Why Henry Had Anne Boleyn Executed | The Lovers Who Changed History (Part 2 of 2) | Real Royalty

an had held out the promise that she would give Henry the Sun and air that he needed to secure the Tudor dynasty [Music] [Applause] [Music] but and failed to fulfill that promise she gave birth to a girl Elizabeth it was a massive disappointment [Music] Catherine of Aragon a loyal wife and queen for over 20 years had already been unceremoniously discarded for being unable to deliver a son Henry had seen this failure as a stain on his image an image was everything in the world of the Tudors Henry needed to be seen as a king who could continue his dynasty this is a cartoon that was prepared by Hans Holbein a sketch and it is such an insight into how Henry wanted to be seen because first art he's actually told her that he was in real life we've compared his armor with this picture and we found that actually he's been stretched but the key message of this picture is told by the shapes of Henry's body so it forms two triangles we've got the broad shoulders that form a triangle tapering to the waist and the splayed feet the taper also up to focus the gaze on his bulging codpiece which his hands framed and which the several bows above because this picture is all about masculinity and virility and fertility and potency it's no wonder that we think of Henry as this man of lusts when in actual fact he had trouble hiring an heir because this picture tells us what to think that's why there are so many copies of this picture because if you were a courtier who had any nouse at all you'd get yourself a copy of this picture to show that you were on message Henry and Anne's marriage came under intense pressure from the very beginning England's future depended on their ability to reproduce a song composed for Anne's coronation made the new Queen's duties explicit it was called the white fukken the Falken being an erotic badge and a symbol of grace purity and fertility this white falcon rare and precious this bird shyness so bright of all that are no bird compared may with this falcon white of body small of power regal she is and sharp of sight in chastity excel as she most like an angel bright that she may bring fruit according for such a falcon white herself repose upon the rose now may this falcon white [Music] the symbolism is clear as king and queen Henry and Anne were expected to produce a male heir under such pressure Anne's increasing desperation began to show less than a year after Elizabeth's birth rumours circulated that the Queen was once again of a goodly belly but mysteriously there's no record of either a miscarriage or indeed a birth well it suggests to me that maybe it was a case of pseudocyesis or phantom pregnancy which happened particularly in the sixteenth century before the age of scans or pregnancy tests when women who desperately wanted to be pregnant would have all the symptoms of pregnancy there was no baby which expresses just how much and was desperate to give Henry what he wanted Henry's obsession wasn't the only burden on their marriage there were still many Roman Catholics who refused to accept Anne as their queen this conflict would lead to bloodshed [Music] [Music] Henry the Eighth had paid a heavy price to marry amberle in in removing the pope's authority over England he had made Catholic enemies at home and abroad to protect his own position the King needed the loyalty of his subjects and he was prepared to create new laws and use force to get it in 1534 Henry's government passed the act of Supremacy which said that Henry was and always had been supreme head of the Church of England they just hadn't noticed it recently and following on the heels of that was the Act of Succession this said that Anne was his lawful Queen and any children they had would be the true heirs to the throne and all English subjects were required to swear that this was the case and some people found this very hard to swallow those that refused to swear the oath were treated as traitors this is Charterhouse in central London in the 16th century it was a flourishing monastery and at its head was Prior John Houghton he would pay the ultimate price for defying Henry Houghton and many of his monks refused to swear that oath of succession and so in April 1535 10 of them were taken to Newgate Prison and within fewer than 3 weeks they were tried convicted and executed for treason and we have an astonishing account of their execution a foreign report on the gruesome event was graphic what it said was this they were dragged to the place of execution in their habits to the great grief of the people they were hanged cut down before they were dead opened and their bow and hearts burned the heads were then cut off and their bodies quartered and another report adds the shocking detail that the executioner caused them to be ripped up in each other's presence their arms torn off their hearts cut out and rubbed upon their mouths and faces and the barbarity of this act was blamed directly on the King of England himself [Music] far from easing the pressure on Henry and Anne's marriage the death of these dissenters only amplified it they needed a son more than ever to justify their actions but even though their relationship was under great strain they certainly weren't shown I've come to a castle in Gloucestershire it's a place that reminds us that for more than two years they were happily married and still in love [Music] the royal couple came here for 10 days in the summer of 1535 just a few months after the bloodshed at Charterhouse today it's an upmarket hotel hello welcome to the wheels thank you my name is Lipscomb I've got the keys to a unique hotel room now it's pretty unusual to stay in any room that a king and queen have slept in but one that Henry and Anne have stayed in is a rare and thrilling experience [Music] of course it's hard enough to know what goes on behind closed doors in modern relationships let alone at a distance of almost 500 years but what we do know is what other people said about Hillary and Ann and what they said is that Henry and Anne were married together in fact Henry and Anne were described as being married together more than Henry and his other wives including throughout the summer and autumn of 1535 when they were staying here but the other thing we know about their relationship is that it was a relationship of sunshine and storms they quarreled and they made up they had fights and then they had ardent reunions Henry and Anne were now two and a half years into their marriage and as 1535 drew to a close all seemed well in their way [Music] 15:36 should have been a great year for Henry and Anne the king was now supreme head of the Church of England and any son that they had would be the legitimate heir to the throne and things were looking optimistic on that front because Anne was pregnant again [Music] the couple's good fortune continued with the first major event of that year on the 7th of January 1536 Catherine of Aragon Henry's first wife had died after a short illness in the eyes of Roman Catholic Europe Katherine was still the legitimate Queen of England her nephew was the spanish king charles v a serious threat to Henry's reign on the day his ex-wife died henry was busy partying at court no one could now dispute his marriage to an if there's ever a true victim in this story it's Catherine of Aragon she gave more than 20 years of her life to this man who would ultimately discard and humiliate her her only crime was her failure to give Henry a healthy son for that she was exiled from court and her daughter Mary declared a bastard as a final humiliation catherine was denied a state funeral at some pools or Westminster Abbey instead she was buried here at Peterborough Cathedral [Music] I find it quite moving and sad to be here by Catherine's grave Catholics viewed Catherine as a martyr and her story is so tragic the people still want to mark her life look at all this people have brought flowers and posies and the pomegranate her symbol to remember her by so Catherine remains an inspiration Henry and Anne treated her with utter contempt so self-absorbed were they ultimately she would be just another victim of their destructive love affair [Music] Henry had weathered a political and religious storm over his divorce from Catherine now Ann was expecting a child that would surely be a son Henry appeared to have comes through the other side with pride and honor intact but I believe it was Henry's overwhelming desire to maintain honor that would ultimately destroy the marriage for which he'd fought so hard [Music] just 17 days after Katherine's death Henry and Anne's relationship suffered a major blow like everyone else in the 16th century Henry the eighth was obsessed with honor and honor was associated with masculinity with upholding patriarchy with controlling one's household and maintaining one's good name masculinity was an essential part of kingship it was vital that Henry excelled over all he was a champion on the tillyard an expert Joslyn but is used in athleticism were fading and his love for dangerous sports would now prove life-threatening Henry fell from his horse whilst Justin he suffered a major blow to the head the king was reported to be unconscious for over two hours such a severe head injury could be partly responsible for the marked change in Henry's personality he became an increasingly brutal and cruel King we understand that the young Henry was very different from Henry in the later years of his life and there were a couple of ideas about why that could be and how his brain might have been involved if he underwent damage to the frontal lobe of the brain as this part here just behind the forehead and if he hit the ground very hard then the front part of the brain could bat against the skull and cause damage to this area and the reason why that's important is that the frontal lobe here the biggest labor of our brain is the area responsible through our personalities and our behavior it processes our experiences and makes us the people that we are and we know that people who have damage to the frontal lobe it may just exacerbate character traits that they already have so if they're slightly grumpy they may after their injury be very grumpy often people say it's like a completely different person and so their characteristics change completely so it's possible that that's what happened to Henry we also know that the impact of his fall opened up an old Olsen Henry's left leg which would never heal we know that actually Henry's physicians did try to drain his ulcers and they used hot irons almost like a hot poker that they pushed into his let into his also with no anaesthetic and that can't have done very much for his temper and worse was to come Henry's justing accident would be blamed for the next disaster to strike at the heart of Henry and Anne's marriage [Music] less than a week after henry's near-fatal fall and miscarried she blamed her miscarriage on her shock at hearing the news of the Kings for the fetus was three and a half months old old enough for them to be able to tell that it would have been a boy [Music] [Applause] although they loved each other the success of Henry and Anne's marriage had always depended on having a son the Spanish ambassador Eustace chap we wrote that Anne had miscarried of her Savior [Music] he believed that the queen had sealed her fate well we know that Henry was distraught reports said that he showed great distress and great disappointment and sorrow at the loss of this child he's reported to have said I see that God will not give me now children Henry had seen his failure to sire a son with his previous wife Catherine as a sign that God disapproved of his first marriage was the miscarriage assigned the and you have God's backing either [Music] following ambulance miscarriage rumors circulated in court that Henry the Eighth had lost interest in his wife Ann was never a popular queen and without a son she was exposed to those at court who would rejoice at her downfall and they would have been delighted to hear gossip that Henry was seeing another woman our evidence comes from the Spanish ambassador Eustace Chaffee a wily character and a staunch Roman Catholic who never disguised his hatred for an the woman whom he called the concubine nobly no rights that is hurt in France that Anna bulan had in some way or other incurred the royal displeasure and that she is in disgrace with the king who is pain is caught with another lady and that the people are uttering words of much indignation against them the other lady that Shappy refers to is Jane Seymour Jane was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen just as Anne had once been to Katherine the Spanish ambassador wrote that Henry had sent a letter to Jane accompanied by a purse full of sovereigns it was possibly a summons to his bedroom [Music] Jane didn't open the letter and instead sent back the purse and the letter saying that she was the daughter of good and honorable parents and that if the King wanted to make her a present of money perhaps he'd do so at the time that God decided to give her advantageous marriage it does look a little like Jane is playing hard-to-get perhaps because she hoped that the advantageous marriage would be with Henry himself but I don't believe Henry was planning to marry Jane it was normal practice for Kings at this time to have mistresses and there's absolutely no evidence that Henry was thinking of abandoning an are indeed that he'd even fallen out of love with her in fact Henry was still increasing pressure on the Spanish king charles v to recognize Ann as his queen but then fate intervened delivering a blow so powerful that it would tear Henry and Anne's relationship apart scandalous rumors began to spread through the court that the Queen had been having sexual relations with other men some close to the king why these allegations surfaced and who was behind them is still fiercely debated was she guilty of the charges against her where the dark forces behind-the-scenes plotting her downfall was an the victim of court gossip did careless talk costs lives we know that Han could be feisty and sometimes even flirtatious but it's extremely doubtful that Ann would commit adultery frustratingly we don't have the evidence to give us a clear picture of what was going on but perhaps we can understand Anne's downfall through a more recent royal scandal former courtier Patrick Jefferson was Princess Diana's private secretary I think there are some parallels with Diana there where some of her critics some of them quite close to to the Royal establishment have tried to paint her as a loose cannon whereas the truth was she was a extremely dutiful Princess Diana was painted as this woman who had many lovers and was of course as well and it's extraordinary to me that five hundred years later the way you can really black and a woman's name is to suggest that she's some sort of sexual predator I think they're both very sassy women and you can't sass around in court and not expect to Dubrow the consequence is sooner or later when your usefulness has been outlived then you better watch out in other words they would find anything they could to condemn her in the eyes of the world it seems to me at the heart of this question about Henry and Hannah is the question of scandal and of course you have been in a court that had a certain amount of scandal I mean what can we learn from that Skylar is one way in which courtiers or those who make their living from the court are able to sort out their own pecking order and when scandal doesn't exist then there will always be somebody around to create it and I think the extraordinary thing about Henry is my conviction is that he does genuinely believe that she's committed adultery because there would be nobody who wanted to keep their head on their shoulders who was gonna tell him he got it wrong and this is why today I think it is still the case that to give advice to a royal person let alone tell a royal person they're getting it wrong that's quite an art and I don't know how many people have got that art or want to exercise it there is nobody I think today who will tell senior members they're all family that they're getting it wrong [Music] according to one account when rumors of Ann's infidelity reached Henry he was shocked and his color changed he immediately ordered an investigation into the allegations arguably the most damaging and hurtful of these involved adultery and treason with one of the Kings oldest friends Henry Norris Norris was a gentlemen of Henry the eighth's privy chamber and a groom of the stool a role that traditionally entailed wiping the Royal bottom in reality it meant that Norris was Henry's closest companion someone he truly trusted but in Henry's court walls had ears no one was immune from the deadly consequences of rumour and gossip in an indiscreet conversation the Queen was said to have asked Norris why he hadn't got married yet and when he replied that he would tarry a time and said you look for dead men's shoes the report came to the king but good you would look to have me in other words you want to marry me when my husband's dead don't you Norris his response that he'd rather his head were off suggests he knew that they'd committed a serious faux pas they had imagined the King's death which under the treasons Act was illegal Henry launched an investigation into Norris's conduct along with many others who were suspected of having had sexual intercourse with the Queen among them her own brother George Ann's final downfall was Swift and sudden it began with what should have been a day of celebration for the king and queen at Greenwich palace it was May Day they were at a tournament they were having a very nice time until some unwelcome news arrived for Henry it turned out that a musician who'd been interrogated possibly under torture had confessed to sexual intercourse with an on three occasions it's my opinion that Henry believed the accusations and they have the power to destroy his masculine honor something he valued more than his love for Anne Henry couldn't be seen as a king who had no control of his wife he abruptly left Greenwich taking Norris with him and whatever was said on that journey back to London was enough to convince Henry that his closest friend was guilty too Norris would end up on the scaffold Henry would never see Anne again she would never have a chance to meet her husband to talk it through to give her side of the story to protest her innocence that same night alone at Greenwich palace and was given all the usual attention of a queen she was still completely unaware that her life was unraveling [Music] early in the morning on the second of May and was taken from Greenwich to the tower by barge she had no idea why she could never have imagined that she was experiencing her final moments of freedom she's traveled in through this Watergate instant Thomas's tower now known as traitors gate in those days the Thames came up all the way to these stairs and of course we have this sense with hindsight that that was the beginning of the end that she must have known it was all up but I wouldn't have known that no one considered for an instant that a queen of England might lose her head sometime after arriving at the Royal Apartments of the tower Anne was accused of a long list of sexual crimes and treasonous acts we don't know how the news was broken to her or how she reacted Henry meanwhile simply disappeared from public life no doubt wanting to escape the hurt and embarrassment but his wife's trial would bring [Music] I'm walking where the Royal Apartments used to be where kings and queens stayed the night before their coronation because to hold the tower was to hold London and was to indicate that you really held England and of course it was where and stayed on the night before her coronation and again on the night before her execution it was also the site of the Great Hall which held 2,000 people and where as trial was held [Music] ann's trial took place in front of 2,000 people and she was judged by a jury of peers led by her own uncle the Duke of Norfolk surviving documents from the trial reveal some of the more salacious accusations leveled at an [Music] this document is an extraordinary one because it is a record of that trial this is the indictment this is the charges laid out against an it says for example that an has diabolically seduced these men because of her frail and carnal appetites because of her lust it doesn't stop here it goes on and on over here it describes Anne's relationships with these various men so it mentions here for example Henry Norris and says that he has violated and carnally known the Queen and then it mentions George Boleyn and brother and this bits particularly lurid it says that she has alert the said George into putting his tongue in her mouth and she has put her tongue in his mouth this is a picture of an as sexual predator and that's exactly how Henry wanted her to appear no man could possibly keep control of a wife with such a depraved sexual appetite not even the King Henry was conspicuous by his absence from the trial it was a tactic but completely rebounded on him Henry stayed away because it was really humiliating for him to have his wife accused of adultery it suggested at this time his lack of sexual dominance his lack of sexual prowess and indeed that's precisely what came out of the trial George Boole in North Montford Anne's brother was given a piece of paper that he was told not to read out loud but he did and on it was the charge that he and Ann had laughed at the Kings manner of dressing had laughed at his terrible poetry and above all that Ann had said that the king was not skilful and copulating with a woman and had neither vigor nor potency remember that's in front of that crowd of 2000 Henry was right to stay away and was convicted on all counts she now had just three days to live [Music] the outcome of ambulant trial was never in doubt by a jury loyal to the king she was unanimously found guilty of adultery incest and high treason sentenced to death and with nothing to lose it was now Anne's chance to tell her side of the story I am entirely innocent of all these accusations so I cannot ask pardon of God for them I have been always a faithful and loyal wife to the king I've not perhaps at all times shown him that humility and reverence that he's goodness to me in the honor to which he raised me to deserve in some ways Anne's trial speech is entirely straightforward she says that she is innocent that she has always been a loyal wife to the king but then there's that curious line about not having shown him the humility and reverence that his goodness to her and the position to which he raised her justified in other words she's admitting that actually she's been a bit feisty that perhaps she's spoken back she's been out of line from time to time she hasn't always been the wife that Henry wanted her to be I confess I have heard fancies and suspicions of him which I had not strength nor discretion to resist but God knows and as my witness I have never failed otherwise towards him and I shall never confess any otherwise and claimed both before and after taking the communion that she was innocent on peril of her soul's damnation and I think she was I was I don't think there's any evidence to sustain the idea that Henry wanted to get rid of her in fact I think what happened to Ann was a terrible mishap that actually and managed to look guilty when she wasn't her sophisticated conversational wit her excellence of the courtly game was where she came unstuck exactly what had beguiled Henry in the first place made her look guilty as sin so like a Shakespearean tragedy the King feeling betrayed and hurt sentenced the queen that he loved to death for crimes she didn't commit I think that the concubines little bastard Elizabeth would be excluded from the succession and that the king will get himself requested by Parliament to marry [Music] the joy shown by the people every day not only at the ruin of the concubine but at the hope of Princess Mary's restoration is inconceivable while Anne awaited her execution in her chambers at the tower she may well have heard the commotion outside as the five men she was accused of sleeping with including her brother will the head--it I can't begin to imagine how she must have felt [Music] [Music] we can't be certain but it is believed that this is the prayer book that Anne had with her in the tower I spent a lot of time thinking about Anne's weeks in the tower how she racked her brains how she tried to figure out what had got her into that mess the hysteria the trauma the terrible time she must have had and the idea that she had this with her at the time and that I'm now holding it in my hands is something I can't quite express this is the wonder of history this tangible sense of reaching out to touch the past [Applause] [Music] what's even more extraordinary about it is that Anne has written in it now she probably wrote this some time before her execution but what she wrote has a haunting resonance it says remember me when you do pray that hope does lead from day to day remember me when you do pray that hope doth lead from day to day and she signed it ambolyn [Music] and left her chambers at the tower a little before 8 o'clock in the morning awaiting her at the end of this short journey was an expert French swordsman summoned by Henry as an act of mercy for a dignified execution befitting a queen the scaffold had been erected inside the walls of the tower away from the public an eyewitness reported Anne's final words good Christian people I'm come hither to die for according to the law and by the law I'm judged to die therefore I shall speak nothing against it I'm come hither to accuse no man to speak anything of that we're off I'm accused and condemned to die but I pray god save the king and send him long to reign over you all for gentler nor and more merciful Prince was there never and to me he was ever a good a gentle Sovereign Lord and if any person will meddle of my cause I require them to judge the best and thus I take my leave of this world and of you all and I heartily desire you all to pray for me Jesus Oh Lord God have mercy on boys is to receive my soul [Music] the Queen of England was beheaded with a single clean strike of the French blade this is the Chapel Royal of st. Peter Winkler a Paris Church within the walls of the Tower of London after Anne was executed she was brought here to be buried release most of her was if they did what they did with other traitors they would have taken her head boiled it tarred it and put it on a spike on London Bridge before throwing it into the swirling Thames but the rest of her is here somewhere beneath my feet and this is where she should be remembered [Music] [Music] [Music] you

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Id: UPDhxRd1azE

Length: 42min 11sec (2531 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 20 2020