Anyanka said

I thinking in this context “Cultural” equals reading too many V C Andrews books.

I think EoY gets thrown under the bus a lot these days in regards to the old rumour, but then again it was Richard who was thrown under the bus first. I think for novelists it is tempting to try and dismiss it by way of making out Elizabeth was young and innocently flirting, and laying the blame with her. We’ve really got no evidence of that, so it is interesting how it has been fictionally blown up over the last couple of decades. Or then you have novelists who make out they actually had an affair and people seem to enjoy this! There’s an author who is writing a series of books where Cecily is sleeping with Richard. Seriously. You wonder he had time to do anything else with all of these nieces that he allegedly seduced.

EW made him wear to find them all husbands, so yes, Richard would have done. Although I doubt he would have sanctioned a marriage between her and Tudor lol. He was planning on shipping one of them off, either Elizabeth or Cecily, overseas.

I’m not too sure Hannele, but I think Mary had doubts about the charges brought against Anne too. They were without a doubt hogwash anyway, and no court these days would entertain such a case, which was solely based on hearsay and rumour.
I also believe that Jane Seymour after the first bloom of married life with Henry darkened realised that Anne was innocent of every charge levelled at her, and as she lay dying perhaps realised just what a total bastard Henry really was.
It was only natural that Anne babbled as “Mental” puts it, when she (Anne) was confined to the tower.. She must have been terrified. The words “The Tower” was spoken was designed to strike terror into a person, and it did. The whole populus at that time was afraid more of “the Tower” then they ever were of anything else. You have to admit the William the bastard (Conqueror) certainly did instill fear into the people when he commissioned Gundulf, the Bishop of Rochester to build it. Gundulf was also the architech who designed and built both Rochester Castle and it’s Catherdral.
If you look at Rochester Castle to me at least there seems to be a sence of forbodding about it. I should imagine the people of Rochester perhaps felt that same sence of forbodding when they saw the walls of Rochester Castle looming over them..
The tower wasn’t designed as a pleasure palace so to speak, it was a place to lock people away where they would never been seen again, and many did disappear into those grey grim walls.
I know that there were many who did try to escape the tower but only a few actually succeeded, one of the first escapees, and in fact the first prisoner within those walls, was a monk called Ranulf Flambard in 1101, during the reign of Henry 1st. The custodian of the tower at the time was William de Mandeville who turned a blind eye whilst Ranulf did a runner.
The consequences of a failed attempt of escaping were dire and many met with a grisly end, either they fell to their deaths as the rope they were climbing down snapped, or in the case of Alice Tankerville (the only woman escapee) in Henry 8th’s reign she and her accomplice a tower guard named John Bawd, were cruelly executed. Alice and her husband who had asked Bawd to help him rescue Alice, were chained to the bottom on the tower walls and low tide and were slowly drowned as the tide turned. John Bawd the tower guard was tortured on the rack and left for days in a cell called little ease. A cell which is too small to either stand up in or lie down in, leaving the poor prisoner in an agonising squating position, finally he was left to hang in chains by his wrists over the tower walls, where he died of of exposure and was left to rot.
So you can understand why Anne must have babbled as she did. We don’t know if Mark Smeaton was tortured or not, but he did confess to what Cromwell and Henry had cooked up against him, so I think it’s pretty likely that he was, anyone in such pain would confess to anything just to make your tormenters stop. Maybe Anne heard Mark’s screams as they tortured him, or the screams of others being tortured or who had gone mad. I should imagine the very sound of them would be enough to make anyone babble, with fear.

To my mind, a plea bargin as the best Smeaton could hope for.

His status was as low as that of Francis Dereham and indeed Cromwell..Only one was afforded the full penalty of a traitor’s death..

Hannele said
Yes, but that they would have said even if they were guilty (or rather, somebody of them was). If a man really loves a woman, he tries to save her, even by lying. (I don’t believe this considering the evidence, but this is a possibility.)

I don’t think we can say that they would have lied regardless, it is also extremely difficult to judge the characters of obscure historical figures we know practically nothing about. What we do know is that Mark Smeaton was not a noble, he was a musician and has not been raised at court, therefore he may have had different values in some respects. He would have had the same religious values, which is why it is so unlikely he would lie without having been coerced. Anne was fretting for Mark’s soul because he lied. He may have been raised to honour chivalry and virtue, and loyalty and all of those pretty ideals that captured the medieval people’s imaginations, but the nobles and courtiers certainly were. There is also the matter of oaths and honour. And those other five men had their own souls to worry about, and the honour of their Queen. Why betray her when they knew their death was a foregone conclusion? They had seen Henry murder More and Fisher and Buckingham and torture the Carthusian monks by then, among his many atrocities, I doubt they had any hope they would survive the coup.