Was Anne Boleyn buried in the Tower of London and what were her crimes?

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Was Anne Boleyn buried in the Tower of London and what were her crimes?
By Stephen 14 hours 1 minute ago
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Anne Boleyn Queen of England and second wife to Henry VIII Anne Boleyn Queen of England and second wife to Henry VIII

Who was Anne Boleyn, for what crime was she executed for, is she really buried in the Tower or was her body spirited away to a secret resting place? Archnews set outs to explore and investigate one of the more bloody episodes of English history

Anne Boleyn, Queen of England and second wife of Henry VIII was executed within the grounds of the Tower of London.  Her crime was a trumpeted charge of adultery with two men of the court and incest with her brother.  The real reason for her execution was to remove Anne, who was an obstacle to Henry remarrying and having an heir.

After Henry set aside his first wife Catherine of Argon he broke with the Church of Rome to allow him to marry Anne.  Henry and Anne were married on 25th January 1533 and on the 23rd  May 1533 Anne was crowned Queen of England.

While Anne gave Henry a daughter, the future Queen Elizabeth I, she failed to produce the male heir that Henry was desperate for.  This failure caused Anne’s days as wife number two to be numbered, as already Henry by this time had identified a replacement, Jane Seymour, one of Anne’s ladies in waiting.

On April–May 1536, Henry had Anne investigated for high treason, adultery with two men of the court and incest with her brother. On the 2nd of May, she was arrested and sent to the Tower of London, where she was tried before a jury of her peers and found guilty on the 15rd of May. The punishment for this crime of adultery was to be burnt alive.   However Henry commuted the sentence to beheading by a sword within the Tower of London.

On the 17th of May 1536 George Boleyn Anne’s brother and the other accused men were executed on Tower Hill.  Two days later on the morning of the 19th of May, Anne accompanied by two female attendants, made her final walk from the Queen's House and was led to the scaffold.  There she met her death bravely and without fear or regret.

Her speech on the scaffold to the small group who had been invited to withness the excavation was moving and short.

“Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, for according to the law, and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that, whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I 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 if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. O Lord have mercy on me, to God I commend my soul."

Just before the sword man took her head from her body she was heard to uter her final words. "To Jesus Christ I commend my soul; Lord Jesus receive my soul."

While Anne's execution was efficiently planned and organized , the execution committee failed to organized any kind of funeral or even provide a proper coffin for her.

According to an eyewitness Anne’s ladies in waiting dealt with the disposal of her body.  However it took some time before a coffin was found, which was an empty arrow chest and in this they placed her head and body.

Anne was then buried in front of the High Altar  along with her brother within the Chapel of St Peter's ad Vincula (St Peter in Chains) within the Tower precincts adjacent to the spot where the execution took place.

However in the middle of the 19th century, the entire Tower was "restored," including the chapel, which had fallen into a major state of disrepair.  Unfortunately, much of the "restoration" was badly done, resulting in some serious alteration and damage to the original fabric of the buildings, which also included the chapel.

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Queen Victoria when told of the burials under the chapel floor while been given a tour of the restoration, ordered that the remains be exhumed and reburied.  Only 30 of the burials under the floor were positively identified including the bodies of Anne, Jane Grey and Katherine Howard, Henrys forth wife also executed for adultery.

There has been much debate about if the remains found did indeed belong to Anne, and for this we are totally dependant on the opinion of Dr. Mouat who was given the task to examine the remains.

He was of the opinion that the remains must be Queen Anne’s due to a number of factors.  The body was found alongside George Boylan (identified by a lead burial plate on the body).  The body was female and was in an elm arrow chest.  It had been decapitated and the head was with the body.  People executed by beheading had their heads placed on London Bridge, Annes was one of the very few with the head buried with her. Finally the location under the main High Altar matched the location of the eyewitness to the burial.

The bones of several women, including but not limited to Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard, and Jane Grey where then interred in a common grave or vault beneath the wall to the left of the High altar.

There is a single marker plaque recording the names of the persons buried together.  This also specifically states that they are interred together and several feet away from the marker.  This means the marker is not over the exact spot of the burials.

I have spoken in detail to one of the experts of the Tower about these burials and their location.  He believes that the collected bones were deliberately placed in a spot that then made them inaccessible.   The marker was then placed away from that spot, specifically to prevent future grave robbing by possible souvenir hunters or vandals, including 19th century personnel of the Tower.   While public tours point out the individual spots where the three Queens of England are buried, it’s a ploy to keep the tourists happy and is not actually correct.

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There is a myth that sometime after her execution her body was confiscated by family or friends and buried elsewhere. This has surfaced a number of times and was a very popular myth in the 19th Century.  Even an highly respected writer of the status of Charles Dickens wrote a fictional account of the moving of Anne’s body from the tower to her family tomb.

In 1842, a book called The Life of Anne Boleyn” by Agnes Strickland recorded the folklore in Anne’s local area in regards to her final resting place as follows;

“In Anne Boleyn’s native county, Norfolk, a curious tradition has been handed down from father to son for upwards of three centuries, which affirms that her remains were secretly removed from the Tower Church under the cover of darkness, and privately conveyed to Salle Church, the ancient burial place of the Boleyn’s; and there the body was interred at midnight, with the holy rites that were denied to her by her royal husband, at her first unhallowed funeral”

This myth continued to be popular and in 1858 in a book called “The Queens of England” by Francis Lancelott he says that;

“The remains of the unfortunate Anne Boleyn, covered with a sheet, were placed by her maids in an elm chest and immediately afterwards buried by the side of her fellow victims, in the chapel of the Tower, without singing or prayer; but her friends returned at midnight and disinterred them, and conveyed them away in secret, buried them in Salle Church, in Norfolk”

However the idea is highly controversial and one that cannot be backed with sufficient evidence.  I would go further that the idea has no foundation for the following reasons.  It would have been extremely hard to move the body without the knowledge of the authorities.  I find it even harder to believe that Henry VIII would have granted permission for the relocation such was his determination to wipe her name from history. 

Moreover I find it hard to believe that Anne’s family who were busy distancing themselves from her in the last days, would then proceed to attempt to move her body.  Anne’s own father Thomas Boyleyn was one of the driving forces that over saw the conviction and execution of his daughter Anne and his only son George to save his own skin.  It would make no sense to endanger his life, titles and propriety to move Ann’s body to the family tomb.  If he did why did he also not move the body of his son George.

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The fact was after Anne’s death, all mention of her name was kept to the bare minimum.   If any one were to raise the issue regarding a new burial place for her would have only resulted in her name resurfacing, which would have brought great displeasure from Henry.  As a man not noted for his understanding, good temper or his indeed his forgiveness, A man who had exicuted his best friend Sir Henrey More, it was not a good idea to gain his displeasure.   For this reason more than any it is more than probable that her remains along with her memory were neglected and left be.

When we think of Anne Boyleyn and her remains along with the other victims of that time entombed in Chapel of St Peter's ad Vincula we should consider the  words of the Victorian historian, Lord Macaulay, who said;

“To this sad place were "carried, through successive ages, by the rude hands of gaolers, without one mourner following, the bleeding relics of men who had been the captains of armies, the leaders of parties, the oracles of senates, and the ornaments of courts."

 

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