On the 1st of May following the king suddenly broke up a tournament at Greenwich, leaving the company in bewilderment and consternation. The cause was soon known. Inquiries had been made on reports of the queen's ill-conduct, and several of her reputed lovers had been arrested. On the 2nd Anne herself was committed to the Tower on a charge of adultery with various persons, including her own brother, Lord Rochford. On the 12th Sir Francis Weston, Henry Norris, William Brereton and Mark Smeaton were declared guilty of high treason, while Anne herself and Lord Rochford were condemned unanimously by an assembly of twenty-six peers on the 15th. Her uncle, the duke of Norfolk, presided as lord steward, and gave sentence, weeping, that his niece was to be burned or beheaded as pleased the king. Her former lover, the earl of Northumberland, left the court seized with sudden illness. Her father, who was excused attendance, had, however, been present at the trial of the other offenders, and had there declared his conviction of his daughter's guilt. On the 16th, hoping probably to save herself by these means, she informed Cranmer of a certain supposed impediment to her marriage with the king--according to some accounts a previous marriage with Northumberland, though the latter solemnly and positively denied it--which was never disclosed, but which, having been considered by the archbishop and a committee of ecclesiastical lawyers, was pronounced, on the 17th, sufficient to invalidate her marriage. The same day all her reputed lovers were executed; and on the 19th she herself suffered death on Tower Green, her head being struck off with a sword by the executioner of Calais brought to England for the purpose.[7] She had regarded the prospect of death with courage and almost with levity, laughing heartily as she put her hands about her "little neck" and recalled the skill of the executioner. "I have seen many men" (wrote Sir William Kingston, governor of the Tower) "and also women executed, and all they have been in great sorrow, and to my knowledge this lady has much joy and pleasure in death." On the following day Henry was betrothed to Jane Seymour.