Traitors of the Tower by Alison Weir Page B

tale had him crying that the Queen and Elizabeth Shore had caused his arm to wither by using witchcraft, but there is no proof that he had a withered arm. He did shout that an ambush had been set to trap him.
    His victims had no chance to reply. Armed guards had been hiding in the next room, and when Gloucester banged his hand on the table, they burst in, yelling, ‘Treason!’ There was a sharp scuffle, which ended in the arrest of Hastings and four others.
    Gloucester told Hastings he had better see a priest at once and confess his sins, ‘for I will not dine until I see your head off!’ Hastings realised he was going to die within minutes. There was no trial, and there can be no doubt that Gloucester was acting outside the law. It was the right of a lord to be tried by his fellows, but Gloucester dared not risk a trial because Hastings knew too much about his plot to seize the throne. In fact, this was the start of Gloucester’s rule by terror.
    He paid no heed to Hastings’ pleas for mercy. Nor did Buckingham, whom Gloucester put in charge of the doomed man. A priest was summoned, but was not allowed much time to give the last rites. Then Hastings was dragged by an usher to ‘the green beside the chapel in the Tower’. There he was made to kneel by a block of wood left by some workmen, and an usher struck off his head with a sword. Edward may even have been watching, for the windows of his rooms faced Tower Green
    ‘Thus fell Hastings, killed not by those enemies he had always feared, but by a friend whom he had never doubted.’ And so Edward V lost his best friend. People were sad and shocked to hear of Hastings’ death. When Rivers and Grey too were killed without trial, and the little Duke of York was forced to join his brother in the Tower, they woke up to the fact that Gloucester was bent on taking the throne.
    Without the loyal Hastings to defend him, Edward V was declared a bastard and deposed. He and his brother, the two ‘Princes in the Tower’, were never seen again. On 26 June 1483, less than two weeks after Hastings died, Gloucester became king, as Richard III.
    Hastings was buried in the fine chantry chapel built for him in St George’s Chapel at Windsor, near the last resting place of his great friend, King Edward IV. His tomb can still be seen there today.

Chapter Two
    Queen Anne Boleyn (1536) - ‘I Have a Little Neck’
    On 29 January 1536, Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife, lost a baby son, born dead after four months. This was her fourth child, but the only one still living was a girl, Elizabeth, born in 1533. In Tudor times, no one thought a woman might be a powerful ruler, as Elizabeth later was, and the King had long wanted a son to succeed him on the throne. Now, to his ‘great distress’, that son had been born dead.
    Henry VIII had hoped for a boy from his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, but of her six children, all had died young except a daughter, Mary. By 1526, the King had fallen madly in love with her lady-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn. Anne had dark hair and eyes, and she was clever and witty. Henry wrote ardent love letters to her, and begged her to be his mistress, but she kept him at bay, holding out for marriage.
    In 1527, Henry asked the Pope to end his marriage to Katherine. But the Pope did not want to offend Katherine’s mighty nephew, the Emperor Charles V, so he held back. After six years of waiting in vain for the Pope to speak, Henry broke with the Church of Rome and made himself Head of the Church of England. In 1533, he married Anne and had his union with Katherine declared null and void. By then, he was forty-two and his need for a son was urgent.
    But in the three years that followed his secret wedding to Anne Boleyn, Henry was not a kind husband. His ‘blind passion’ had not lasted, and he had turned to other women, telling Anne to ‘shut her eyes as her betters had done’. Now he was chasing after her maid, Jane Seymour, and Anne had borne a dead son.