Boleyn Family tree
A quick guide to Anne’s relations
adultery were tried and condemned, and three days later she and George stood trial separately. Though both siblings defended themselves ably, the result was a foregone conclusion. Anne and her brother were both found guilty and condemned to death. Among the peers who sat in judgement upon them was their own father, whom Chapuys had heard was “quite as ready to assist at the judgement” as he had been to the other men who had stood trial.
There was no hope of a reprieve, and on 17 May George and the men condemned alongside him were executed on Tower Hill. Permitted to speak, in his final moments he stated that “I am come hither not to preach and make a sermon, but to die.” He met his end bravely. Two days after her brother’s death it was Anne’s turn. By means of a final favour to the woman who he had once loved so passionately, the king had sent to Calais for a French swordsman who was tasked with executing his former queen. Unlike George, a private execution within the confines of the Tower had been arranged for her, and a scaffold erected in front of the White Tower. Having made a short speech in which she implored “If any person will meddle with my cause, I require them to judge the best”, Anne’s head was removed swiftly and cleanly with a deft blow from the sword. Her severed remains were interred within the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula within the Tower.
Eleven days after Anne’s death, Henry VIII married Jane Seymour. It was through this marriage that he received that which he had so desperately craved: a son, Edward. Amongst those who attended the prince’s christening at Hampton Court in October 1537 was Thomas Boleyn. Yet he no longer basked in royal favour or held the influence he had once enjoyed as a result of his daughter’s exalted status. Moreover, the tragedy that he had been forced to endure had left him a broken man, and he retired to Hever to live quietly. On 3 April 1538 his wife died and was buried at Lambeth, and it would not be long before he followed her to the grave. Thomas died at Hever on 12 March 1539, and was interred in the church there. It was a sad end for the man whose family had once been raised to such staggering heights. Yet their moment of glory was not quite at an end.
The two decades following Anne’s death left their mark on her daughter, Elizabeth, whose life was destined to run a less than stable course. She would never forget her mother’s terrible end, and there is no doubt that it deeply affected her. Yet she was to be Anne’s greatest legacy, for when Elizabeth succeeded to the throne on 17 November 1558, she did so not only as her father’s daughter, but as her mother’s too. For in this queen flowed the blood of the family who had once been the most ambitious in England – the Boleyns.
“Among the peers who sat in judgement upon them was their own father”