Original subtitles

May 19th,

the anniversary of the death of a queen of England.

Every year on this day,

a bouquet of red roses is delivered anonymously

to the chapel of the Tower of London.

They are accompanied by a simple request.

They are to be laid just over there,

on the spot where the second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn,

was buried on this day in 1536.

I'm historian Tracy Borman.

Over the next three nights, I'm going to explore

the incredible story of Anne's downfall.

Look at that, it's just exquisite.

It's wonderful, isn't it?

It all took place in the space of just 17 days.

I studied Anne for most of my life.

I think I know her well, but I'm going to do something

that I've never done before.

I'm going to follow in Anne's footsteps.

Take the journey with her.

Hour by hour, during the three most important clays,

from queen to outcast,

to find the truth behind her downfall.

That is incredible.

Can I just put it in my pocket?

I'll look at the day she's arrested...

...the day she's tried...

...and the day she's beheaded.

In this first episode,

I'll be tracing the events of Anne Boleyn's last day of freedom.

For the first time in history, a queen of England has been arrested

and imprisoned in the Tower of London,

and she faces charges for which the penalty is death.

It's eight o'clock in the morning on Tuesday, 2nd May, 1536.

Since dawn three hours ago, the streets have been crowded

with traders selling to passing travellers.

The River Thames is full of boats carrying people and goods.

And, in Whitehall, a plan is being hatched.

At one of the king's palaces - he has almost 60 -

servants are preparing Henry Vlll's main meal of the day.

Things seem normal.

In 1536, Henry isn't yet the oversized king we tend to think of.

He's fit and active, and his weight hasn't yet ballooned.

And this morning, he's been busy already.

He's sent a message to one of his other palaces.

And it's a message that will change the course of history forever.

Leaving Henry's palace at Whitehall...

...the messenger starts his journey eastwards along the River Thames,

towards Henry's wife, Queen Anne Boleyn.

She is at another royal palace, down the river in Greenwich -

the magnificent palace of Placentia.

This is Anne's favourite residence.

The name means "Pleasant Palace",

but it will not live up to that today.

We're told Anne starts the day watching a game of real tennis.

It's a favourite sport of hers, and also of her husband Henry,

who frequently plays matches.

Anne Boleyn stands out in the English court

as stylish, intellectual and charismatic.

She has already experienced plenty of drama in her 35 years.

Born in England, Anne was educated in France,

and later became a lady-in-waiting to Henry Vlll's first wife,

Catherine of Aragon.

Henry's spotted her at court, wooed her,

and they fell in love.

He had his marriage to Catherine annulled.

And now, Henry and Anne have been married for three years.

They have a young daughter - the future Queen Elizabeth I.

But today, unusually, Anne is watching alone,

and that must feel ominous,

given what happened yesterday at the May Day jousts.

King Henry received some news which set him on edge.

He left without warning for the palace at Whitehall,

leaving Anne by herself at Greenwich.

Anne loves to have a flutter on sporting events,

and the story goes that she's just regretting not having placed a bet

on the winner, when the message that the king sent this morning

arrives, with ominous instructions.

The king's message from Whitehall has arrived by boat at Greenwich.

The instruction is simple, but ominous.

It says, by order of the king,

Anne must present herself before the Privy Council,

here at Greenwich.

Her heart must sink.

She knows that the council is the most important advisory body

in the kingdom, and so this must be really serious.

The world Anne lives in is full of intrigue...

...as people struggle for the king's attention.

Anne has climbed to the top, but there are plenty of people

who want to drag her down.

This letter by a foreign ambassador,

Eustache Chappuis, is full of court gossip.

Chappuis is reporting that Anne, whom he refers to throughout

as the concubine and great whore -

this is absolutely typical.

There's nothing but criticism of Anne.

The concubine, the woman who has led the king astray.

In one of his most cutting comments,

he reports that Henry is tiring of Anne,

looking out for a new, younger wife.

"It's the joy and pleasure a man feels

"in getting rid of a thin, old, vicious horse,

"in the hope of getting soon a fine horse to ride."

It really is incredibly thrilling, as a Tudor historian

to get my hands on documents such as this.

They're telling us what people are saying about Anne at this time -

the sorts of rumours that are circulating.

So you get the feeling of the weight of evidence

that is gathering against Anne.

There's nothing here in her favour.

It seems nobody is prepared to speak in her defence.

The documents record what happens next on May 2nd...

...at the palace in Greenwich.

Anne is escorted from the tennis courts,

which are part of the vast palace,

to a council chamber at the other side of the complex.

Anne makes her way across the courtyard

to the Privy Council meeting, in full view of everyone.

I can only imagine what must be running through her mind.

Perhaps she's fearing that, like Catherine of Aragon,

Henry is going to divorce her.

She must be racking her brains,

trying to think of just what she's done wrong.

At the council chamber, she is met by three grave-faced men...

...who rise to their feet.

One of them is the Duke of Norfolk, Anne's uncle.

You'd have thought that he'd want to help her, but in fact,

the two can't stand each other.

Also there is William Kingston, constable of the Tower of London

and a member of the Privy Council.

Anne later claimed that...

"l was cruelly handled at Greenwich

"with the King's Council, with my lord of Norfolk.

"And then he said, 'Tut, tut, tut, tut.'"

Well, "tut, tut, tut" - that sounds like quite a mild reprimand,

but what the council then said to Anne was earth shattering.

They charged her with adultery...

...with Sir Henry Norris.

This is a bolt from the blue.

Norris is one of the king's oldest friends.

Until now, he's been one of Henry's most trusted courtiers.

To make matters worse, Anne's also accused of adultery

with a common and brash court musician, Mark Smeaton,

and a mysterious third unnamed man.

Anne must be absolutely reeling from this,

but somehow she holds it together.

She says...

"l am the king's true wife..."

...and that no other man has ever touched her.

It's interesting that, even now, in the midst of her shock,

the first thing she does is protest her innocence.

Rumours travel like lightning in the Tudor court.

After questioning, Anne's escorted under guard back to her rooms,

forced to cross the palace courtyard again, in full view of everyone.

This is all incredibly demeaning.

No other queen of England has ever suffered such humiliation.

Gossip must already be spreading across the palace,

and as Anne makes her way back to her private apartments,

her mind must be spinning.

What's going on?

Is the king behind this, or is it a plot by her enemies to destroy her?

Little does she know, much worse is to come.

In Greenwich, at the Palace of Placentia,

Anne is back in her apartments, under armed guard.

Despite the charges, she tries to follow her normal routine.

Anne sits down to dinner.

She's clearly doing her best to try and maintain appearances

that all is well.

She's dressed in a sumptuous gown of red velvet and cloth of gold,

and she sits beneath a canopy of estate,

a symbol of her authority as queen,

which is ironic because that authority has started to crumble.

The people around Anne are acting strangely.

Her ladies are upset and tearful.

And, most ominous of all is that the king's waiter,

who usually appears at meal times to say...

'Much good may it do you.'

...on behalf of the king, doesn't appear.

Anne is so distressed that finally her composure starts to crumble.

She must be wondering, as must everybody else in the room,

what is going to happen next.

But today's events haven't come out of the blue.

Anne's troubles began three months ago...

...when she was expecting a son.

Henry's marriage to his first wife, Katherine,

had broken down because, after almost 25 years,

they'd failed to produce a son.

To continue the Tudor dynasty, he needs a male heir.

The duty now falls to Anne.

Three months ago, she was pregnant.

The king and queen were pinning all their hopes on it being a son.

Proof of the anticipation of this new male arrival

is a commemorative medal produced by Anne.

Known as the "Most Happy Medal",

she planned to distribute it across the nation

to celebrate the birth, and to boost her own image.

Just the prototype survives,

locked away in the British Museum.

I feel like a burglar!

I'm about to come face-to-face with Anne

for the very first time.

Wow, this is really exciting.

It's amazing, the detail. You can see so much more.

I've only ever seen pictures of this.

Do you want to handle it? Oh, is that OK?

This feels like looking at Anne Boleyn.

It really is quite extraordinary,

and yet very, very different to the way that I think of her,

the way that I've been influenced by those later portraits,

whereas this is the only known likeness of Anne

actually taken during her lifetime.

So this is Anne as she really was.

This is just incredibly thrilling to see.

There weren't any others made. This was it.

And Anne was quite a control freak,

so the chances are that Anne, perhaps Henry, too,

actually held this.

Sends shivers down the spine.

So this is a piece of propaganda.

This is the Tudor equivalent of Twitter.

I wonder what she made of it when she saw it.

Can I just put it in my pocket now and go?

That is incredible.

A WOMAN WAILS

But three months ago, tragedy struck.

Anne suffered a miscarriage.

Worse, it seems it was a baby boy,

the heir that Henry was so desperate for.

This is a major blow for Henry,

and an absolute disaster for Anne.

All of Henry's doubts come flooding back.

Henry believes that...

'God did not permit them to have a son.'

...and there are rumours that he believed he might...

'..take another wife.'

Straight away, Henry begins thinking of ditching Anne

for someone who can give him a son.

Step forward, this man, Thomas Cromwell,

the so-called fixer who has made it his job

to make Henry's deepest wishes come true.

As Anne finishes her meal today,

she knows Cromwell must be behind this attempt to bring her down.

He's spent the last few weeks secretly building a case against her

from his base here at Austin Friars.

Today, the area lies in the shadow of the City of London skyscrapers.

The son of a blacksmith,

Cromwell's risen to be the king's special adviser.

By promising to make Henry...

'..the richest sovereign whoever reigned in England.'

I've come to Thomas Cromwell's power base

to get a political perspective on him

from journalist Owen Jones.

Hi, Owen. Hi, how are you doing? Nice to meet you.

Well, we're here on the site of Thomas Cromwell's original house,

and it's from here that he did so much of his plotting.

We can see him as the original spin doctor, Mr Fixer.

There are some pretty obvious modern parallels, aren't there?

I think the parallels are very, very striking indeed.

You had to use cunning and you had to be devious.

You had to constantly see it as a chess game,

where you have to outmanoeuvre

and defeat your opponents ruthlessly.

That kind of tradition of the spin doctor,

whether it be Peter Mandelson and Dominic Cummings, I bet,

I wouldn't be surprised

if they hadn't themselves looked back at Thomas Cromwell

with some admiration and, who knows,

maybe they were partly inspired by him.

So it's a case of the end justifying the means. Remorselessly so.

Even if the way you get there is seen as morally very dubious,

very problematic, even scandalous,

as long as you get to where you want to get to,

as long as you achieve that sacred goal,

then everything can be justified.

For people like Cromwell, he has this huge amount of power

and influence, but he has a job to do -

instead of "get Brexit clone", it's get rid of the queen of England.

So he knows the risks that he's taking,

and that if he fails, really, it's his neck on the line.

I think politicians are risk seekers.

They're adrenaline junkies.

They like the idea that they could suddenly amass all this power,

that at any moment it could all come crumbling down.

So I think there is that sense of politics is seen

as a bit of a game.

From his house in Austin Friars,

Cromwell makes his way across the city...

...to Greenwich.

The net is closing in on Anne.

Cromwell's skill is finding out what the king wants,

and making it happen.

When Henry had grown tired of his first wife, Katherine,

Cromwell had turned against her.

Now, Henry has grown tired of Anne,

Cromwell has turned against her, too.

Well, his first move has been to put Anne in front of the Privy Council.

Now it's time to put the next part of his plan into action.

Cromwell enters Anne's dining room,

together with a large entourage of important men,

including her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk.

Earlier this morning, Norfolk has been one of three men

of the Privy Council to charge Anne with adultery.

Now he's carrying a scroll,

which is a warrant for his niece's arrest.

Clearly, blood is not thicker than water in the Boleyn family.

Loyalty to the king is more important for political survival.

Anne rises from her seat, asking why they have come.

Norfolk says...

"We came by the king's command

"to conduct Anne to the Tower of London."

Discovering that she is being taken to the Tower

must be a horrific body blow for Anne.

Her stomach must be churning.

Yet remarkably, she holds it together.

Anne replies...

"lf it be His Majesty's pleasure, then I am ready to obey."

She's given no time to pack,

to summon her ladies-in-waiting,

or say goodbye to her beloved two-and-a-half-year-old daughter,

Elizabeth.

Why the need for all this haste?

Well, Cromwell is painfully aware that Henry and Anne have always

had a tempestuous relationship,

furious rows, but each one followed by a passionate reconciliation.

He has to act fast to make sure that that doesn't happen this time.

The Queen of England is under arrest,

her freedom gone.

All she can do is wait in Greenwich to be taken down the Thames

to the Tower of London.

But, while events in Greenwich play out,

down the Thames in Whitehall, her husband is keeping a low profile.

Henry doesn't want to face his wife or the public.

Strangely, though, he doesn't seem greatly troubled by events

that are happening ten miles from here in Greenwich.

In fact, those people who do see him

report that he's in great spirits, even rejoicing at Anne's fate.

The court has never been so lively.

Feasts and banquets follow one another,

much to the disgust of many of those there.

Eyewitnesses report that he has...

'..daily gone out to dine here and there with ladies,

'and sometimes has remained with them until after midnight.'

It's all very strange behaviour.

But perhaps mentally, Henry has already moved on from Anne.

This sudden rejection of Anne is particularly shocking

because he courted her for so long.

But what attracted Henry to her in the first place?

It's difficult to know the truth about her looks and personality,

because pictures we have of her were painted after her death,

but there may be clues on the "Most Happy Medal" I looked at earlier.

It features the only portrait of Anne created during her lifetime.

It's badly damaged, but sculptor Lucy Churchill

is using it to reconstruct her face.

I noticed when I looked at it under magnification,

I noticed so much more detail.

I'm about to see the restored likeness of Anne for the first time.

Here is my version.

Oh, wow! That's amazing.

I must admit that my first reaction on seeing this is,

what was Anne's appeal for Henry?

We know that he was absolutely besotted with her.

The fact that she isn't conventionally beautiful,

a lot of people are very disappointed.

She is heavy eyed, heavy jawed.

She was described as not the most beautiful woman at court,

but she... She could dance. She was very, very witty,

very intellectual. She had charisma.

And I think that's much more attractive than the idea

of it being her superficial beauty that lured him in.

And what you can see from here is that she had self-confidence...

Yeah. ..in spades. Yes.

It looks like more of a Henry VIII pose - it looks like hands on hips.

You can't actually see the rest of her arms,

but back straight, head raised. Yes.

This is Anne at her most self-confidence, isn't it? Yes.

Under arrest, Anne's self-confidence is now in tatters.

At Greenwich, she's been waiting for almost an hour for the boat

to take her down the Thames.

Anne is about to leave her beloved Greenwich Palace for the last time.

Next stop, the Tower.

In Greenwich, at the Palace of Placentia...

...Anne is escorted from her apartments down to the River Thames.

Leading the way is the man responsible for arresting her,

Thomas Cromwell.

This must be the way that Anne is led down the steps under arrest,

here to the beach, where there'll be a barge waiting for her

to take her upriver to the Tower of London.

And you can still see, just over there, the remains of the original

Tudor Pier, from which Anne would have boarded the boat.

I'm now following in the wake of Anne's journey

to the Tower of London.

Usually, state prisoners would have been taken to the Tower

under cover of darkness, but Anne suffers the humiliation

of being rowed there in full daylight.

They really want to make her arrest very public indeed.

If that isn't bad enough,

her nemesis, Thomas Cromwell, is with her on the boat.

It's as if he can't trust her arrest to others -

he has to keep a close eye throughout.

The atmosphere on the boat must be toxic.

Cromwell's agents have been at work, spreading the word

that the queen has been arrested...

...and is heading down the river.

Within a matter of hours,

the sensational news is all around London.

Today, the Thames is very quiet, but, at the time of Anne's arrest,

it would have been a bustling thoroughfare, filled with boats,

and also crowded with spectators watching from the shore.

And they would have all been hostile to this woman

who they saw as a usurper -

she'd ousted the rightful queen, Catherine of Aragon.

After a two hour journey, Anne arrives at the Tower of London.

This is the Tower as Anne is seeing it, as she arrives from Greenwich.

And it's incredibly imposing when you see it from this view -

you tend to approach by road and you don't get a sense

of just how intimidating the fortress would have looked

arriving here, particularly for Anne,

who knows that she's arriving not as an honoured guest,

but as a prisoner.

Well, most prisoners who are brought to the Tower

enter through Traitor's Gate,

but Anne is brought here, to what was known as the Court Gate,

which was probably a nod to her status because, after all,

prisoner she might be, but she's also still the Queen of England.

GUNS FIRE

As Anne steps down here, the thunder of the Tower's cannons

sounds all around her.

She's renowned for her composure, but that now begins to crumble.

She falls to her knees protesting her innocence.

When Anne last arrived here, three years ago,

it was for her coronation celebrations.

Remembering this, she says...

"l was received with greater ceremony last time I entered here."

The Tower is a royal palace, but it's also an infamous prison.

Responsibility for Anne now falls to Sir William Kingston,

the constable of the Tower.

Anne asks him...

"Mr Kingston, do I go into a dungeon?"

Anne expects to be taken to one of the many cells within the Tower.

But instead, she's taken the other way towards the Queen's Apartments.

This is a great relief for Anne,

and also a surprise.

Perhaps it gives her a glimmer of hope,

that things might not be quite as bad as she feared.

But, on the other side of London, in Henry's Whitehall Palace,

something incredible is cooking up.

The case against Anne is developing fast,

and it's about to get much darker.

So far, I know she's accused of adultery with Mark Smeaton,

Henry Norris,

and a mysterious third man.

But who is he?

Rumours are circulating that this third man is,

in fact her own brother, George Boleyn.

George has heard the rumour, and, as yet, is unaware.

He races across London to here, Whitehall Palace, which once stood

where these buildings are now.

He's come to see the king to plead his innocence,

clear his name, and make a case for the Boleyns.

But George's attempt to win the king over is in vain.

Cromwell has the king in lockdown

so he can control exactly what's going on.

George has no chance of a meeting.

Instead, he is arrested on the spot and charged...

...with incest.

As if the charges of adultery against Anne aren't enough,

they've really stepped up a gear with this claim.

Cromwell's plot to destroy the queen is all falling into place.

Now he needs Anne under lock and key while he plots his next move.

Anne is under the watch of the constable of the tower,

Sir William Kingston.

He leads her to the Queen's apartments.

Well, thanks to this detailed map from the Tudor period, we know

exactly where Anne's apartments were - they were on that lawn,

long since demolished, but would have been very lavish.

And they're certainly not what Anne is expecting.

And that must have just added to her confusion.

Why has she been brought here and lodged still as queen?

The Queen's Apartments, together with a great hall,

connected the White Tower to the outer walls.

Just three years ago, Henry spent £3,500 -

that's £1.5 million in today's money -

rebuilding them for Anne's coronation.

Inside, they are sumptuously decorated and furnished.

When Anne first sees her apartment, she cries out...

"lt is too good for me."

Which seems an odd thing to say,

given she's just protested her innocence.

Is this an admission of guilt,

or is Anne trying to be clever,

pretending to be humble, in order to invite compassion?

Kingston recalled that Anne...

'..knelt down, weeping a good pace

'and then fell into great laughing, and...

'..she has done so many times since.'

It's clear that Anne is almost hysterical

at the thought of what might now happen.

To make matters worse, she's been appointed four ladies,

whom she neither likes nor trusts.

Incredibly, one of them is her own aunt.

Once again, family loyalty counts for nothing with the Boleyns.

Well, it's obvious that these ladies have been placed there as spies

by Cromwell - he knows that the evidence he's gathered

so far is not enough.

He needs more.

And he's hoping that while Anne is here in the tower,

she'll say something to really incriminate herself.

As Cromwell waits for incriminating evidence from his spies,

he plots the next move from Austin Friars.

He has the queen under lock and key.

But what next?

Cromwell can't risk a repeat performance of Henry's split

from Catherine of Aragon.

She'd refused to go quietly,

and had caused a great deal of trouble for the king.

Even after the annulment, most people in Britain

still see Catherine as the true queen,

but not everyone does -

Anne is a good deal less popular than Catherine,

but she's not without powerful supporters,

who might make trouble if Henry tries to divorce her.

So Cromwell knows he needs to get rid of them, and fast.

He's already imprisoned three of her allies -

Sir Henry Norris,

musician Mark Smeaton,

and a third man...

...who has turned out to be her brother, George Boleyn -

all accused of adultery with the queen.

Across London, Cromwell's trap is closing in on Anne,

and anyone who can help her.

Now he must prepare for the trial of the century,

in which he'll bring down these supporters

and the queen of England herself.

Just a stone's throw away from Cromwell's base

at Austin Friars at the Tower of London,

Anne Boleyn prepares for her first night as a prisoner.

Her mood is darkening.

Kingston pays her a visit.

Anne insists on her innocence to Kingston. She protests...

"l am the king's true wedded wife."

And then she asks, "Mr Kingston, do you know wherefore I am here?"

And he replies, "No."

Whether he does know or not is a different matter.

In desperation, Anne demands to know where her supporters are,

in particular her father.

The truth is her father, Thomas, has abandoned her

in order to save his own skin.

Across the city in Whitehall, the king retires for the night.

His wife imprisoned, he is alone.

As the events of the day draw to a close,

Cromwell sends a message to the king here at Whitehall.

The message updates the king with the allegations

against his wife.

When the king reads it, he's utterly distraught.

An eyewitness tells us...

'..the king begins to weep.'

Were the tears genuine,

was Henry just putting on a show,

or did he truly love Anne?

I think it more likely that Henry was feeling sorry for himself,

that the woman whom he'd raised to be Queen of England

had betrayed him.

At the Tower, Anne is settling in for the first night

away from her husband, as a prisoner.

The Tower is a place full of foreboding, particularly at night,

and I can only imagine what Anne must have been feeling

during her first night as a prisoner here,

desperately wanting to know what fate lay ahead for her.

Well, there is a letter in existence

that said to have been written by Anne to her husband, the King.

In it, she writes,

"Try me, good King, but let me have a lawful trial,

"and let not my sworn enemies sit as my accusers and judges

"for my truth shall fear no open shame."

Anne is asking for a fair trial,

but is that what she's going to get?

Next time...

...my investigation moves forward to the events of 15th May, 1536.

This is Anne's trial.

I'll follow the day of Anne Boleyn's trial, moment by moment.

I want to find out if she stands any chance of a fair hearing,

or is her fate sealed from the beginning?

Can Anne possibly save herself?