Original subtitles

It's dawn in London.

For the first time in history,

the Queen of England is about to be tried for adultery and treason.

If she's found guilty, her fate will be death.

I'm historian Tracy Borman.

Over three nights,

I'm exploring 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 gonna 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'm exploring exactly what went so devastatingly wrong

for Anne Boleyn.

I've already investigated what happened on the day

of her arrest.

In this episode, I'll be tracing the events of Anne Boleyn's trial.

Even by the standards of its day, it was a complete outrage.

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?

It's...

In an hour and a half,

the trial of Anne Boleyn will begin

at the Tower of London in its Great Hall.

Well, we can locate the Great Hall precisely on this Tudor map.

It would have stood over there on the far side of the lawn,

but demolished in the 17th century

and so, sadly, we can only imagine what it must have been like.

Today, the Great Hall at the Tower is hosting the most infamous trial

in Tudor, England...

...instead of the banquets and meetings it's more used to.

Well, you can imagine the atmosphere when everyone is gathered

in the courtroom is just electric.

This is the trial of one of the most famous women in Europe

and her dirty laundry is about to be aired in public.

It really is the scandal of the century.

Some of the most important men in the kingdom are gathering,

including the architect of Anne's arrest,

the King's right hand man, Thomas Cromwell.

Just three years ago,

Cromwell masterminded Henry's marriage to Anne,

hoping she would give the King a son, but she hasn't.

Cromwell and Anne are now at loggerheads

and his relationship with the King hangs by a thread.

Anne must go.

Anne was arrested 13 clays ago.

Cromwell's ensured there's little time before the trial

and to guarantee things go his way,

he's selected the judge and jury.

Reading a list of who's gathered here for the trial,

it's a who's who of Tudor England.

Remarkably, presiding over the whole thing

is Anne's own uncle, the Duke of Norfolk.

It may seem a risky move for Cromwell to put someone so close

to Anne in charge.

But Cromwell has his reasons.

Five years ago, the Duke of Norfolk predicted that Anne would be the...

Cromwell is confident that when it comes to the crunch,

Norfolk will side with the King.

Anne's fate will be decided by a jury of 26 peers,

including her own father.

Thomas Boleyn is a ruthlessly ambitious politician.

He puts his career ahead of everything,

even, or especially, his own children.

Even though these men, in theory, are loyal to Anne,

if they don't vote the way the King wants,

their necks are gonna be on the line.

At the centre of the room, on a raised platform so all can see,

is a chair where Anne will sit.

Members of the public are being allowed to watch the trial.

2,000 have squeezed in,

desperate to know how this is going to play out.

Anne is being accused

of one of the most salacious acts imaginable,

punishable by death.

The stakes really couldn't be higher.

But there is one person missing from the trial.

Across London, at York Place in Whitehall,

the King is out of bed and being dressed by his gentlemen.

Where these buildings now stand was Henry's Palace of Whitehall

and it's here that he's lying low today as Anne's trial takes place,

but he's keeping a close eye on the proceedings.

If Anne is found guilty, then a cannon will be fired

from the Tower.

Fire!

And if she is out of the way, then Henry already has plans

for who he is going to marry next.

One mile down the River Thames from Whitehall, in Chelsea,

is the woman who the king hopes will be his next wife, Jane Seymour.

She's already being kept like a queen.

Henry has been obsessed by Jane for the past few months

and the affair hasn't gone unnoticed by Anne.

There are rumours recently that the King's been giving Jane

priceless gifts and love letters.

And on one occasion, Anne apparently spots Jane wearing a new locket

and demands to see it more closely.

When Jane refuses, Anne rips it from around her neck

and opens the locket to find a picture of the king.

She is furious.

Since Anne's arrest, Jane has been kept out of sight

in the countryside.

As a lady-in-waiting to Anne Boleyn,

her presence in court would cause gossip that he can do without.

Yesterday, with Anne's trial drawing nearer,

Henry orders that Jane be brought back to London

to be close to him.

Now she's just a mile down river at Chelsea,

where Henry can visit her secretly in the night.

He assures Jane that soon all this pretence will be over.

At the Tower of London, the court is now assembled.

And in the Great Hall, the most well-known woman in England

is set to enter the stage.

Silence is called for.

And the Duke of Norfolk, Anne's uncle, remember,

shouts out...

Gentlemen, jailer of the Tower...

...bring in your prisoner.

Anne is led into the courtroom,

flanked by the gentleman jailer,

his axe turned away from her, because she's not yet proven guilty,

and also by four ladies.

Now, these ladies aren't of Anne's choosing, but of Cromwell's.

He's placed them in her service to watch and record everything

she says and does.

Spectators remark that she's never looked more in control.

Anne's composure is remarkable.

Several eyewitnesses comment on it.

She doesn't flinch, even when she looks across

and sees her own father sitting on the jury.

Everyone is in place.

The trial is about to begin.

If found guilty, Anne could be sentenced to death.

The prosecution is led by Anne's archrival, Thomas Cromwell.

But as the trial begins,

things are already not going quite as planned.

Before Anne had come in,

the crowds had been baying for her blood,

but now she's conducting herself with such dignity

and clearly they weren't expecting that.

When commoners are put on trial,

they're made to stand throughout the proceedings,

but Anne is still Queen of England,

so she is allowed to sit

and you can imagine as she lowers herself into the chair

and waits with apprehension to hear the charges against her.

Anne still doesn't know what she's being accused of.

To discover the actual charges,

I've come to The National Archives at Kew.

This is where all the records that still exist

from Anne's trial are stored.

This is very exciting.

These incredible papers, in their original leather pouch,

were kept in what's known as the bag of secrets.

Oh, there actually is a bag.

Then you get all of the papers.

And Sean Cunningham looks after them.

These are the fronts of the original commissions and orders.

The records are written in Latin on 22 sheets of parchment.

It's amazing to think that this document would have actually

been there in the trial room at the time. That's right.

It is a record of the process as it was unfolding.

Some of this would have been in the hands of the people

in the courts at the time. It makes it all chillingly real.

But as I examine the records, something isn't right.

These documents are all telling the story from the side

of the prosecution.

There's no record of Anne's testimony.

We have here a huge body of evidence

against Anne - the indictment, eyewitness accounts.

Nothing in her defence has survived.

And that surely is significant.

The indictment that details Anne's charges does still exist.

Here, the charges are listed.

Adultery with four men.

Henry Norris...

...William Brereton...

...Sir Francis Weston...

...and Mark Smeaton.

It's telling us that she's despised her marriage for three years

and she's... Three years? So the whole marriage, really?

Pretty much, yes. I mean, it's setting up the adultery

and the relationship with her accomplices

in such a way that it undermines the King's status and dignity.

And what's the significance of the men who are accused with Anne?

They're all gentlemen, apart from Mark Smeaton.

So these are the young men who've grown up with Henry

or are serving Henry and his family.

And so they spend a lot of their time in the King's direct presence.

It's really explaining how they have been wooed

by Anne's charms to be her lovers.

The indictment alleges how Anne is...

"..following daily her frail and carnal lusts,

"did falsely and traitorously procure kisses

"and touches of the King's daily and familiar servants

"to be her adulterers and concubines."

In court, the charges are read out to Anne.

She is accused of some 20 acts of adultery.

So, now that Anne knows what she's accused of,

how on earth must she be feeling?

Well, she's sure of her innocence. That comes across, definitely.

And she's also got great faith.

So perhaps she thinks that God will deliver her from all this,

because He knows she's innocent,

so he'll make sure that justice prevails.

But mingled with all of that self-righteousness,

there must be terror, disbelief and outrage.

She must feel like screaming.

In the courtroom, the spectators are on the edge of their seats,

listening to these charges and waiting for Anne's response.

But Anne is completely calm, certain of her innocence,

believing God will intervene with a miracle to prove it.

An eyewitness describes how she seemed unmoved.

She said little, but...

Cromwell must now be growing agitated.

This isn't going the way he thought.

He'd planned it all out very carefully.

He must have thought it was a done deal,

but now he senses the atmosphere changing

and he must be terrified that it's all going to go against him.

Because Anne has a hidden weapon.

She's not just the intellectual equal of most of the men there,

she's their superior.

Anne's had the benefit of an education abroad,

very unusual for a Tudor woman.

She stands apart in Henry's court

as somebody who champions the role of women, the qualities of women,

and her feistiness, if we can call it that,

is what attracts Henry.

He loves the fact she's different

to all the other women in his courts.

Well, he loves that when she's a mistress,

but when she becomes his wife, that's something else entirely

and he turns against her, at least partly for that reason.

Anne has been accused of adultery, a deeply serious allegation.

But then the next part of the indictment is read out.

Anne is also accused of having a sexual relationship

with her brother George, the crime of incest.

And the records spare no details

in describing the siblings' alleged affair.

There's quite a lot about the carnal contact and the lusting

and the secret associations of Anne and her brother.

They're talking about the Queen and her brother kissing.

The court records claim that Anne encouraged her brother.

"Alluring him with her tongue in the said George's mouth

"and the said George's tongue in hers..."

There's allegations of diabolical sorcery.

Witchcraft, as well. Yeah.

And lots of carnal lust.

She's presented, even in the language,

as someone who's not in control of her passions.

To make the charge of incest stand up,

Cromwell needs to provide some proof.

The evidence for Anne's incest with her brother is flimsy,

to say the least.

All it was was the fact that Anne had written to George telling him

that she was pregnant.

Well, that was taken to mean that the child was his.

And as if the incest wasn't devastating enough,

Cromwell also finds a way to really twist the knife.

It all gets deeply personal,

because as well as the incestuous relationship

between Anne and George,

it's recorded that they laughed at the King behind his back.

They made fun of his clothes, of his poetry.

It is deeply humiliating for Henry

and it's just another nail in Anne's coffin.

But to be sure this would stand up in court,

Cromwell needs to find someone who can testify.

In the run up to Anne's trial,

from his base in Austin Friars...

...in the depths of the city,

Cromwell's men scoured London

for juicy evidence.

What they come up with

is a star witness,

someone who confirms the incest between Anne and George.

What's remarkable about this is that the witness

is George's own wife, Lady Rochford.

This is a mind-blowing claim,

because she's incriminating her own husband.

Why on earth would she do this?

We know that they have an unhappy marriage.

So perhaps she's jealous of just how close George is

to his sister, Anne.

Whatever the case, it's clear she's out to get George

and to bring Anne down with him.

In the courtroom, Anne is still insisting on her innocence

and fighting off the evidence brought against her.

The atmosphere in the room begins to change as Anne defends herself

against the charges.

This is the woman who's the scandal of Christendom,

called "the great whore" and "the concubine".

And yet she's conducting herself with such wisdom and discretion

that people are beginning to sympathise with her.

It looks like it's gonna go her way.

Is it possible she will be found...

...not guilty?

Anne Boleyn, Queen of England and second wife of Henry VIII

is accused of adultery and incest.

At the start of her trial,

she appears to be a dead woman walking.

But now the atmosphere in the courtroom is starting to change.

Even her most bitter enemies are impressed by her robust defence.

Can she turn it all around?

The men Anne has been accused of adultery with

are her husband's most trusted and intimate courtier, Henry Norris,

along with William Brereton and Sir Francis Weston,

all members of the King's inner circle.

Worse still, it's claimed she committed incest

with her brother, George Boleyn.

But Mark Smeaton, the fifth man accused,

is of a much lower status.

He's a simple court musician.

15 clays ago, at Thomas Cromwell's house in Austin Friars,

Smeaton was interrogated for 24 hours.

All of the other men grilled by Cromwell

have totally denied the charges,

but Smeaton doesn't.

He cracks.

He claims that Anne singles him out for special attention.

He says that one morning, as she lay in bed,

she summoned him to play music, so her ladies could dance.

As she watched him, she decided to seduce him.

Mark admits to making love to the Queen on three occasions.

But was this true or was Mark Smeaton attempting

to save himself?

A servant witnesses the horror of Smeaton's interrogation

and casts doubt on his confession.

The account reads as follows.

"Then he called two stout young fellows of his...

"..and asked for a rope and a cudgeL

"And ordered them to put the rope, which was full of knots,

"around Mark's head.

"And twisted it with the cudgel until Mark cried out...

"..Sir Secretary..."

In Tudor times, torture could be used

as a way of getting people to admit guilt,

but it couldn't be used on members of the nobility.

Only commoners like Mark Smeaton.

I think it's no coincidence that he's the only one to confess.

There is one admission in particular by Smeaton that is hard to believe.

It tells of the extraordinary lengths Anne would go to

in order to get Smeaton into her bed.

The problem is, as Queen, Anne has very little privacy.

She's always surrounded by her ladies,

so she has to come up with a cunning plan

and it involves her most-trusted lady, Margaret,

whose bedroom lies right next to Anne's.

And it's also used to store dried fruits, sweet meats and marmalade.

According to Smeaton's confession, Margaret hides him behind a curtain

until the coast is clear.

Then Anne supposedly calls...

"Bring me a little marmalade."

...loud enough for any eavesdroppers to hear.

Margaret leads Mark into Anne's bed chamber and supposedly says,

"Here is the marmalade, my lady."

Anne tells her she may leave

and well, you can use your imagination for what happens next.

It's interesting to reflect on the likelihood of these charges,

because it's almost certain

that Anne did flirt with the men at court,

but then she'd been schooled in the art of what's known

as courtly love.

This is when a knight can court a woman far above him in status.

He can wear her colours at a tournament,

compose songs or poems, or even pursue her.

But always the woman stays just out of reach.

Although in reality, this behaviour did lead to sexual liaisons.

But Anne is Queen of England, after all.

She's hardly ever alone, always surrounded by her ladies.

She would have had to have taken a huge risk

to conduct an affair in secret.

There's also the fact that Anne is a woman

not lacking in self-control.

She'd kept Henry at bay for seven long years.

Would she really lack the discipline to stay faithful to him now?

While all the charges of sexual liaison, even incest,

might make Anne look like a scheming and lustful woman,

would there be enough to get rid of her completely?

Adultery was usually a crime for the church courts

that would have seen the guilty woman exiled to a convent.

But Henry wanted Anne gone...

...permanently.

So, adultery wouldn't have been enough

on its own to end Anne's life?

It would have made Henry very cross and it made him look incompetent

to the nation, which obviously he doesn't want to do.

But something more...more formal and damaging

has to be the final charge.

To ensure that Anne was disposed of forever,

Cromwell had to engineer a charge that was far more serious.

And he cooked up the most serious charge of all,

that Anne had been plotting the death of the King,

an act of high treason.

Henry is a very paranoid king by this time,

so it would be easy to convince him

that there's a plot afoot from amongst his gentlemen.

In the courtroom, Cromwell plays his trump card.

He declares his discovery that Anne has plotted the death

of the King.

And he claims to have evidence from one of the men

Anne is accused of sleeping with...

...Henry Norris.

Apparently, a couple of weeks before,

Anne had quarrelled with Henry Norris.

She'd asked him why he hadn't yet proposed to her cousin,

Lady Shelton, and he'd replied that he was going to wait and see,

which Anne took to mean that he was going to wait and hope

to marry her instead.

In court, written testimony from William Kingston,

the constable of the Tower,

says that when Henry Norris told Anne he was waiting,

she said...

"For if ought should come to the King but good..."

Well, this might all sound very flimsy and inconsequential,

but the implication here is that it's just a short step for Anne

from contemplating her husband's death to actually plotting it.

Cromwell has pulled off a master stroke.

Treason is as serious as it gets.

It's the ultimate crime and it's punishable only by death.

Even as Anne Boleyn sits calmly

listening to the evidence against her,

she's aware that her fate doesn't just rest on the trial today.

Three clays ago, there was another trial,

this time across London at Westminster Hall,

right in the heart of government.

Its outcome would profoundly affect Anne's situation.

Being judged are four of the five men she's accused

of having affairs with.

Henry Norris...

...William Brereton...

...Sir Francis Weston...

...and Mark Smeaton.

Ensuring the queen is convicted rests on finding these men guilty.

The men were brought here by barge from the Tower to Westminster Hall.

Well, today it's part of the Houses of Parliament,

but then, it was one of the most important law courts in the kingdom.

There are no surviving official records of the trial,

only eyewitness accounts.

Well, you have to imagine that this ancient hall is crowded

with people lining the walls on either side.

Courtiers, the jury, of course, and the men are led into the centre

where they stand.

You can imagine them gazing nervously around

and their hearts must have sank as they saw all those hostile faces

staring at them.

The men stand to hear the charges.

We have here a record of the attainder that's read out

against the men and it says...

"Each person at different times."

Like the Queen, they have no witnesses testifying for them.

They are only allowed to declare their guilt or their innocence.

They all say not guilty except one.

Mark Smeaton confesses that he had, quote,

"Carnal knowledge of the Queen three times."

The Lord Chancellor then reads out the sentence.

They are to be publicly...

Their members cut off...

...and burnt before them.

Their executions are postponed until after the verdict of Anne's trial.

Instead, they are returned to the Tower of London

to await their fate.

There are no records as to where the condemned men

are locked up within the Tower,

but I believe there are some clues etched into the ancient stonework.

As a historian and curator,

I spend a lot of time in historic buildings,

grand state rooms, examining archives and the like,

but this gives me an absolute thrill,

because graffiti like this gives you an insight into the past

like none other.

It really does feel like you're almost touching history.

This was left behind, quite possibly by the very men

who are accused of adultery with a queen of England.

The graffiti shows a carving of a falcon,

the emblem of the Boleyn family.

I think this gives us a little glimpse into the state of mind

of those men, if it was them who carved this,

because carving Anne's symbol

after they've been found guilty of adultery with her

is almost like an act of defiance.

They're still supporting her, even now, as they face death.

As the condemned men await their sentence,

just metres away in the Tower's Great Hall,

Anne's trial reaches its conclusion.

She's clone all she can to convince the court

that she deserves to go free.

Now, Anne must wait for the verdict.

At this point, Anne seems to think that justice will prevail

and she'll be found not guilty.

After all, she's conducted herself throughout the trial

like a woman who knows herself to be innocent.

All of the evidence that's been presented against her

has been questionable and her faith and belief

in her innocence are total.

As she and everyone else here awaits the verdict,

the tension must be palpable.

The judge and uncle, the Duke of Norfolk,

sends the jury to deliberate,

including her own father, Thomas Boleyn.

The room holds its breath.

It takes them just moments to reach their decision.

They are unanimous.

Anne is found guilty of treason.

It must have hit her like an electric shock.

Her mind must be spinning.

With the implications,

immediately she's stripped of her crown and her titles.

She is no longer Queen of England.

As Anne is still reeling from this, her uncle,

the Duke of Norfolk, sat there, delivers the sentence

and it's this.

"Because thou hast offended against our sovereign

"the King's grace in committing treason against his person,

"and here attainted of the same,

"the law of the realm is this,

"that thou hast deserved death.

"And thy judgment is this,

"that thou shalt be burnt,

"here within the Tower of London on the Green,

"or else to have thy head smitten off...

"..as the King's pleasure shall be further known."

Well, this is just horrific.

The sentence for treason is to either be burnt or beheaded.

Well, the latter is preferable, it's the swifter death,

but both are Anne's worst nightmare.

She hasn't seen this coming.

Now she knows that she's going to die.

We can only imagine what must be going through her mind,

but this is when Anne is extraordinarily courageous.

As the room erupts into chaos,

Anne's composure doesn't waver for a second.

Why is she so unmoved?

Is it just the shock?

That would be understandable,

but I can't help feeling it's something else.

And it's Anne's determination to show no fear,

no dismay in front of the men who have brought her down,

because that would hand them yet another victory.

Anne Boleyn has been found guilty

of the most serious crime imaginable.

High treason.

But is her fate sealed?

Surely she has the right to challenge the verdict.

Lawyer Afua Hirsch has been studying Anne's case.

I've never come across such a blatant unfairness.

Even by the standards of its day, it was a complete outrage.

Today, if you were in Anne's position

and the verdict went against you,

what recourse would you have?

Well, the obvious thing would be an appeal.

All of those things that are lacking in her first trial should

have been addressed in an appeal where an appealjudge would say,

"Well, what exactly is the evidence and what did the witnesses say?"

It's really a check on exactly this kind of abuse of process.

It's almost impossible now for somebody to be convicted

of the most serious sentence without an appeal.

The other thing that strikes me is the trial takes place

in a single day, probably a few hours, if that.

The idea that something this serious could be dealt with

in a few hours is absolutely abhorrent to me.

So if somebody is going to die, you would want to make sure

that everything has been done properly and in a fair way.

But perhaps the reason for all this unfairness

was the most sinister part of Anne's trial.

I think the real elephant in the room is obviously

King Henry VIII himself.

We have a monarch who is able to directly interfere

in legal proceedings,

bully and intimidate witnesses, judges.

And I suppose the thing that explains all of this blatant

unfairness is the fear that everyone must have had,

that if they didn't deliver the verdict the King wanted,

they would be next.

This is a trial in name only.

Nothing about this meets even the most basic standards of justice.

With the verdict delivered, silence descends on the courtroom.

Still with incredible dignity and poise, Anne delivers a speech.

She says, "l do not say that I have always borne

"towards the King...

"..the humility to which I owe him,

"considering the great honour and respect he always paid me.

"L admit too that...

It's such a well-thought-out speech and delivered without hesitation.

It's tempting to think that Anne has prepared in advance.

But remember, she doesn't believe that this is gonna happen.

She thoroughly believes she's innocent

and will be found such.

So, it seems that actually this speech is just delivered

from the heart.

To mark the guilty verdict, cannons fire...

CANNONS FIRE

...which reverberates across London.

In his palace at Westminster, the King hears the signal

and knows that the deed is done.

The coast is almost clear for him to marry Jane Seymour.

Anne is escorted out of the courtroom.

The guards turn their axe blades towards her.

As Anne is taken back to her apartment in the Tower,

her brother, George Boleyn,

is escorted into the Great Hall for his trial.

George, like Anne, defends himself eloquently,

but also, like Anne, he doesn't stand a chance.

He's found guilty

and taken back to the Tower, so that he can prepare for death.

Two clays have passed since Anne's trial.

Imprisoned, she still believes salvation is possible.

But then, near the Tower, something shocking happens.

Henry Norris, Mark Smeaton, William Brereton, Francis Weston

and George Boleyn have been brought up there on Tower Hill

for their execution.

Their only crumb of comfort is that they're to be given

the more merciful death of beheading,

rather than the traitor's death of hanging, drawing and quartering.

The first to be executed is George Boleyn,

because he's highest in rank.

Poor Mark Smeaton is the last.

By then, the block and the scaffold would have been covered in blood

and the axe would have been blunter.

Well, Anne may have seen the men being led out up to Tower Hill

for their execution.

And she may be watching now

as their bloodied remains are brought back.

With her co-accused now dead,

Anne must summon all her courage to stay strong,

as she hopes and prays

that the King will have mercy

and grant her a last minute reprieve.

Next time...

I investigate the events that took place on this spot

at the Tower of London on the 19th May 1536,

the day the Queen of England, Anne Boleyn, is due to be executed.