Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived. That was the fate of the British king Henry VIII's six wives. Today, it is exactly 485 years ago that his second wife, Anne Boleyn, was sentenced to death for adultery, incest and high treason. Four days later, on May 19th, 1536, she was beheaded, after only having been queen for three years. Let's take a look at what happened.
From maid-of-honour to queen
Anne Boleyn was most likely born in 1501 or 1507 - there is a wild debate going on between historians as to what year it exactly was. Boleyn was the daughter of a favoured diplomat and part of the high aristocracy. In her youth, Anne Boleyn served as a maid-of-honour to first the Dutch and later the French queen. She was considered charming, clever and witty, but also very opinionated and headstrong. In 1522, Boleyn had gone back to England and entered into the English court. Here she entered into a secret betrothal with the nobelman Henry Percy, but they were forced to annul the betrothal because his father refused it. Instead, she became a maid-of-honour for King Henry VIII's wife at the time, Catherine of Aragon.
During that time, Henry VIII started to notice Boleyn, but she refused to become his mistress, and would only agree to be with him if they married. But for this to happen, the king's current marriage had to be annulled. Part of the reason Henry might have wanted an annulment is that he strongly desired sons to let the Tudor line live on - and he had no living sons with Catherine. However, the Catholic Church, which England was a part of at the time, didn't allow divorce, and even when King Henry tried to argue with the Pope based on biblical reasoning, it didn't change anything. Since the Pope refused to annul the marriage, Henry VIII broke ties with the Catholic church in Rome, affirming the king’s view that the church should not have power over England’s sovereignty. This led to the establishment of the Church of England, which was a major step in the Reformation and made England a Protestant nation.
This break with the Church led to a long and chaotic affair, where Catherine was banished from court in 1531 while still married to the king. Anne Boleyn was given her rooms and much of her practical power. Henry and Anne married in secret on November 14th 1532. Shortly after, she became pregnant and, to legalise the first wedding there was a second wedding service on January 25th 1533. On 23 May 1533, there was a special court led by the to rule on the validity of Henry's marriage to Catherine, which was declared invalid. Five days later, on 28 May 1533, Henry and Anne's marriage was declared valid by the new religious authority. All in all, the process was a very drawn-out one.
Fall from favour
A few years passed, and public opinion turned against Anne Boleyn, especially for her 'failure' to provide a male heir to the throne.
In January 1536, Henry VIII's previous wife Catherine died, which led Henry free to annul the marriage to Anne Boleyn without fear of being forced back to Catherine for religious reasons. Anne was pregnant, but on the day of Catherine's burial, she had a miscarriage. At the same time, the king had started an affair with one of Anne's maids in waiting, Jane Seymour, who became his queen only 11 days after Anne was executed.
Multiple members of court were arrested in April 1536 on charges of being a lover of Anne Boleyn, though some of those, mostly the influential ones, were later acquitted. Even Anne's brother, George Boleyn were arrested for the same reason, as well as for treason. Anne Boleyn was arrested on May 2nd 1536, and brought to the Tower of London. The men not acquitted were tried first, and while three of them plead innocent, one did plead guilty. However, historians suspect that, because he was, unlike the others involved, not nobility, it was due to him either being tortured or promised freedom, as he had initially plead innocent. All four were condemned to death. The same went for Anne's brother, when he had his separate trial.
Anne Boleyn was tried on May 15th, and unanimously found guilty by the jury - a member of which was her uncle, as well as the man she was originally secretly betrothed to! But most of the jury were picked so as to be enemies of her. The accusations against her consisted of incest, adultery - which, for a queen, counted as high treason - and high treason for plotting the death of the king with her 'lovers'. There were also accusations of her using witchcraft to seduce the king. It has later been theorised that many of the accusations were mainly to defame her character and turn the public opinion against her. Even though she had alibis for many of the occasions on which she was accused of having committed adultery, she was sentenced to death, and her marriage to the king was declared void.
Anne Boleyn was executed on the morning of May 19th, 1536, after swearing to a priest that she had never been unfaithful to the king. She walked to her execution with a raised head, and delivered a short speech accepting the outcome but continuing to state her innocence. She was buried in an unmarked grave in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula, which is a church placed inside the Tower of London.
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