Lives of the Queens of England Volume 4 Page 212. In Anne Boleyn's native county, Norfolk, a curious tradition has been handed down from father to son, for upwards of three centuries, which affirms that her remains were secretly removed from the Tower church under cover of darkness, and privately conveyed to Salle church [Map], the ancient burial-place of the Boleyns¹,' and there' interred at midnight, with the holy rites that were denied to her by her royal husband at her first unhallowed funeral. A plain black marble slab, without any inscription, is still shown in Salle church as a monumental memorial of this queen, and is generally supposed, by all classes of persons, in that neighborhood, to cover her remains. ‘The mysterious sentence with which Wyatt closes his eloquent memorial of the death of this unfortunate queen affords a singular confirmation of the local tradition of her removal and reinterment:—“God,” says he, “provided for her corpse sacred burial, even in a place as it were consecrate to innocence².” This expression would lead us to infer that Wyatt was in the secret, if not one of the parties who assisted in the exhumation of Anne Boleyn’s remains, if the romantic tradition we have repeated be indeed based on facts. After all, there is nothing to violate probability in the tale, romantic though it be. King Henry, on the day of his queen’s execution, tarried no longer in the vicinity of his metropolis than till the report of the signal gun, booming faintly through the forest glade, reached his ear, and announced the joyful tidings that he had been made a widower. He then rode off at fiery speed to his bridal orgies at Wolf hall. With him went the confidential myrmidons of his council, caring little, in their haste to offer their homage to the queen of the morrow, whether the mangled form of the queen of yesterday was securely guarded in the dishonored grave into which it had been thrust with indecent haste that noon. There was neither singing nor saying for her, —no chapelle ardente, nor midnight requiem, as for other queens; and, in the absence of these solemnities, it was easy for her father, for Wyatt, or even for his sister, to bribe the porter and sextons of the church to connive at the removal of the royal victim’s remains. That old elm chest could excite no suspicion when carried through the dark narrow streets and the Aldgate portal of the city to the eastern road: it probably passed as a coffer of stores for the country, no one imagining that such a receptacle enclosed the earthly relics of their crowned and anointed queen.

Note 1. The stately tower of Salle church is supposed to be the tallest in Norfolk, and it is certainly one of the most magnificent in the east of England. The profound solitude of the neighbourhood where this majestic fane rises in lonely grandeur, remote from the haunts of village life, must have been favourable for the stolen obsequies of the distinguished queen, if the tradition were founded on fact. Her father was the lord of the soil, and all his Norfolk ancestry were buried in that church. It is situated between Norwich and Reepham, on a gentle eminence.

Note 2. Singer’s edition of Cavendish’s Wolsey, vol. ii. p. 215.