0:00:03 > 0:00:06On the 19th May 1536,
0:00:06 > 0:00:10one of the most infamous episodes in English history
0:00:10 > 0:00:13moved towards its gruesome conclusion.
0:00:13 > 0:00:18Anne Boleyn became the first queen in Britain's history to be executed.
0:00:25 > 0:00:29On the face of it, the year 1536 began well for Anne Boleyn.
0:00:31 > 0:00:35Henry had divorced his first wife, Catherine of Aragon,
0:00:35 > 0:00:37and married Anne three years earlier.
0:00:41 > 0:00:46Catherine had refused to recognise Anne Boleyn as queen.
0:00:46 > 0:00:51But on 7th January 1536, Catherine died.
0:00:56 > 0:00:59In their favourite palace at Greenwich,
0:00:59 > 0:01:01the King and his new wife threw a party.
0:01:03 > 0:01:07To celebrate Catherine's death, Henry and Anne danced.
0:01:07 > 0:01:12And there are accounts of him and Anne coming out dressed in yellow,
0:01:12 > 0:01:16and this has been interpreted to be a sort of sign of unbecoming glee.
0:01:16 > 0:01:19So I think for Anne this is a great moment.
0:01:19 > 0:01:22Finally her old rival, her old enemy is dead.
0:01:25 > 0:01:28Anne had begun her rise to power ten years earlier.
0:01:29 > 0:01:32Although her family were commoners,
0:01:32 > 0:01:35they were notorious for their scheming ambitions.
0:01:35 > 0:01:39After a period of training in the French royal household,
0:01:39 > 0:01:41Anne made her debut at court
0:01:41 > 0:01:44and became a lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine.
0:01:54 > 0:01:58She came, at the age of about 21, to the English court
0:01:58 > 0:02:01and she seems to have burst upon it with a certain brilliance.
0:02:01 > 0:02:05And she was very confident, very stylish, very French.
0:02:05 > 0:02:09And it was said you would have taken her for a French woman born.
0:02:09 > 0:02:12And she clearly made an impact.
0:02:12 > 0:02:15She's obviously not a girl that everybody goes, like,
0:02:15 > 0:02:17"That's the prettiest girl at court".
0:02:17 > 0:02:21But I think she's probably the sexiest girl at court.
0:02:21 > 0:02:24She's very, very intelligent, she's very quick witted.
0:02:24 > 0:02:27There was a lot of discussion about theology.
0:02:27 > 0:02:29She has a genuine interest in that.
0:02:29 > 0:02:33So you've got a young woman of some substance.
0:02:35 > 0:02:37King Henry was infatuated.
0:02:37 > 0:02:41He bombarded Anne with love letters, begging her to become his mistress.
0:02:44 > 0:02:48But the new girl at court was a shrewd operator.
0:02:51 > 0:02:56We don't know to what extent she loved him, if she ever did,
0:02:56 > 0:02:59or if she operated on the basis of cold ambition.
0:03:01 > 0:03:05But she strikes me as a woman
0:03:05 > 0:03:09slightly too cool, detached and intelligent
0:03:09 > 0:03:12to stake everything on love.
0:03:17 > 0:03:19In a move of astonishing boldness,
0:03:19 > 0:03:23Anne told Henry she would settle for nothing less than to be his queen.
0:03:26 > 0:03:29And of course, for a king this is wildly exciting!
0:03:29 > 0:03:33Nobody's ever talked to him like this before.
0:03:33 > 0:03:36Nobody has ever effectively given him orders.
0:03:37 > 0:03:40So Henry made a momentous decision,
0:03:40 > 0:03:43to divorce his Spanish wife of 24 years.
0:03:46 > 0:03:50To do so Henry was forced to break with the Catholic Church in Rome
0:03:50 > 0:03:55and declare himself head of a new Church of England.
0:03:55 > 0:03:58So there were many who resented Anne Boleyn
0:03:58 > 0:04:01as a destructive and immoral force.
0:04:01 > 0:04:05There's this famous account of her being called a goggle-eyed whore.
0:04:05 > 0:04:08I think there is a sense that people feel that wrong has been done
0:04:08 > 0:04:12and that Catherine was the true queen and therefore Anne
0:04:12 > 0:04:16is a usurper and who has wormed her way into the King's bed.
0:04:16 > 0:04:20No woman had ever done what she did before.
0:04:22 > 0:04:27No woman had ever made that step from royal mistress to the throne,
0:04:27 > 0:04:31getting the queen, a real queen, out of the way.
0:04:31 > 0:04:35This is something utterly, completely extraordinary.
0:04:35 > 0:04:38It changes all the rules.
0:04:43 > 0:04:47After a six year legal battle Henry finally got his divorce
0:04:47 > 0:04:50and Anne Boleyn got her crown.
0:04:53 > 0:04:57And by 1536 she had another reason to be happy.
0:04:59 > 0:05:03She had already given birth to a daughter, the Princess Elizabeth.
0:05:03 > 0:05:05Now she was pregnant again.
0:05:05 > 0:05:08All she needed to do was bear Henry a son
0:05:08 > 0:05:11and her position as Queen would be secure.
0:05:21 > 0:05:26On 29th January 1536, after three years of marriage,
0:05:26 > 0:05:31Henry VIII's second wife, Anne Boleyn, suffered a miscarriage.
0:05:37 > 0:05:41Even worse, the unborn child was a boy.
0:05:44 > 0:05:46Desperate for a male heir to secure the dynasty,
0:05:46 > 0:05:48King Henry was devastated.
0:06:03 > 0:06:06But was it Anne Boleyn's failure to give Henry a son
0:06:06 > 0:06:09that set in motion the events which led to her downfall?
0:06:11 > 0:06:14Records from the period offer a clue into Henry's thinking.
0:06:17 > 0:06:20The day after the miscarriage he declared to a courtier
0:06:20 > 0:06:23that he had been charmed into marrying Anne
0:06:23 > 0:06:25by magic spells, or sorcery.
0:06:27 > 0:06:31But were these the wild words of a distraught husband?
0:06:31 > 0:06:33Or something more ominous?
0:06:34 > 0:06:40When Henry talks about enchantments, charms, magic tricks,
0:06:40 > 0:06:43Henry is beginning, it seems,
0:06:43 > 0:06:46to think about annulling his marriage to Anne.
0:06:47 > 0:06:50He cannot imagine what he ever saw in Anne Boleyn,
0:06:50 > 0:06:55and he cannot imagine why for her sake he broke with Rome,
0:06:55 > 0:06:58turned the politics of Europe upside-down.
0:06:58 > 0:07:03So he's thrashing about trying to find a reason, and he's saying,
0:07:03 > 0:07:07"Perhaps my marriage was always null and void
0:07:07 > 0:07:09"for lack of proper consent."
0:07:12 > 0:07:14But some perceive a different,
0:07:14 > 0:07:18darker tale in the story of Anne Boleyn's miscarriage.
0:07:21 > 0:07:25According to some accounts, Anne's miscarried child
0:07:25 > 0:07:27was found to have physical deformities...
0:07:29 > 0:07:33..clear evidence to 16th century minds of evil-doing.
0:07:35 > 0:07:36Anne miscarries a baby,
0:07:36 > 0:07:40and it's inspected by a midwife
0:07:40 > 0:07:44who says that it was a boy but it's malformed.
0:07:45 > 0:07:48Now, that's of enormous importance.
0:07:49 > 0:07:52The belief was, in the medieval world,
0:07:52 > 0:07:56was that if a woman gave birth to a deformed or a malformed foetus
0:07:56 > 0:08:00then what everybody would genuinely, thoroughly and sincerely believe,
0:08:00 > 0:08:04is that she's done a truly awful sin
0:08:04 > 0:08:08and that would be like adultery, like gross adultery,
0:08:08 > 0:08:11or it would be incest, or it might be witchcraft.
0:08:12 > 0:08:15When she loses the baby, you know, Henry,
0:08:15 > 0:08:21what he sees is conclusive evidence that his wife is not a good woman,
0:08:21 > 0:08:24and that his marriage is not blessed by God.
0:08:26 > 0:08:30And that's the least of his fears. I'm certain that he feels that.
0:08:30 > 0:08:34It may be that he goes further and believes that his wife is a witch.
0:08:38 > 0:08:41There's no indication, in the contemporary records,
0:08:41 > 0:08:46that this was anything other than a normal pregnancy with a sad end.
0:08:47 > 0:08:53The idea that Anne was delivered of a shapeless mass of flesh
0:08:53 > 0:08:58comes along 40 years later, to the best of my knowledge and belief,
0:08:58 > 0:09:03in the work of Nicholas Sander who was a Catholic propagandist.
0:09:03 > 0:09:08And a great edifice of speculation has been built up on this,
0:09:08 > 0:09:11so that it's, it's quite hard to remember
0:09:11 > 0:09:15that there is no evidence at the root of it all.
0:09:15 > 0:09:20This hypothesis, let's call it, is so sensational,
0:09:20 > 0:09:25so hair-raising and, of course, it's attractive to novelists.
0:09:25 > 0:09:31But there is, really it's just hot air.
0:09:33 > 0:09:35We will probably never know
0:09:35 > 0:09:38whether it was Anne's miscarriage that sealed her fate.
0:09:38 > 0:09:41Whatever King Henry's intentions, one thing seems beyond doubt.
0:09:41 > 0:09:47By March 1536, his infatuation with Anne Boleyn was over.
0:09:57 > 0:10:01Some historians believe that Henry VIII decided to get rid
0:10:01 > 0:10:05of Anne Boleyn in 1536 because she had failed to give him a son.
0:10:07 > 0:10:10But was Anne's downfall simply the result of a breakdown
0:10:10 > 0:10:11in her marriage to Henry?
0:10:13 > 0:10:16There were other dangerous tensions at work in the Tudor court
0:10:16 > 0:10:21between Anne Boleyn and King Henry's chief minister, Thomas Cromwell.
0:10:45 > 0:10:47In nomine Christus.
0:10:50 > 0:10:55On this day, when we remember the passion of our Saviour,
0:10:55 > 0:10:58we do well to recall his words in the temple -
0:11:00 > 0:11:03"Which of you can convict me of sin?"
0:11:04 > 0:11:09But Anne's chaplain appeared to have a particular courtier in his sights.
0:11:10 > 0:11:13Let us not forget the book of Esther
0:11:13 > 0:11:17and the sins of the wicked counsellor.
0:11:19 > 0:11:24Skip told the Biblical story of an evil royal adviser named Haman.
0:11:27 > 0:11:30But few in the chapel could have doubted who his real target was.
0:11:34 > 0:11:38Thomas Cromwell was Henry's chief political counsellor.
0:11:39 > 0:11:41Although the fortunes of Cromwell
0:11:41 > 0:11:44and Anne Boleyn were closely entwined,
0:11:44 > 0:11:46some believe that by 1536
0:11:46 > 0:11:49their relationship had reached a crisis point.
0:11:50 > 0:11:54Cromwell, by this stage, is minister of everything.
0:11:54 > 0:11:59There's very little business done in England that doesn't cross his desk.
0:12:00 > 0:12:04Cromwell is astute. He's omnicompetent.
0:12:04 > 0:12:06He's as clever as a bag of snakes.
0:12:08 > 0:12:12He's a supreme master of the political game.
0:12:12 > 0:12:18And he was, of course, one of the people who made the marriage possible
0:12:18 > 0:12:21but political divisions have crept in.
0:12:22 > 0:12:25Anne is not, as she had hoped,
0:12:25 > 0:12:29Henry's frontline political advisor.
0:12:29 > 0:12:31Cromwell is.
0:12:31 > 0:12:35And the King said, "Who is in the court?"
0:12:35 > 0:12:38And his servants said unto him,
0:12:38 > 0:12:41"Behold! Haman stands in the court."
0:12:42 > 0:12:45And the King said, "Let him come in."
0:12:45 > 0:12:49I think that sermon is totally extraordinary.
0:12:49 > 0:12:56To invoke Haman, it has to be directed, absolutely,
0:12:56 > 0:12:59full-on square at Cromwell himself.
0:12:59 > 0:13:01It's, it's throwing a grenade.
0:13:02 > 0:13:06And to do it in front of the King, in the Chapel Royal,
0:13:06 > 0:13:09surely it's a declaration of war.
0:13:09 > 0:13:12I think there is a power rivalry.
0:13:12 > 0:13:15I think Cromwell has come up since 1532
0:13:15 > 0:13:18and Anne fears her influence is waning,
0:13:18 > 0:13:21and I think there is this power struggle going on,
0:13:21 > 0:13:25so I think that Anne is feeling threatened by Cromwell
0:13:25 > 0:13:28but I think he's also feeling threatened by her.
0:13:28 > 0:13:30I think that's rather far-fetched.
0:13:30 > 0:13:32I don't really see the analogy.
0:13:32 > 0:13:35I don't quite see what Cromwell should have been the author of
0:13:35 > 0:13:38that Anne Boleyn would be so opposed to.
0:13:38 > 0:13:42And the assumption there is that Cromwell is a leading minister,
0:13:42 > 0:13:45that perhaps he is a controlling minister.
0:13:47 > 0:13:50I see Cromwell as very much the King's servant.
0:13:50 > 0:13:56I'm not convinced she would campaign to get rid of Cromwell in that way.
0:13:56 > 0:13:59I don't think that we can necessarily say that
0:13:59 > 0:14:03because her chaplain has said something, he's Anne's mouthpiece.
0:14:03 > 0:14:05We are making all sorts of leaps
0:14:05 > 0:14:07in order just to use this piece of evidence
0:14:07 > 0:14:11to suggest that Anne is opposed to Cromwell.
0:14:11 > 0:14:16I'm sorry. Forgive me, but why do you have the sermon invoking Haman?
0:14:16 > 0:14:21Why does Cromwell mention it three or four times in conversation?
0:14:21 > 0:14:26Sorry, if this isn't evidence, I don't know what is!
0:14:27 > 0:14:31Six centuries on, it is still hard to disentangle
0:14:31 > 0:14:35the troubled relationship between Anne, Henry and Cromwell.
0:14:45 > 0:14:48Nearly six centuries after Anne Boleyn's execution
0:14:48 > 0:14:50for treason and adultery,
0:14:50 > 0:14:54it's hard to establish exactly where the evidence against her came from.
0:14:56 > 0:14:59According to some accounts, in April 1536,
0:14:59 > 0:15:04a series of scandalous rumours about Anne began to spread through court,
0:15:04 > 0:15:06started by Anne's own ladies-in-waiting.
0:15:09 > 0:15:14One of Anne's ladies, Lady Worcester, was being told off
0:15:14 > 0:15:17by her brother for her loose living.
0:15:17 > 0:15:21She says, "Huh! Don't blame me!
0:15:21 > 0:15:25"It's nothing to what the Queen gets up to!"
0:15:25 > 0:15:27Or words to that effect.
0:15:27 > 0:15:29And to cut a long story short, she said,
0:15:29 > 0:15:32"If you think I'm bad you should see the Queen.
0:15:32 > 0:15:34"She entertains men late at night,
0:15:34 > 0:15:38"including her Mark Smeaton who's a musician at the Queen's court."
0:15:38 > 0:15:41The situation then explodes.
0:15:41 > 0:15:45Everything accelerates and the game changes.
0:15:46 > 0:15:48On 30th April the court musician
0:15:48 > 0:15:51Mark Smeaton was taken in for questioning.
0:15:54 > 0:15:58His interrogator was none other than Thomas Cromwell.
0:16:03 > 0:16:06Nobody knows what happened behind closed doors.
0:16:06 > 0:16:10But the outcome of their little chat would have fatal consequences.
0:16:12 > 0:16:16So he takes him back to his house, and questions him.
0:16:16 > 0:16:18We're not sure whether torture was used,
0:16:18 > 0:16:21some people say there was torture, other people say there wasn't.
0:16:21 > 0:16:23But he, remarkably, confesses.
0:16:23 > 0:16:26He says, "I had sex with the Queen on three occasions."
0:16:28 > 0:16:29That could have been fantasy,
0:16:29 > 0:16:33it could have been, if there was torture, you know, who knows?
0:16:33 > 0:16:35I would probably confess to having sex with the Queen
0:16:35 > 0:16:38if I was tortured and want it to stop. Wouldn't you?
0:16:40 > 0:16:43But amidst the torrent of lurid allegations,
0:16:43 > 0:16:47Anne stood accused of one particularly monstrous crime.
0:16:49 > 0:16:53According to rumours at court, she had been overheard talking
0:16:53 > 0:16:55with Sir Henry Norris a few days earlier.
0:16:57 > 0:17:01And the content of their discussion was to prove highly inflammatory.
0:17:04 > 0:17:06So they've been in her chamber and she's asked him
0:17:06 > 0:17:10why he hasn't got married yet and he says that he'd like to tarry a time.
0:17:10 > 0:17:12And she responds, and this is the crucial line,
0:17:12 > 0:17:15"You look for dead men's shoes,
0:17:15 > 0:17:19"for if aught came to the King but good, you would look to have me."
0:17:19 > 0:17:20In other words she's saying,
0:17:20 > 0:17:23"You want to marry me when my husband's dead, don't you?"
0:17:23 > 0:17:29Speculating about the King's death is an extremely dangerous matter.
0:17:32 > 0:17:34It's a short step from saying,
0:17:34 > 0:17:40"One day Henry will die", to saying, "And I hope it's soon".
0:17:40 > 0:17:44And it's a short step from saying, "I hope it's soon,"
0:17:44 > 0:17:47to saying, "Let's accelerate it".
0:17:47 > 0:17:52So Norris and Anne are coming very close to treason.
0:17:54 > 0:17:57Anne Boleyn's fall had been so sudden and so spectacular
0:17:57 > 0:18:02that today many believe she was the victim of a terrible injustice.
0:18:03 > 0:18:06But there is one other possible explanation
0:18:06 > 0:18:09for the extraordinary events of 1536.
0:18:10 > 0:18:13In the absence of any hard evidence of a conspiracy,
0:18:13 > 0:18:17one scholar at least believes Anne could have been guilty as charged.
0:18:17 > 0:18:21Why do we all assume that Anne Boleyn must have been innocent?
0:18:21 > 0:18:24Henry, I think, is committed to his marriage,
0:18:24 > 0:18:28then something happens to call his marriage into question
0:18:28 > 0:18:30and it happens suddenly.
0:18:32 > 0:18:37And this is where the accusations made by the Countess of Worcester,
0:18:37 > 0:18:40Anne's lady, seem to acquire a greater degree of plausibility.
0:18:40 > 0:18:42It makes sense.
0:18:42 > 0:18:46After all, she'd be in a position to know what she was talking about.
0:18:46 > 0:18:50It's difficult to see what motive she would have for making it up,
0:18:50 > 0:18:53because she must have realised it's a serious charge.
0:18:53 > 0:18:56With Smeaton, the difficulty
0:18:56 > 0:18:59is to explain why he should have confessed.
0:18:59 > 0:19:02Now, he may have been tortured,
0:19:02 > 0:19:04the sources are divided about that.
0:19:04 > 0:19:07Torture is not something which is
0:19:07 > 0:19:09commonly in use in Henry VIII's England.
0:19:09 > 0:19:12But there it is, he did confess.
0:19:12 > 0:19:14He never withdraws his confession,
0:19:14 > 0:19:18he never denies or says that he's made it under pressure.
0:19:18 > 0:19:22Anne Boleyn, her comments hint, again,
0:19:22 > 0:19:26at a rather intimate relationship, she teasing him.
0:19:26 > 0:19:29Erm, it's unusual.
0:19:29 > 0:19:32And even the Duke of Norfolk, her relative,
0:19:32 > 0:19:35describes her as a grand, great whore at one point.
0:19:35 > 0:19:38Erm, so it is just possible.
0:19:38 > 0:19:41And in the end, my hunch would be that Anne Boleyn
0:19:41 > 0:19:45did sleep with Mark Smeaton and Henry Norris.
0:19:45 > 0:19:50All the accusations that are made against Anne give various dates
0:19:50 > 0:19:52and say, "Oh, so Anne and um, you know,
0:19:52 > 0:19:55"at Hampton Court on the 7th of December, 1533,
0:19:55 > 0:20:00"did traitorously procure and incite said man to violate her."
0:20:00 > 0:20:03And we can disprove three quarters of them
0:20:03 > 0:20:06by proving that Anne wasn't in that palace at that time,
0:20:06 > 0:20:08or the man in question wasn't there.
0:20:08 > 0:20:11They are made up!
0:20:11 > 0:20:14But they're made up in order to achieve an end,
0:20:14 > 0:20:18which is to make sure that Anne doesn't come out of this alive.
0:20:25 > 0:20:28Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd