The Last Days of Anne Boleyn | BBC Documentary

[Music] on the 19th of May 1536 one of the most infamous episodes in English history moved towards it's gruesome conclusion an Berlin Queen and second wife of King Henry the eighth was taken from her quarters in the Tower of London and with a single blow of a sword became the first queen in Britain's history to be executed to Jesus Christ I commend my spirit Lord God have pity on my soul and Berlin's rise to power had been highly controversial she was the commoner who so captivated the king he was prepared to tear the Christian Church apart in order to have her people like to think of Anne Boleyn as sexually out of control ravenously ambitious as she walked home but when it came her downfall was spectacular it was a burping primeval primordial drama red in tooth and claw and horror and depression it's a highly political story unique to its time and place but it's also a universal story because in the end it's a story about a man and a woman today the saga of an Berlin's downfall is entered into legend it was a blood-soaked ending to a love story that began with inflamed passions and high intrigue and has lost none of its power to fascinate and 500 years on the reasons for her downfall continue to stir strong argument I think this is one of the most shocking and audacious plots in English history I mean I think all the conspiracy theories are suspect the problem is that there is no evidence maybe we should pause and ask whether gambling was wholly innocent of the charges of adultery treason that were brought against her and ponder whether perhaps they might have been something in them so who was the real amber lynn and why was she executed [Music] [Music] on the afternoon of the second of May 1536 a unit of the King's Guard arrived at Greenwich palace near London accompanied by members of Henry the eighth's Privy Council they carried with them an extraordinary document a warrant for the arrest of the Queen of England the charges against Anne could hardly have been more serious adultery incest and conspiring to cause the death of the King accused and tried alongside her were five men including some of King Henry's closest companions and even Anne's own brother all of them were thrown into the Tower of London in a matter of days they were dead never before had a queen been arrested and executed but the reasons behind Anne's destruction remain the subject of fierce historical debate the brutal speed of her downfall and the shocking nature of the charges against her suggests that she was framed but by whom and for what reason on the face of it the year 1536 could hardly have begun more auspiciously for an Berlin on the 7th of January King Henry's first wife Catherine of Aragon died at kim bolton castle near Cambridge [Music] at their favorite Palace in Greenwich the king and his new wife threw a party to celebrate Catherine's death Henry and danced and the row counts of him and Anne coming out dressed in yellow and this has been interpreted to be a sort of sign of unbecoming Glee so I think for and this is a great moment finally her old rival her old enemy is dead [Music] we have to remember that Katherine never cease to call herself Queen and if you didn't give her her full titles she wouldn't answer she wouldn't negotiate with you so there must be a moment I suppose when Ann feels now I really am queen of England Anne had begun her rise to power ten years earlier although her family were commoners they were notorious for their scheming ambitions after a period of training in the French royal household and made her debut at court and became a lady-in-waiting to Queen Katherine she came at the age of about 21 to the English Court and she seems to have burst upon it with a certain brilliance and she was very confident very stylish very French as she was said you would have taken her for a French woman born and she clearly made an impact she's obviously not a girl that everybody goes like that's the prettiest girl at court but I think what she is is I think she's probably the sexiest girl at court she's very very intelligent she's very quick-witted there was a lot of discussion about theology she has a genuine interest in that so you've got a young woman of some substance that she was thought to be a bit of a cut above what she was was sophisticated and cosmopolitan and she could dance and she could recite poetry and she obviously just had a charisma that attracted people to her King Henry was infatuated he bombarded Ann with love letters begging her to become his mistress but the new girl at court was a shrewd operator we don't know to what extent she loved him if she ever did or if she operated on a basis of cold ambition but she strikes me as a woman slightly too cooled detached and intelligent to stake everything on love in a move of astonishing boldness and told Henry she would settle for nothing less than to be his queen and of course for a king this is wildly exciting nobody's ever talked to him like this before nobody has ever effectively given him orders so Henry made a momentous decision to divorce his Spanish wife of 24 years to do so Henry was forced to break with the Catholic Church in Rome and declare himself head of a new Church of England so there were many who resented an Berlin as a destructive and immoral force there's this famous account of her being called a goggle eyed [ __ ] I think there is a sense that people feel that wrong has been done and that Kathryn was the true queen and therefore Aniston is usurper and who has wormed her way into the Kings bed no woman had ever done what she did before no woman had ever made that step from royal mistress to the throne getting a queen a real queen out of the way this is something utterly completely extraordinary it changes all the rules [Music] after a six-year legal battle Henry finally got his divorce and Anberlin got her crown [Music] and by 1536 she had another reason to be happy and was pregnant she had already given Henry a daughter the Princess Elizabeth now all she needed to do was bear Henry a son and her position as Queen would be unassailable Ann Boleyn was riding high and Henry was saying and God be praised we are free from the fear of war because it was felt that Katherine's nephew the Emperor Charles v might invade England on her behalf but no and now felt the way was clear for her to be accepted as undisputed Queen yet just three months later Anne would be dead although she couldn't have known it the road to her ruin began on the very day that her rival was buried on the 29th of January 1536 three weeks after her death Catherine of Aragon was laid to rest in Peterborough Cathedral but on this occasion there were no celebrations at court [Music] on the very same day and suffered a miscarriage [Music] even worse the unborn child was a boy Henry was devastated [Music] the idea of not having an heir was unthinkable he's had two children both of them daughters it's it's this is failure for a king of a most terrible sort the survival of the dynasty is what is at stake Anne had had a miscarriage before perhaps more than one no there is another I'm Henry is finding his flesh begins to creep because it looks as if this deathly pattern is reasserting itself Henry is an intensely religious man this is not assumed this is not feigned he thinks that as king he has a direct relationship with God so why am I still not on the right side of God what does God want of me now did an Berlin's failure to give Henry a son set in motion the events which led to her downfall records from the period offer a clue into Henry's thinking the day after the miscarriage he declared to a courtier that he had been charmed into marrying and by magic spells or sorcery but were these the wild words of a distraught husband or something more ominous when Henry talks about enchantments charms magic tricks Henry is beginning it seems to think about annulling his marriage to Anne he cannot imagine what he ever saw in Anne Boleyn and he cannot imagine why for her sake he broke with Rome turned the politics of your upside down so he's thrashing about trying to find a reason and he's saying perhaps my marriage was always null and void for lack of proper consent but some perceive a different darker tail in the story of Han Berlin's miscarriage according to some accounts Anne's miscarried child was found to have physical deformities clear evidence to 16th century minds of evildoing and miscarries a baby and it's inspected by a midwife who says that it was a boy but it's malformed now that's of enormous importance the belief was in the medieval world was that if a woman gave birth to a deformed or malformed fetus then what everybody would genuinely thoroughly and sincerely believe is that she's done a truly awful sin and that would be like adultery like gross adultery or it would be incest or it might be witchcraft but when she loses the baby you know Henry what he sees is conclusive evidence that his wife is not a good woman and that his marriage is not blessed by God and that's the least of his fears what I'm certain that he feels that it may be that he goes further and believes that his wife is a witch there's no indication in the contemporary records that this was anything other than a normal pregnancy with the sad end the idea that an was delivered of a shapeless mass of flesh comes along 40 years later to the best of my knowledge and belief in the work of Nicolas sander who is a Catholic propagandist and the great edifice of speculation has been built up on this so that she's it's quite hard to remember that there is no evidence that the root of it all this hypothesis let's call it he's so sensational so hair-raising and of course it's attractive to novelists but there is really it's just hot air we will never know for sure whether it was Anne's miscarriage that sealed her fate but there is evidence to suggest that by the spring of 1536 Henri was in the grip of a new passion on the 30th of March the king sat down to write a letter something he normally avoided but this was a love letter for one of Ann Berlin's own ladies-in-waiting a certain Jane Seymour she was a direct opposite to Anne Boleyn self-effacing demure humble obedient at least she looked as if she'd be no trouble she is so pale that she virtually doesn't exist she is desperately plain and Henri like a pendulum swings from one to the other although the content of Henry's letter to Jane Seymour is not known Jane's reaction to the Kings overtures was witnessed by observers [Music] if she kisses the letter Jane hands it back to the messenger saying it would be quite improper for me to take this but please tell the king that he should send it again when I should happen to make a good marriage oh she's teasing Henry and after this point he's thinking can I get out of my marriage to Anne I don't think that Henry had decided he wanted to get rid of her and there isn't really any evidence of it in practice I think that he had worked very hard to get her and wasn't about to throw her away easily Henry does have mistresses he has about three that we know of and the worst case scenario I think is that Henry is trying to make Jane his mistress and I certainly don't think that there's any way that one could spin that out and say that's the beginning of the end in the Kings eyes was Jane Seymour a new queen in Waiting or just a potential royal mistress whatever Henry's intentions one thing is beyond doubt by March 1536 his infatuation with Anne Boleyn was over what Henry looked for when a wife was one just like Catherine please intelligent for sure but knowing her place but and continue to be an what makes an interesting and fascinating I think is precisely that she's not like Katharine of Aragon's she is highly intelligent articulate she'd seen some of the world she knew scholars and she talked to them she was the friend of the poets and intellectuals and she involved herself in matters of religion and state politics and simply won't accept conventional roles as the wife because she had become a meshed in the diplomatic game because she'd acquired her own expertise she saw herself as a player and as an advisor to Henry well Henry didn't want advice from his wife but was Ann's downfall simply the result of a breakdown in her marriage to Henry in the highly charged atmosphere of the Tudor Court sexual politics weren't the only dangerous forces at work there were other seething tensions in the form of power politics on the 2nd of April King Henry and and the court gathered in the Chapel Royal for the passion Sunday service the sermon that day was delivered by an Berlin's personal chaplain in nomine Christus his name was John skip on this day when we remember the passion of our Savior we do well to recall his words in the temple which of you can convict me of sin for his theme skip took on the most controversial issue of the day religious reform and the dissolution of the monasteries in these days many men attack the clergy but is it for noble reasons or is it because they would have of the clergy their positions it's a wonderful piece of political theater it's a cult sermon in front of the assembled King and nobility and the council and skip lays into them it's a wonderful satirical sermon where he essentially criticizes everyone but Anne's chaplain appeared to have one particular courtier in his sights let us not forget the book of Esther and the sins of the wicked counselor skip told the biblical story of an evil royal adviser named her man but few in the chapel could have doubted who his real target was Thomas Cromwell was Henry's chief political councillor he had risen to power by acting as the King's advisor over his divorce from Catherine and the break with Rome although the fortunes of Cromwell and an Berlin were closely entwined some believed that by 1536 their relationship had reached a crisis point Cromwell by this stage is minister of everything there's very little business done in England that doesn't cross his desk Cromwell is a stooped he's Omni competent he's as clever as a bag of snakes he's a supreme master of the political game and he was of course one of the people who made the marriage possible but political divisions of crept in and is not as she had hoped Henry's front-line political adviser Cromwell is and the King said who is in the court and his servants said unto Him behold her man stands in the court and the King said let him come in I think that sermon is totally extraordinary to invoke Haman has to be directed absolutely full on square the Cromwell himself it's it's it's throwing a grenade and to do it in front of the King in the Chapel Royal surely it's a declaration of war he has begun to complain way back in 1534 the town is turning against him he said the turns threatened him he said and wants his head by 1536 the conflict is is ready to explode she said unto him the enemy is this wicked Haman and thanks to this woman her man was hanged from a gallows fifty cubits high I think there is a power rivalry I think Cromwell has come up since 1732 and fears her influence is waning and I think there is this power struggle going on so I think that the you know Ann Ann is feeling threatened by Cromwell but I think he's also feeling threatened by her I think that's rather far-fetched I don't really see the analogy I don't quite see what Cromwell should have been the author of that that Anne Boleyn would be so opposed to and the assumption there is that Cromwell is a leading Minister that perhaps he is controlling Minister I see Cromwell as very much the Kings servant I'm not convinced that she would campaign to get rid of Cromwell in that way I don't think that we can necessarily say that because her chaplain has said something he's Anne's mouthpiece we are making all sorts of leaps in order just to use this piece of evidence to suggest that and is supposed to Cromwell forgive me why do you have a sermon invoking Hamer why does prom well mention it three or four times in conversation sorry if this isn't evidence I don't know what is five centuries on it's still hard to disentangle the troubled relationship between Anne Henry and Cromwell was an brought down by a brutal husband who had tired of his wife or by a power struggle with Henry's scheming counselor [Music] two weeks after John Skip's extraordinary sermon a second dramatic encounter in the chapel at Greenwich palace provides an insight into the tensions within Henry's Court on the 18th of April the Spanish ambassador Eustace shap we arrived at court ship wheeze master Charles the fifth was the nephew of Catherine of Aragon Charles had refused to recognize an Berlin and even threatened war ambassadorship we had come to discuss peace terms with Henry but first Henry had arranged a little surprise for his guests the king and queen would sit in the Royal pew above the chapel in the body of the chapel and then they would come down to offer and there would be like a small staircase coming down it was a much room at the bottom and Shipley was there it was such a small space and she had to come face to face with him for the past seven years the Ambassador had refused to meet and in person and insisted on calling her the hall now his hand had been forced Henry essentially stages this maneuver whereby chap we will bow to an in the chapel and this is crucial because this tiny piece of etiquette is a diplomatic coup [Music] what shop we is doing is on behalf of the Emperor chartoff if he is recognizing Anne Boleyn he is conceding by that gesture that Henry the eighth's break with Rome and his marriage and all that that Henry at least had some justification that is a major stamp the ambassador's gesture has been seen by some as a victory for Han and clear evidence that her recent miscarriage had been forgiven and forgotten by King Henry Anne was quite triumphant yes absolutely and to Cromwell it became very clear that that Anne was Anna drew it look well it looked a Cromwell as if Anne had recovered her ascendancy over Henry or was actually recovering it I'm Henry's championing her again [Music] why would Henry the eighth have been involved in doing something like this if he knew the two weeks later ambolyn would be falling I think it's inconceivable that at this point 18th of April Henry has resolved on getting rid of amberlynn if Henry was still committed to his wife on the 18th of April just two weeks before her arrest then the theory that somebody else engineered Ann's downfall starts to gain credibility and the finger of suspicion points towards Cromwell shortly after the service in the chapel King Henry and shop we met accompanied by Cromwell their subject was the delicate state of England's alliance with charles v an alliance that had been broken by Cromwell at some point Henry appears to turn on Cromwell we don't have a word to word account it seems that Cromwell is being accused of making his own foreign policy in cahoots with the Imperial ambassador and he's gone too far along the line of conciliation and is tantalizing because here is history he eavesdropping but we're not quite close enough but it's quite obvious from their body language the default scale rows going on here Cromwell walks away is in terrible distress physical distress he looks like a man who's on the brink of a heart attack or some other catastrophe it's possible that this was a turning point could his humiliating dressing down from the king have been the moment that Cromwell turned on Anne some historians have argued that there was a great fissure between chrome warren and that they had been close allies and now because of these matters of foreign policy and the dissolution of the monasteries that they are separate i don't think that's actually what's going on I think perhaps no one could argue that there might be some struggle for Henry's a place and Henry's affections Henry tends to rely on one pivotal person and that they're both trying to be that person but the evidence for their arguments are really very far a few between it's mostly speculation speculation maybe the fact of these the next day cromwell up scented himself from court claiming illness while he was away a series of scandalous rumors about amberlynn began to spread through the court according to some accounts the stories were started by Anne's own ladies-in-waiting one of Anne's ladies lady Worcester was being told off by her brother for her loose living she says oh don't blame me there's nothing to what the Queen gets up to Oh words to that effect and to cut a long story short she said if you think I'm bad you should see the Queen she entertains men late at night including her mark Smeaton who's a musician at the Queens Court and this was pyrotechnic intelligence the situation then explodes everything accelerates and the game changes on the 30th of April the court musician Mark Smeaton was taken in for questioning his interrogator was none other than Thomas Cromwell now fully restored to health nobody knows what happened behind closed doors but the outcome of their little chat would have fatal consequences so he takes him back to his house and and questions him we're not sure whether torture was used some people say there was torture other people say there wasn't but he remarkably confesses he says I had sex with the Queen on all three occasions that could have been fantasy it could have been if there was torture you know who knows we want I probably would confess to having sex with the Queen if I was tortured and I wouldn't want it to stop wouldn't you just a few days earlier hands position as Queen had seemed secure now Cromwell had in his hands apparently damning evidence of her adultery later that day he informed King Henry of his findings Henry is genuinely staggered by this you know he has just engineered the rapprochement with shap we he's sorted out the diplomatic situation to make his marriage to an acceptable in European eyes everything is fine and then very suddenly he has this bombshell dropped on him it's his worst fears this is the woman that he moved hell and high water to be with waited seven long years to marry put aside his wife of nearly twenty four years to be with changed the very religion of England to have and she's betrayed him oh dear people don't understand Henry do they the best and the most convincing liars believe their own lies Henry has an amazing gift for persuading himself that whatever is convenient is true Henry believes it because it's convenient and then he persuades others but isn't this politics throughout the ages [Music] the king gave orders for Han to be arrested and instructed Cromwell to launch a full investigation an atmosphere of paranoia and panic swept through the court as Cromwell drew up his list of suspects begins to happen people start to rush to distance themselves from an they're all looking over their shoulder this is the court of terror everybody is playing with fire everybody at Henry's Court is and knows they are a whisker away from execution confused and terrified the Queen now found herself a prisoner in the Tower of London she alternates between a sense that the law will save her she's innocent that will come out won't it Henry's just testing her isn't he and gradually she then realizes that Henry isn't testing her and her innocence won't save her and the law won't help her if Henry doesn't want it to and she's desperately trying to think what it is she's done I think you know she's have been accused of having sex with men about her who could they be within days no fewer than seven men were under arrest for allegedly having illegal intercourse with the Queen among them was Anne's own brother George Boleyn in the indictment which we have we don't have all the trial documents but in the indictment we have these accounts of and being accused of having traitorously procuring and inciting her own natural brother George Boleyn to violate her luring him with her tongue in the said George's mouth and I said George's tongue in hers and ink so it goes on and it it plays to this idea that women are naturally lustful and of course this is actually not just lustful but is almost of the devil sex with five people one of them your brother this is deliberately pornographic on the other hand remember Anne has broken every rule in the political religious and moral universe as she is inverted the moral and religious universe why shouldn't she have slept with every man she came across is precisely the magnitude of the charges that makes them convincing but amidst the torrent of lurid allegations hands stood accused of one particularly monstrous crime according to rumors at court she had been overheard talking with Sir Henry Norris a few days earlier Norris was not only a leading member of Henry's Privy chamber he was also one of the Kings closest companions and the content of their discussion was to prove highly inflammatory so they've been in her chamber and she's asked him why he hasn't got married yet and he says that he'd like to tarry a time and she responds and this is the crucial line you look for dead men's shoes for if alt came to the king look good you would look to have me in other words she's saying you want to marry me when my husband's dead don't you speculating about the Kings death is an extremely dangerous matter it's a short step from it saying one day Henry will die to saying and I hope it's shown and it's a short step from saying I hope it's soon to saying let's accelerate it so Norris and Anne are coming very close to treason on top of multiple charges of adultery and incest and now stood accused of an even more serious crime plotting the death of the King Henry is not going to say innocent until proved guilty the breath of suspicion is enough rumours were already leaking out all over Europe whatever the result of those Henry's lost face terribly if it can even be hinted that his wife might be unfaithful to him so Henry's going quietly mad in the 16th century a wife's adultery is thought to suggest her husband's lack of sexual dominance and this obviously doesn't play very well on Henry but it plays even worse when you realize that actually it's about being able to govern the household if you can't govern a household how can you choose to suggest you can rule around Henry now hid himself away in his palace and authorized Cromwell to organize a trial [Music] and never saw her husband again if a power struggle had broken out between Anne and Cromwell then Henry's advisor now had an exactly where he wanted her know where his Cromwell is he will say later to the Imperial ambassador I went back to my house and I dreamt it up but I don't suppose for one moment that Cromwell had dreamt up a stage by stage perfectly controlled process which would end in Anne's destruction what he could do was put people under a bit of pressure by asking questions and then sit back and see what they do and he may himself be surprised at the readiness of the court years to say incriminating things about her I don't think there was a pre-arranged highly intricate conspiracy what I think happened was a series of events which spiraled out of control took everyone by surprise Cromwell was the one who saw how to play them I don't think that works as an argument I mean if anyone could have done this I mean you have to sort of look for real evidence that someone did do this and there's much more holding on and Cromwell together than there is forcing them apart the idea that they suddenly become enemies I think is a is not based on the evidence you know he had been handed if I can change metaphors a really hot potato and he wasn't happy to be investigating adultery in the Queen's Privy chamber you know that that is such a difficult thing to do he's in a minefield and every step he could take could lead to his own disaster his own ruin so I guess in a sense he would have hoped Smeaton hadn't confessed but Smeaton did confess and after that he had to follow it up it was Cromwell he's the guilty party in this I think this is one of the most shocking and audacious plots in English history Cromwell masterminded it he got the evidence and the evidence was laid before the king and it was compelling Cromwell later tell should read that he thought up and plotted the affair of the Queen in which he had taken a great deal of trouble but I mean I'm tempted to say he would say that wouldn't he the alternative is to say no I had absolutely no idea what was going on until someone told me but if you look at the evidence he he just wasn't involved until Henry brought him in the only piece of evidence that's used to say that it was a coup is a line a letter from Eustace chap we the Imperial ambassador Cromwell has said to him and it's written in French the original that he set himself to conspire and think up the said affair but the problem is historians don't always tell you everything you need to know and what you need to know in this instance is the line before the context the crucial line before is that he himself Cromwell had been commissioned by the King to put to an end to mistress's trial so it actually means the context is very much that Cromwell himself admits the Henry has told him to do it almost 500 years later the full extent of thomas cromwell's role in Anne's downfall is still hard to pin down was he the author of a plot against Anne or was he simply following orders the final driver of everything under Henry is Henry and it is very clear indeed it's driven by the fact that Henry wants to get rid of her she's undercut very seriously by that miscarriage but if she'd carried that child to term she would have been up solutely secure it wouldn't have mattered about Jane Seymour it wouldn't have mattered about what the King felt about it it's also that she was creating serious trouble had caught her arrogance the way that she bad-mouthed to their faces leading members of the court it breaks etiquette it treads on toes as relations between an henry and cromwell all become increasingly fraught the signal must come from Henry I am fed up we want this woman out of the way we will probably never know precisely how far hands down fall was orchestrated by Henry or Cromwell but could there be a simpler explanation for the events of 1536 rooted in the relationship between sex and politics in the highly-charged world of the Tudor Court I think that Henry really believes his rumours I don't think Henry tired of her and I don't think it was a court coup by a Cromwell what I think it is is a game of courtly love gone wrong in the 16th century women had to be very chaste in order to maintain their honor but at the same time for women of the court for someone like Anne it was necessary that she be attractive and alluring and talk of love and she was surrounded by men who were paying court to her essentially he would who would who would sing her songs he would write her poetry and so there was this type wrote that they're trying to walk between appearing entirely chased but appearing entirely available at the same time Queens have a difficult task you know they tell her that she is their mistress that they love her above all other women and that their hearts ache for her presence she's in a world where she has to behave flirtatiously that's that line that you can cross so easily and what Anne does in that conversation with Norris is cross that line definitively and at the wrong moment and in the wrong terms and that's the moment that destroys her I think there's no grand conspiracy theory that they're hatching to imagine the death of the king is technically a crime and is politically a disastrous thing to do so it's not a kiss in achill destruction of an innocent woman it's a destruction of an innocent woman who appeared to conform to various patterns of guilt and if you happen to be an egotistical monster as Henry the eighth was you want to act decisively and he does act decisively he destroys the people he thinks of betrayed less than two weeks after their arrest five men including Mark Smeaton Henry Norris and Ann's brother George Berlin were tried and convicted of adultery and treason and sentenced to death with the single exception of Mark Smeaton all of them protested their innocence on the 15th of May it was Anne's turn my Lords I am willing to believe you have reasons for what you have done but they must be other than those which have been produced in court for I am innocent of all the charges you lay against me I have been a faithful wife to the king and as for my brother and those others who are justly condemned since it's so please their king I am willing to accompany them to death with this assurance [Music] but I shall lead an endless life with them of peace and joy well I shall pray to God for the king and for you my Lords before a panel of 26 peers of the realm and defended herself a Blee but it was no use the decision was a foregone conclusion her courage throughout all this all deal is just remarkable and at her trial her composure her dignity were admirable and when this dreadful sentence is passed they they said her face didn't change and she said no father Oh creator thou who art the way the life and the truth knowest whether I have deserved this death I think she was already reconciled by the end of the faction she would die an berlin's fall had been so sudden and so spectacular that today many believe she was the victim of a terrible injustice but there is one other possible explanation for the extraordinary events of 1536 why do we all assume that Anne Boleyn must have been innocent maybe we should pause and ask whether nan Berlin was wholly innocent of the charges of adultery treason that were brought against her and ponder whether perhaps they might have been something in them in the absence of any hard evidence of a conspiracy one scholar at least believes Anne could have been guilty as charged Henry I think is committed to his marriage then something happens to call his marriage into question and it happens suddenly and this is where the accusations made by the Countess of Worcester hands lady seemed to acquire a greater degree of plausibility it makes sense after all she would be in a position to know what she was talking about it's difficult to see what motive she would have for making it up because she must have realized it's a serious charge we've Smeaton the difficulty is to explain why he should have confessed now he may have been tortured the sources are divided about that torture is not something which is commonly in use in Henry Gates England but there it is he did confess and he never withdraws his confession he never denies or says that he's made it under pressure amberle in her comments hint again at a rather intimate relationship she teasing him it's unusual and even and the duke of norfolk a relative describes her as a grand great [ __ ] at one point and so it is just possible and in the end my hunch would be that Hamblin did sleep with mark Smeaton and Henry Norris whether or not an Berlin was guilty of adultery with her courtiers some believe she could have committed an even more shocking offense not in the pursuit of personal pleasure but for reasons of political expediency to have an incestuous relationship with her brother seemed to modern most modern minds really most unlikely and very troubling they weren't brought up as brother and sister at all she was away to France so they meet pretty well as strangers but we certainly know that Anne is determined enough to take extraordinary decisions you're talking about someone very very ruthless very ruthless indeed so I think it's perfectly possible to imagine that they might decide to have intercourse in order to conceive a child especially if as we know they believe that the king was incapable of fathering a child in those circumstances I think I think she's capable of it I'd ask you to think of the the cure and the illness I mean it i husband is only occasionally potent I better have sex with my own brother in order to produce a son that he can then believe is his it's you know it doesn't quite work I think as an argument no matter how desperate you are you don't have sex with your own brother all the accusations that are made against Anne give various dates and say oh so Anne and you know at Hampton Court on the 7th of December 1533 did traditionally procure an insight said man to violate her and we can disprove 3/4 of them by proving that Anne wasn't in that palace at that time well the man in question wasn't there they are made up but they're made up in order to achieve an end which is to make sure that Anne doesn't come out of this alive [Music] on the 17th of May 1536 Anberlin looked on from a window in the tower as the five men accused with her including her brother were put to death [Music] it's a very chilling picture of and that we have in these last days in the tower she prays a lot that she cries that she she says that she wishes the executioner would come sooner so that her ordeal could be ended she's lost her title she's lost her marriage she won't see her daughter again it's an extraordinary fall it's a very very dramatic fall and then they tell her the swordsman's arrived there remains one final piece of evidence at dawn on the 18th of May the day she was due to be executed and prepared her soul for death in nomine Patri it fili it's spiritus sancti in the presence of a number of witnesses and received the last sacrament corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat corpus tuam it animam Tuam in vitam eternam finally the Queen made her last solemn confession in the sight of God do you recall any sins you have not yet confessed I swear upon the eternal damnation of my soul I have been a true wife and never have I offended with my body against the king crucially she swears on peril of her soul's damnation both before and after taking the Eucharist that she's innocent this is a very serious act in this religious age if you know that you're going to meet your maker in the next day or so you're not going to take risks for me her final confession its key evidence because she's facing what she believes will be divine judgment is her final confession and she she she made a declaration she had never offended with her body against the king you might think that she's perhaps being a little bit too specific here and that she hadn't offended with her body but had she offended with her heart we don't know [Music] during the course of a short life and Berlin had risen from obscurity to become a queen she had taken the Tudor Court and the king by storm and her marriage to Henry changed the course of British history forever but on the 19th of May 1536 Ann was taken from her lodging in the Tower of London to a scaffold nearby among the onlookers was Thomas Cromwell King Henry stayed away shortly after 9 a.m. one of history's most remarkable women met her brutal end and 500 years of argument began when it comes to the mystery of ambulance fall there's just enough evidence to keep historians guessing but just enough gaps to make sure they can never finally get to the solution I think the evidence strongly suggests that Cromwell had an framed or framed himself and he's the guilty party in this its judicial murder she's a victim of a husband who decides to kill her it's not suicide in the tower it's Henry's order that she's taken out and beheaded he doesn't just stop it divorce it's got to be death for him that's wicked that's that's wicked behavior I don't think does any favors to an the cast her is a victim she was not a victim she was a woman who chose to step into the tough political game she made her calculations she played a winning hand ultimately she lost [Music]

Channel: BBC Documentary

Views: 883,355

Rating: 4.7803159 out of 5

Keywords: bbc documentary, documentary bbc, bbc, anne boleyn, anne boleyn execution, henry 8, henry viii, henry viii wives, henry viii history, king henry viii, king henry 8, anne boleyn history, bbc documentary history, bbc documentary full, full bbc documentary, anne boleyn documentary, anne boleyn death, anne boleyn six, henry viii six wives

Id: tmWTkALTja0

Length: 58min 49sec (3529 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 03 2020