Anne Boleyn’s execution in May 1536 ends her rise from court favorite and queen to a prisoner whose death the king allows to proceed even after their marriage has been annulled. The event is not shown directly: Margaret Pole, away at Bisham Manor, learns of its outcome through the cannon shot from the Tower, and her mistaken belief about Henry VIII’s intentions makes the reversal especially stark.

From Courtly Triumph to Imprisonment

At a court masque, Anne had once held the room’s attention while Henry danced with her in full view of Queen Katherine. When the queen’s party prepared to withdraw, Anne remained among the courtiers rather than taking her place behind her in the customary order. Margaret, initially ready to guide her into the departing company, recognized in Anne’s unhurried defiance a change in the court’s hierarchy: the queen did not command her to leave, and the king allowed her to stay. The scene of public favor supplies a pointed contrast to the later account of Anne confined in the Tower.

By May 1536, the immediate political outcome appears settled in one respect: Henry’s marriage to Anne has been annulled, and their daughter Elizabeth declared illegitimate. Yet these changes do not end Anne’s imprisonment or halt the preparations for her execution. At Bisham Manor, Margaret has left London because she cannot bear the speculation and repeated discussion of the trial. She notes that even people who had hated Anne cannot understand why the king does not simply put her away in a distant castle. Instead, the plans for her death continue.

Margaret’s Disbelief

Margaret’s response is shaped by both the unprecedented nature of the sentence and her memory of Henry. She considers it unthinkable that a Queen of England could be executed, and cannot imagine a woman being led from the Tower to the small patch of ground by the chapel to die. Her disbelief is personal as well as political: she remembers Henry as a prince associated with courtly love and cannot reconcile that image with a king ordering his wife’s death.

Margaret also distinguishes this sentence from Henry’s earlier treatment of Katherine. Sending a wife away and neglecting her, she reasons, is not the same as condemning a wife and the mother of his child to death. Her thoughts turn to Anne, whom she had hated, and she finds herself praying for her in the stripped chapel of the priory. The empty altar, deprived of its cross and silver, places that prayer in a setting already marked by the removal of sacred objects; Margaret nevertheless directs it toward the woman whose agent had taken her holy things.

The Execution and Its Aftermath

The narrative confirms Anne’s death indirectly. From Bisham, Margaret hears that the cannon shot from the Tower has informed London that Henry has killed his wife. No eyewitness account of the execution is given, and the event’s force rests instead on the distance between Margaret’s expectation and the news that reaches her. Her assumption that Henry cannot carry out the sentence proves wrong.

The account then reveals that Henry has not spent the days grieving Anne or lamenting the loss of his youth. While Margaret imagines him in a jealous fury, he is courting Jane Seymour, travelling upriver by barge with musicians, dining with her, and sending gifts as he plans their future. Only a few days after the cannon announces Anne’s death, Henry marries Jane and the court has a new queen. The rapid succession of imprisonment, execution, and remarriage makes Anne’s death not an isolated ending but a decisive change in the royal household.

Narrative Significance

Anne’s trajectory is framed through public ritual and its reversal. At the masque, her refusal to follow the queen’s withdrawal signals that established precedence no longer restrains her position; in the later account, annulment and declared illegitimacy do not protect her from imprisonment or execution. The contrast exposes the instability of favor at court, where public prominence can give way to lethal royal power.

The event is also structured around Margaret’s failed interpretation of Henry. Her memories of the prince and her assumptions about love make the execution seem impossible, but the evidence of his courtship of Jane replaces that imagined grief with action directed toward a new marriage. Because Margaret is absent, the death reaches the reader as news rather than spectacle: the cannon marks the moment when her hope gives way to confirmation.