actually a Victorian book that I've got it's got an inscription in it actually dated 1882 um it's called I'll read out the title to you notices of the historic person's buried in the Chapel of st. Peter Advan cooler in the Tower of London with an account of the discovery of the supposed remains of Queen Anne Boleyn and it's by doing C Bell who was actually given the job of minuting everything minuting all the meetings that were going on about the restoration and writing everything down for Queen Victoria so these reports date back to 1876 and eighty-seven and they're in a book and what's lovely about the book is it isn't just minutes of meetings and and things like that look might be a bit boring it actually has got this through medical reports on the remains that were found and also really useful biographies of each person that was executed at the Tower of London and who is buried in the chapel so it's a wonderful book if you can't find I was very lucky to find this antique copy and I think I got it from Abe books and you can sometimes see copies coming up on eBay and that there are versions on Amazon now I think which have just been sort of scanned or transcribed but here is what happened when they were doing the restoration so it was decided that the pavement should be raised in order to remedy any further sinking the pavement was then lifted on the spot which was marked on the plan as the place of Queen Anne Berlin's interment so they had a plan which was based on the Tower of London records of the burial so they kind of knew where to look the earth removed to a depth of two feet it had certainly not been disturbed for upwards hundred years at this depth the bones of a female were found not lying in the original order but which had evidently for some reason or another being heat together into a smaller space all these bones are examined by dr. Murat and he was the pathologist who was being tasked with looking at the remains who at once pronounced them to be those of a female or between 25 and 30 years of age of a delicate frame of body and who had been of slender and perfect proportions the forehead and lower jaw was small and especially well-formed the vertebrae were particularly small especially one joint the atlas which was that next to the skull and they bore witness to the Queen's little neck he thought that these female bones had lain in the earth that upwards of three hundred years and they were certainly all those of one person no other female bones were found from this spot so they dug in the place where Tower Records had said that Queen Anne Boleyn was buried and they found the bones of a female all gathered together and no other bones sort of mixed in or very close to it so I do feel that you know it was there's a high probability that it was Anne Boleyn they then found some male bones further along and we know that the Duke of Northumberland of the Duke of Somerset were buried between two queens as it was described so between Queen Anne Boleyn and Queen Katherine Howard and those male bones were thought to be those Dukes so that all fits together the book also includes a very detailed memorandum by dr. mu out on the findings about amberlynn he said the bones the bones found in place where Queen Anne Boleyn is said to have been buried are certainly those of a female in the prime of life all perfectly consolidated and symmetrical and belonged to the same person the bones of the head indicate a well-formed round skull with an intellectual forehead straight orbital Ridge large eyes oval face and rather square full chin the remains of the vertebra and the bones of the lower limbs indicate a well formed women of middle height with a short and slender neck the rib showed depth and roundness of chest the hands and feet bones indicate delicate and well shaped hands and feet with tapering fingers and a narrow foot they are all consistent with published descriptions of the Queen and the bones of the skull might well belong to the person portrayed in the painting by Holbein in the collection of the Earl of Warwick and then you get a very very very detailed report about each bone and the word bones that were missing they really they weren't all there which is why people often say to me well surely you know it's amberlynn because they could see you know where the sword you know damage the bones were unfortunately there were some vertebrae missing so she couldn't have been identified and by that I've also get people saying well oh yes I've heard that the Victorians prove that it was Anne Boleyn by finding an extra finger but that's not true and I wonder if the confusion comes from this bit it says 11 finger bones for lamb geez are people reading that as oh but there were eleven eleven fingers you know well that must be an extra one well I'm sorry but the phalanges the finger bones we actually have 14 phalanges on each hand so there were finger bones missing now obviously Nicholas sander in the 1580s wrote of and having an extra finger but there are no contemporary and reports or evidence to back that up at all and he also said she had protruding teeth and she had aware and you know he didn't give a very flattering impression of her but George Wyatt who was the grandson of Thomas Wyatt the elder the poet who obviously Thomas Wyatt knew and George Wyatt and his biography of Anne Boleyn talks about there being a show of nail on of her fingers now the Victorians thought that they might be able to you know find some malformation on a finger bone or something just to sort of you know back this up but it says that on a careful examination it dissipated that impression so there was nothing on the finger bones there was nothing wrong with her hands from the bones that they found now what happened to her remains after they'd been examined by doctor Murat well they here are the minutes of a meeting from 13th of April 1877 a meeting was held in the chapel of st. Peter in the tower on Friday the 13th of April at 12 o'clock when Colonel Millman produced seven cases which contained the remains that had been exhumed from the chancel on the 9th and 11th of November last these remains had been soldered up in thick leaden coffers and then fastened down with copper screws in boxes made of oak plank one inch in thickness each box for a leaden escutcheon on which was engraved the name of the person who's supposed remains with us enclosed together with the dates of death and of the year 1877 of the reinterment the cases were then placed in the respective positions in the chancel in which the remains have been found and the ground having been opened they were all buried about four inches below the surface the earth was then filled in and concrete immediately spread over them the various positions of these interments are recorded upon a plan which we copied on vellum and deposited among the records belonging to the tower it was then decided as well that tiles would be put down as memorial tiles to show these positions and then what you can see today Queen Anne Boleyn has a beautiful one there are also tiles to the Dukes of Somerset and Northumberland Katherine Howard and they're all in the chancel area which is actually roped off so you have to stay behind the rope but today the 19th of May flowers will be laid on Queen Anne's Memorial and there's always a basket of red roses we're just a card that just simply says Queen Anne Boleyn on it and that is delivered every year now the Yeomen warders don't know who delivers it there are various theories apparently in the past one of the one of the heads sort of heads of the Tower of London traced flowers to a florist in a Kent Village and it is thought that perhaps it's descendants of the Berlin family that send this every year that there was money left in a will for this to happen every year it's a beautiful tradition and the yeoman warders take it very very seriously the flowers come by taxi usually and then they are taken and placed on the memorial tile but other people leave flowers there as well and flowers also on the glass memorial now this book also includes as well as beautiful Victorian engravings it also includes a plan of the burials in the chancel area so it's a fascinating book but for me I really do think there's no reason to doubt the Victorian sort of Records and their findings and to say that you know Anne Boleyn isn't there or she's in another position they dug where they were told that Anne Boleyn was according to the tower records they found a skeleton which seems to sort of match in that it's a female it was sort of the right age and it had the two men beside it so it's very very interesting and I would recommend sort of getting hold of a copy of this if you can anyway I hope that this has been a fitting tribute to Queen Anne Boleyn who was executed on this day in 1536 you

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Keywords: Anne Boleyn Day, MadeGlobal Publishing, Claire Ridgway

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Length: 21min 55sec (1315 seconds)

Published: Thu May 19 2016