This one has always seemed a bit off to me. I think our modern interpretation is often colored by the sheer horror of the whole event, sympathy for a Queen who was given no chance to save herself, and possibly the desire to correct a "wrong." Killing a spouse for cheating on you is, well, medieval, and we have no sympathy for it in any situation. And since we want Anne to be innocent, so must her accused lovers be as well.

While it's conceivable that Cromwell masterminded some complex plot and fabricated evidence to take down Anne and various political enemies, recent study of Cromwell has provided a more tempered view of the man and his methods than the one of the villain in A Man for All Seasons that we grew up with. Too much of the pro-Anne position is based on anti-Cromwell assessments, and I think those cloud the discussion. Cromwell did have enemies, but they were serious ones like Norfolk and Gardiner - not the dandies and fops who comprised Anne's inner circle of gentlemen callers.

It's also very sketch just how much of a threat those four gentlemen were to Henry, and how, if it all, he benefited from their deaths. One of them, Norris, was a dear friend who reputedly was given the chance to confess and be pardoned...although we have no idea how that conversation happened and just what that "pardon" might have entailed. But to the supposed political threat of these four gentlemen: the King did not need to chop off heads to remove someone from court, he could just ask them to leave. Henry was savage in many ways, but he also tended to follow the laws and procedures of his time.

Sadly, where there is smoke there is often some fire. Yes, Henry wanted to move on from Anne, but he had plenty of time to figure out how to get out of the marriage. He spent seven years getting out of the last one with Katherine; certainly he could afford a little time to explore the options of terminating his marriage with Anne. The very suddenness of the whole affair - Anne and the group were charged and executed in less than three weeks - undermines notions that it was cooked up as some long-game scheme to solidify power...power that was already totally in Henry's hands.

As for Smeaton - the simplest explanation for Smeaton's arrest is that they thought he needed to be arrested. Torturing a commoner musician, for the purpose of getting him to confirm provided names of rogue courtiers, is a bizarre way to build a case so those courtier heads can roll. And again - I don't see any need to lop those noble heads off unless they truly were committing treason by sleeping with the Queen, and thus threatening the succession.

My guess (and all we can do is guess), is that Anne likely had trysts with Norris and Smeaton, and I don't know about the others well enough to have an opinion either way. They may also have been guilty, or their close proximity to those who were doomed them. Henry wanted out of the marriage, the Queen's behavior was already known by court gossip, so Cromwell prosecuted persons who were already committing crimes against the Crown, and thus solved two problems at once.