Shortly after 9am #OTD in 1536, Queen #AnneBoleyn was executed by a swordsman at the Tower of London. A Portugese witness reported "Never had the Queen looked so beautiful," and another reported that she "went to her execution with an untroubled countenance".
#History
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An hour before her execution Sir William Kingston, Constable of the Tower of London informed her that she must prepare for death within the hour, but she was already prepared. She had expected to be executed the day before, but this had been rescheduled at the last minute.

It was just a short journey from her apartments. Past the Great Hall (where three years ago she had dined on the night before her coronation), through Cole Harbour Gate, along the west side of the White Tower, to the scaffold. The scaffold was 3-4 feet high & draped in black.

Spectators were gathered around the scaffold. Many of whom she would know well, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, Thomas Cromwell and the King's illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond.

Kingston helped her up the steps to the scaffold, where she addressed the crowd with a dignified speech;

After this her ladies removed her mantle, while Anne removed her hood, tucking her long dark hair under cloth cap to keep it off her neck. She then paid the distressed executioner, who begged her forgiveness.

Then her famous black eyes were hidden behind a blindfold, and Anne knelt praying "Oh Lord have mercy on me, to God I commend my soul. To Jesus Christ I commend my soul; Lord Jesu receive my soul." The crowd - all except Suffolk and Fitzroy - knelt, while her ladies sobbed.

Anne kept flinching, anticipating the blow of the sword. The executioner noticed this and called to his assistant to bring him his sword. Anne moved her head to follow the assistant, and at that moment the executioner came up behind her, and cut off her head with one stroke.

As the cannons fired to signal her death, her ladies gathered up her head and body, wrapping them in white cloth and placed them inside an old elm chest, (no coffin was provided) & taken to the Chapel within the Tower, where it was buried in an unmarked grave near her brother.

Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, wife of King #HenryVIII and mother of the future Queen #ElizabethI was dead. But despite Henry’s attempts, her memory has never been forgotten
#Tudors #History
End of thread.