Why Was Anne Boleyn Executed? The Charges, the Trial and What Historians Believe

Anne Boleyn was executed on 19 May 1536 after being convicted of adultery, incest with her brother George, and plotting to kill the King, charges that most historians today dispute. The deeper reason was political and personal: after three years of marriage she had given Henry VIII a daughter, Elizabeth, but no surviving son, she had miscarried a boy in January 1536, and by March the King was already courting Jane Seymour. In less than three weeks Anne went from queen to prisoner to a body in an unmarked grave. Her death came barely three years after Henry had broken with Rome to marry her.

Who was Anne Boleyn?

Anne was the daughter of Thomas Boleyn, later Earl of Wiltshire, and Elizabeth Howard, from the powerful Howard family. Her birth year is uncertain: historians argue for about 1501 or about 1507, and the debate turns partly on a single letter she wrote in French to her father in 1514.

Unusually for an English girl of her time, she was educated abroad. She joined the schoolroom of Margaret of Austria at Mechelen in the Habsburg Netherlands in 1513, and then spent nearly seven years in France as a maid of honour to Queen Claude. There she perfected her French and developed interests in music, poetry, fashion, art and religious reform. When she returned to England in early 1522, she stood out at court as polished, witty and very much her own person. Contemporaries described her as intelligent and gifted in music and scholarship, but also strong-willed and proud.

The woman who said no to a king

Henry VIII began pursuing Anne in 1526. Her older sister Mary had already been the King's mistress, and Anne refused to follow the same path. She often withdrew from court to her family home at Hever Castle. Within about a year Henry proposed marriage, and she accepted. Both assumed an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon could be obtained within months.

It took six years. Pope Clement VII would not grant the annulment, so Henry and his advisers, including Thomas Cromwell, began breaking the Church's power in England. Anne and Henry married secretly on 14 November 1532 and formally on 25 January 1533. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer declared the first marriage void and the second valid, and the Pope excommunicated Henry. Anne was crowned on 1 June 1533.

She was more than a romantic prize. Anne promoted Bibles in French and English, protected scholars working on English translations of scripture, and, according to a later account, brought reformist pamphlets to Henry's attention, though she remained in many ways a Catholic.

A daughter instead of a son

On 7 September 1533 Anne gave birth to a girl, the future Elizabeth I. The letters that had been prepared to announce a prince had an "s" hastily added to read "princess", and the tournament planned for a male heir was cancelled. Henry professed to love the baby and hoped a son would follow.

None did. On 29 January 1536, the day Catherine of Aragon was buried, Anne miscarried a child that, according to the imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys, "seemed to be a male child". Chapuys wrote that she had "miscarried of her saviour", and in his view this loss was the beginning of the end.

Three weeks from queen to scaffold

In April 1536 Henry had Anne investigated for high treason. Late that month, a Flemish musician in her service, Mark Smeaton, was arrested. He first denied being the Queen's lover and later confessed, perhaps after torture or a promise of freedom. The courtier Henry Norris was arrested on May Day; he denied everything and swore Anne was innocent. Francis Weston and William Brereton followed, and so did Anne's brother George.

Anne herself was arrested on 2 May and taken to the Tower of London. She was tried before a jury that included her former suitor Henry Percy and her own uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, and convicted on 15 May. Henry's own biography records that although the evidence was unconvincing, all the accused were found guilty, and that on 17 May Cranmer annulled the marriage, which meant that in law Anne had never been Henry's wife at all. Historians still debate whether her fall was driven mainly by accusations of conspiracy, adultery or even witchcraft.

The execution

Henry commuted Anne's sentence from burning to beheading, and instead of the common axe he brought an expert swordsman from Saint-Omer in France. The Constable of the Tower, William Kingston, reported that she seemed ready to die, and recorded her famous remark: "I heard say the executioner was very good, and I have a little neck." Before dawn, she swore on the sacrament that she had never been unfaithful to the King.

On the scaffold she did not attack Henry. A contemporary poem records that she asked the crowd to pray for the King, "in whom she had always found great kindness". Historians think she avoided criticising him to protect Elizabeth and her family. She was buried in an unmarked grave in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula inside the Tower. Bones identified as hers were found during renovations in 1876 and reburied, and her grave is now marked in the chapel floor.

Myths: six fingers and a ghost

The claim that Anne had six fingers on one hand was first made in 1585 by Nicholas Sanders, a Catholic writer hostile to her daughter Elizabeth. When the remains were examined in 1876, no abnormality was found. Ghost stories are another part of her legend: people have claimed to see her at Hever Castle and at the Tower of London, which are tales, not history.

Why she still matters

When Elizabeth became queen in 1558, Anne's reputation was rehabilitated, and Protestant writers came to honour her as a heroine of the Reformation. She has been called "the most influential and important queen consort England has ever had", because her marriage gave Henry the occasion to declare the English Church independent of Rome. The woman the King executed for failing to give him a son is remembered as the mother of one of England's greatest rulers.

Learn with Anne Boleyn: English phrases about rise and fall

Phrase	Meaning	Example
to play hard to get	to pretend not to be interested	Anne did not simply play hard to get.
a fall from grace	a sudden loss of status	Her fall from grace took only weeks.
trumped-up charges	false accusations	Many historians call them trumped-up charges.
to clear someone's name	to prove someone innocent	Later writers tried to clear her name.
to keep your head	to stay calm	She kept her head on the scaffold, in every sense but one.

Try this: Write three English sentences about Anne's last days, using "a fall from grace" and "trumped-up charges". Then explain why "keep your head" is a dark joke here.