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3:27 pm
May 16, 2014
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So here’s the thing: I have pretty much always believed that Anne really was treated like a prisoner in the days between her arrest and her execution. But things seem to be different: she had a fair amount of ladies serving her, stayed in the apartments where she also slept before her coronation – which makes me think that there was quite a lot of luxury there – and in today’s article I read that she dined with people, which also makes me think that she was still treated like a queen. Do we have any information on this?
Anne Boleyn: just a strong woman with incredible dignity who lived in an era that didn't approve of that.
6:08 pm
January 3, 2012
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She was treated with respect, I don’t know if she had been stripped of her title Marquess of Pembroke, but she was stripped of her Queen status. She was alledgely housed at first in the rooms that she lay in the night before her coronation, once she was convicted (unjustly) of treason etc she was moved to lodgings that over looked the Tower green. Again I’m not sure but I believe she complained that noise of the hammering as the carpenters built the scaffold had been keeping her awake.
In fact her supposed lovers save for poor Mark Smeaton were given all the respect that gentleman (gentry) deserved. There is no evidence to suggest that Mark Smeaton was tortured, but I think we can assume that the poor fellow was. He would have been shown the “instruments” of torture, which was generally the first line of being put to the question (a euphemisum for torture), after which if person accused refused to say anything they were tortured in various ways first with the gentler tortures I assume that was thumb screws or something like that and then moving up the ladder so to speak with the more painful tortures, such as snapping off teeth or pulling out toe and finger nails and then of course they would meet the Duke of Exeter’s daughter, a nice girl she was, she always made a person feel 10 foot tall when she had done with them. More commonly known as the RACK.
Semper Fidelis, quod sum quod
6:01 pm
February 24, 2010
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I don’t think Anne was moved from the Queen’s Royal Apartments. She was taken from there to her execution. Anne did have ladies serving her. In the beginning, however, they were women who were not her favorites, nor were they friendly to her. They were there to spy on her. Later, after her trial, she may have had others who were closer to her there, but we don’t know if that happened or who they were. She was treated well, I suppose, but she was a prisoner. I doubt she was enjoying those dinners.
In Claire’s book, The Fall of Anne Boleyn, she says that after she was found guilty, “the Queen was then stripped of her crown and her titles, all except that of “Queen.”
I think Mark was an easy “mark.” I think Cromwell was able to intimidate him with the threat of torture. I don’t think torture was necessary in Mark’s case. He was a commoner and was probably scared stiff with the threat of torture and death by hanging and disembowelment. I would think that would make any young man say whatever they wanted him to say. He may have been promised death by beheading if he stuck with the story that he had a sexual relationship with Anne. Cromwell needed one of the men to say he was involved with her. Who better than a commoner to ruin her reputation completely? He walked to his execution unaided. If he was racked, he would have been unable to do that. Nobody commented at the execution that he looked as if he had been tortured. With him, the torture was psychological, I think.
I’ve never heard the rack called the Duke of Exeter’s Daughter, Boleyn. Why is it called that?
8:54 pm
January 3, 2012
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The Rack got it’s nick name the Duke of Exeter’s daughter from the person who brought it to the tower. I.e the Duke of Exeter.
There were some strange euphemisums for torture or execution ideas. The Halifax Gibbet for instance was a rudimentary form of guilotine from the 16th century.
James Douglas Earl of Morton, one of Jimbo’s 6th guardians liked the idea of the guilotine, which was so much better than an axe or sword, that he copied the idea, and built one in Scotland. It became known as the Scottish Maiden. 150 people lost their head to the Maiden including James Douglas himself in 1581 after that it went out of use.
Another torture instrument was the Scavenger’s Daughter (or Skevington’s Daughter) was invented in the reign of Henry VIII by Sir Leonard Skeffington, Lieutenant of the Tower of London,[1] a son of Sir William Skeffington, Lord Deputy of Ireland, and his first wife, Margaret Digby. It was an A-frame shaped metal rack to which the head was strapped to the top point of the A, the hands at the midpoint and the legs at the lower spread ends; swinging the head down and forcing the knees up in a sitting position compressing the body so as to force the blood from the nose and ears
Semper Fidelis, quod sum quod
