'Wolf Hall' Recap: Episode 6

Wolf Hall is available to stream. Recap the previous episode.
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Tasked by King Henry VIII with removing Anne Boleyn as queen – even though her elevation was engineered by Cromwell in the first place – Thomas Cromwell dreams of hosting a banquet at his house. The guests are odd bedfellows: friends of Jane Seymour, enemies of Anne and her Protestantism, rivals to Henry’s throne and supporters of Henry’s late first wife and her daughter, Mary, and the Catholicism she espouses – not necessarily friends of Cromwell, but his allies in this cause. He imagines Anne Boleyn being served at the table for them to all cut into.

In real life, Cromwell dines with Sir Nicholas Carew, a representative of the old families who have a claim to the throne and hate Anne. They believe Jane can be made to support Catholicism when she is elevated to queen, and so are backing her.

Anne herself knows that Cromwell is meeting with her enemies. She warns him that she’s responsible for his rise, and that those who have been made can be unmade. But she’s providing him opportunities for her downfall, as when she taunts some of the men who hang around her for adoring her: the lowly musician Mark Smeaton and the courtiers Harry Norris, Francis Weston, and William Brereton. When she announces in front of a crowd that Norris has declared his love for her, he leaves – and she panics, telling everyone that it was just idle talk.

But all talk can be used by Cromwell. Anne’s lady-in-waiting and sister-in-law Jane Rochford, misused by both her queen and husband, immediately relates the event to Cromwell. The king already knows, and Anne has pleaded with him to forget the incident. But there’s worse, Jane says: she has seen her husband George kiss his sister Anne, intimately. Henry can’t give Anne a son, so she has to go to other sources – and if the son is fathered by George and thus looks like a Boleyn, no one can doubt his legitimacy.

Jane also advises Cromwell to talk to Mark. So Cromwell invites over the musician, whom he has disliked since he overheard Mark impertinently gossiping about him and his patron Wolsey during Wolsey’s downfall. With his ward Rafe and nephew Richard as witnesses, Cromwell asks Mark about Anne – and is surprised when Mark quickly boasts of being the queen’s lover and the envy of Norris and Weston. When Mark realizes what he has done, he tries to recant and flee, but Cromwell insists on a full confession. He keeps him overnight in a storage room with a “phantom” and listens to Mark’s yelps in the night. The next morning, Mark babbles everything he thinks Cromwell wants to hear.

Cromwell sends Richard to tell the king of the confession. Henry is at a jousting tournament, and calls Norris, an old friend, to ride and talk with him.

The duke of Norfolk – Anne’s uncle – carries a warrant for Anne’s arrest to her with Cromwell, Lord Chancellor Audley, and Master Treasurer Fitzwilliam. They escort her to be imprisoned at the Tower of London – albeit in the same rooms she stayed in before her coronation. Cromwell tells the constable to record anything Anne says. He hears her say that she is not worthy of the rooms, Jesus have mercy. The ambitious Wriothesley, who is in Cromwell’s service, believes it is an admission of guilt.

Archbishop Cranmer, who has used Anne’s patronage to start reforming the church of England, cannot believe she is guilty – or is at least conflicted, but will reluctantly support Henry’s crusade against her. Henry certainly believes everything, and more. He feels persecuted by Anne and continually laments his situation; he has written a tragedy about himself. He even says, within hearing of Cromwell, that Anne waged an unfair campaign against the cardinal – even though Henry was ultimately responsible for it.

Five men have been arrested on suspicion of being Anne’s lovers, or at least hoping to marry her after the king’s death – an act of treason. In addition to Mark, four of them are the men who played demons dragging the cardinal to hell in a farce staged years ago. Cromwell has remembered them all these years: George Boleyn, Norris, Weston, Brereton.

He interrogates them all in the Tower. With the dismissive Brereton he brings up injustices committed by the Breretons against poorer men. George is defiant, guessing correctly that his wife is responsible for his arrest, but soon realizes the trouble he is in. Cromwell threatens violence against the wily Norris after trying to explain that Henry wants another wife and Anne won’t go without a push. Cromwell needs guilty men, so he found men who are guilty – if not necessarily as charged. This also explains why he has excluded his friend Thomas Wyatt from charges, even though Wyatt was rumored to have had a relationship with Anne years ago.

But none of them will confess, or offer evidence against the others. The young Weston may be on the verge of saying something after realizing he has undone himself by incurring debts and accepting money from the queen. But when he tells Cromwell that he doesn’t blame him and he only thought he had another twenty years of life at least, Cromwell finds himself shaken. He leaves the interrogation, and Wriothesley asks Cromwell if he wants Wriothesley to make them all confess. Cromwell explodes at Wriothesley.

Cromwell expresses some tenderness towards Anne when he visits her in the Tower. Her father has abandoned her to save himself, and she has as her attendants in the Tower unfriendly aunts who believe she is guilty. Cromwell advises her to be penitent, at least for the sake of her daughter Elizabeth. As Cromwell is leaving, she desperately asks him if he believes the charges against her; he simply holds her hand in response.

As nobles, the two Boleyns are tried before a court of peers. They are both defiant. But Anne’s admission that she gave money to Weston creates a stir, while George’s amused reading of reported remarks against Henry puts words of treason in his mouth.

When Norfolk reads out the sentence against Anne, there is a kerfuffle – the intended punishment is burning at the stake, but Cromwell on behalf of the king has intervened to allow for the quicker, kinder beheading.

The five men are killed separately from Anne. When her time comes, she tremblingly disburses alms to the watching crowd before mounting the platform where she will be killed. She keeps looking to the Tower, still believing the king will grant her mercy at the last minute. She makes a speech praising Henry before kneeling and removing her cap to receive a blindfold. The executioner is French. He wears soft shoes and misleads Anne as to where he is so that the beheading by sword is swift and unexpected.

Francis Bryan makes a joke and immediately leaves to bring the news of Anne’s death to his friends the Seymours. The women attending Anne prevent any man from handling her body and place her in a waiting coffin before carrying it away themselves.

Henry smiles and hugs Cromwell when he hears the news. Cromwell looks pained in Henry’s grasp.