Hello, my name is Sean Cunningham, and I’m one of the 16th century record specialists at The National Archives.
Today we are going to look at documents from our legal collections created in the Court of King’s Bench and the Chancery. The documents relate to how trials for the most serious crimes were held in our time period of the 1530s. The Court of Kings Bench was the High Court of Henry the Eighth’s reign, where the top judges heard important cases. The Chancery was the place in the King’s government where official orders and instructions were written. In those days everything had to be written by hand. These letters and papers were sent out and returned to help Henry the Eighth and his advisers run the country smoothly.
So what kind of material can we find in these documents? Trials in the law courts had to follow procedures that everyone agreed on, and which lawyers could learn so that people accepted the court’s decisions. This helped Kings and Queens to build trust, that they ruled for all their subjects, and offered ways for disputes and crimes to be solved, and the judgments upheld.
Different documents were used at each stage of trials. Some were orders to get people to turn up to the courts. Other papers recorded evidence and information that helped juries and judges decide who should win the case. Small writs were specific orders that moved the progress of cases forward, and large sheets called indictments set out the charges that accused people, known as defendants, had to face.
Many trials or disputes between individuals ended with fines, but those that damaged the King’s authority or his peace as it was usually known, could end with the death sentence. For the most serious crime of treason monarchs would use the execution of people found guilty as a public spectacle and warning to others thinking of replacing him or killing the ruler.
Before we look at our examples from this collection, notice that our documents have unique references, so we can use our catalogue to find them. In this case it’s KB 8/9.
So what kind of document is this? From 488 years ago this is how the records of a major state trial from Henry the Eighth’s reign look. In this case, they show how Queen Anne Boleyn was charged and convicted of adultery, incest and high treason. What about the appearance of the document? The documents were originally kept in the soft leather pouch found at the back of this file. You can see it here. This is one of the secret bags into which the papers of the state trials were put after the Tudors came to power in 1485. The sheets have been flattened and arranged in a sequence to show how the special court was set up and the evidence against Queen Anne assembled between her arrest and the start of the trial. So the documents were probably created in early May 1536. Queen Anne was imprisoned in the Tower of London on the 2nd of May. Her trial started on the 15th of May, and she was quickly found guilty and beheaded on Friday 19th of May.
So we can ask who produced these documents? They were written by clerks in the King’s Bench Court and in the Chancery, the government’s writing office. They reflected normal procedure for a major criminal trial, even if the main person on trial was a queen. Because of the status of the people involved, the outcome that the documents were intended to achieve was a personal and political one that could only have been agreed by King Henry and set in motion by his minister, Thomas Cromwell.
So this is a large file of 13 parchment sheets with many duplications. The record shows how the trials of Anne Boleyn and her brother George, Lord Rochford, were organised and conducted in May 1536. Most records deal with procedures including King Henry’s authorisation to Anne’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, to hold the trial, for which he was appointed Lord High Steward of England; commands to the Sheriff of Kent and Middlesex to return all documents related to the trial. Lots of evidence had been collected from people connected to events that occurred at Greenwich and Westminster Palaces, which were then in those counties. There’s a writ to the constable of the Tower to bring Anne out of prison for her trial, and summonses to the lords to assemble to take part in the trial, and a list of those who formed the jury with their agreement that she was guilty added to each name.
The indictments against the Queen. These set out the accusations in detail. Anne was accused of having sex with her brother George and four other men of the King’s private chamber staff. Queen Anne’s alleged behaviour amounted to adultery,
but since Henry the Eighth was desperate for a legitimate son to inherit the crown, the Queen’s sexual relations with others presented a danger to the King’s person, his authority, the royal succession and his masculine reputation. For Anne, adultery while married to the King was treason. All the defendants were convicted of treason for plotting the King’s death. The 1351 Treason Act, under which Anne was tried, required that she be executed by burning alive.
So who was this document created for? It’s a difficult question because there’s a procedure in the court, but in the 1530s, the law was used to uphold Henry the Eighth’s power and not to deliver more modern ideas of justice. Defendants had to prove that they were innocent of the charges. Today, accusers must prove guilt. It was very difficult, therefore, for Anne and her co-defendants to escape conviction when the King and Cromwell had agreed on the charges and had a clear outcome in mind. The records justify the actions and decisions that the King and Cromwell wanted.
Anne was an anointed and crowned Queen, and her role brought clear expectations of behaviour and duty. When she was accused of failing in her responsibilities, her status required that a special court was set up to decide on the truth of the accusations against her. Because she was imprisoned within the Tower, and the circumstances of her arrest were so unusual, her trial would also take place in the Tower precinct. She was judged by members of the House of Lords with her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, leading the trial. The records created at each stage of the trial show that it had all the appearance of a careful and elaborate state occasion. Yet it was a legal travesty, designed to use the power of the state to solve the latest of Henry the Eighth’s personal problems. Henry’s romantic fixation had moved on to Jane Seymour, and he wanted Anne out of the way. Cromwell was able to manipulate the politics of the court to try to solve some bigger problems at the same time, such as who could influence around the King and who therefore could benefit from his attention to increase their own power.
So is this document useful for understanding Anne Boleyn’s position as Henry the Eighth’s second wife? Although the Latin text is a formal record of the stages of the trial, without any of the detail that appears in other eyewitness accounts, it does help to explain how and why Henry the Eighth justified killing his wife through the power of the law. This was an amazing and very troubling event within Tudor society, so the explanation of the charges had to depict Anne as a malicious enemy of the king. The scale of her betrayal was set out with Henry as the intended victim of a court plot that she led. These charges claimed that after more than three years of marriage, and began to treat her relationship with Henry with contempt, she was lustful and chose lovers from among his trusted servants. Together, and since October 1535, they were all alleged to have planned the King’s death with Anne promising to marry some of the traitors to ensure that they stayed committed.
Henry, once he discovered the conspiracy, realized that the accusations undermined his royal status and reputation and made it less certain that he was the father of any child that Anne might have had she become pregnant again. Those issues built a position whereby the execution of the defendants could be publicly justified despite the shocking and unprecedented circumstances.
The second document I’m going to show you shows how this happened in relation to Anne Boleyn’s trial. It’s a book created by the clerks in Chancery to record the forms of words to be used when writing official documents. When something new or unusual was demanded, they also recorded the text as a reminder or precedent for other clerks in the future. No English queen had ever been executed, so Henry the Eighth’s orders for the day of her death were very important. The original writs have been lost, but we know what Henry the Eighth was thinking, because the clerks made their own copy of the words in his instructions. It’s a leather and paper bound book with pages of rough cut paper made from pulped rags. The book has been damaged, as you can see, through repeated use and storage, which suggests that it was important as a resource for the Chancery officials.
The Latin text of the five writs on this page show how the executions were organised for all of those tried and condemned at the same time as Anne Boleyn. The first one requires the constable of the Tower of London to deliver for execution George Boleyn and the four men of the King’s chamber found guilty of adultery with the Queen. They were to be executed on Tower Hill and not inside the Tower itself, making this a public event under the responsibility of the sheriffs of London. The second text shows that those executions would be by beheading, and not the usual grisly traitor’s death of hanging, drawing and quartering, the punishment that their trial records noted. The third writ requires the nobles on the Queen’s jury to return all the trial papers to the Duke of Norfolk. This was probably around the sensitivity of the issue and the risk of having information in the public domain. The fourth text is the order to the Constable of the Tower to deliver Anne and her brother to the Duke of Norfolk at the time of their executions. And the fifth text is the most interesting, since it shows King Henry the Eighth intervening on the 18th of May to offer his mercy, allowing Anne to be beheaded on the green in the Tower, and not publicly burned alive. So the writs offer insight into the organisation behind public executions.
Many more documents would have been drawn up to ensure that instructions and procedures were followed. The Sheriffs of London, the Duke of Norfolk as the Steward of England, and the Constable of the Tower all had important roles if the executions were to be managed efficiently. The record reminded the clerks about the orders that were needed if this type of event had to be organised in future, as it was only four years later when Queen Catherine Howard was executed for adultery and treason.
What’s the purpose of these documents? The document reveals the powerful influence of the King upon the business of the courts and the roles of officials in government. This was known as the exercise of his prerogative rights. The powers associated with the role of the monarch in society, which could be activated at any time by his will and command. Henry intervened to change how the sentences of the court would be carried out. The powers could have extended to stopping the executions or pardoning the condemned people, even on the execution scaffold, as happened at other times in this period. Those orders never came, however, and Anne Boleyn became the first Queen of England to be executed for treason.
Are the documents useful for understanding how England was ruled during Henry the Eighth’s reign? Well, Henry the Eighth was unwilling to have his wife burned to death in public. That was a hideous spectacle which would only deepen public upset and outrage. Although many religious heretics had already been publicly executed by fire earlier in the Tudor period, killing a queen for treason in this way was a completely different prospect.
These documents show a related concern for security on the day of the executions, since the instructions for the careful delivery of prisoners and to officials and guards. That worry links the risks arising from the full spectacle of a parade of the condemned through London to the execution grounds at Tyburn or Smithfield. Any concerns that the Queen’s supporters might try to rescue her and her fellow victims before they were killed were reduced when the decision was made for quicker public beheadings for the king’s servants and George Boleyn on Tower Hill. The documents make no mention of the swordsman, who was brought to the Tower from Calais to behead the Queen on the 19th of May. Those were small examples of the King’s mercy towards his wife, but this was done more for his reputation and the preservation of public order than to spare Anne from her fate. Here Henry used his control of the law to get his own way.
This was another example of how his personal problems dominated the way government worked, and forced officials into actions to meet his demands. In 1536, the regime was still in the process of closing the monasteries and grabbing monastic lands and goods, a massive social and religious change for most people, and which would cause large rebellions in the north that autumn, the Pilgrimage of Grace. Only two years earlier, Henry had made himself head of the Church of England so that he could take the legal and religious steps to end his marriage to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Anne’s execution showed that his problems over a rightful male heir and the rivalries in his court had not been solved by these drastic steps. Those issues would continue for the rest of his reign.
Why does The National Archives have this document? The texts have come to The National Archives as part of the archives of the Chancery Offices. These books were used and added to until a new volume of precedents was required. Records of the Crown’s law courts are seen as public records. Documents showing what cases were about and how they were managed by the courts have survived from all periods to become part of the legal collections here at The National Archives. Those of the senior courts that existed at Westminster are especially important in showing who had access to the highest levels of the law, and how legal processes changed over time. They allowed the use of the law in the past to be researched and questioned, and this is important in holding to account those powerful organisations and functions that make up what we can call the state.