Anne Boleyn 19 May

On this day in 1536, Anne Boleyn, Marchioness of Pembroke and Queen Consort of England, second wife and queen consort of Henry VIII and the mother of Queen Elizabeth I of England was beheaded. The reason for this sad separation of head from shoulders has always been the subject of debate but it seems most likely that the king had got cheesed of with Anne’s strong willed ways and blundered into the arms of the doe-eyed and manipulative Jane Seymour, who was a pawn of Anne’s many political enemies. Most importantly, Anne had quarrelled with Thomas Cromwell, the chief minister, which was probably a bit of an error, and he moved swiftly to extract revenge. Cromwell, with the secret support of the king, engineered an elaborate plot to bring the queen to the scaffold along with several of her strategic allies at court. Anne was arrested on May 2, 1536, and taken to the Tower of London. where she apparently went slightly off her chunk. She is rumoured to have written a letter to her husband remonstrating against this "unworthy stain" on her reputation. On the evidence of a false confession, obtained from one of her chums, Marc Smeaton, by torture, Anne was convicted at her trial on May 15 and on May 19, 1536 she was beheaded in the Tower of London. Her head came off with a single stroke of the swordsman’s blade. By some oversight, a coffin hadn’t been ordered for her, so they placed her in an arrow box, and since it was too small, they placed her head under her arm, which is, of course, where all the tales of ghosts with heads under their arms stem from. Henry, clearly distraught, waited 11 whole days and married Jane Seymour on May 30.