Page 37 of The Rest is History
Oh God. Poor guy. Sympathy and concern instantly overtake any disappointment that he’s not declaring his undying love or proposing marriage (or even a hookup).
Oh no! Are you OK? Of course I can. What’s the topic?
Thx. Trial of Anne Boleyn. Emailing you my notes. Just stick to them pls
Yes yes yes! Not only am I getting the chance to teach my beloved Tudors, but I have truly hit the jackpot. Anne Boleyn’strial? Is he kidding me?
All over it. Feel better. Do you need anything? And have you covered the background / run-up? Charles V / France / Cromwell?
All done. This lesson is focusing on the case against Anne & the others / machinations of the trials. And all I need is for you to stick to my teaching notes.
He honestly is such a nob. At least he’s well enough to be his usual arsehole self. If he was being pleasant, I’d be worried he was dying.
I open up his email. I haven’t taught this period for a year—not at A Level standard, anyway—so I definitely won’t turn down a little spoon-feeding. Except that his notes aredry. They run through the mechanics of the trials.
A list of Anne’s supposed lovers.
A list of their charges.
A (long) list of the hostile jury members, as handpicked by Thomas Cromwell.
A list of the ‘evidence’ (yes, that term deserves quotation marks because there basically was none).
A list of the peers of the realm who tried Anne and her brother George.
A list of the charges againstthem.
A list of the laws of the time upon which the charges could be based, however tenuously.
Yada yada yada.
Jesus Christ. This is turgid beyond belief. It’s toe-curlingly dull, and it’ll have Charlie’s class pulling out their own fingernails to liven up their lesson. Most importantly, while the lesson plan lays out the moving parts, it doesn’t get to the crux of the matter, which is that this was a political coup of epic proportions.
Anne and her friends never stood a chance.
And where the fuck is the mention of Henry here? That there is none was one of the most fascinating aspects of the whole case. Cromwell and the Seymour faction served up what Henry wanted to hear. Otherwise, they isolated him and cut off access to him, exploiting his capacity for self-pity and paranoia. He didn’t really surface until Anne was condemned and he was obsessing over to burn her or behead her.
These heads didn’t roll because the king willed it.
They rolled because Cromwell needed them to.
And that’s what we’re going to get to the crux of today. You see if we don’t.
I haven’t been this excited about a lesson since I got to Hampton Park School. I’m in my happy place—the bewildering and cut-throat (pun intended) world of Tudor political machinations. I’m practically rubbing my hands in morbid glee as I enter the classroom. Let me have at these young minds. I feel a lively debate coming on.
Except that these young minds don’t feel the same way.
‘Mr Vaughan’s out sick today,’ I tell the twelve members of the Lower Sixth that take Sixteenth Century History. ‘I’m Miss Peach. I’ll be filling in. But we have a great topic—one I’m sure you’ve been looking forward to. It’s the trial of Anne Boleyn!’
Blank stares meet my proclamation.
Okay, then.
I’ve found the pupils at Hampton Park are, for the most part, more engaged and ambitious than my St Michael’s pupils are. The flipside is that many of them are entitled little shits.
I’ll take another approach. Wow them with a few attention-grabbing numbers.
1,000 daysI write on the screen. ‘This is the approximate length of time Anne was queen. She waited six years for this role, and she lasted just over three.’
