85 Ibid
86 Wriothesley
87 SC
88 Churchill
89 SC
90 LP
91 Ives: “Faction”
92 Froude, Note D in Thomas (LP 911)
93 Ives: “Fall Reconsidered”
94 Starkey: Six Wives
95 LP
96 Burnet
CHAPTER 11: FIGHTING WITHOUT A WEAPON
1 Wriothesley
2 Deans
3 Carles
4 Wriothesley
5 Carles
6 Younghusband
7 Carles
8 There is a fifteenth century ceremonial axe in the Tower of London, but it is not known if this was the axe carried at Anne Boleyn’s trial.
9 Carles
10 Aless
11 SC
12 Wriothesley; Carles
13 Wriothesley
14 Spelman
15 Carles
16 Childs; Fox
17 LP
18 This word is often mistranslated as “medals” (medailles), but is more likely to be “metals” (metals).
19 LP
20 Ibid
21 Wriothesley; Ridley: Henry VIII
22 LP
23 Ibid
24 Wriothesley
25 Burnet
26 LP
27 Cavendish: Metrical Visions
28 Dunn
29 Harleian manuscripts
30 LP
31 Milherve; Spelman
32 Fox
33 Rivals in Power
34 Hastings
35 Wriothesley
36 Baga de Secretis
37 State Trials
38 Loades: Henry VIII and His Queens
39 George Wyatt
40 Carles
41 Additional Manuscripts
42 Carles; LP
43 LP
44 Levine
45 Ibid
46 Kelly
47 Cited by Erickson: First Elizabeth
48 Harleian manuscripts
49 Warnicke
50 Wriothesley; Carles; Constantine; Baga de Secretis
51 Doran states that burning was the penalty for incest, but incest did not become a crime in England until 1583.
52 SC; LP; Ives
53 LP
54 Ibid
55 Carles
56 LP
57 Spelman
58 Anthony
59 Harleian manuscripts
60 LP
61 SC
62 LP
63 Harleian manuscripts
64 Impey and Parnell; Fraser
65 LP
66 Wriothesley
67 Carles incorrectly states that Rochford was tried before Anne.
68 Wriothesley
69 SC; Carles; Thomas Fuller; Excerpta Historica (LP 1107); George Wyatt; Foxe
70 SC
71 LP
72 Ibid
73 Carles
74 Excerpta Historica (LP 1107)
75 Loades: Henry VIII and His Queens
76 LP
77 Denny: Anne Boleyn
78 Norton
79 Dunn
80 Kittredge
81 Kelly
82 Cited by Denny: Katherine Howard
83 Fraser
84 SC
85 Warnicke
86 Erickson: Bloody Mary
87 LP
88 Carles
89 The site of the public gallows at Tyburn is by Marble Arch in London.
90 Wriothesley
91 Cited by Hamer
92 LP; Carles
93 LP
94 Wriothesley
95 LP
96 Ibid
97 VC
98 LP
99 Ibid
CHAPTER 12: JUST, TRUE, AND LAWFUL IMPEDIMENTS
1 Chapman: Anne Boleyn
2 Loades: Henry VIII and His Queens
3 LP
4 LP. The original is Cotton Lib. Otho C.10.
5 Rymer; Wilkins; Ridley: Henry VIII
6 Statutes of the Realm
7 Ibid
8 Wriothesley (editorial notes)
9 Warnicke
10 Loades: Henry VIII and His Queens
11 Wriothesley
12 LP. Ellis, the editor of Original Letters, misread Kingston’s text, and mistook “anonre” for Antwerp, when in fact it should read “a nunnery.” In so doing, he perpetrated the myth that Anne believed she was to be sent abroad to a nunnery in Antwerp.
13 Kelly
14 LP
15 Ibid
16 Ibid
17 Ibid
18 Froude, Note D in Thomas (LP 911)
19 LP
20 Froude, Note D in Thomas (LP 911)
21 Cavendish: Metrical Visions
22 Friedmann
23 Ridley: Henry VIII
24 LP
25 Her will is in the Cheshire Record Office: DCH/E 294.
26 LP
27 Chronicle of Calais
28 Abbott. In the eighteenth century Horace Walpole recorded—with scant regard for accuracy—that “the axe that beheaded Anne Boleyn” was on display at the Tower.
29 Chronicle of Calais
30 LP
31 Fraser
32 SC
33 National Archives C.193/3, f.80; Ives
34 LP
35 For examples of journey times in this period, see Armstrong.
36 LP
37 Carles
38 Excerpta Historica (LP 1107)
39 Wriothesley; Lisle Letters; SC; Froude, Note D in Thomas (LP 911); Starkey: Six Wives
40 LP
41 manuscript in Trinity College, Dublin, discovered in 1959; Ives; Muir
42 Lisle Letters
43 Rivals in Power; Jankofsky; Warnicke
44 Wriothesley
45 According to the account in the reliable contemporary chronicle written by Charles Wriothesley, Rochford told the assembled people, “Masters all, I am come hither not to preach and make a sermon, but to die as the law hath found me, and to the law I submit me, desiring you all, and specially you, my masters of the court, that you will trust on God specially, and not on the vanities of the world; for if I had so done, I think I had been alive as ye be now. Also I desire you to help to the setting forth of the true word of God, and whereas I am slandered by it, I have been diligent to read it and set it forth truly; but if I had been as diligent to observe it, and done and lived thereafter, as I was to read it and set it forth, I had not come hereto, wherefore I beseech you all to be workers and live thereafter, and not to read it and live not thereafter. As for mine offenses, it can not prevail [benefit] you to hear them that I die here for, but I beseech God that I may be an example to you all, and that all you may beware [the text says “be wayre,” which could also mean “be aware”] by me, and heartily I require you all to pray for me and to forgive me if I have offended you; and I forgive you all, and God save the King!”
In the contemporary Imperialist eyewitness account of the executions in the Vienna Archives (printed in Thomas), there is a very similar version of this speech, which was described by the writer as “a very Catholic address to the people,” in which Rochford said “he had not come hither to preach but to serve as a mirror and example, acknowledging the crimes he had committed against God and against the King his sovereign; there was no occasion for him, he said, to repeat the cause for which he was condemned; they would have little pleasure in hearing him tell it. He prayed God, and he prayed the King, to pardon his offenses; and all others whom he might have injured, he also prayed them to forgive him as heartily as he forgave everyone. He bade his hearers avoid the vanities of the world and the flatteries of the court, which had brought him to the shameful end that had overtaken him. Had he obeyed the lessons of that Gospel which he had so often read, he said he should not have fallen so far; it was worth more to be a good doer than a good reader. Finally, he forgave those who had adjudged him to die, and he desired them [the people] to pray
for his soul.”
The Portuguese account, written on June 10, has Rochford saying: “From my mishap, ye may learn not to set your thoughts upon the vanities of this world, and least of all upon the flatteries of the court and the favors and treacheries of Fortune, which only raiseth men aloft that, with so much the greater force, she may dash them again upon the ground.” Excerpta Historica (LP 1107)
In another version of his speech, Rochford declared: “I was a great reader and a mighty debater of the Word of God, and one of those who most favored the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Wherefore, lest the Word of God should be brought into reproach on my account, I now tell you all, sirs, that if I had in very deed kept His holy word, even as I read and reasoned about it with all the strength of my wit, certain am I that I should not be in the piteous condition wherein I now stand. Truly and diligently did I read the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but I turned not to profit that which I did read; the which, had I done, of a surety I had not fallen into so great errors. Wherefore I do beseech you all, for the love of our Lord God, that ye do at all seasons hold by the truth, and speak it and embrace it; for beyond all peradventure, better profiteth he who readeth not and yet doeth well, than he who readeth much and yet liveth in sin.” (LP)
According to the author of the “Spanish Chronicle,” Rochford said, “I beg you pray to God for me, for by the trial I have to pass through I am blameless, and never even knew that my sister was bad. Guiltless as I am, I pray God to have mercy on my soul.” This version was almost certainly fabricated.
George Constantine, far more concise, wrote that Rochford, after exhorting his companions to “die courageously” and the crowd to “live according to the Gospel, not in preaching, but in practice,” said “words to the effect that he had rather had a good liver according to the Gospel than ten babblers.” He added, “I desire you that no man will be discouraged from the Gospel by my fall. For if I had lived according to the Gospel, as I loved it and spake of it, I had never come to this. As for mine offenses, I cannot prevail you to hear them that I die here for, but I beseech God that I may be an example to you all.”
Chapuys, who, perhaps deliberately, misinterpreted Rochford’s statements about religion, reported that he “disclaimed all that he was charged with, confessing, however, that he had deserved death for having been so much contaminated, and having contaminated others, with these new sects, and he prayed everyone to abandon such heresies.” (LP) Chapuys later informed Dr. Ortiz that Rochford (whom Ortiz, in his report of June 11, confused with Norris, “the principal gentleman of the King’s Chamber”) “said a great deal about the justice of his death, and that a favored servant ought not to flatter his prince and consent to his desires, as he had done.” (LP) It cannot have been Norris who uttered these words because according to the eyewitness accounts, he did not have “a great deal” to say on the scaffold.
46 Abbott; Chronicle of King Henry VIII. While rejecting the speeches that the author of the “Spanish Chronicle” put into the mouths of the condemned, which he may not have been able to hear, we might yet accept his claim that three strokes were needed to behead Rochford, which any bystander could plainly have seen.
47 Froude, Note D in Thomas (LP 911)
48 Ibid
49 Lofts
50 Warnicke
51 Carles
52 Constantine
53 SC
54 Brysson Morrison
55 Froude, Note D in Thomas (LP 911)
56 LP
57 Abbott
58 Wriothesley
59 Bayley
60 Wriothesley; Carles
61 Abbott. The Norris family had lived there until 1517, when Sir John Norris, Henry’s father, had to surrender the estate in return for a pardon for the murder of one John Enhold. Ockwells was then granted to John Norris’s uncle, Sir Thomas Fettiplace, and it was the Fettiplaces who were supposed to have claimed Sir Henry Norris’s head in 1536. A large part of the manor house was burned down in 1845.
62 Abbott
63 LP
64 Ibid
65 Loades: Henry VIII and His Queens
66 Carles
67 Ibid
68 Milherve
69 Wilkins
70 Wilkins; Wriothesley
71 Friedmann
72 LP; Wriothesley
73 Ives
74 Wriothesley
75 Kelly
76 LP
77 Ives: “Fall Reconsidered”
78 LP; Rymer
CHAPTER 13: FOR NOW I DIE
2 LP
3 Excerpta Historica (LP 1107)
4 Ives; Parnell
5 Parnell
6 Ibid
7 Ives; Parnell
8 Ives
9 LP
10 Carles
11 LP; SC
12 LP
13 Ibid
14 Ibid
15 Ibid
16 As do George Wyatt and Camden
17 Ives
18 LP
19 Carles
20 LP
21 Carles
22 Ibid
23 Friedmann; Warnicke
24 LP
25 SC
26 Lindsey
27 LP
28 Ibid
29 SC
30 See, for example, Strickland
31 Ridley: Henry VIII
32 LP
33 Abbott
34 Wriothesley; Chronicle of King Henry VIII
35 Carles
36 Excerpta Historica (LP 1107)
37 Froude, Note D in Thomas (LP911)
38 LP; Norris
39 Carles
40 LP
41 Ibid
42 Excerpta Historica (LP911); Histoire de la Royne Anne de Boullant; LP; Carles
43 Sergeant; Warnicke
44 Milherve; Excerpta Historica (LP 1107)
45 Miscellaneous Antiquities; Strickland
46 Some sources call her Mary, but there is no record of a Mary Wyatt, nor does a Mary Wyatt appear in the extensive pedigree drawn up by David Loades in his edition of George Wyatt’s papers.
47 Hare; Westminster Abbey guidebooks
48 Excerpta Historica (LP 1107)
49 Froude, Note D in Thomas (LP 911); Carles
50 Excerpta Historica (LP 1107)
51 Froude, Note D in Thomas (LP 911); Histoire de la Royne Anne de Boullant; LP
52 Abbott; Younghusband
53 Chapman: Anne Boleyn
54 Ives; Impey and Parnell
55 Carles
56 Lisle Letters
57 LP
58 Foxe
59 LP; Wriothesley
60 Wriothesley
61 Murphy
62 Chapman: Two Tudor Portraits
63 Cited by Murphy
64 Wriothesley
65 Harleian manuscripts