After Wolsey's fall from grace, Smeaton was transferred from the Cardinal's service to Henry's Chapel Royal, where his musical ability came to the notice of the Queen.
Fatefully, this conversation with the Queen was quickly reported to Thomas Cromwell, one of the King's advisors, who was looking for evidence of Anne committing treason and adultery.
It is generally accepted that Anne was accused of adultery to free her husband, Henry VIII, to marry a new wife, Jane Seymour, to whom he became betrothed the day after her execution.
Those arrested for alleged adultery with Anne as a result of Smeaton's confession were Sir Francis Weston, Henry Norris, William Brereton, and her brother, George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford.
[2] A slightly different version of the events surrounding Smeaton's guilty plea is told by the nineteenth century English historical writer and poet, Agnes Strickland.
Strickland maintained that Smeaton was lured into signing the incriminating deposition by the subtlety of Sir William Fitzwilliam, 1st Earl of Southampton.
It was alleged by one of Anne's ladies-in-waiting, thought to be Elizabeth Browne, Countess of Worcester, that the Queen "admitted some of her court to come into her chamber at undue hours".
Smeaton's form of execution was beheading, rather than the brutal quartering usually assigned to commoners; the reason is thought to have been due to his co-operation with Anne's enemies.
A poem about the five executed men, allegedly written by Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder, contains the following verse dedicated to Mark Smeaton: Ah!
In the 1972 feature film remake of the BBC miniseries, Henry VIII and His Six Wives, Smeaton is portrayed by Damien Thomas and is depicted participating in a court masque with Anne Boleyn which mocks the downfall of Cardinal Wolsey.
He and the other four accused of adultery with Queen Anne are executed as the culmination of a careful vendetta against them by Cromwell, in revenge for their production of a mocking dramatisation of the downfall of Cardinal Wolsey shortly after his death, which was also depicted in 1972's Henry VIII and His Six Wives.
Smeaton appears in Gaetano Donizetti's opera Anna Bolena, in which the character is a trouser role assigned to a contralto.
Chris Clynes portrayed Smeaton in the BBC documentary drama The Six Queens of Henry VIII (S:1 E:2) entitled "Anne Boleyn" which originally aired in 2016.
Smeaton was portrayed by Nitai Levi in Michael Poulton's 2024 stage adaptation of the Philippa Gregory Novel "The Other Boleyn Girl", directed by Lucy Bailey for the Chichester Festival Theatre.