Anne Boleyn was sentenced to burn; Henry chose the sword

Anne Boleyn was beheaded with a sword inside the Tower of London on 19 May 1536 after Henry VIII used his royal prerogative to spare her the punishment the law actually prescribed for a queen convicted of treason: burning alive.

According to The National Archives, the 1351 Treason Act under which she was tried required death by fire. A Chancery precedent book (catalogue reference C 193/3) preserves a copy of Henry’s writ of 18 May, in which the king, “moved to take pity” on his “lately” wife, orders her beheaded on the green within the Tower instead. The original is lost; clerks copied it because no English queen had ever been executed. Less than a year earlier, Henry’s former chancellor Thomas More had gone to the block for defying him.

• 2 May: Anne is imprisoned in the Tower.
• 15 May: peers led by her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, try her inside the Tower and convict her of adultery, incest and treason.
• 17 May: her brother George and four other men are beheaded on Tower Hill.
• 19 May: a swordsman brought from Calais beheads her on a newly built scaffold.
• 20 May: Henry and Jane Seymour are formally betrothed at 9 am, the imperial ambassador reports.
• 30 May: Henry marries Jane.

The Constable of the Tower, Sir William Kingston, wrote to Thomas Cromwell that he was glad to hear of the “executur” of Calais, “for he can handle that matter.” When Anne learned she would not die before noon, she said she was sorry, having hoped to be past her pain. Then, Kingston reported, she put her hand about her neck, laughing heartily:

“I heard say the executor was very good, and I have a little neck.” — Anne Boleyn, as reported by Sir William Kingston, May 1536

Kingston added that he had seen many men and women executed, all in great sorrow, but that this lady seemed to have much joy and pleasure in death.