Original subtitles

It's the early hours of the 19th of May, 1536.

Four clays ago, Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, was tried here

at the Tower of London and found guilty of adultery,

incest and, even worse,

treason against her husband, King Henry VIII.

She's been condemned to die.

It's a stark reminder of just how quickly her star has fallen.

I'm historian Tracy Borman.

Over three nights, I'm exploring the extraordinary 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've already seen how Anne was arrested, tried

and sentenced to death.

Now, in this final episode, I'm focusing on the darkest day

of all - the 19th of May, 1536, the day Anne is set to be executed.

I'll discover the order issued by King Henry VIII,

which decides Anne's fate.

It's sad that behind this very bureaucratic document

is a real person who's going to suffer a butchering, basically.

Will the King grant her a last-minute reprieve?

Or is this Anne's final clay?

It's the dead of night.

Nearly all of London is asleep.

But not quite everyone.

At the Tower of London, the Yeomen Warders are patrolling the grounds,

their prisoners secure inside.

Unsurprisingly, in the Queen's apartments,

where Anne is spending her final hours,

everyone is awake.

Although it's just a few hours until Anne's execution, she seems

remarkably composed, even cheerful, laughing and joking with her ladies.

The Constable of the Tower, Sir William Kingston,

reports that Anne's moods swing between despair and hope.

He writes, "l have seen many men and also women executed,

"and all they have been in great sorrow..."

MAN: "..but, to my knowledge, this lady has much joy

"and pleasure in death."

Maybe Anne is thinking that King Henry will intervene

and save her at the 11th hour,

or perhaps she's just resigned to her fate.

After all, her marriage is over.

She's lost all of her power and status,

her family has abandoned her

and she's been found guilty of the most evil of crimes.

Perhaps she just wants to be put out of her misery.

At his base in Austin Friars,

the man who is determined Anne will die today is sleeping.

The King's chief advisor, Thomas Cromwell.

Just three years ago, Cromwell masterminded Henry's marriage

to Anne, hoping she'd give the King a son, but she hasn't.

Cromwell and Anne are now at loggerheads,

giving him the perfect opportunity to get rid of her.

Now, the final part of his plan is falling into place.

Two clays ago, the five men accused of adultery

with Anne, including her own brother, George, have been taken

from inside the tower up to Tower Hill, where they were executed

in full public view.

Anne, on the other hand, is to have a private execution.

She's to be the first person to be officially executed

inside the walls of the tower.

This means that they had to build a scaffold and quickly.

But why the need for such a rush?

Cromwell wants to get Anne's execution over and done with

as quickly as possible,

before the notoriously fickle King Henry changes his mind.

A short distance upriver at Whitehall,

the King is sleeping in his private apartments.

In a matter of hours, he hopes to be rid of Anne,

the woman who has failed to give him a son.

As King, he needs a male heir to continue the Tudor dynasty.

Already waiting in the wings is the woman he hopes will replace Anne

and provide him with a son - Jane Seymour,

Anne's former lady-in-waiting.

Over the last few weeks,

Thomas Cromwell has been working tirelessly to make it happen.

He's managed to get Anne sentenced to death on trumped-up charges.

Now, he has to make sure her daughter Elizabeth

can HGVGI' become QUGGH.

But to do this, he must wipe the marriage from existence.

It's vital for Henry to have the marriage annulled.

A divorce won't do - he wants it never to have happened

in the first place.

Nothing must get in the way of the male heir

Henry now hopes to have with Jane Seymour.

Three clays ago, Cromwell persuaded the Archbishop

of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer,

to write off Henry's marriage to Anne.

Even though Cranmer has serious doubts about Anne's guilt,

he agrees to Cromwell's request, perhaps to save his own skin.

He says, "On the basis of some true, just..."

"..and legitimate causes recently brought to our attention,

"the marriage was null and void, and had always been so,

"which made Anne's daughter,

"henceforth to be known as the Lady Elizabeth, a bastard."

This is yet another blow for Anne because it means that her precious

daughter, Elizabeth, is now technically illegitimate

and has no right to the throne.

It seems that Anne's legacy will be completely destroyed.

Today, two miles upriver from the tower at Lambeth Palace,

Thomas Cranmer, like Anne Boleyn, is unable to sleep.

Cranmer is a firm supporter of Anne.

Cranmer's mind must be spinning.

In a way, he knows Anne better than anyone because he's acted

as her personal confessor.

Anne is deeply religious.

If she had done anything wrong,

she would have told Cranmer in order to seek forgiveness

and be received into heaven.

But even though he granted the annulment of her marriage

to Henry, Cranmer is astounded at the charges.

It's interesting because the fact that Cranmer is so shocked

and distraught by the allegations

must mean he believes her to be innocent.

In fact, he told Henry he is...

"..amazed, for I never had a better opinion of woman."

He must be desperately hoping that the King will change his mind,

but he's also painfully aware that time is quickly running out.

As Cranmer paces around his garden,

a close friend, Alexander Ales, arrives by boat.

Ales is in an agitated state.

He tells Cranmer that he's been awoken by a terrible nightmare

and recounts it all in gory detail.

"It was revealed to me - whether I was asleep or awake, I know not -

"the Queen's neck after her head had been cut off,

"and this so plainly that I could count the nerves,

"the veins and the arteries."

Cranmer believes this is a premonition.

Ales has not left home for clays,

so how could he know Anne is about to be executed?

He later recounted that Cranmer looked up to the sky and declared...

"She, who has been the Queen of England upon Earth,

"will today become a queen in heaven."

He is now utterly overcome with grief.

Despite believing Anne is innocent, Cranmer is losing hope that the King

will grant a reprieve and save her from the sword.

Time...is running out.

Anne is just six hours from execution.

It's dawn.

Anne is in the Queen's apartments at the tower.

She's with her chaplain, receiving her final communion.

But this is a repeat of what happened yesterday when Anne

was supposed to be executed,

yet it was postponed not once, but twice.

Why is this?

One theory is that Cromwell is worried there will be protests

at the tower in support of Anne.

People are starting to mutter against the guilty verdict...

...and Cromwell needs time to clear them out of the tower

before the execution can take place.

This is torture for Anne.

They say hope is harder to deal with than despair,

and perhaps growing within her is a notion that the King

is having second thoughts.

Anne, still in her apartments, is preparing to face the world

for the last time.

Her distraught ladies-in-waiting dress her.

Hi, Eleri. Hi, Tracy.

She carefully chooses every item of clothing to send a message

to those watching her execution.

Eleri Lynn is a world expert in Tudor clothing.

She's reconstructing what Anne wore.

Well, we know that she was wearing a red kirtle,

so that's what we understand to be an underdress.

A red kirtle was quite a sort of normal thing to wear

in the 16th century.

Peasants wore red, scarlet petticoats,

so it may be that she was wearing it to appear humble,

so she's sort of one of the people.

But it also plays to that idea of humility,

and that's certainly what she wants to project now.

Educated on the Continent, Anne famed for her flamboyant,

French style of dress.

She usually wears rich, colourful, imported fabrics.

But today, for her outer gown, she chooses something

much more subdued.

I think the choice of the grey or the black fabric is quite

important because that is the colour of piety

and sobriety at court.

It's the colour of the officials and the lawyers.

All played to Anne trying to be quite meek, which is not

what she's known to be, otherwise.

I think what she's actually doing here is dressing down.

She's using everything possible in her armoury

to try and get out of this.

Anne is guilty of treason, punishable by death.

But the jury didn't specify the method of execution.

A Queen of England has never before been sentenced to death,

so this is new territory.

Deep within the National Archives lies an extraordinary and rarely

seen document that provides a glimpse

into how the decision was made.

Tucked away inside a 500-year-old book is something truly remarkable -

a record of the execution warrant for Anne Boleyn.

It sets out how she's to die.

The penalty under the Treason Act

that this all would have proceeded under for a woman would be to be

burned and for a man to be hanged, drawn and quartered.

Burning is a slow, excruciating death.

Beheading isn't that much better,

at least with an axe, because axes can be very blunt - it can take

several blows to sever a head.

But the document reveals that, for Anne, Henry chooses

an alternative method of execution.

So they've made a record and that's where he says...

"..we, moved by pity, not wishing the Lady Anne be burned, direct the

"Constable of the Tower that on the green within the

"Tower of London, the said Anne shall have her head

"cut from her body."

Because, of course, Henry orders a sword rather than an axe, the axe

being blunt, a more kind of brutal form of death,

so that that wording could be significant -

"cut away", not "chopped away".

Yeah, I think this is, again, some sense of mercy

in the King's involvement in the process.

When Anne is told of Henry's decision that she's to be beheaded

by sword, she shows her dark sense of humour.

She puts her hands around her neck and laughs heartily and says,

"lt'll be a swift death because I have just a little neck."

These instructions for Anne's execution were sent to the tower

just yesterday, giving Sir William Kingston,

the Constable of the Tower, little time to prepare.

What this document does make very, very clear is the unprecedented

nature of all of this, that a Queen of England

has never been executed before.

They have to get it right.

And worryingly for any future wives, now they know exactly

what to do next time.

Beheading by sword is a French method of execution,

so the King has summoned an expert swordsman from Saint-Omer in France.

He arrived at the tower yesterday and soon he will have the daunting

task of being the first man to execute an English Queen.

There's something quite intriguing about the timeframe here,

because somebody would have had to have gone to summon the swordsman.

You can't just pick up a phone in those clays,

and obviously travel is a lot slower,

so they would have travelled down from London to Dover by horse

and then, of course, sailed over the channel and on to Calais,

and, from there, it was a bit further on to Saint-Omer,

where the swordsman was.

That would have taken at least three clays and then, of course,

at least three clays for the swordsman to travel back.

That's six clays in total at least.

This is a damning piece of evidence because what it means

is that, incredibly, the swordsmen must have been summoned

before the verdict of Anne's trial was delivered just five clays ago.

It was a foregone conclusion.

Whatever Anne does or says,

it seems she's going to be executed.

This is meant to be a private execution, to preserve Anne's

dignity and to prevent anyone from trying to rescue her,

so the public were ordered to leave the tower.

But the gates have accidentally been left open, so now crowds

are gathering in anticipation of the execution.

A thousand people have come in, people of all ranks of society,

to witness what is about to unfold here on the scaffold.

It seems incredible to think that people would willingly choose

to come and watch as a person's head is severed from their body,

but it's like the grim fascination we have with crime dramas

or watching as the latest celebrity is shamed by the media,

only this is much worse.

Among those gathering are men from the King's council,

including Anne's uncle, the Duke of Norfolk.

There is also the King's illegitimate son,

the Duke of Richmond.

Well, he's there perhaps as a reminder to Anne that the King

has no trouble fathering sons.

Then the architect of Anne's downfall arrives.

Thomas Cromwell.

He's about to witness the concluding part

of his plan to dispose of Anne Boleyn.

Everything is in place for the execution.

Sir William Kingston now heads

for the Queen's apartments to summon Anne.

Time is running out.

At the Tower of London, in the Queen's apartments,

Anne Boleyn is dressed and waiting to be called.

It's the job of the Constable of the Tower, Sir William Kingston,

to make sure Anne's execution all goes to plan.

With the time approaching, he heads over to collect her.

Kingston arrives at Anne's door.

You can only imagine what she's thinking at this moment

because, on the one hand, it's what she's been dreading all along.

Perhaps she is hoping that, against the odds, Kingston has come

with a message from the King informing her that he has come

to his senses and she will be pardoned.

Well, if she does hope that, it's soon shattered

when Kingston tells her to make ready for her execution.

Anne replies, calmly...

"..acquit yourself of your charge...

"..for I have long been prepared."

It seems extraordinary that Anne is so ready to meet her fate

and it's a real testament to her strength of character.

Her great enemy, Ambassador Chapuys, once remarked...

"..she was braver than a lion."

His words were never more true than on this,

the last day of her life.

Upriver at his palace in Whitehall is the one man who can put a stop

to the execution.

The King.

But there's no sign he's about to change his mind.

As he's dressed by his gentlemen,

he's listening out for cannon fire from the Tower of London.

This will signal that Anne is dead and he's free to remarry.

Anne is about to be led by Sir William Kingston

from the sanctuary of her apartments...

...through Coldharbour Gate

to the scaffold on the other side of the White Tower,

where she'll be executed.

She is to be accompanied by her four ladies-in-waiting.

There's a terrible irony to all of this.

The last time Anne was here was just three years ago

for her coronation celebrations.

Her story has come full circle.

Anne, her ladies and Kingston are met by a procession of 200 Yeomen

of the King's Guard, followed by the officers of the tower

and her chaplain.

She is escorted the short distance towards the Coldharbour Gate.

She knows that what awaits her around that corner

is the scaffold.

The masked spectators are desperate

to get a glimpse of the fallen Queen...

WHISPERS

...and she also sees, for the first time, the scaffold

where she's to be beheaded.

There's a hushed silence as she walks through the crowd.

People comment that she's never looked more beautiful.

Even now, with time running out, Anne is looking all around her

as if hoping to see a messenger from the King carrying a royal pardon.

But there is no messenger.

Among the crowd, Anne sees familiar faces.

These are the men who once raised her to be Queen.

Her own uncle, the Duke of Norfolk,

and the architect of her downfall...

...Thomas Cromwell.

They are here to make sure Anne's life and her powerful influence...

...are destroyed...

...permanently.

Kingston helps Anne to mount the steps onto the scaffold.

She turns to her ladies, who are weeping, and comforts them,

and then she sees the executioner,

who's looking apprehensive at what he is about to do.

What Anne doesn't see is the sword...

...which is hidden underneath the straw, so as not to alarm her.

Anne asks Kingston for permission to speak.

She doesn't look like someone who's about to be executed.

Eyewitnesses say that she's smiling

and it's with such a cheerful countenance

that she turns to address the crowds.

"Good, Christian people, I am come hither to die

"for, according to the law and by the law, I am judged to die."

"Therefore, I will speak nothing against it.

"L come hither to accuse no man,

"nor to speak anything of that

"whereof I am accused and condemned to die.

"But l pray»-

"..God save the King and send him long to reign over you,

"for a gentler, nor a more merciful prince

"was there never.

"And to me, he was ever a good,

"a gentle and sovereign Lord.

"And thus, I take my leave of the world and of you all.

"And I heartily desire you all to pray for me.

"Oh, Lord, have mercy on me.

"To God, I commend my soul."

Anne's words reduce many spectators to tears.

Well, this is an incredibly humble speech, perhaps not what we expect

of Anne, the woman renowned for her feistiness and outspoken manner.

What's she actually saying here?

Well, I think she's trying to make the King look kindly

on those whom she leaves behind,

none more so than their daughter, Elizabeth.

Then Anne is invited to confess the truth.

But instead, she replies...

"l know I shall have no pardon,

"but they shall know no more from me."

She is maintaining her innocence right to the very end.

The swordsmen takes off his shoes

so that Anne won't hear him approach.

Anne removes her headdress, one of her ladies hands her a linen cap.

She tucks her hair inside so it won't get in the way of the sword.

The executioner steps forward, kneels before Anne

and begs her forgiveness for what he's about to do.

He asks Anne to kneel and say her prayers.

The crowd falls to its knees.

It's time...

...for the execution.

The executioner picks up his sword

as Anne Boleyn kneels down on the scaffold.

Her eyes are bandaged.

Dazed, she says, "jesu, you have pity on my soul."

The crowd falls completely silent.

The next thing to happen is that the swordsmen signals to an assistant,

who makes a noise, distracting Anne.

The executioner's hands tremble in distress.

And in that moment, the executioner swings his sword twice over his head

to gain momentum and then in one strike, severs Anne's head.

GHASTLY WHISPERS

DISTORTED VOICES ECHO

Anne's head falls to the straw on the scaffold.

Horrified eye witnesses claim they can see her lips still moving

in silent prayer.

People begin to weep.

The Queen of England, as she was, is dead.

One of Anne's ladies bravely picks up her head

and covers it in a linen cloth, the blood still dripping from it.

The other three ladies, deeply distressed

and refusing to let any man touch her, pick up her body,

and together they carry Anne away.

CANNONBALL BLASTS

MAN SHOUTS

Cannons at the tower fire out, reverberating across London,

announcing that the Queen of England is dead.

MAN SHOUTS AND CANNONBALL BLASTS

At Whitehall, the King hears the cannons.

CANNONBALL BLASTS

It's the signal he's been waiting for.

Henry takes no time to mourn Anne's loss

or even to celebrate it with a great feast as he had the death

of his first wife, Catherine.

Instead, he boards his royal barge and travels the short distance

upriver to Chelsea and into the arms of the waiting Jane Seymour.

At the tower, Anne's body is laid to rest.

Not in a coffin, but in an old arrow chest.

It's been taken from the tower's weapons store,

which is right next to the execution site.

Well, you might think there isn't room for a body in an arrow chest,

but the arrows are actually laid end to end like this,

so it is actually quite long, but it is also narrow.

So it's quite lucky that Anne was a very slender lady.

But why hasn't anyone prepared a proper coffin?

Anne was once Queen of England.

It could simply be because there was no time to source a coffin.

After all, Cromwell had rushed through the Queen's execution

as quickly as possible.

I wonder, though, if there is another reason.

Responsibility for the execution and all of the arrangements for it

lies with William Kingston, Constable of the Tower.

Is it possible that he, like Anne,

didn't really believe that Henry would go through with the execution?

Anne's body is brought here to the Tower Chapel,

where it's stripped of her jewellery and her expensive,

but bloodstained clothes.

Incredibly, Henry will pass the jewels and clothing

of his dead wife onto his new wife, Jane Seymour.

At midday, three hours after Anne's execution,

she's buried in the chancel next to her brother, George.

Every year on May the 19th, the anniversary of Anne's execution,

an anonymous bouquet of red roses is delivered to the tower.

They are to be laid just over there

on the spot where Anne Boleyn was buried in 1536.

It's touching to think that Anne is still remembered

almost 500 years after her death.

In executing Anne, Thomas Cromwell has pulled off a massive coup.

He has got rid not just of the Queen of England,

but of all her faction.

Cromwell goes on to become the most powerful man in England

after the king.

But as Anne Boleyn learned, no-one is safe in the Tudor court.

In a dramatic twist of fate, he falls from Henry's favour.

Four years later, he, too, is executed.

There's a final postscript to this story.

After Anne's execution,

Henry and Cromwell tried to erase her from history.

Her letters and portraits were destroyed and her initials

and emblems that once adorned the royal palaces were removed.

But there was one thing they couldn't get rid of,

despite being Queen for just three years,

Anne left England one of its greatest legacies.

22 years later, against all odds,

her daughter was crowned Queen Elizabeth I.

She ruled for 44 years.

At the Prime Minister's country home, Chequers, is evidence

that Elizabeth never forgot her mother.

We now find ourselves in the great parlour...

Curator Rodney Melville is giving me exclusive access

to a ring worn by the Queen that contains a secret.

So, here we have Elizabeth's ring.

Oh, this is just incredible to see.

And if you lift the E in diamonds...

It's so delicate.

That's incredible.

There is Anne with her very characteristic French hood...

That's right. ..and then facing her, Elizabeth, her daughter.

Look at that, it's just exquisite.

It's wonderful, isn't it?

And the face shape, you can see, Anne had a very long, slim face...

Yes. ..exactly as is shown here.

But it's just so intricate, isn't it?

It's absolutely beautiful. It is amazing.

What a piece of history.

I have written about this - I've never seen it in the flesh.

As a historian, it doesn't get much better than seeing this.

So, thank you. HE CHUCKLES

Elizabeth kept her feelings about her mother private,

but she cherished this ring.

It's said it was removed from her finger on her deathbed.

If you look at the portrait of Anne Boleyn,

right at the bottom, there is a diamond. Mm.

Whereas Elizabeth I only has a ruby.

Huh?

So her mother's jewels are superior.

Is this Elizabeth kind of deferring to Anne?

Very possibly.

That's remarkable.

Yet another show of respect, of reverence...

Yes. ..even, for her late mother. Yes. Yes, I think so.

There's one other intriguing aspect of this ring.

Elizabeth wore pearls a lot.

It symbolised her, her virginity, her purity.

And I think it's quite interesting

that this ring is fashioned from mother of pearl.

That idea of purity, of innocence, and Anne is there.

Elizabeth was said to rarely speak of her mother,

but this ring speaks for her.

It seems to show what Elizabeth

really felt about the woman condemned as an adulteress.

What it also very, very clearly illustrates

is Anne's most valuable legacy.

Her daughter, of course. Yes.

Who was a disappointment at the time of her birth. Yes.

And really was the beginning of the end for Anne.

But little did Henry know that it was his reviled second wife

who would give him his most successful child.

To think that this was on Elizabeth's finger...

Yes. It's amazing.

When I set out on this journey to follow three very significant clays

at the end of Anne's life,

I had so many assumptions about Anne and her story.

But re-examining the evidence in real time,

rather than looking back, has shattered those ideas.

Stripping back the layers of rumour and downright lies

that have surrounded Anne for 500 years

makes it clear just how groundless the case against her was

and how courageous she was in the face of it all.

Living Anne's story with her, day by day and hour by hour,

has brought home to me just how deeply shocking it was

to execute a Queen of England.

It's also made me realise that most people didn't really believe

Henry VIII would go through with it - above all, Anne herself.