Anne Boleyn was beheaded on Tower Green after being convicted of treason, adultery, and incest, ending her three-year reign as queen consort.
On the morning of 19 May 1536, Anne Boleyn was executed by beheading on Tower Green within the Tower of London. In a gesture sometimes attributed to Henry VIII's residual regard for her, an expert swordsman was brought specially from Calais to perform the execution with a sword rather than the more common and often less precise axe, sparing her a potentially prolonged and painful death.
Anne delivered a brief, dignified speech before her execution, notably refraining from directly criticizing the king, in keeping with the customs of the time for those condemned to death. She was buried in an unmarked grave at the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula within the Tower precincts; her remains were later identified during Victorian-era renovations and now rest beneath the chapel floor, marked with her name among other notable Tudor figures.
Anne's execution marked the dramatic and brutal end of a queenship that had reshaped the religious and political landscape of England. Her death paved the way for Henry's marriage to Jane Seymour just eleven days later. Yet Anne's legacy endured profoundly through her daughter, Elizabeth I, and through her association with the early evangelical reform movement in England. Her execution remains one of the most studied and dramatized events in English history, symbolizing the perilous position of women — even queens — within absolutist monarchical power structures.