The Creation of Anne Boleyn — Guest post & Giveaway!

To celebrate the upcoming release (April 9, 2013) of Susan Bordo’s The Creation of Anne Boleyn: A New Look at England’s Most Notorious Queen, I will be giving away five copies!  I am also very excited to share with you this blog-post written by Susan and based on material from the book.

Conditions of Entry

For your chance to win a copy of The Creation of Anne Boleyn you must be subscribed to On the Tudor Trail’s newsletter (if you are not already, sign up on our homepage).

Then simply leave a comment after Susan’s guest post, ‘At the Scaffold’, between now and April 14, 2013.

Thanks to the generosity of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in New York, this giveaway is open worldwide!

Don’t forget to leave your name and a contact email.

Good luck!

At the Scaffold by Susan Bordo

Natalie Dormer as Anne Boleyn in ‘The Tudors’

Despite her proclaimed readiness to die, until very near the end Anne still harbored the belief that Henry might pardon her. It was not an unreasonable expectation.  Not only had no British queen up until then been executed, but the last-minute rescue of the condemned queen was a centerpiece of the romance of chivalry, which was still being avidly consumed at court via Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur.  In the Arthurian legend, Guinevere is condemned to death twice for treason (the second time for adultery with Lancelot) and both times is saved from the stake by Lancelot—with King Arthur’s blessings.  Arthur had, in fact, suspected the queen’s infidelity for years, but because of his love for her and for Lancelot, had kept his suspicions a secret.  When Modred and Aggravane, plotting their own coup d’etat, told the King about it, he had no choice but to condemn his queen, while privately hoping she would be rescued.

It was a romantic fantasy—but one which Henry and Anne had grown up with, and which no doubt shaped their ideas about love.  The Arthurian romance, even today, has the power to move us.  And in 1536, many of the outward trappings and habits of courtly love still existed.  Henry was himself an adroit and seductively tender courtier, who at the beginning of his courtship of Anne had written seventeen letters in which he pledged himself her “servant” and swore his constancy. The pledges may (or may not) have been made manipulatively, but his infatuation was real and the gestures were convincing. Why wouldn’t Anne, who Henry had in fact been honored like Guinevere for six years, cherish the hope that she, too, would be rescued from death?

Henry had no such plans in mind, however. As Anne prepared for her death, Henry was spending much of his time at Chelsea, visiting Jane Seymour and making plans for their wedding.  Chapuys describes the king as showing “extravagant joy” at Anne’s arrest.  Convinced (or making a great show for posterity) that Anne was an “accursed whore” who had slept with hundreds of men, he was “very impatient” and wishing to have the thing done with “already.”  Ironically, Anne, on her part, felt the same way. Expecting to die on the 18th, she took the sacrament at 2 a.m., having prepared her soul for many hours.  By now all who were in close contact with her must have been convinced of her innocence, whatever their politics. She had insisted that Kingston be present when she took confession, so her assertion of innocence of the charges would be public record. Even her old enemy Chapuys was impressed by the fact that Anne, before and after receiving the Sacrament, affirmed to those who had charge of her “on damnation of her soul, that she had never offended with her body against the King.”  In the 16th century, to speak anything other than the truth at such a time would be to invite the utter condemnation of God. Anne had nothing to gain and her salvation to lose by lying.

She was prepared to die.  Yet, cruelly, the execution was delayed twice, once in order to clear the Tower of possible sympathetic observers, the second time because the executioner had been delayed. The first delay dismayed Anne, who thought that at the newly appointed hour she would already “be dead and past my pain.”  Kingston, who seems to have been an absurdly literal man, took her to be referring to the physical pain of the execution itself, and reassured her that “there would be no pain, it was so subtle.” Anne replied with her most famous line: “I have heard say the executioner is very good, and I have a little neck.”  And then, according to Kingston, “she put her hand around [her neck], laughing heartily.”  Kingston flat-footedly interpreted this to mean that Anne had “much joy and pleasure in death.”  He apparently did not “get” Anne’s irony, or the fact that at this point, she was probably becoming a bit unhinged.  At the news of the second delay, she was distraught.  But “It was not that she desired death,” as she told Kingston (or perhaps one of the ladies, who then told him) “but she had thought herself prepared to die, and feared that the delay would weaken her resolve. “  So much for Kingston’s theory that Anne felt “joy and pleasure” at the prospect of death.

What she may have felt was something closer to what James Hillman describes as the state of mind that often precedes an attempt at suicide:  a desperate desire to shed an old self whose suffering had become unbearable, and thus be “reborn” in the act of dying.  This imagined rebirth, for Hillman, has nothing to do with belief in reincarnation, or even in heaven, but the perception, ironically, that the soul cannot survive under existing conditions. What Anne had been through was certainly enough to shatter any hold her previous life may have exerted on her.  She had been discarded by the man who had pursued her for six years, fathered her daughter, and seemingly adored her for much of their time together.  The person she was closest to in the world—her brother George—had been executed on the most hideous and shameful of charges.   The rest of her family, as far as we can tell, had either abandoned her or—as Anne believed of her mother–was awash with despair and grief over what was happening.  Still recovering from a miscarriage, her body and mind undoubtedly assaulted by hormonal changes and unstable moods, she had been sent to prison on absurd, concocted charges, and “cared for” there by women who were hostile spies.  She knew she would never see her daughter Elizabeth again, and—unlike the fictional Anne of Anne of the Thousand Days, who predicts that “Elizabeth will be queen!”—had no hope, after Cranmer’s visit, that her child would ever be anything more than she had seen Mary reduced to: a bastardized ex-princess forced to bow down to any children the new wife might produce for Henry.  She had been given reason to hope that she would be allowed to live, only to have those hopes crushed at her sentencing. In a sense, she had already been through dozens of dyings.   Nothing was left but the withered skin of her old life, which she was ready to shed.

As she mounted the scaffold, wearing a role of dark damask (black in some reports, grey in others) trimmed with white fur, with a red kirtle (petticoat) underneath—red being the liturgical color of Catholic martyrdom—political and national affiliations continued, as they had through her reign and would for centuries to come–to shape the descriptions of her appearance and behavior. To an author of the Spanish Chronicle, she exhibited “a devilish spirit.” A Portugese witness who had snuck in despite the ban on “strangers”, wrote that “never had she looked so beautiful.” An imperialist observer described her as “feeble and stupefied” (which would be understandable, and not incompatible with her looking beautiful as well.)  Wriothesley says she showed “a goodly smiling countenance.”  French de Carles commented on the beauty of her complexion, pure and clear as though cleansed by all the suffering.  For all, the spectacle of a queen, wearing the white ermine of her role, mounting the stairs to the scaffold, was unnerving.

Unlike her trial speech and her “last letter,” Anne’s remarks on the scaffold made the more conventional bows to the goodness and mercy of the King—in this highly public context, it was virtually required, if only to prevent any retribution against surviving relatives—and asked the people to pray for her.  She did not admit to guilt for the offenses with which she was charged or accuse the judges of malice, but did make reference to the “cruel law of the land by which I die.” By now, the four young ladies who had accompanied her to the scaffold (clearly not the hostile spies that had lived with her in the Tower, but others, more intimate with her, who she had been allowed to have with her in these last moments) were weeping.  Anne, having helped them take off her robe—an act that in itself must have demanded great composure and courage—“appeared dazed” as he kneeled down, modestly covering her feet with her dress, and asked the executioner to remove her coif, lest it interfere with his stroke.  The executioner realized that she was afraid of the pain of an impeded blow; she kept looking around her, her hand on her coif, anticipating the moment.   Clearly “distressed” at the task he was to perform, he told her that he would wait until she gave the signal.  “With a fervent spirit” she began to pray, and the Portuguese contingent, unable to bear it, huddled together and knelt down against the scaffold, wailing loudly.

Anne gave the signal.  But either the executioner or someone else in charge had devised a scheme to distract Anne at the last moment, so the fatal blow would come when she wasn’t expecting it; he turned toward the scaffold steps and called for the sword, and when Anne blindly turned her head in that direction, he brought the sword down from the other side and swiftly “divided her neck at a blow.”   As these things went—others had died only after multiple clumsy hackings—it was an easy death: if the naturalist Lewis Thomas has it right, it was far easier than her weeks of suffering in the Tower:  “Pain, “ he writes, is useful for avoidance, for getting away when there’s time to get away, but when it is end game, and no way back, pain is likely to be turned off, and the mechanisms for this are wonderfully precise and quick.  If I had to design an ecosystem in which creatures had to live off each other and in which dying was an indispensible part of living, I could not think of a better way to manage.”   He quotes Montaigne, who nearly died in a riding accident and later described the “letting go” that he experienced at what could have easily been the very end:

“It was an idea that was only floating on the surface of my soul, as delicate and feeble as all the rest, but in truth not only free from distress but mingled with that sweet feeling that people have who have let themselves slide into sleep. I believe this is the same state in which people find themselves whom we see fainting in the agony of death, and maintain that we pity them without cause…If you know not how to die, never trouble yourself; Nature will in a moment fully and sufficiently instruct you; she will exactly do that business for you; take you no care with it”

While I was in London, conducting interviews for this book and visiting sites of importance, I had an experience that reminded me of Lewis’s essay. Returning to my hotel from a day-long visit to the Tower, I was obediently following the crowd across a busy  intersection when I heard a voice call out “Watch Out!” and, struck on my lower back, was knocked to the ground. The impact was forceful and disorienting; I had no idea what had happened.  Then, out of the corner of my eye I saw the red of a London bus. “I’m about to be run over by a bus!” I thought, disbelieving but sure; it seemed impossible, on my innocent little research trip, that I should die in this arbitrary, unexpected way, but that was clearly what was about to happen.  I tried to lift myself up, and realized that although I was hurt, I wasn’t about to be crushed, for I’d been hit not by the bus I’d seen out of the corner of my eye, but by an impatient bicyclist; the bus had slowed to a stop by the time I was on the ground.

I was bleeding from a bad scrape on my arm, and sharp darts of pain in my back and side accompanied every breath, in a way that I recognized from a hair-line rib fracture I’d once received in an auto accident. I suppose I ought to have gone to the hospital just to be sure everything was okay, but I didn’t.  And eventually, everything did heal.  The only injury that remained was existential: the memory of that moment when I was sure that I was about to be extinguished, just like that, without warning.  I had felt terror, yes, but then, when the fatal blow seemed inevitable, an eerie calm overcame me.  It seemed useless to struggle—a feeling that I had never before experienced, in a life devoted to making things happen, protecting myself and those I love, and constantly moving forward.  For a moment, when I thought I was about to be struck by that bus, I relaxed into the unfamiliar sense of “letting go.” It was only for an instant, and then, when I realized that the bus had stopped and escape from the traffic was still possible, the self-protective fear returned and I scrambled to my feet, and hobbled across the street to the sidewalk where my husband was standing, looking alarmed.

Dostoevsky, too, had experienced a close brush with death—by the Czar’s firing squad, a sentence from which he was reprieved at the last moment—and fictionalizes his experience through a character in The Idiot.  His account, though very different from Montaigne’s or mine, nonetheless describes a radically altered state of consciousness, not characterized by pain but a sense of the infinity of time, stretching his final moments into an extended reflection culminating in the sense of impending re-birth into the “new self” that James Hillman describes:

“About twenty paces from the scaffold, where he had stood to hear the sentence, were three posts, fixed in the ground, to which to fasten the criminals (of whom there were several). The first three criminals were taken to the posts, dressed in long white tunics, with white caps drawn over their faces, so that they could not see the rifles pointed at them. Then a group of soldiers took their stand opposite to each post. My friend was the eighth on the list, and therefore he would have been among the third lot to go up. A priest went about among them with a cross: and there was about five minutes of time left for him to live.

He said that those five minutes seemed to him to be a most interminable period, an enormous wealth of time; he seemed to be living, in these minutes, so many lives that there was no need as yet to think of that last moment, so that he made several arrangements, dividing up the time into portions–one for saying farewell to his companions, two minutes for that; then a couple more for thinking over his own life and career and all about himself; and another minute for a last look around. He remembered having divided his time like this quite well. While saying good- bye to his friends he recollected asking one of them some very usual everyday question, and being much interested in the answer. Then having bade farewell, he embarked upon those two minutes which he had allotted to looking into himself; he knew beforehand what he was going to think about. He wished to put it to himself as quickly and clearly as possible, that here was he, a living, thinking man, and that in three minutes he would be nobody; or if somebody or something, then what and where? He thought he would decide this question once for all in these last three minutes. A little way off there stood a church, and its gilded spire glittered in the sun. He remembered staring stubbornly at this spire, and at the rays of light sparkling from it. He could not tear his eyes from these rays of light; he got the idea that these rays were his new nature, and that in three minutes he would become one of them, amalgamated somehow with them.”

Anne’s preparations for dying, facing the inevitability of her execution, may also have been filled with internal good-byes, existential confrontation with the mystery of “being” and “nothingness”, and imaginings of becoming one with nature.  I like to think of her final hours as immensely rich, in a way that I cannot comprehend but that were sustaining to her, even beyond her more conventional—but extremely deep, for Anne—religious faith.  And then, at the end, I hope that nature or God (it makes no difference), gave her no more to figure out, no more to regret, no more to say good-bye to, no more work to do, and took care of her dying.

Find out more about the book and the author here.

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Comments

  1. Sheila Parks says:

    I so enjoy this site & all information on the Tudors and Anne Boleyn

  2. RachelB. says:

    Gorgeous cover! This sounds like a fascinating read.
    bodner.rachel@gmail.com

  3. What a wonderful article! I especially liked the foray into the death experience.
    A very well written piece.

  4. Christina Kook says:

    I am so excited for this book!

  5. Rachael Sommerfeld says:

    Looks like a great read! Cant wait to get my hands on a copy of this book!
    Love everything tudor related 🙂

  6. ConstanceC says:

    Love anything written about the Tudors, and especially about Anne Boleyn. Can’t wait to read this book!

  7. What a lovely post on a terribly sad topic. It’s always made my heart ache to read of Anne’s last walk to the scaffold, how she kept glancing back over her shoulder as though expecting to see a messenger running after her, a pardon in his hand. Like you, I believe she prepared her soul and tried to steel herself for the ordeal ahead, but a small part of her hoped until the last moment Henry would relent and spare her life. Perhaps that is what she expected after Cranmer’s visit, when she “revealed” the impediment to her marriage to the king that gave him grounds for an annulment. She told her ladies afterwards she thought she might be sent to a nunnery. So, it may be that even until she knelt in the straw, she expected he would follow through on the deal.

  8. More information to read and learn from. excellent

  9. Karen Kidd says:

    You make a very good point about the romance of last minute reprieves as recreated in Henry’s time. Just now, I am recalling the Evil May Day of 1517 when about 1,000 young apprentices rioted in Cheapside. A few days later, the apprentices, with the halters already around their necks, were brought before the King in sight of all the nobles in the city. His Queen, Katherine of Aragon, publicly appealed to Henry to pardon the apprentices, which Henry, in turn, publicly did.

    I seem to recall, also, a similar incident in which Henry’s younger sister, Mary, appealed to Henry for clemency on behalf of someone condemned but, just now, those details aren’t coming to mind.

    Anyway, Henry already had a track record for such public theater, so I imagine Anne might have considered he’d do it again in her case. Sadly, he did not.

  10. Sarah Joy says:

    I have been waiting to read this book and i’m so happy it’s finally here. Anne has been and always will be a personal hero of mine. Such a brave woman.

  11. Laurie thornton says:

    I can’t wait to read the book. The only problem I have is that I live in Canada and it is hard to gets these kind of books. Thank u susan u make the book come alive.

  12. Anne Boleyn. If she only knew how much we’ve grown to love her.

  13. Lori Thomas says:

    Looking forward to reading this book. Great post!!! Thx 4 the chance.

  14. Beautiful post! I can never read accounts of Anne’s execution without tearing up. She was so calm, poised, dignified. I can’t wait to read the book!

  15. Natasha Hayes says:

    Oh Anne such a sad life you had it seems so unfair that the men of the tudor time could sleep with as many women as they liked yet women were treated so badly, the legacy you left not only Elizabeth but a world in awe of an amazing strong woman

  16. Amanda N says:

    This book is going to be a must read for me! Thanks for the chance to win a copy!

  17. Jenny Smedley says:

    I actually had tears in my eyes reading this, I still find it amazing how one woman could have met death so bravely.

  18. Mary Johnson says:

    Really looking forward to reading this

  19. Ase Johannessen says:

    Love all the info I get here. I have always been interested in Anne Boleyn.

  20. Donna Quartley-Parker says:

    I believe Anne was a truly strong & remarkable woman, who herself believed that Henry would pardon at the last moment, alas, this was not to be.

    I have loved reading your excerpt, so very well written & it leaves me eagerly wanting more! I shall be so excited to read this book. Thank you

  21. Nancy Blizzard says:

    I have long been a fan of the Tudors and have read many books about them and other English royalty. Forty-two years ago I named my daughter after Anne, and continue to find her a strong, intelligent, and fascinating woman.

  22. I loved this look into what may or may not have been going through Anne’s thoughts during her last moments. It seems like a juggling act between head and heart: getting the protocol right was necessary, but so was saying farewell to this world and preparing for the next. I do hope God did as Anne believed He would: showed her how to die and strengthened her resolve. Can’t wait to get my hands on this book!

  23. Jessica says:

    I followed the facebook page and the creation of the book and I think it interesting to discover Anne in a different way if I can say it this way.

  24. Kayleigh Harper says:

    Really looking forward to reading this and adding it to my Tudor collection! kayleighharper20@gmail.com

  25. Karon Hollis says:

    What a fascinating article . I have read some other interesting stories of the complete and sudden way some men abandon their wives at http://www.runawayhusbands.com . The sudden and inexplicable hatred is well documented . Henry who invented the British Divorce to get rid of one wife he declared once to love was not going to balk at beheading another , but of course Anne didn’t know this because she had fallen for the lie that he never loved his first wife , as so many second wives do , at being right at the beginning of the history of subsequent wives she had no means to see the pattern because as yet there wasn’t one

  26. Michelle skinner says:

    Would love to read this, great post x x

  27. Enjoyed reading this post. Look forward to reading the book.

  28. Cyril Beattie says:

    This event was so very wrong.She had done nothing,except she did not give him a son.
    So they trumped up charges and executed her.Tragic to say the very least..She will always live in my heart.

  29. My favorite subject in the world!

  30. Fascinating read….I can’t comprehend how it must have felt facing your own execution..Morbidly interesting and.can’t wait to read it!

  31. Lubica L says:

    For me, Anne Boleyn is one of the most fascinating figures from history! I´d love to own this book!

  32. I love anything to do with Anne Boleyn, my absolute heroine God rest her soul.

  33. Gemma Ellen Smith says:

    I love reading about Anne – such an amazing figure from history. The Tudors are awesome!

  34. lynn gurney says:

    always good to read, i cant get enough about the tudors and Anne Boleyn in particular cant wait to read the book.

  35. Adriana says:

    In Spain we’re also very interested in Anne Boleyn’s story. Can’t wait to read it!

  36. TrailerParkPrincess says:

    It’s amazing how many took up her case. Can’t get enough Anne.

  37. Neil Bradley says:

    These writings are so amazing and they keep my attention for hours!

  38. Jennie O'Neill says:

    How many of us have thought of our own mortality and put ourselves in the place of the victims of this type of death as described here ?
    I most certainly have , Most unsettling but a necessary way of understanding the true courage of these condemned of walking and presenting themselves for execution whether they be innocent or guilty.
    Extremely thought provoking article. thanks for posting it .

  39. Susan MacNutt says:

    I am pleasantly surprised as to the number of sites regarding Tudor history — especially those about Anne Boleyn. Many thanks to all of you for the hard work.

  40. Grace Hatter says:

    Looking forward to this book!

  41. Denise Hansen says:

    Great post! Countdown for the book.

  42. Thank you for the opportunity to win this interesting book! I love everything about Anne Boleyn and the Tudors in general!

  43. Kim Cree says:

    Great article, I cannot wait to read this!

    kim_cree@yahoo.com

  44. This sounds like an awesome read. Love all things Tudor.

  45. Annemarie Bohn says:

    Can’t wait to receive my copy! Looks like a bread read, even for this person who often finds herself burned out on reading so much on the subject..finally a new and fresh perspective.

  46. Rebecca Harris says:

    A strong, intelligent, passionate woman., born in a time when perhaps such qualities in a woman were not so appreciated.

  47. Pamela Kapustka says:

    All I can say is “wow”…how beautifully-written! I could almost “smell & taste” the sorrow & desperation that Anne must have felt. And to have all this occur by someone who you loved & shared your bed with, is truly unimaginable! The scope of Henry’s cruelty never ceases to amaze me…but Anne conducted herself in a dignified & humble manner and remained a “Queen”, in every sense of the word, to the end.

  48. I am so looking forward to reading this!

  49. This looks like a great read! It’s amazing how their behavior in the last days turned public opinion to favor Anne instead of Henry.

  50. Christine Snyder says:

    Wonderfully written article. Looking forward to reading the book from her perspective.