Anne Boleyn Falls: Henry VIII's Queen Executed for Treason

A French swordsman's blade fell in a single stroke on the Tower Green on May 19, 1536, ending the life of Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, after a trial that most historians regard as a judicial murder. Anne had been convicted of adultery with five men including her own brother, treason, and plotting the king's death. The charges were almost certainly fabricated. Henry VIII had grown tired of his second wife, who had failed to produce a male heir and whose sharp intelligence and political maneuvering had made her powerful enemies at court. Anne's fall was astonishingly swift. On April 30, court musician Mark Smeaton was arrested and, likely under torture, confessed to sleeping with the queen. Within days, four more men were arrested: Sir Henry Norris, Sir Francis Weston, William Brereton, and Anne's brother George, Viscount Rochford. Anne herself was taken to the Tower of London on May 2. The accused men were tried on May 12, convicted, and executed on May 17. Anne's own trial on May 15 lasted a few hours before a jury of twenty-six peers, including her former suitor Henry Percy, pronounced her guilty. Henry had already moved on before the axe fell. He was seen dining publicly with Jane Seymour, his next intended wife, during Anne's imprisonment. The day after Anne's execution, Henry and Jane were formally betrothed. They married eleven days later. Thomas Cromwell, the king's chief minister who had orchestrated the prosecution, had efficiently removed a queen who opposed his policies and delivered the king's desired annulment by the most permanent means possible. Anne's three-year-old daughter Elizabeth, declared illegitimate after her mother's execution, was raised in relative obscurity. Twenty-two years later, she ascended to the throne as Elizabeth I and reigned for forty-five years, presiding over an age of English cultural and imperial expansion. Anne Boleyn's real legacy was not the charges that killed her but the daughter who became England's most celebrated monarch and the religious reformation that her marriage to Henry had set in motion.