Plea Bargin for Ann Boylen

500 years on, pardon plea for Anne BoleynDAVID SAPSTEDLondon, April 1: Britain’s home secretary is being urged to pardon AnneBoleyn, almost 500 years after she lost her head.An 85-year-old Battle of Britain veteran is calling on Charles Clarke topardon Henry VIII’s second wife because she was “obviously innocent” of thecrimes of adultery, incest and witchcraft that led to her being beheaded in1536.Wing Commander George Melville-Jackson also wants her remains to be movedfrom the Tower of London to Westminster Abbey, to lie alongside those of herdaughter, Queen Elizabeth I.“Ideally, I would like her to be posthumously declared not guilty of thecrimes she was convicted of because a pardon only means that you are beingexcused the crimes you have committed,” Melville-Jackson said at his home inNorwich yesterday.“But I got a barrister’s opinion and it seems that we would not be able togo to court to get a judicial review because, after nearly 500 years, therewas not much of a chance of being able to come up with new evidence. So apardon is the next best thing.”Melville-Jackson has been a keen amateur historian all his life. He admitsthat he first “fell in love” with Anne during history lessons as afive-year-old boy.He initially approached his constituency MP — coincidentally, the sameCharles Clarke — last year but Clarke refused to champion his cause. So helater wrote to the Queen, whose office forwarded the letter to the homeoffice where, by this time, Clarke had been installed as home secretary,succeeding David Blunkett.Melville-Jackson is still awaiting a reply from Clarke.The former airman said: “I have always felt that Anne Boleyn suffered agreat injustice but I don’t know why, this late in life, I have decided todo something about it.“I just woke up one morning and thought, ‘Damn it, I’m going to give it a go’.“I know there are lots of other cases of injustice in this world but AnneBoleyn was such a wonderful and gifted woman. She did great things for thisnation. Really, she started us off as a nation.“Yet she was so unjustly treated and she’s lying in a criminal’s grave. Shedeserves better than that. I know I am probably butting my head against abrick wall but I will go on doing so until I die.”Melville-Jackson is trying to enlist “celebrity” historians to join hiscampaign.He has written to Simon Schama, who has already said that Anne was tried bya kangaroo court that was able to convict her only on the basis of aconfession gained under torture. That confession, he wrote, provided “a figleaf of legality for this judicial murder”.Likewise, he points out that Antonia Fraser believes Anne was “certainly notguilty”, while David Starkey has said the case against her was “hopelesslyprejudiced”.Melville-Jackson believes there would be practical benefits from giving hisheroine a proper shrine in Westminster Abbey. “There is an Anne Boleyn fanclub and two-thirds of its members are Americans,” he said. “If we did thedecent thing by her and gave her a fitting resting place in the abbey, itcould become a major tourist draw.”A spokesperson for the home office said: “We do not normally comment onindividual cases under review and, I guess, the same would be true in thisinstance.”THE DAILY TELEGRAPHhttp://www.telegraphindia.com/1050402/asp/atleisure/story_4564513.asp