85 Ibid

  86 Wriothesley

  87 SC

  88 Churchill

  89 SC

  90 LP

  91 Ives: “Faction”

  92 Froude, Note D in Thomas (LP 911)

  93 Ives: “Fall Reconsidered”

  94 Starkey: Six Wives

  95 LP

  96 Burnet

  CHAPTER 11: FIGHTING WITHOUT A WEAPON

  1 Wriothesley

  2 Deans

  3 Carles

  4 Wriothesley

  5 Carles

  6 Younghusband

  7 Carles

  8 There is a fifteenth century ceremonial axe in the Tower of London, but it is not known if this was the axe carried at Anne Boleyn’s trial.

  9 Carles

  10 Aless

  11 SC

  12 Wriothesley; Carles

  13 Wriothesley

  14 Spelman

  15 Carles

  16 Childs; Fox

  17 LP

  18 This word is often mistranslated as “medals” (medailles), but is more likely to be “metals” (metals).

  19 LP

  20 Ibid

  21 Wriothesley; Ridley: Henry VIII

  22 LP

  23 Ibid

  24 Wriothesley

  25 Burnet

  26 LP

  27 Cavendish: Metrical Visions

  28 Dunn

  29 Harleian manuscripts

  30 LP

  31 Milherve; Spelman

  32 Fox

  33 Rivals in Power

  34 Hastings

  35 Wriothesley

  36 Baga de Secretis

  37 State Trials

  38 Loades: Henry VIII and His Queens

  39 George Wyatt

  40 Carles

  41 Additional Manuscripts

  42 Carles; LP

  43 LP

  44 Levine

  45 Ibid

  46 Kelly

  47 Cited by Erickson: First Elizabeth

  48 Harleian manuscripts

  49 Warnicke

  50 Wriothesley; Carles; Constantine; Baga de Secretis

  51 Doran states that burning was the penalty for incest, but incest did not become a crime in England until 1583.

  52 SC; LP; Ives

  53 LP

  54 Ibid

  55 Carles

  56 LP

  57 Spelman

  58 Anthony

  59 Harleian manuscripts

  60 LP

  61 SC

  62 LP

  63 Harleian manuscripts

  64 Impey and Parnell; Fraser

  65 LP

  66 Wriothesley

  67 Carles incorrectly states that Rochford was tried before Anne.

  68 Wriothesley

  69 SC; Carles; Thomas Fuller; Excerpta Historica (LP 1107); George Wyatt; Foxe

  70 SC

  71 LP

  72 Ibid

  73 Carles

  74 Excerpta Historica (LP 1107)

  75 Loades: Henry VIII and His Queens

  76 LP

  77 Denny: Anne Boleyn

  78 Norton

  79 Dunn

  80 Kittredge

  81 Kelly

  82 Cited by Denny: Katherine Howard

  83 Fraser

  84 SC

  85 Warnicke

  86 Erickson: Bloody Mary

  87 LP

  88 Carles

  89 The site of the public gallows at Tyburn is by Marble Arch in London.

  90 Wriothesley

  91 Cited by Hamer

  92 LP; Carles

  93 LP

  94 Wriothesley

  95 LP

  96 Ibid

  97 VC

  98 LP

  99 Ibid

  CHAPTER 12: JUST, TRUE, AND LAWFUL IMPEDIMENTS

  1 Chapman: Anne Boleyn

  2 Loades: Henry VIII and His Queens

  3 LP

  4 LP. The original is Cotton Lib. Otho C.10.

  5 Rymer; Wilkins; Ridley: Henry VIII

  6 Statutes of the Realm

  7 Ibid

  8 Wriothesley (editorial notes)

  9 Warnicke

  10 Loades: Henry VIII and His Queens

  11 Wriothesley

  12 LP. Ellis, the editor of Original Letters, misread Kingston’s text, and mistook “anonre” for Antwerp, when in fact it should read “a nunnery.” In so doing, he perpetrated the myth that Anne believed she was to be sent abroad to a nunnery in Antwerp.

  13 Kelly

  14 LP

  15 Ibid

  16 Ibid

  17 Ibid

  18 Froude, Note D in Thomas (LP 911)

  19 LP

  20 Froude, Note D in Thomas (LP 911)

  21 Cavendish: Metrical Visions

  22 Friedmann

  23 Ridley: Henry VIII

  24 LP

  25 Her will is in the Cheshire Record Office: DCH/E 294.

  26 LP

  27 Chronicle of Calais

  28 Abbott. In the eighteenth century Horace Walpole recorded—with scant regard for accuracy—that “the axe that beheaded Anne Boleyn” was on display at the Tower.

  29 Chronicle of Calais

  30 LP

  31 Fraser

  32 SC

  33 National Archives C.193/3, f.80; Ives

  34 LP

  35 For examples of journey times in this period, see Armstrong.

  36 LP

  37 Carles

  38 Excerpta Historica (LP 1107)

  39 Wriothesley; Lisle Letters; SC; Froude, Note D in Thomas (LP 911); Starkey: Six Wives

  40 LP

  41 manuscript in Trinity College, Dublin, discovered in 1959; Ives; Muir

  42 Lisle Letters

  43 Rivals in Power; Jankofsky; Warnicke

  44 Wriothesley

  45 According to the account in the reliable contemporary chronicle written by Charles Wriothesley, Rochford told the assembled people, “Masters all, I am come hither not to preach and make a sermon, but to die as the law hath found me, and to the law I submit me, desiring you all, and specially you, my masters of the court, that you will trust on God specially, and not on the vanities of the world; for if I had so done, I think I had been alive as ye be now. Also I desire you to help to the setting forth of the true word of God, and whereas I am slandered by it, I have been diligent to read it and set it forth truly; but if I had been as diligent to observe it, and done and lived thereafter, as I was to read it and set it forth, I had not come hereto, wherefore I beseech you all to be workers and live thereafter, and not to read it and live not thereafter. As for mine offenses, it can not prevail [benefit] you to hear them that I die here for, but I beseech God that I may be an example to you all, and that all you may beware [the text says “be wayre,” which could also mean “be aware”] by me, and heartily I require you all to pray for me and to forgive me if I have offended you; and I forgive you all, and God save the King!”

  In the contemporary Imperialist eyewitness account of the executions in the Vienna Archives (printed in Thomas), there is a very similar version of this speech, which was described by the writer as “a very Catholic address to the people,” in which Rochford said “he had not come hither to preach but to serve as a mirror and example, acknowledging the crimes he had committed against God and against the King his sovereign; there was no occasion for him, he said, to repeat the cause for which he was condemned; they would have little pleasure in hearing him tell it. He prayed God, and he prayed the King, to pardon his offenses; and all others whom he might have injured, he also prayed them to forgive him as heartily as he forgave everyone. He bade his hearers avoid the vanities of the world and the flatteries of the court, which had brought him to the shameful end that had overtaken him. Had he obeyed the lessons of that Gospel which he had so often read, he said he should not have fallen so far; it was worth more to be a good doer than a good reader. Finally, he forgave those who had adjudged him to die, and he desired them [the people] to pray
for his soul.”

  The Portuguese account, written on June 10, has Rochford saying: “From my mishap, ye may learn not to set your thoughts upon the vanities of this world, and least of all upon the flatteries of the court and the favors and treacheries of Fortune, which only raiseth men aloft that, with so much the greater force, she may dash them again upon the ground.” Excerpta Historica (LP 1107)

  In another version of his speech, Rochford declared: “I was a great reader and a mighty debater of the Word of God, and one of those who most favored the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Wherefore, lest the Word of God should be brought into reproach on my account, I now tell you all, sirs, that if I had in very deed kept His holy word, even as I read and reasoned about it with all the strength of my wit, certain am I that I should not be in the piteous condition wherein I now stand. Truly and diligently did I read the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but I turned not to profit that which I did read; the which, had I done, of a surety I had not fallen into so great errors. Wherefore I do beseech you all, for the love of our Lord God, that ye do at all seasons hold by the truth, and speak it and embrace it; for beyond all peradventure, better profiteth he who readeth not and yet doeth well, than he who readeth much and yet liveth in sin.” (LP)

  According to the author of the “Spanish Chronicle,” Rochford said, “I beg you pray to God for me, for by the trial I have to pass through I am blameless, and never even knew that my sister was bad. Guiltless as I am, I pray God to have mercy on my soul.” This version was almost certainly fabricated.

  George Constantine, far more concise, wrote that Rochford, after exhorting his companions to “die courageously” and the crowd to “live according to the Gospel, not in preaching, but in practice,” said “words to the effect that he had rather had a good liver according to the Gospel than ten babblers.” He added, “I desire you that no man will be discouraged from the Gospel by my fall. For if I had lived according to the Gospel, as I loved it and spake of it, I had never come to this. As for mine offenses, I cannot prevail you to hear them that I die here for, but I beseech God that I may be an example to you all.”

  Chapuys, who, perhaps deliberately, misinterpreted Rochford’s statements about religion, reported that he “disclaimed all that he was charged with, confessing, however, that he had deserved death for having been so much contaminated, and having contaminated others, with these new sects, and he prayed everyone to abandon such heresies.” (LP) Chapuys later informed Dr. Ortiz that Rochford (whom Ortiz, in his report of June 11, confused with Norris, “the principal gentleman of the King’s Chamber”) “said a great deal about the justice of his death, and that a favored servant ought not to flatter his prince and consent to his desires, as he had done.” (LP) It cannot have been Norris who uttered these words because according to the eyewitness accounts, he did not have “a great deal” to say on the scaffold.

  46 Abbott; Chronicle of King Henry VIII. While rejecting the speeches that the author of the “Spanish Chronicle” put into the mouths of the condemned, which he may not have been able to hear, we might yet accept his claim that three strokes were needed to behead Rochford, which any bystander could plainly have seen.

  47 Froude, Note D in Thomas (LP 911)

  48 Ibid

  49 Lofts

  50 Warnicke

  51 Carles

  52 Constantine

  53 SC

  54 Brysson Morrison

  55 Froude, Note D in Thomas (LP 911)

  56 LP

  57 Abbott

  58 Wriothesley

  59 Bayley

  60 Wriothesley; Carles

  61 Abbott. The Norris family had lived there until 1517, when Sir John Norris, Henry’s father, had to surrender the estate in return for a pardon for the murder of one John Enhold. Ockwells was then granted to John Norris’s uncle, Sir Thomas Fettiplace, and it was the Fettiplaces who were supposed to have claimed Sir Henry Norris’s head in 1536. A large part of the manor house was burned down in 1845.

  62 Abbott

  63 LP

  64 Ibid

  65 Loades: Henry VIII and His Queens

  66 Carles

  67 Ibid

  68 Milherve

  69 Wilkins

  70 Wilkins; Wriothesley

  71 Friedmann

  72 LP; Wriothesley

  73 Ives

  74 Wriothesley

  75 Kelly

  76 LP

  77 Ives: “Fall Reconsidered”

  78 LP; Rymer

  CHAPTER 13: FOR NOW I DIE

  1 Lisle Letters; the “Spanish Chronicle” states that they brought Anne out to die “the next morning” after the scaffold had been built.

  2 LP

  3 Excerpta Historica (LP 1107)

  4 Ives; Parnell

  5 Parnell

  6 Ibid

  7 Ives; Parnell

  8 Ives

  9 LP

  10 Carles

  11 LP; SC

  12 LP

  13 Ibid

  14 Ibid

  15 Ibid

  16 As do George Wyatt and Camden

  17 Ives

  18 LP

  19 Carles

  20 LP

  21 Carles

  22 Ibid

  23 Friedmann; Warnicke

  24 LP

  25 SC

  26 Lindsey

  27 LP

  28 Ibid

  29 SC

  30 See, for example, Strickland

  31 Ridley: Henry VIII

  32 LP

  33 Abbott

  34 Wriothesley; Chronicle of King Henry VIII

  35 Carles

  36 Excerpta Historica (LP 1107)

  37 Froude, Note D in Thomas (LP911)

  38 LP; Norris

  39 Carles

  40 LP

  41 Ibid

  42 Excerpta Historica (LP911); Histoire de la Royne Anne de Boullant; LP; Carles

  43 Sergeant; Warnicke

  44 Milherve; Excerpta Historica (LP 1107)

  45 Miscellaneous Antiquities; Strickland

  46 Some sources call her Mary, but there is no record of a Mary Wyatt, nor does a Mary Wyatt appear in the extensive pedigree drawn up by David Loades in his edition of George Wyatt’s papers.

  47 Hare; Westminster Abbey guidebooks

  48 Excerpta Historica (LP 1107)

  49 Froude, Note D in Thomas (LP 911); Carles

  50 Excerpta Historica (LP 1107)

  51 Froude, Note D in Thomas (LP 911); Histoire de la Royne Anne de Boullant; LP

  52 Abbott; Younghusband

  53 Chapman: Anne Boleyn

  54 Ives; Impey and Parnell

  55 Carles

  56 Lisle Letters

  57 LP

  58 Foxe

  59 LP; Wriothesley

  60 Wriothesley

  61 Murphy

  62 Chapman: Two Tudor Portraits

  63 Cited by Murphy

  64 Wriothesley

  65 Harleian manuscripts