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After five long years, Wolf Hall is back on our screens with the second and final season. Following the events of Hilary Mantel's third Wolf Hall novel, The Mirror and the Light, the series traces Henry VIII (Damien Lewis) and his advisor Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance) in the four years following the execution of Anne Boleyn (Claire Foy), concluding with Cromwell's death in 1540.
What many TV fans quickly notice about Wolf Hall is its apparent accuracy. Everything from the costumes to the sets to the language certainly feels as though it's true to history. My Lady Jane it is not! But although Wolf Hall bucks the trend of many modern period dramas, just how historically accurate is it really?
Hilary Mantel was a stickler for historical accuracy — but her novels are still fiction
Hilary Mantel, the author of the original trilogy, was not one to add modern twists or fantastical elements to her historic fiction. In fact, she was obsessive about ensuring her novels were as historically accurate as possible.
“People sometimes say to me: 'Why do you make a fetish of historical accuracy? Shakespeare didn't.' My answer is always simply ‘I am not Shakespeare,’" she said to The Guardian in 2014. "He could get away with anything.”
However, Mantel maintained that her works were fiction. As a novelist, she claimed she could take her story where “the historian and biographer can’t go.” She added, "However much you learn, factually, there is plenty of scope for imagination.”
In 2017, John Guy, a Tudor historian, noted that many students had begun to assume the Wolf Hall series was 100% accurate — which he saw as troubling. “We are starting to get people coming up who want to talk about Thomas Cromwell,” he said while appearing at the Hay Literary Festival. “This blur between fact and fiction is troubling."
Guy went on to explain that Mantel's novels twisted certain historic figures for artistic reasons. More, he explained, was not “a misogynistic, torturing villain,” nor was Anne Boleyn a “female devil.”
Rebecca Rist, a professor of religious history, echoed these thoughts.
“If you want to enjoy a period yarn with plenty of intrigue, sex and drama then by all means watch Wolf Hall,” she wrote in 2015. “The costumes are beautiful; there are some salty acting vignettes.” But for “serious history," she recommends biographies by the likes of Geoffrey Rudolph Elton and George M. Logan.
Wolf Hall, season 2: how historically accurate is the show?
Ok, so the source material is extremely well-researched and fairly accurate — though it does take some artistic liberties. Just how accurate is season 2 of the hit BBC show?
Although Wolf Hall offers a fictionalised version of events, the execution of Anne Boleyn features a number of historically accurate details. For instance, it is known that Henry chose beheading as the method of execution as a mercy, as it offered a swift death. He also chose a sword rather than an axe and even imported a French swordsman as French beheadings were thought to be more civil.
We don't know exactly how many people would have attended Anne's execution — while some accounts indicate that over 1,000 people were present, Wolf Hall's depiction seems to show a much smaller number. Some accounts suggest that this might actually be more accurate, as organisers of the execution may have wished to stop too many onlookers from attending and later writing sympathetic accounts of the event that might diminish Henry's popularity with the public.
Season 2 opens with Henry's wedding to Jane Seymour — it is historically accurate that this occurred just 11 days after Anne's execution. In Wolf Hall, Jane is depicted as a gentle force in Henry's life who often tries to help him make peace with members of his family. For instance, she encourages Henry to mend his relationship with his daughter, Mary. According to historic accounts, Jane was close with Mary — in fact, after Jane died of complications during childbirth, Mary was her chief mourner.
According to historic accounts, Henry chose to marry Anne of Cleves in order to strengthen political ties with Germany and to produce a “spare” after fathering Edward with Jane. It is true that Henry disguised himself in order to see Anne before their official meeting and that Anne didn't recognise him, leaving him insulted. In Wolf Hall, we don't get to see this disastrous meeting, but we do hear about it. Henry would later claim that Anne was “ugly” and didn't look like her portrait — and for centuries, this has been what many historians believed to be true. However, more recently, historians have reconsidered these accounts and hypothesised that Henry simply didn't get along with Anne — and it is this version of events that Wolf Hall presents us with. Eventually, Anne was said to have accepted the annulment graciously and without much fuss.
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The series culminates with the dramatic fall of Cromwell — once Henry's trusted confidante, Cromwell finally makes a blunder that he can't undo, which ultimately leads to his execution. It all began when Cromwell orchestrated the match between Henry and Anne of Cleves. After this messy marriage and a smear campaign by the Duke of Norfolk, Cromwell was arrested as a traitor and sentenced to death.
“Written at the Tower this Wednesday, the last of June, with the heavy heart and trembling hand of your Highness’s most heavy and most miserable prisoner and poor slave. Most gracious prince, I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy,” he allegedly wrote to the King after his arrest.
Cromwell was executed on 28 July 1540 as Henry tied the knot with his fifth wife, Catherine Howard. According to one account by eyewitness Edward Hall, the execution was not a clean one. “So patiently suffered the stroke of the axe, by a ragged and Boocherly miser, which very ungoodly perfourmed the office,” the witness wrote.
Wolf Hall doesn't show the gruesome detail — instead, we see Cromwell's unrealised vision for his peaceful rural retirement at Launde Abbey.
There is still plenty of debate about just how accurate Rylance's Cromwell may be — but then again, the show is a fictionalised and artistic version of historic events. And historical accuracy isn't always the point. Whether or not this version of Cromwell is entirely truthful, we can all agree that this version of his story has been mesmerising from start to finish.
