The Arrests of Anne and Her "Lovers"

On this day in Tudor history 1536, Sir Henry Norris, friend to the King and Groom of the Stool was taken to the Tower to await trial. He had been held over night at York Place but refused to confess to any wrong doing. Mark Smeaton was already imprisoned and George Boleyn, Lord Rochford was arrested that afternoon. During the arrests, Queen Anne had been busily watching a lively game of tennis at the Greenwich courts when she was interrupted by a messenger ominously telling her that the King had ordered her to present herself before his privy council. Anne left the match and appeared before the royal commission in the council chambers. The Council, made up of her uncle the Duke of Norfolk, Sir William FitzWilliam and Sir William Paulet informed her that she was being accused of committing the treasonous act of adultery with three different men and that Smeaton and Norris has already confessed. Anne was held under force in her chambers until the tide of the River Thames turned favorable and then, at two o'clock in the afternoon, she was rowed by barge to the Tower of London. Anne entered the Tower by the Court Gate of the Byward Tower, not Traitors' Gate as often reported. There she was met by Sir Edward Walsingham, the Lieutenant of the Tower. Walsingham escorted her to the Royal Palace, where Sir William Kingston, the Constable of the Tower was waiting. Not long after Kingston recorded was happened at their meeting in his correspondence with the King's minister Thomas Cromwell.

"On my lord of Norfolk and the King's Council departing from the Tower, I went before the Queen into her lodging. She said unto me, "Mr. Kingston, shall I go into a dungeon?' I said, 'No, Madam. You shall go into the lodging you lay in at your coronation. 'It is too good for me, she said; Jesu have mercy on me;' and kneeled down, weeping a good pace, and in the same sorrow fell into a great laughing which she has done many times since.
She desire me to move the King's highness that she might have the sacrament in the closet by her chamber, that she might prayer for mercy, for I am as clear from the company of man as for sin as I am clear from you, and am the King's true wedded wife. And then she said, Mr/ Kingston, do you know where for I am here? and I said, Nay. And then she asked me, When saw you the King? and I said I saw him not since I saw {him in} in the Tiltyard. And then Mr. Kingston, I pray you to tell me where my  Lord, my father is? And I told her I saw him afore dinner in the Court. O where is my sweet brother. I said I left him at York place; and so I did. I hear say, said she, that I should be accused with three men; and I can say no more by nay, without I should open my body. And there with opened her gown. O, Norris, hast thou accused me? Thou are in the Tower with me, and though and I shall die together; and, Mark, thou art here to. O, my mother, though wilt die with sorrow; and much lamented my lady of Worcester, for by cause that her child did not stir in her body. And my wife said, what should be the cause? And she said, for the sorrow she took for me. And the she said, Mr. Kynston shall I die without justice? And I said, the poorest of the King's subject hath, hath justice. And there with she laughed."

Perhaps Anne laughed because she had seen the King's "justice" at work and knew that things would likely not end well for her. Her fears were well founded as today in history 1536 began the process of the first judicial execution of a reigning Queen.

The Tower of London

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