佚名 · Public domain
Tudor period · c. 1501 or 1507–1536
Anne Boleyn
Anne Boleyn · United Kingdom
Queen of England, second wife of Henry VIII
Educated in the Netherlands and France, she returned to serve Queen Catherine at court. Henry VIII pursued her and sought to annul his marriage to Catherine, and Anne became queen in 1533. On 2 May 1536 she was arrested and taken to the Tower of London, tried for treason, and beheaded on 19 May. Her marriage and death made her a key figure at the start of the English Reformation.
Where the story happened
Places connected with this person
History · Tower of London
'Sent to the Tower'
The 16th and 17th centuries were the Tower's heyday as a prison, and in English being 'sent to the Tower' became a byword for falling from favour; even Elizabeth I was held here before she came to the throne. In 1536 Queen Anne Boleyn was taken to the Tower, tried for treason and beheaded, and buried in the Tower's Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula. However, the Tower's reputation as a 'place of torture and death' owes much to 16th-century religious propaganda and 19th-century writers: before the two World Wars of the 20th century, only seven people were executed within the Tower.
