On this day in 1536, Archbishop Cranmer paid a visit to Anne Boleyn.

As five men prepared to die for their supposed crimes with Queen Anne Boleyn, she, astonishingly, told her gaoler she believed she might live.

In the Tower of London, the atmosphere was grim. Sir Henry Norris, Sir Francis Weston, William Brereton, Mark Smeaton, and George Boleyn, Lord Rochford – Anne’s own brother – had all been found guilty of high treason. Their executions were scheduled for the next morning.

Two others, Sir Thomas Wyatt and Sir Richard Page, remained imprisoned but had not been formally charged. For now, their fates were uncertain.

But for the condemned men, the scaffold awaited.

Meanwhile, something strange was happening in the Queen’s lodgings.

According to a letter written by Sir William Kingston, the Constable of the Tower and Anne’s gaoler, the Queen made a surprising remark during dinner that day. She said she believed she would be “sent to a nunnery” and was “in hope of life.”

Hope of life?

Just the day before, Anne had been sentenced to death for adultery, incest, and plotting the King’s death. How could she now believe she might be spared?

Earlier that very day, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, one of Anne’s old allies, visited her in the Tower. His purpose? Officially, to act as her spiritual advisor. But his real task was to secure Anne’s agreement to an annulment.

Cranmer was to investigate whether there had ever been an impediment to her marriage to Henry VIII (something like a prior pre-contract or consanguinity) that could render the union invalid. This would allow the King to declare that his marriage to Anne had never truly existed.

What exactly passed between them, we don’t know. But Anne’s sudden belief that she might escape death suggests that Cranmer may have offered her hope, either directly or indirectly.

Was she promised a deal? Was she simply grasping at straws? Did she think agreeing to the annulment might lead to banishment to a nunnery instead of the scaffold?

We will never know for certain.

Sadly, if Anne truly believed she would be spared, she was wrong. Just three days later, on the 19th of May, she was executed by sword on Tower Green.

But this brief moment of hope gives us a poignant glimpse into Anne’s state of mind. Even in the shadow of death, she still clung to the possibility that she might live – perhaps not as queen, but as a woman, a mother, and a soul still capable of redemption.