Ann Boleyn

On the 19th May, 1536 at 8.00am, a thirty-six-year-old woman took her place on a scaffold dressed in a robe of black damask covered by an ermine mantle of white. Instead of denying her guilt as an adulteress and disciple of witchcraft, she delivered a generous speech praising her former lord and lover Henry VIII. After being blindfolded, she waited only a few seconds before a French swordsman severed her head from her delicate neck.