Louise said:

It is another thing which what bothered me about the Bernard book. He suggests that the jury, by finding them guilty, believed they were guilty. So did Thomas believe his daughter was guilty? No, of course he didn't. If Bernard thinks the jury had to have believed in their guilt then he has a far too high opinion of human nature.   

I keep thinking I'm going to put a list together of all the things that bother me about the Bernard book!

This is certainly an intriquing debate. I’m not convinced that Henry conspired against Anne but I do believe he may have said things about her that Cromwell twisted into lies against her. Such as silly things I don’t like the way she keeps her brother close to her. Cromwell used this gripes to make a mountain out of a molehill, and Henry chose to believe them purely because he wanted to but I think deep in his heart and concious he knew that Cromwell case was nothing but lies, and I believe it’s possible that was perhaps one of the reason he turned into such a bastard in his later life. He had to live with the fact that he had sent an innocent woman one who truly loved him to her death.
When he sent Cromwell to his death it was partly to do with his screw up with AOC but also to do with the fact he could no longer live with his guilt that his misplaced words about Anne had made Cromwell make up the lies that condemned the only person he truly loved.
Perhaps he hoped by killing Cromwell his guilt in Anne’s death would die with him. But in fact I think it made the situation a damn site worse instead, because Henry then had to live with Cromwell’s death as well as Anne’s. Serves the fat git right too.

I don’t buy an argument which says Henry was weak and easily influenced. Cromwell would not have dared produce his ‘evidence’ if he hadn’t had direct knowledge of Henry’s wishes.

I also don’t really believe that Anne was the ‘one’ Henry truly loved – I am sure he wanted her and her tactics in holding him off for so many years simply inflamed that desire, but once he got her, all he wanted after that was a son. When she failed to deliver (no pun intended) he was eager to get rid of her. He had to kill her, because he couldn’t suffer the embarrassment of divorcing two wives. He needed the way clear for a third ‘unblemished’ wife, safely married after his two previous wives were well and truly dead.

It is interesting to compare Henry with his grandfather, Edward IV, who also had marital tangles, with two ‘secret’ marriages and heirs with potentially dubious claims to the throne. With that example before him, Henry would have to ensure that any wife which presented him with a son was thoroughly ‘legal’. Executing Anne made that position clear.

The more I think about Anne’s fall the more I come to believe that Henry was the instigator:-

1. Cromwell would never have risked bringing Anne down without Henry’s blessing and complicity. I admire Ives, but I can’t accept it was a political coup and that Henry was duped. If, by April 1536, Anne was still Henry’s most beloved wife then he would have made more of an effort to disbelieve the allegations, as he had been with Catherine Howard. He never gave Anne a chance to defend herself, and he showed none of the grief over her alleged indiscretions as he had with Catherine Howard. That suggests he wanted to believe the worst.

2. George Boleyn failed to receive the Order of the Garter on 23rd April. I understand the reason for giving it to Carew, but why allow George’s name to be put forward in the first place if Henry knew he was going to appoint someone else, and in particular an opponent of the Boleyns? He must have known it would humiliate his wife and brother-in-law. Coincidentally, one day later there were commissions set up to investigate alleged crimes. I find it difficult to imagine Cromwell would do that behind Henry’s back, and there was no other reason for those commissions other than to investigate Anne. Three days after that Parliament was summoned to look at revoking laws which favoured Anne. Henry was, therefore, looking at ditching Anne days before Smeaton’s confession, and days before any charges had been brought. So it wasn’t merely a belief in her guilt which triggered Henry’s desire for a fresh start, it was his desire for a fresh start which triggered the investigation when he discovered getting rid of her would be no easier than getting rid of Catherine had been.

3. If Lady Worcester’s remarks instigated the investigation, which was set up on 24th May, then why wasn’t she charged with the crime of withholding the truth from the King, just as Jane Rochford was in the Catherine Howard affair? If she had accused Anne of affairs with Smeaton and her own brother, then as part of the investigations surely Smeaton would have been questioned immediately those comments came to light, and probably George too.

4. But the actual arrests didn’t start upon Lady Worcester’s supposed comments. They started following Anne’s confrontations with Smeaton and Norris. In other words, despite the commissions, no evidence had been found of guilt up until then. I question whether it was lady Worcester’s comments which started the ball rolling, because if so then Smeaton would surely have been arrested long before his confrontation with Anne. Sadly Anne unwittingly played into Henry’s hands with the unfortunate timing of those confrontations, more so when Smeaton confessed. These were bonus’s that had never been expected, but which provided the only potential evidence of wrongdoing. I personally think that the commissions were set up to look at any possibility of ensnaring Anne, and that there was nothing to go on at that time. Anne then had her confrontations with Norris and Smeaton, and it was that which was used to pin something on her. It was only much later that Lady Worcester’s supposed comments were used as an excuse as to why the commissions had been set up in the first place.

5. Henry must have know Henry Norris was innocent, or why would he offer he a pardon if he admitted to an affair with Anne. There is no way Henry would offer a pardon to a man who he believed had meddled with his wife. He wanted Norris to help him out by lying. Norris was killed not because he wouldn’t admit the truth, but because he wouldn’t admit the lie. He killed his best friend out of vindictive spite.

6. No one seriously believed the incest allegation. If the allegation stemmed from something the Lady Worcester said, as I’ve said above, she withheld that information and would have been in the Tower too. Yet even after George’s eventual arrest, which was shortly after Anne’s, Anne wasn’t questioned regarding the alleged incest. In fact she wasn’t even aware until the day following her arrest that George was in the Tower. If George was the ‘third’ man who Anne was being accused of having a sexual relationship with, then this was kept from her. I can’t help feeling Lady Worcester’s name was just being used in an attempt to ensnare George in an offense which would have caused the most shock and horror, and that she’s actually a bit of a red herring.

7. Following their deaths Cromwell exhorted beyond measure the sense, wit and courage of Anne and George. He would hardly do that if he genuinely thought there was enough actual evidence to prove they were guilty of such vile acts. He admired them both for taking the travesty of justice on the chin. That doesn’t smack of a man going out of his way to destroy them, but of a man who did what he had to do to appease the man he worked for.

8. So much seemed to be made at the siblings trials of Anne and George laughing at Henry behind his back, and of Anne discussing his sexual problems. Was Lady Worcester’s supposed evidence manufactured or deliberately exaggerated to ensure George was caught up in the net, because Henry wanted to get his own back, not just on Anne but George too? I think so. Cromwell wouldn’t be stupid enough to charge George with a crime which everyone agreed had little if any evidence to back it up. The charge smacks of the malice and vindictiveness of Henry, not the calm levelheadedness of Cromwell.

9. The charges came about just as Henry fell for another woman and after Henry was starting to think he would be no more successful in having healthy son’s with Anne as he had been with Catherine, due to Anne’s miscarriage in the January. Some coincidence!!

10. And if Smeaton really was guilty and Henry genuinely believed it to be true then as a commoner why didn’t Henry subject him to a traitors death? Henry’s natural vindictiveness would have surely made that a foregone conclusion, as he did to Francis Dereham. None of the men’s heads were displayed in Tower Bridge, as Catherine Howard’s alleged lovers were. Was that a little consideration by the man who knew they were all innocent?

I wonder what would have happened if Anne had not argued with Smeaton and Norris that day? Something else would have been cobbled together, but without that the prosecution would have had nothing to pin it’s case on.

Louise said
8. So much seemed to be made at the siblings trials of Anne and George laughing at Henry behind his back, and of Anne discussing his sexual problems.

A fine post, and the point above is a telling one (in my opinion):

The personal: Henry would not want Anne around after her disgrace, for personal reasons. I think he might’ve feared her gossiping about his want of prowess, so to speak. Anne was bold, outspoken, and frequently tactless; Henry, as both man and monarch, could not tolerate her slandering him at home or abroad, Therefore, Anne had to be silenced, completely.

And then there’s ‘the political’: In the rather fluid world of royal politics, it now became advantageous to court an alliance with the Emperor. Realpolitik dictated that Anne and her pro-French allies must be sidelined at best, destroyed at worst.

There is no doubt at all in my mind that Henry instigated the whole thing. A few previous posters have mentioned his complete lack of emotion over the whole affair and that speaks volumes…you would have expected at least *surprise*, but there is no record of even that. He appears to have accepted the news that the woman he loved so much had betrayed him with utter equanimity. You might almost say he seemed to be *expecting* that news.

I believe that Henry was actually incapable of really loving anyone other than himself. He liked to play at being in love, and he fought so long to marry Anne more because he was determined to get his own way and not look foolish than because he was deeply in love with her. He imagined he was, but he had a disturbing tendency to turn viciously on those he claimed to love when he didn’t get what he wanted from them – KoA, Mary, Wolsey, More, Anne, Norris, Cromwell…all cast aside at best, murdered at worst. And Henry claimed he loved them all, but he was utterly indifferent to them once he turned his face from them.

Is it just me, or does Henry just seem like a complete spoilt child?! I don’t think he knew what to do with the power he had, and he discarded his wives when they failed to give him his own way as he couldn’t think what else to do with them!

Louise, great post!
There are so many reasons why I believe Henry was up to his eyeballs in this deal. Everyone has done a terrific job of listing them.
The way a person died was ordered by the king. The swordsman was sent for before any of these people came to trial. We have figured out the mileage and the time it would take for him to arrive from France on another post. (ordered around the 10th or 11th at the latest) It was said by Chapuys that the swordsman was sent for and nine days later he arrived. We know that he was still traveling on the 18th because Anne’s execution was postponed that day. There had been no trial…not one trial until the 12th.

Smeaton by all rights should have been hung and disembowled, etc., etc..you know the deal. I think he was given the sentence of beheading instead for saying he was guilty and not retracting that statement, courteousy of the king. Who wouldn’t choose beheading over the other way? I think he would have said whatever they wanted to hear. Again, the king’s doing. Cromwell could not have made that decision, but he certainly would have used the manner of death to threaten Smeaton. Ordering the swordsman early on as Henry did, along with the reduction of Smeaton’s sentence to death by beheading, makes me think that Henry was well aware of what Cromwell was doing and that he was in on the planning right from the beginning.

How can anyone believe that Cromwell could pull the wool over Henry’s eyes like this? Henry was nobody’s fool. If Henry didn’t want this to happen, it would not have happened. Henry didn’t believe that Anne would do any of these acts, but he knew if the stories were nasty enough, the public would buy it. Henry wanted to make sure Anne was found guilty and between him and Cromwell they piled on the charges. This man wasn’t the least bit upset over fact that if any of this was true, Anne was making a monumental fool of him? Apparently not. As far as we know, Henry did not shed one tear when hearing that his beloved Anne had slept with many of his dearest friends. There was no, “I will kill her myself,” as we hear there was with KH. Nothing. He parties the whole time Anne is in the Tower. He was having a grand old time and wasn’t the least bit troubled by what was happenning to Anne. He plans their deaths right down to the smallest detail. He was making plans to marry Jane. Don’t look at what I’m doing over there. Hey look here, I’m getting married!
Geez, he makes me crazy.

I’ve always viewed Cromwell’s sequestering of Henry away from all other counsel and representations as being for Cromwell’s benefit alone: so that Henry wouldn’t be swayed by emotion or argument; so that Cromwell would be able to control the narrative of Anne’s ‘undoubted guilt’, and thus, the King’s thinking on the matter. However, seeing as Henry was hands-on regarding the editing of the charges, and because Cromwell’s list of suspects might ordinarily have given the King pause (the wiping-out of the Boleyn faction would benefit Cromwell enormously, in varied ways…yet Henry didn’t question this very convenient fact), I’m now drawn to think that Henry and Cromwell collaborated all along. From the King’s perspective, the only fly in the ointment was Norris’s refusal to offer Henry the chance to pardon his friend. And more to the point, it simply couldn’t have escaped Henry’s notice that the execution of all these people would’ve opened the way to grants, pensions and inner-court positions for Cromwell’s creatures. In a very crude sense, the coup appears like a brutal version of the Eltham Ordinances; typically and characteristically, Cromwell lacked Wolsey’s subtlety…

I wonder, also, if Henry wanted to rid himself of those intimates (Norris, Brereton) who may have witnessed his secret marriage in 1533. That kind of behaviour, along with the Stalinesque airbrushing of history via the destruction or hiding-away of Anne’s portraits, might seem rather senseless to us but it would make sense to a paranoid ruler. Anne was meant to become an ‘unperson’; happily, her memory proved imperishable.

And yet we’re forever being told that Henry was quite chaste, especially in comparison to his other royal contemporaries. Ahem. Like Cromwell in conversation with Chapuys, I’m obliged to hide my smile…

Meanwhile Anne, with no definitive & supporting evidence that Henry wasn’t her first lover in the fullest sense of that word, has traditionally been considered little better than a lady of the night. Sexism at work.