“On Thursday, 29 May 1533, 25 Hen. VIII., the lady Anne marchioness of Pembroke was received at Greenwich, and conveyed to the Tower of London, and thence to Westminster, where she was crowned queen of England. Order was taken by the King and his Council for all the Lords spiritual and temporal to be in the barge before Greenwich at 3 p.m., and give their attendance till the Queen took her barge. <…> At her landing, a long lane was made among the people to the King’s bridge at the entrance of the Tower. She was received on coming out of her barge by Sir Edw. Walsingham, lieutenant of the Tower, and Sir Will. Kinston, constable of the Tower. <…> Somewhat within the Tower she was received by the King, who laid his hands on both her sides, kissing her with great reverence and a joyful countenance, and led her to her chamber, the officers of arms going before. After which every man went to his lodging, except certain noblemen and officers in waiting. The King and Queen went to supper, and “after super ther was sumptuus void.”
31 May. MS. L. f. 1. Coll. of Arms. 563. Anne Boleyn. from Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII: May 1533, 26-31 Pages 234-262
“Mary had also decided on a grand public display rather than a private wedding, according to her prerogative, just as in times past a king could be married ‘prively or openly’.Although Judith M. Richards has argued that royal weddings in England tended to be private occasions and that, in contrast,‘the procedures were very different’for the unusual event of a regnant queen’s marriage, the choice of public or private ceremonies in fact depended on circumstances specific to each Tudor marriage. Henry VIII’s wedding to Catherine of Aragon in 1509 at Greenwich had been a quiet, speedy affair so that she could share his coronation; his marriage to Anne Boleyn had to be conducted secretly in 1533 because she was pregnant and the annulment of his previous marriage had not yet taken place. Henry’s nuptials with Jane Seymour had occurred shortly after Anne Boleyn was beheaded by the king’s order, and the obscene haste of the match likely called for some discretion at the wedding. Henry VIII’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, arrived on January 3, 1540, and was married three days later in a season of the year when the church forbade marriages, a fact that may have limited the festivities. The circumstances of his nuptials with Catherine Howard on July 28, 1540, echoed the unseemly haste of the Seymour wedding: Henry and Catherine were married only 18 days after his previous alliance was annulled and on the same day that Thomas Cromwell was beheaded. Mary would hardly have wanted to study these marriage ceremonies as exemplars.
The Tudors, however, were also capable of grand, extravagant weddings. Catherine of Aragon’s first marriage to Prince Arthur in 1501 had been a lavishly opulent, grandiose public affair within St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, with King Henry VII, his queen, Elizabeth, members of the royal court, and city dignitaries all in attendance. There had been a procession through the streets of London before the wedding and banqueting and a tournament after it; and the festivities, including dances, masques, and jousting, went on for a week. It is more likely that Mary I took her mother’s first wedding to Prince Arthur rather than her father’s marriages for her model. Whatever the inspiration, Mary I the city of Winchester provided a convenient meeting point and marriage site for Mary, journeying from London, and Philip, arriving from Southampton. The queen issued a proclamation on July 21 ordering that‘all noble men and gentlemen, ladies and other apointed by her maiestie to attende upon her grace’at the wedding ‘doo with all convenyent spede make their repaire to her grace cytie of Wynchester, there to give their attendance upon her’.Summoning the peers of the realm to witness this important ceremony turned it into the kind of magnificent public occasion that England had not witnessed for some years. In addition, the participation of England’s nobility, the country’s leaders, validated Mary’s choice of spouse and potentially created an aura of widespread support for the queen and her husband while overcoming the spectre of resistance to the Anglo-Spanish alliance.”
“Paradoxically, however, although Mary’s pregnancy appeared to strengthen Philip’s position and power, linking discussions of his coronation with the imminent birth of an heir placed him in a position not unlike that of former queen consorts: except for Catherine of Aragon, whose coronation took place at the same time as that of Henry VIII,plans to crown Tudor consorts were usually connected with the proof of their fecundity. For example, King Henry VII’s wife Elizabeth was crowned only after she had borne a son. According to Charles T. Wood, the fact that Elizabeth had a better claim to the throne than Henry VII meant that ‘before a non-threatening coronation could take place, Elizabeth had first to produce a son, a male whose rights would supersede her own’. Of Henry VIII’s wives, Anne Boleyn’s coronation took place during her pregnancy, plans to crown Jane Seymour after the birth of Edward were thwarted only by her untimely death, and rumours of Katherine Howard’s imminent coronation circulated during a progress to York when it was believed she was with child. Although Renard believed that ‘in England the coronation stands for a true and lawful confirmation of title, and means much more here than in other realms,’ he presented the case for Philip’s coronation to Mary by citing ‘the precedent of Queen Catherine, her lady mother, who was crowned,’ implying that it would give Philip no more power than that enjoyed by a queen consort.”
“If I must die, then I will die boldly, as I have lived”- quote from Doomed Queen Anne by Carolyn Meyer.
May 19th, 1536: Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, was executed on charges of adultery, incest and treason. All charges against Queen Anne were false and her death will always be one of the most horrifying miscarriages of justice in history. Rest In Peace, Anne, you are so loved in the modern day and I hope that gives you some peace❤️
“As Anne waited for the executioner to strike, she started praying, "O Lord have mercy on me, to God I commend my soul. To Jesus Christ I commend my soul; Lord Jesu receive my soul. "As Anne prayed, the executioner called out to his assistant to pass him his sword. As Anne moved her head to follow what the assistant was doing, the executioner came up unnoticed behind her and beheaded her with one stroke of his sword. It was over.
As the shocked crowd dispersed, Anne’s ladies, who were described as "bereft of their souls, such was their weakness”, wrapped her head and body in white cloth and took them to the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula for burial. No casket had been provided, so a yeoman warder fetched an old elm chest which had once contained bow staves from the Tower armoury. Anne Boleyn, Queen of England and mother of Elizabeth I, was then buried as a traitor in an unmarked grave. The Tower cannons fired to tell London that its Queen was dead.
Scottish theologian Alexander Alesius had woken up in the early hours of 19th May from a nightmare about the Queen’s severed neck in which he “could count the nerves, the veins, and the arteries”. He went to visit his friend Archbishop Cranmer in his garden at Lambeth. Alesius was unaware of Anne’s imminent execution, having remained at home since the day of Anne’s imprisonment, but as he told the Archbishop of his dream, Cranmer “raised his eyes to heaven and said, ‘She who has been the Queen of England upon earth will to-day become a Queen in heaven.’ So great was his grief that he could say nothing more, and then he burst into tears.” The Archbishop who owed his rise to the patronage of the Queen and her family was a broken man, and perhaps he felt some guilt for his part in recent events. It is hard to imagine how he would have felt on hearing the cannons ring out over London, announcing the Queen’s death. Queen Anne Boleyn was gone, gone to a better place.“
Source: "The Fall of Anne Boleyn: A Countdown”, Claire Ridgway, MadeGlobal Publishing, UK, April 2012.
“She walked forth in fearful beauty” and “seemed unmoved as a stock, not as one who had to defend her cause, but with the bearing of one coming to great honour.”
