CHAPTER VIII

HENRY VIII.

After succeeding to the throne, Henry VIII. passed a few tranquil days

in the Tower, but his sanguinary nature soon showed itself, and his

first victims were his father’s most trusted counsellors. Having formed

a new Council, Henry had Sir Henry Stafford (the Duke of Buckingham’s

brother), Sir Richard Empsom, and Edmund Dudley arrested, the former

on some slight charge of disaffection of which he was able to clear

himself, and the two others on the charge of extortion during the late

reign.

Empsom and Dudley were disliked throughout the country, having been the

tools of the late King’s intense avarice, which became his consuming

passion towards the close of his life; both men appear to have enforced

his tyrannical policy with extreme harshness. Henry VIII. benefited

by his father’s miserliness, however, for the seventh Henry left the

colossal sum, for those times, of one million eight hundred thousand

pounds. His son, in order to obtain popularity at the beginning of his

reign, gave up his father’s ministers to gratify the popular clamour

against them, and although Empsom and Dudley both deserved punishment,

it was deemed necessary for form’s sake not to condemn them without a

specified charge. The Council was instructed, therefore, to trump up a

charge of conspiracy against the King’s person; and, upon this the two

men were condemned and executed upon Tower Hill.

Henry then bethought himself of marriage, and took to wife his

sister-in-law, Catherine of Arragon, he being then only nineteen

years of age, and Catherine five-and-twenty. For the first few years

this appears to have been a happy union; but it was one much to be

regretted, as it brought Mary Tudor into the world.

Henry possessed a handsome presence and a genial bluff manner, and as

long as all went well with him, and his least wish was carried into

instant execution, he could be amiable and even attractive. But his

character was both cruel and crafty, and, in later years, these defects

became more strongly marked. With old age and infirmity, he became

more akin to a wild animal than to aught human; and although he was

personally popular amongst the great bulk of the people, on account of

his magnificence and prodigality, no greater tyrant ever sat upon the

English throne.

Froude has in vain tried to whitewash Henry’s character. The early

years of his reign were indeed years of promise, but Henry must be

judged, not by his promise, but by his life and deeds; and the butcher

of Anne Boleyn, of More and Fisher, can only be regarded as a worthy

colleague of the worst tyrants that have from their height of place

been the curse and bane of their subjects.

Henry, with his love of show and splendour, gave himself and Catherine

a gorgeous wedding ceremony. They had held their court at the Tower

previous to their nuptials, and on the 21st of June the wedding took

place. Never had the English court made so magnificent a show as at

this time. The costumes of the men vied in splendour with those of the

women, and many of the great nobles literally bore their fortunes upon

their backs. The King blazed in a habit of crimson velvet, lined with

ermine and covered with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and other gems.

And as he rode through the streets, bareheaded, on a charger arrayed

in damasked cloth of gold, he was surrounded and followed by a suite

of knights and nobles, all in crimson velvet or scarlet cloth, Sir

Thomas Brandon, the Master of the Horse, being the most splendid figure

in the procession next to the King. Brandon, the chronicler tells us,

was arrayed in “tissue broudered with roses of fine gold, and having

a massy balderick of gold.” He led the King’s spare horse by a silken

rein, “trapped barde wise, with harneis broudered with bullion golde,”

and he was followed by nine children of honour, “apparelled in blewe

velvet, poudered with floure delices of gold and chains of goldsmithes

woorke, every one of their horses trapped with a trapper of the King’s

title.”

The Queen’s cortege was no less magnificent. Catherine was seated in a

chariot drawn by two white palfreys, and was attired “in white satyn

embroidered, her heire hangyng downe to her backe, and on her hedde

a coronall, set with many rich orient stones.” She was followed by a

crowd of ladies riding white palfreys, dressed in cloth of gold and

silver, these again being followed by an army of attendants.

The coronation was soon followed by executions; Henry seems to have

required blood-shedding as a kind of relaxation, and to have caused

it to flow with as much delight as he participated in the pomps and

splendours of his regal state. His next victim, after Empson and

Dudley, was Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk. Although the only crime

that could be brought against him was his consanguinity to the Blood

Royal of the Plantagenets, it was quite a sufficient excuse for the

King, and Suffolk was beheaded in 1513. He had been born in 1464, his

father being John de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, and his mother Elizabeth

Plantagenet, daughter of Richard, Duke of York, consequently he was

of the Blood Royal by his mother’s side, and, through her, nephew to

Edward IV. and Richard III. Edmund de la Pole had surrendered the

Dukedom of Suffolk in 1493, but was attainted in 1504, imprisoned

in the Tower in 1506, and executed seven years later. “Audacious,

strong and prompt in council” is the character given to Suffolk by a

contemporary writer. The title of Duke of Suffolk was bestowed by Henry

upon his brother-in-law, Charles Brandon, who had made such a fine

figure at his marriage.

Half-a-dozen years passed, and again the Tower prisons were filled,

some of the prisoners there having been concerned in a City riot.

With these was a Dr Bell, charged with “inflammatory and seditious

preaching.” During this riot the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Roger

Cholmondeley (whose effigy is in St Peter’s Chapel), fired the Tower

guns upon the City, but the damage done by the cannonade seems to have

been very slight.

In 1521 a descendant of Edward II. was brought to the fortress; this

was Edward Bohun, Duke of Buckingham, who traced his descent from

the grandfather of Richard II. through Anne the eldest daughter of

Thomas of Woodstock. Wolsey, now all-powerful, hated Buckingham for

the arrogance of his manner towards him, the Duke never troubling

to conceal his contempt for the lowly born, but ambitious Cardinal.

Wolsey’s opportunity for being revenged upon the nobleman for his

insolence came, when some ill-guarded expressions uttered by Buckingham

were repeated to him; the Duke was immediately arrested and taken

to the Tower. This was on the 16th of January 1521, and on the 13th

of the following month he was tried on the charge of high treason

and sentenced to death. Holinshed, in his Chronicle, describes how

Buckingham was taken by water from the Tower to Westminster. A barge

had been furnished for the occasion with a carpet and cushions, and

when the Duke was brought back from Westminster in the same manner, but

with the axe’s edge turned towards him, he refused to take the seat

which he had occupied on his way to his trial, saying to Sir Thomas

Lovel, “When I came to Westminster I was Lord High Constable, and Duke

of Buckingham, but now, poor Edward Bohun.” It is interesting to see

how closely Shakespeare has followed Holinshed’s description of this

episode in Buckingham’s condemnation, in his play of _Henry VIII._:

_Vaux._ Prepare there, the Duke is coming: see the barge be

ready;

And fit it with such furniture as suits

The greatness of his person.

_Buckingham._ Nay, Sir Nicholas,

Let it alone; my state will now but mock me.

When I came hither, I was Lord High Constable

And Duke of Buckingham; now, poor Edward Bohun—

In Brewer’s Introduction to the third volume of “Foreign and Domestic

State Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII.,” is the following interesting

account of Buckingham’s trial and execution:—

“As trials for treason were conducted in those days it was little

better than a question of personal credibility, assertion against

assertion; and very few reasonable men could entertain doubts as to

the issue. The King had already pronounced judgment, he had examined

the witnesses, encouraged and read their correspondence, and expressed

his belief in the Duke’s guilt. Who was to gainsay it? Who should be

bold enough to assert that the King had arrived at a false conclusion,

and that such manners of procedure were fatal to justice? In a court

also, constituted of men who were not lawyers by profession, who had

received no training for such nice questions, who understood nothing of

the salutary laws of legal evidence, what hope could there be for the

accused? How could he expect that protection which not only innocence

but guilt had a right to demand until the charge be fairly and fully

proven? The only lawyer employed was the Attorney-General, on behalf of

the Crown. But in those days Attorneys-General regarded themselves as

the servants of the Crown, who had to earn their wages by establishing

the guilt of the prisoner. So the Lords retired, and on their return

into court the sentence of each peer was taken one by one. Then said

the Duke of Norfolk to the Duke of Suffolk, ‘What say you of Sir

Edward, Duke of Buckingham, touching this high treason.’ ‘I say that he

is guilty,’ answered the Duke, laying his hand upon his heart. Every

peer made the same response; and against each of the names entered on

the panel—a little scrap of dirty parchment, still preserved in the

Record Office—there is to be seen to this day, in the handwriting of

the Duke of Norfolk, ‘Dicit quod est culpabilis.’

“Then was the Duke brought to the bar to hear his sentence. For a few

moments he was overpowered by his situation. In the extremity of his

agony, he chafed and sweat violently.[8] Recovering himself after a

while, he made his obeisance to the court. After a short pause, a

death-like silence! ‘Sir Edward,’ said the Duke of Norfolk, ‘you hear

how you be indicted of high treason, you pleaded thereto not guilty,

putting yourself to the judgment of your peers, the which have found

you guilty.’ Then bursting into tears (he was an old man, and had faced

death unmoved in the field of Flodden), he faltered out: ‘Your sentence

is, that you be led back to prison; laid on a hurdle, and so drawn

to the place of execution; there to be hanged, to be cut down alive,

your members cut off and cast into the fire, your bowels burnt before

your eyes, your head smitten off, your body quartered and divided at

the King’s will. God have mercy on your soul. Amen.’ The Duke heard

this horrible sentence with proud dignity and composure. Turning to

the Duke of Norfolk, he quietly replied, ‘You have said, my lord, as a

traitor should be said unto; but I was never one.’ Then addressing the

court, he requested that those present would pray for him, assuring

them that he forgave them his death, and expressing his determination

not to sue for mercy. In compliance with the custom of the time he

entered his barge at Westminster stairs, and was delivered, on landing

at the Temple, to Sir Nicholas Vaux and Sir William Sandys, by whom

he was conducted through the city to the Tower. This was about 4 P.M.

The trial had lasted some days, having commenced on a Monday, and on

the following Friday (17th of May), between eleven and twelve in the

forenoon, when the hills of Surrey were cloathed in their freshest

verdure, and the then unoccupied banks of the Thames, steeped to the

water’s edge with the tender green and delicate blossom of the white

thorn, the Duke’s favourite flower, the sombre procession threaded

its way through the dark passages of the Tower, and emerged upon the

Green. Amidst the sobs and tears of the spectators, the Duke, led by

the Sheriffs, mounted the scaffold with a firm and composed step.

Turning himself to the crowd, he requested all men to pray for him,

‘trusting,’ he said, ‘to die the King’s true man; whom through his own

negligence and lack of grace he had offended.’ With this brief request,

he kneeled at the block. There was a sudden glimmer for an instant in

the air, then a dull thud, and the head rolled heavily from the body.

The headsman wiped his axe; the attendants threw a cloak over the

headless trunk, to conceal the blood which streamed in a torrent over

the scaffold and dripped through the platform on the grass beneath. In

rough frieze, barefooted and bareheaded, six poor Augustinian friars,

shouldering a rude coffin, emerged from the shuddering and receding

crowd. Gathering up the remains of the once mighty Duke of Buckingham,

for the King, satisfied with his condemnation, had commuted the last

extremities of the sentence, they carried the corpse to the church

of the Austin Friars. The Duke in his lifetime had been kind to poor

religious men, and this was the last and only office they could render

him.”

[Illustration: _Queen Anne Boleyn_

(_From an Engraving after a portrait of the time._)]

Thus closed the life of Edward Bohun, Duke of Buckingham, Earl of

Hereford, Stafford, and Northampton.

Lords Montague and Abergavenny, and Sir Edward Nevil, were also

committed to the Tower with Buckingham, being charged with having

concealed their knowledge of his so-called treason; but they were all

three liberated after an imprisonment of some months duration.

In the fifth volume of “Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic,” in

the reign of Henry VIII. is the following memorandum of repairs made

in the Tower during the summer of 1532:—“Work done by carpenters and

taking down old timber, etc., at St Thomas’s Tower; and for alteration

in the Palace.” “There has also been taken down the old timber in

the four turrets of the White Tower; and the old timber of Robyn the

Devil’s Tower—that is, Julius Cæsar’s Tower; and of the tower near

the King’s Wardrobe. Half of the White Tower is new embattled, coped,

indented, and cressed with Caen stone to the extent of 500 feet.” The

return to this memorandum estimates the total expense of the alteration

at £3593, 14s. 10d.

The Tower was again the scene of festivities when, in the month of

May 1533, Anne Boleyn—to whom Henry had been secretly married on

January 25 of the previous year—was taken there in state. Again, as

five-and-twenty years previously, the old fortress put on its gala

apparel and became splendid for the new Queen’s coronation. The old

chronicler Hall describes the wondrous scene of “marvellous cunning

pageants,” of the fountains running wine, “Apollo and the Muses,

the Graces and all the Virtues, Mary, the wife of Cleophas, and her

children” welcoming the beautiful Queen, coming in all the glory of

youth and loveliness from Greenwich to the Tower, where she landed at

“five of the clocke, where also was such a pele of gonnes as hathe not

byn harde lyke a great while before, and on her landing was met by the

Kyng, who received her with loving countenance, at the Posterne by the

Water syde, and kyssed her.”

The next day, through streets strewn with gravel and gay with tapestry,

silks, and velvets, Anne wended her triumphal way to the old Abbey at

Westminster. The order of Anne’s coronation has been given at full

length by Shakespeare in the scene in the Abbey in _Henry VIII._:

“At length her grace, and with modest paces

Came to the altar; where she kneel’d, and saintlike

Cast her fair eyes to heaven and pray’d devoutly.

Then rose again and bow’d her to the people:

When by the Archbishop of Canterbury

She had all the royal makings of a queen;

As holy oil, Edward Confessor’s crown,

The rod, and bird of peace, and all such emblems

Laid nobly on her: which performed, the choir

With all the choicest music of the kingdom,

Together sung ‘Te Deum.’ So she parted

And with the same full state paced back again

To York Place where the feast is held.”

(_Henry VIII._, Act iv. scene 1.)

Three short years passed away and a pall of darkness falls over this

brilliant scene, and Anne’s regal state and “royal makings of a queen”

are changed to the prison and the scaffold.

In September 1533, Anne brought a daughter into the world, the future

Queen Elizabeth. In the following year Parliament passed an Act of

Succession, devised by Henry, by which his former marriage with

Catherine of Arragon was declared to be an unlawful one, and Anne’s

daughter was made successor to the Crown, thus excluding the Princess

Mary from the succession. All the King’s subjects were commanded to

acknowledge this new Act, but the Chancellor, Sir Thomas More, and

Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, whilst willing to obey the Act as an Act

of Parliament, declined to allow that the King’s marriage with the

Spanish Princess was illegal. Henry, on hearing this, burst into one of

his Tudor furies, and both More and Fisher were, by his orders, sent

to the Tower. At the same time Henry sent Commissioners through the

length and breadth of England to suppress all the religious communities

that refused to obey the Act, and also those who were not willing to

conform to his new Law of Succession.

Thomas Cromwell was the principal agent in carrying out Henry’s

commands against the monasteries. No fitter man for the task could

have been found. Risen from a humble station, Cromwell, who had been

introduced to the King’s notice by Wolsey, after his patron’s fall had

become private secretary to the sovereign; and in 1534 he was appointed

Henry’s Vicar-General in all matters appertaining to Ecclesiastical

affairs.

One of the Orders of Friars, styled Friars Observant, had openly

expressed their opinion concerning Henry’s second marriage, and for

this the Order was ruthlessly suppressed, many of its members being

executed. The same fate befell the Carthusians, some of whom were

imprisoned in the Tower for refusing to conform to the oath of this

Act of Succession. The Prior of Sion Hospital was hanged as a felon,

and many other priests and friars were put to death with every brutal

detail appertaining to the manner of execution for high treason.

Among all these martyrs for their faith, none were more eminent for

holy living than the aged prelate, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. He

was in his seventy-ninth year when Henry ordered him to be imprisoned

in the Tower; he appears to have been a frail, emaciated old man, and,

to judge from the life-like drawing of him by Holbein, had the look

of a man who has but a few years before him. So beloved was he in his

diocese, that when the order came to remove him from his see, the whole

city of Rochester turned out to bid its revered Bishop farewell. The

grounds for the charge of treason that was brought against him were

that he had listened to the prophecies of a woman known by the name

of the “Nun of Kent”; but Henry’s real reason for ridding himself of

Fisher was the Bishop’s refusal to comply with the Act of Succession.

Fisher, being a fervent servant of Rome, declared that Henry’s first

marriage had the sanction of the Pope, and consequently of the Church,

and therefore could not be declared illegal and invalid. Neither would

he acknowledge Henry’s new title of “On earth supreme Head of the

Church of England,” a title assumed by the King in 1534. This combined

refusal was, in the eyes of Henry and his Council, tantamount to a

penal offence, and both More and Fisher were condemned and executed for

denying the King’s supremacy in the State.

Fisher was imprisoned in the Bell Tower on the 21st April (1534),

and in the following November an Act of Parliament declared him to

be attainted of high treason, and his Bishopric to be vacant. His

household goods were seized and his library, which he had intended

bequeathing to his College of St John’s, Cambridge, was confiscated.

In the chapel of that same College the good Bishop had prepared

his tomb, which, however, was fated never to contain his shrunken

frame. The aged Bishop suffered much from the cold of the winter,

1534–35, in his prison, and there is a piteous letter from him, still

existing, addressed to Cromwell, in which he describes his hardships.

“Furthermore,” he writes, “I byseche you to be gode, master, unto me in

my necessite; for I have neither shirt nor sute, nor yett other clothes

that are necessary for me to wear, but that bee ragged, and rent so

shamefully. Notwithstanding I might easily suffer that, if they would

keep my body warm. But my dyett also, God knoweth how slender it is at

any tymes, and now in myn age my stomak may nott awaye but with a few

kynd of meats, which if I want, I decay forthwith, and fall into coafs

and diseases of my bodye, and kan not keep myself in health.” He then

begs Cromwell to soften the King’s heart on his behalf; he might as

well have asked Cromwell to soften the nether millstone.

[Illustration: _John Fisher. Bishop of Rochester_

(_From the drawing by Holbein at Windsor._)]

Bishop Burnet has written that news of Fisher’s sufferings reached the

ears of Pope Clement, who, “by an officious kindness to him, or rather

to spite King Henry, declared him a Cardinal, and sent him a red hat.

When the King heard of this, he sent to examine him about it; but he

protested that he had used no endeavour to procure it, and valued it so

little that, if the hat were lying at his feet, he would not take it

up. It never came nearer him than Picardy, yet did this precipitate his

ruin.” Henry had sworn that before the cardinal’s hat could arrive the

Bishop should have no head upon which to place it.

When asked by the Lord Chancellor, after he had been declared guilty of

high treason, what he had to say in arrest of judgment, the venerable

old man answered: “Truly, my lord, if that which I have said be not

sufficient I have no more to say; but only to desire Almighty God to

forgive them who have condemned me, for I think they know not what they

have done.” The Chancellor then read out the sentence by which the

Bishop was doomed, by the usual ghastly form of words, to a traitor’s

death. As Fisher was passing under Traitor’s Gate, where he had been

landed on his return to the Tower from his trial, he turned to his

guard of halberdiers and said: “My masters, I thank you for all the

great labours and pains which ye have taken with me to-day. I am

not able to give you anything in recompense, because I have nothing

left, and therefore I pray you accept in good part my hearty thanks.”

Those who were present were struck by the “fresh and lively colour in

his face, as he seemed rather to have come from some great feast or

banquet rather than from his trial and condemnation, showing by all his

carriage and outward behaviour nothing else but joy and satisfaction.”

Three more days of prison and the good old man’s troubles ceased.

At five o’clock in the morning, on the 22nd of June, the Lieutenant

of the Tower awoke Fisher from his sleep, telling him that he had

come with a message from the King—namely, that he was to die that

day. “Well,” answered the Bishop, “If this be your errand you bring

me no great news, for I have sometime looked for this message. I most

humbly thank his Majesty that it pleases him to rid me of all this

worldly business, and I thank you also for your tidings. But pray, Mr

Lieutenant,” he added, “when is my hour that I must go hence?” “Your

hour,” said the Lieutenant, “must be nine of the clock.” “And what hour

is it now?” said Fisher. “It is now about five.” “Well then, let me by

your patience sleep an hour or two, for I have slept very little this

night; and yet, to tell you the truth, not for any fear of death, thank

God, but by reason of my great weakness and infirmity.” “The King’s

further pleasure is,” said the Lieutenant, “that you should use as

little speech as may be upon the scaffold, especially as to anything

concerning his Majesty, whereby the people should have cause to think

otherwise than well of him and his proceedings.” “For that,” remarked

the Bishop, in answer to this practical confession of the injustice

of his sentence, “for that you shall see me order myself so, by God’s

grace, as that neither the King nor any one else shall have occasion to

dislike what I say.”

He then slept on for two hours more, when he rose and was helped to

dress; a hair shirt, which he wore next to his body, he removed,

replacing it with a clean white one. Upon his ordering his attendant

to give him his best clothing, the latter remarked upon the care and

attention that he was bestowing upon his dress that day. “Dost thou

not mark that this is our wedding-day,” said Fisher in answer, “and it

behoves me therefore to be more nicely dressed than ordinary for the

solemnity of the occasion.”

At nine o’clock the Lieutenant called for him. “I will wait upon you

straight,” said the Bishop, “as fast as this body of mine will give me

leave.” He then called for his furred tippet, which he placed round

his neck, “Oh, my Lord,” said the Lieutenant, “what need you be so

careful of your health for this little time, which you know is not

much above an hour.” “I think the same,” said Fisher, “but yet, in the

meantime, I will keep myself as well as I can to the very time of my

execution. For I tell you truly, though I have, I thank our Lord, a

very good desire and a willing mind to die at this present, and so that

of His infinite goodness he will continue it, yet will I not willingly

incommodate my health in the meantime one minute of an hour, but I

will still continue the same as long as I can by such reasonable ways

and means as God Almighty hath provided for me.” With that, taking a

little book in his hand—it was a Latin New Testament—that lay by him,

he made the sign of the cross upon his forehead, and then went out of

the chamber with the Lieutenant, being so weak that he could scarcely

go down the stairs. For this reason he was placed in a chair, and

carried by two of the Lieutenant’s men to the Tower Gate, surrounded

by a small number of guards. At the Gate he was to be delivered over

to the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex for his execution, but when

the procession arrived there it had to wait until a messenger, who had

been sent to the Sheriffs, returned to say whether those officials

were ready to receive him. During this waiting the Bishop rose from

his chair, and stood leaning against the wall with his eyes raised to

the sky. Then he opened the Testament he was carrying in his hand,

and said, “O Lord, this is the last time that I shall ever open this

book, let some comfortable place now chance to me, whereby I, Thy poor

servant, may glorify Thee in this my last hour!” Looking into the book,

the first words he espied were these! “And this is the life eternal,

that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou

hast sent. I have glorified Thee on the earth, I have finished the work

which Thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Thou me with

thine own self.” Fisher then closed the book, saying, “Here is learning

enough for me to my life’s end.” From the Gate he was carried to the

scaffold on Tower Hill, praying as he went, and when several persons

offered to help him to mount the steps, he turned to them and said,

“Nay, masters, seeing that I am come so far, let me alone, and you

shall see me shift for myself well enough.”

The sun shone brightly on the old man’s face when, standing on the

scaffold, with uplifted hands, he pronounced the words “Accedite ad eum

et illuminamini, et facies vestrae non confundentur.” The headsman,

as was the custom, knelt and asked the Bishop’s forgiveness for the

task he was about to perform. “I forgive thee with all my heart, and I

trust thou shalt see me overcome this storm with courage,” answered the

Bishop. Before kneeling down, he spoke a few words to the dense crowd

gathered around the scaffold. He had come there, he said, to die for

the Faith of Christ’s Holy Catholic Church, he begged their prayers

that he might be enabled at the point of death, and at the moment of

the supreme stroke, to continue steadfast without wavering in any one

point of that Faith. Then he prayed for the King, and for the realm,

being so cheerful that he seemed glad to die, and “although he looked

death itself in the human shape,” according to one of the writers of

the time, “his voice was full, strong, and clear.” When on his knees

before the block, the venerable Bishop repeated certain prayers, the

Te Deum, and the Thirty-first Psalm, “In te Domine speravi.” Then the

axe fell, and his head rolled on the scaffold. Thus died John Fisher, a

true martyr to his Church and Faith, far worthier of canonisation than

many enrolled in the long list of hagiology.

Henry was not content with merely putting this aged and venerable man

to death, but, if Cardinal Pole is to be believed, he ordered the

headless body of the Bishop to be treated with insult. It was left

naked for hours on the scaffold, until some charitable soul with a

touch of humanity, cast some straw over the poor remains of one who,

but a short time before, had been among the best, if not the greatest

of English Churchmen (Dr Hall’s “Life of the Bishop of Rochester”).

Fisher’s head was stuck upon a pike and placed on London Bridge. Dodd,

in his history of the Church, recounts that after the head had been

some days on the Bridge, it was taken down and thrown into the river,

the reason for this being that rays of light were seen shining around

it. Hall, in his “Life of the Bishop,” states that “the face was

observed to become fresher and more comely day by day, and that such

was the concourse of people who assembled to look at it, that almost

neither cart nor horse could pass.”

[Illustration: _Sir Thomas More_

(_From the drawing by Holbein at Windsor._)]

The Bishop of Rochester’s judicial murder was immediately followed by

that of Sir Thomas More; it would not be easy to say which execution

was the greater crime: their blood lies equally on Henry’s soul.

In many respects a parallel might justly be drawn between More and

Gladstone. Their fame as statesmen and scholars in both cases was

European. More’s life was equally pure, learned, and brilliant as that

of Gladstone. Both men were as well known on the continent of Europe as

in their own country, and the friend of Erasmus in Germany, and Colet

in England, in the sixteenth century, was as celebrated as the friend

of Dollinger and Hallam in the nineteenth. Their very faults only

brought their great qualities into higher relief. More showed a stern

severity to the Reformers which must always be deplored; Gladstone, in

his Irish and foreign policies, proved the frailty of even the best

intentioned motives. But the very fact of these being the only shadows

of weakness that obscured the brilliancy of both these noble lives,

speaks trumpet-tongued to their undying renown.

Although More had been one of Henry’s greatest friends, and had been

treated by him like a close companion—for Henry could appreciate More’s

humour and admire his learning—at the first sign of his old favourite

standing in the way of his wishes, the monarch turned upon the subject

in deadly rage.

Condemned for the same reason as that for which Fisher had been

executed, More met his fate with similar firmness and cheerful courage.

Neither complaint nor remonstrance troubled the serene calm of his

demeanour throughout the last days of his beautiful life. After his

condemnation, when he had been brought back from judgment to the Tower,

the porter at Traitor’s Gate asked for More’s cloak as a perquisite.

Sir Thomas gave him his cap as well, regretting that they were “not

better.” He was allowed one attendant in his prison, who was unable to

read or write, and although Sir Thomas had no writing materials, he

managed, with a coal in lieu of ink, to write a letter to his beloved

daughter, Margaret Roper. That letter was full of the perfect peace

that reigned in him, and of the affection he felt for her to whom he

wrote; it concludes with these words,—“Written with a cole by your

tender, loving father, who in hys pore prayers forgetteth none of you

all, nor babes nor your nurses, nor your good husbands, nor your good

husbands shrewde wyves, nor your fathers shrewde wyfe neither, nor

our other frendes. And thus fare ye hartely well, for lack of paper.

Thomas More, Knight.” Sir Thomas was allowed ink and paper after he

had written this letter, and he passed the time of his imprisonment in

writing a treatise on Our Lord’s Passion; but his writing materials

were then taken away from him, and he spent the rest of his days in

prayer and meditation.

One day the Lieutenant asking him why he kept his prison room so dark,

More answered, “When all the wares are gone, the shop windows are to

be shut up.” Early in the next year (1535) his wife was allowed to see

him; she urged him to conform to the King’s wishes, but it is needless

to say that he declined to do so. And when he was told that the King

had been mercifully pleased to allow him, as having held the highest

office in the realm, to be beheaded instead of being hanged, drawn, and

quartered, Sir Thomas laughingly said, “God forbid the King shall

use any more such mercy to any of my friends.”

[Illustration: _A Daughter of Sir Thomas More, supposed to be Mʳˢ.

Roper_

(_From the original drawing by Holbein_)]

There are few more touching scenes in the history of the Tower than

that when, after his final trial, More’s daughter, Margaret Roper, made

her way through the crowd to give her father a farewell embrace when

he landed at the fortress, and to receive his last blessing. Kneeling

before him, the poor creature could only say again and again, “Oh, my

father! oh, my father!” Those standing around, hardened as they were to

scenes of cruelty, could not help being moved at the piteous sight.

Early on the morning of the 6th July Sir Thomas Pope, an old friend of

More’s, entered his prison to tell him that the hour for his execution

was fixed for nine o’clock that day. As in the case of Fisher, Sir

Thomas More was asked not to “use many words” on the scaffold, for

the King feared the effect of a speech from his old friend upon the

public. At parting Sir Thomas said to Pope, who was deeply moved, “Be

not discomfited, for I trust that we shall in Heaven see each other

full merrily, where we shall be sure to live together in joyful bliss

eternally” (Roper’s “Life of Sir T. More”).

Punctually at nine o’clock Sir Thomas left his prison. He was dressed

in an old frieze cloak; his beard had grown long, and his face and

form were thin and worn; in his hand he carried a red cross. At what

appears to have been a kind of public-house, near the gate of the

Tower, a woman came out and offered him a glass of wine, but he refused

it, saying, “Marry, my good wife, I will not drink now, my Master had

vinegar and gall, and not wine given Him to drink.” Another woman asked

him for some papers that she had given him to keep for her when he was

Lord Chancellor: to her he said that she must have patience for an

hour, “and by that time the King’s Majesty will rid me of the care I

have of thy papers, and all other matters whatsoever.”

On reaching the scaffold he found it in a very shaky condition,

and turning to the Lieutenant, he said, laughing, “I pray you, Mr

Lieutenant, see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for

myself.” When on the platform he turned to the people, and, like

Fisher, told them he had come there to die for the Holy Church and

begged their prayers; then, kneeling down, he repeated the Misere to

the end. When the executioner asked his forgiveness Sir Thomas, who

meanwhile had risen from his knees, embraced him, saying, “Pluck up thy

spirits, man, and be not afraid to do thy office. I am sorry my neck is

short, therefore strike not awry.” He then bound a cloth which he had

brought with him over his eyes, and placed his head upon the block. An

instant before the axe fell he turned his head towards the executioner

while he moved his beard, “Pity that should be cut,” he said, “that has

not committed treason.”

The head was placed on London Bridge, but Margaret Roper obtained that

sacred relic, and it was buried with her when she followed her beloved

father in 1544, “to where beyond these voices there is peace.” Both

the bodies of Bishop Fisher and of Sir Thomas More were buried in St

Peter’s Chapel in the Tower, where they rest side by side.

One of the earliest inscriptions to be found on the walls of the

Beauchamp Tower is that of Thomas Fitzgerald, who was known as “Silken

Thomas,” from the costliness of his attire. He was the eldest son of

Gerald Fitzgerald, ninth Earl of Kildare, Lord-Deputy of Ireland. Earl

Gerald had been summoned to London, leaving Thomas in Ireland as Deputy

in his place during his absence. On arriving in London, the father

was arrested and thrown into the Tower. When the news reached Thomas

Fitzgerald he broke into open rebellion, and together with five of his

uncles laid siege to Dublin Castle, and having captured Archbishop

Allen, put him to death. Dublin Castle was defended by Sir J. White,

and would probably have fallen into the hands of the rebels had not the

Earl of Ormonde raised the siege with a powerful force. In retaliation,

the Castle of Maynooth, one of the Geraldine strongholds, was taken,

and the garrison incontinently hanged by Lord Leonard Grey; when the

news of this disaster reached Earl Gerald in the Tower, he died, it is

believed, of a broken heart, on the 12th December 1534, and was buried

in St Peter’s Chapel. “Silken Thomas” surrendered with his five uncles,

on the promise of a pardon, to Leonard Grey, who, oddly enough, was

another of his many uncles, Lord Leonard’s sister having married Earl

Gerald. These Geraldines were imprisoned in the Beauchamp Tower, where,

as we have seen, a fragmentary inscription cut by “Silken Thomas” is

still visible in the principal dungeon. Despite the promise of pardon,

Thomas and his uncles were all hanged at Tyburn, only one member of

the Fitzgeralds, a youth, escaping the King’s fury; and so great was

Henry’s anger, that he ordered Grey to be condemned to death for

allowing the youth in question to save himself: Henry had determined to

utterly extirpate the whole Geraldine race. The unfortunate Grey was

beheaded, six years after these events occurred, on Tower Hill. “The

fair Geraldine,” sung by Surrey, was the sister of “Silken Thomas.”

QUEEN ANNE BOLEYN

On May Day of the year 1536 a tournament was held at Greenwich Palace,

at which great surprise was caused by the King leaving suddenly whilst

the jousting was in progress. The next day Queen Anne Boleyn was

arrested, and interrogated by some members of the Council, of whom her

uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, was the President. From Greenwich the Queen

was brought to the Tower by water, arriving at five o’clock in the

afternoon; with her came Secretary Cromwell, the Lord Chancellor, Sir

J. Audley, and the Constable of the Tower, Sir William Knighton. Her

journey up the river and her reception at the grim old fortress were

in bitter contrast with the triumphant progress she had made the day

before her brilliant coronation. Arrived at the Tower, Anne sank upon

her knees in prayer, and, rising, declared her innocence to those about

her. She then inquired of the Constable where she was to be lodged, and

was told that she would occupy the rooms in which she had lived at the

time of her coronation three years before. “It is too good for me,”

said the poor Queen. She appears to have fallen into violent hysterics,

“weeping a great pace, and in the same sorrow fell into a great

laughing, and so she did several times afterwards,” writes Knighton to

Cromwell.

The Queen’s sudden arrest must have fallen upon the Court like a bolt

from the blue, although probably some of the courtiers had noticed

Henry’s growing _penchant_ for Jane Seymour: Anne herself had seen it

only too clearly, as well as the peril in which this new attachment of

the King’s placed her.

On the 3rd May, Archbishop Cranmer wrote as follows to the King:—“I

think your Grace best knoweth, that next unto your Grace I was most

bound unto her of all creatures living, and my mind is clean amazed,

for I never had better opinion in woman than I had in her; which maketh

me to think that she should not be culpable. I wish and pray that

she may declare herself inculpable and innocent.” But this would not

have served Henry’s purpose, even if the poor Queen could have proved

her innocence. He was determined to be rid of her, and as quickly as

possible, in order that he might satisfy his new passion, and all the

Archbishops in Christendom would not have stopped him.

A letter, supposed by such good authorities as Sir Henry Ellice and

Froude to be authentic, was written by Anne to the King from her

prison. This letter was found amongst Cromwell’s papers, being endorsed

by the Secretary thus, “To the King from the Ladye in the Tower.” It

is too long to quote in its entirety, but concludes as follows:—

“Try me, good King, but let me have a lawful trial; and let not

my sworn enemies sit as my accusers and my judges; yea, let me

receive an open trial, for my truth shall fear no open shame.

Then you shall see either mine innocency cleared, your suspicions

and conscience satisfied, the ignominy and slander of the world

stopped, or my gilt lawfully declared; so that, whatsoever God

or you may determine of me, your Grace may be freed of an open

censure; and mine offence being so openly proved, your Grace is at

liberty, before God and man, not only to execute worthy punishment

upon me as an unlawful wife, but to follow your affection already

settled on that party for whose sake I am now as I am, whose name

I could some good while since have pointed unto; your Grace not

being ignorant of my suspicion therein.” (This pointed allusion to

Henry’s attentions to Jane Seymour was surely unfortunate?) “But

if you have already determined of me; and that not only my death,

but an infamous slander, must bring you the joying of your desired

happiness; then I desire of God that He will pardon your great sin

therein and likewise my enemies, the instruments thereof; and that

He will not call you to a straight account for your unprincely and

cruel usage of me, at His general judgment seat, where you and

myself must shortly appear; and in whose judgment I doubt not,

whatever the world may think of me, mine innocence shall be openly

known and sufficiently cleared.

“My last and only request shall be, that myself may only bear the

burden of your Grace’s displeasure, and that it may not touch the

innocent souls of those poor gentlemen, who, as I understand, are

likewise in straight imprisonment for my sake. If ever I have found

favour in your sight, if ever the name of Anne Boleyn hath been

pleasing in your ears, then let me obtain this request; and I will

not so have to trouble your Grace any further; with mine earnest

prayers to the Trinity to have your Grace in His good keeping, and

to direct you in all your actions. From my doleful prison in the

Tower, this 6th of May. Your most loyal and ever faithful wife,

Anne Boleyn.”

This does not read like the letter of a guilty person; it has a fine

brave note running all through it, and the petition for the unfortunate

men accused with her, shows Anne’s unselfish nature in thinking of

others in her own time of dire misfortune.

[Illustration: _The Curfew Tower, from the Moat_]

Knighton’s wife, whose husband was the Constable of the Tower, was set

to watch the Queen, and repeat all she said to her husband, who was in

correspondence with Cromwell. In writing to the latter, Knighton says

that Lady Boleyn (Anne’s aunt) and a “Mestrys Cosyn” were kept in

the same room with the Queen; both of these ladies were Anne’s bitter

enemies, and they acted as spies upon the unhappy prisoner. “I have,”

writes Knighton, “everything told me by Mestrys Cosyn that she thynks

mete for me to knowe.”

The trial was held in the large room, called at that time the King’s

Hall, which is on the second floor of the White Tower, adjoining the

Chapel of St John’s. Here a gallery had been erected for the judges,

and seats and benches for the Lords. The Duke of Norfolk, who presided,

sat under the “clothe of estate,” and represented the King as High

Steward of England. By a singular coincidence Norfolk was uncle to both

Anne Boleyn and the second wife whom Henry beheaded, Catherine Howard.

At Norfolk’s feet sat his son, the Earl of Surrey, both holding staffs

in their hands—Norfolk that of the Lord High Steward, Surrey that of

Earl Marshal. On the Duke’s right hand sat the Lord Chancellor, and on

his left the Duke of Suffolk, the peers occupying seats on either side

of the chamber, in the order of their degree. Led by the Constable of

the Tower and the Lieutenant (Sir Edmund Walsingham), the Queen was

brought to the bar. Anne Boleyn’s defence was admirable, and must have

greatly disconcerted her judges, who knew that no defence, however

convincing, could avail her; she was already sentenced by the King.

Not one of these men, with their high-sounding names and titles, dared

to give their vote in her favour. All, to a man, declared on their

consciences that the Queen was guilty. Surely some of the innocent

blood counted against these noble cowards as well as against their

master, when their day of reckoning arrived. Norfolk, whose tears

appear always to have been at command, wept “so that the water,” writes

Constantyne in his Memorial, “roune in his eyes,” when he pronounced

the sentence, which ran thus: “Because thou hast offended our

Sovereign the King’s Grace, in committing treason against his person,

and here attainted of the same, the law of the realm is this; that thou

shalt be burnt here within the Tower of London, on the Green, else to

have thy head smitten off as the King’s pleasure shall be further known

of the same.”[9]

According to Froude, Anne Boleyn’s trial was conducted “with a

scrupulousness without a parallel in the criminal history of the time.”

One can only wonder what kind of a trial that would be which was not

conducted with the “scrupulousness” that characterised the proceedings

in the King’s Hall, under the Duke of Norfolk, when Anne Boleyn was

condemned to die.

On the 17th of May the Queen was taken to Lambeth Palace, where she

made her confession to Archbishop Cranmer, but, according to Bishop

Burnet, any statements that she made then were induced by the prospect

of saving her life; but this cannot be proved.

Up to the last Anne appears to have maintained her cheerfulness and

lightness of heart. Knighton writing to Cromwell tells him that, whilst

dining with him, the Queen had announced her intention of going to

Antwerp, as if she fully expected to be released. Another time she said

to him, “If any man accuse me, I can say but nay, and they can bring

no witness”; and also, “I think the King does this to prove me.” In

Burnet’s “History” the following incident, which took place shortly

before Anne’s execution, and which I think goes far to prove her

innocence of the charges brought against her, is recounted: “The day

before she suffered, upon a strict search of her past life, she called

to mind that she had played the step-mother too severely to Lady Mary

(afterwards Queen Mary), and had done her many injuries. Upon which,

she made the Lieutenant of the Tower’s lady sit down in the Chair of

State; which the other, after some ceremony, doing, she fell down on

her knees, and with many tears charged the lady, as she would answer

it to God, to go in her name, and do, as she had done, to the Lady

Mary, and ask her forgiveness for the wrongs she had done her.” Speede,

alluding in his “History” to this scene, says, “as she cleared her

conscience of the lesser crimes, so undoubtedly could she have done of

the greater, if any had been committed.”

In a long letter Knighton wrote to Cromwell on the 18th of May, he says

that the Queen had sent for him to be present when she received the

Sacrament in her prison. “And at my commyng,” he writes, “she sayd,

‘Mr Knighton, I hear say that I shall not dye affore noon, and I am

very sory therefore; for I had thowtt to be ded by thys time and past

my payne.’ I told hyr it should be no payne it was so suttel, and then

she sayd, ‘I have heard say the executioner was very good and I have a

lyttel neck,’ and put her hand about it lawying hartely. I have seen

many men and also women executed, and that they have been in grate

sorrow; and to my knowledge thys lady hasse muche joy and plesur in

dethe.” One may infer from the tone of this letter that Knighton did

not believe in Anne’s guilt.

A little before noon on the 19th May, Anne Boleyn, accompanied by four

of her ladies, came out of her prison on to Tower Green, attended by

Sir William Knighton. Near the scaffold stood the Duke of Suffolk and

the Duke of Richmond, the latter a natural son of the King’s; there

also were the Lord Chancellor and Secretary Cromwell, the Lord Mayor

and the Sheriffs of London and Westminster; in all, about thirty

persons gathered at the Tower that bright May morning to behold a

sight that had never been witnessed in England before—the execution

of a Queen. Henry had given orders that the execution should be as

private as possible, fearing the effect of the public sympathy with

his victim, if many persons were admitted to see her die. To the very

last Anne showed a steadfast courage, and may be said to have looked

death fearlessly and without faltering in the face. After a few words

full of resignation to her fate, and of forgiveness for those who had

brought about her death, even for the chief of these, she said: “And

thus I take my leave of the world, and of you all, and I heartily

desire you all to pray for me.” After she had finished speaking her

ladies came to her and placed a bandage over her eyes, and left her,

all weeping bitterly. Kneeling, but keeping her upright position of

body, for on this occasion no block was used—and the headsman, who had

been specially brought over from Calais, did his work with a sword—she

received the stroke of death “with resolution,” writes a contemporary

and eye-witness, “and so sedately as herself to cover her feet with

her garments.” And thus, and without more to say or do, was her head

stricken off, she making no confession of her fault, and only saying,

“O Lord God, have pity on my soul.”

[Illustration: _Traitors’ Gate, from the River_]

When all was over, one of the ladies took up her head, the others the

body, and covering them with a sheet, placed them in a chest which was

ready for the purpose, and carried the remains to St Peter’s Chapel,

“where they say she lieth buried.”

“Such,” writes Lord de Ros in his “Memorials of the Tower,” “was

the end of this most unfortunate lady, who but three years before

had entered the Tower in triumph as the idol of the King, and the

admiration of all around her. Levities, which even now would be

thought slight and pardonable, but which in that coarse and licentious

Court could hardly deserve a moderate censure, were the only offences

found against her, unless the extorted accusation of Smeaton was to

be regarded as proof of any deeper guilt.” At about the time of

Anne’s execution, her brother, Lord Rochford, and three gentlemen of

the Court, Brereton, Western, and Norris, were sentenced to death

as accomplices in the crime of which she was accused. Mark Smeaton,

a musician who, on the promise of pardon, had confessed his and the

Queen’s guilt whilst under torture, was hanged. The accusation against

Anne Boleyn and her brother, Lord Rochford, consisted only of the

charge that he had one morning entered his sister’s chamber, and,

whilst conversing with her in the presence of her attendants, had

rested his hand upon the bed. Rochford died declaring his innocence, as

did the other gentlemen who died with him. They were all buried in the

churchyard of the Chapel of St Peter.

The day after Anne Boleyn’s execution, Henry married Jane Seymour.

There is a tradition that the King had ordered a gun to be fired from

the roof of the White Tower, then mounted with cannon, which he could

see from his palace, as a signal that Anne Boleyn had ceased to live.

When Queen Victoria visited the Tower for the first time, and was shown

the place on the Green on which the scaffold had stood where Jane Grey

and Anne Boleyn had been executed, and where the grass, tradition said,

never grew, Her Majesty ordered the brass tablet that now records those

tragic events, to be placed on the spot, with the words, “Site of the

ancient scaffold: on this spot Queen Anne Boleyn was beheaded on the

19th May 1536.”

The year 1537 saw the Tower full of prisoners, the result of the rising

in the North, called the Pilgrimage of Grace. Thomas Cromwell’s crusade

against the religious endowments of the country, his spoliation of

the monasteries, his wholesale butchery of the monks and friars, had

stirred up a violent feeling of resistance in the north of England. A

report had been spread that as soon as the monasteries had been ruined

and destroyed, it would be the turn of the parish churches, and the

people of Lincoln and Yorkshire took instant alarm. A zealous Roman

Catholic, named Robert Aske, headed the rebellion, bearing a banner

emblazoned with the five wounds of Christ. The peril became so great

that Henry found it necessary to send an army against the insurgents,

the Duke of Norfolk being appointed its general. But Norfolk hesitated

to bring matters to a crisis, and temporised. He promised that the

grievances of the people should be heard, and a Parliament was summoned

in the North to consider their complaints, and mend or end them.

However, in 1537, Henry, breaking faith with the Pilgrimage of Grace,

seized the ring-leaders, and established a Council in the North, which

was a precursor, in cruelty and bloodshed, of Jeffreys’ Bloody Assize

in Devonshire, a century and a half later. Cromwell instituted a reign

of terror. His commissioners tore down, among others, such incomparable

buildings as Fountains, Rievaulx, and Jervaulx Abbeys; the sacred fanes

were gutted, their roofs torn off, and the holy shrines abandoned to

the bats and owls, serving as quarries for anyone who cared to cart

away the materials. The Abbots and heads of these, and many other

religious houses, were either hanged out of hand, or sent in droves

to London, and placed in the Tower. Among many others, the Abbots of

Rievaulx, Fountains, and Jervaulx, and the Prior of Bridlington, after

being imprisoned in the Tower, were hanged as traitors at Tyburn.

Two peers, Lord Darcey and Lord Hussey, who had taken part in the

Pilgrimage of Grace, were beheaded, the former on Tower Hill, and the

latter at Lincoln; Sir Robert Constable, Sir Francis Bagot, Sir Thomas

Percy, the brother of the Earl of Northumberland, Sir Stephen Hamilton,

William Lumley, Nicholas Tempest, Robert Aske, and Sir John Bulwer,

also suffered death, and, horrible to relate, the wife of the last was

burnt at Smithfield.

[Illustration: _The Block and Axe_]

Thomas Cromwell, in his treatment of women, resembled Judge Jeffreys,

and, monstrous as is the fact of a woman being burnt to death in the

reign of Henry VIII. for a political offence, it is not quite so

revolting as the case of Elizabeth Gaunt, executed in the reign of the

second James for sheltering one of the followers of Monmouth after the

Battle of Sedgemoor. Both Cromwell and Jeffreys were the obedient tools

of their masters, who, to quote the great Duke of Marlborough’s remark

when describing James II., “This marble,” he said, laying his hand on a

marble chimney-piece, “is not harder than the King’s heart.”

Secretary Cromwell, having put down the rising in the North of the

country in this ruthless fashion, turned his attention to the West,

where there yet lingered, amongst the descendants of the great houses

of de la Pole and Courtenay, the last hopes of the Yorkists. In order

to accomplish his object of exterminating them, Cromwell required

the services of a traitor; and this he soon found in the person of

Sir Geoffrey de la Pole, brother of Viscount Montagu. How it was

that Geoffrey turned traitor, and denounced his own kith and kin to

Cromwell is not known, but his treachery threw into the Secretary’s

power not only his own brother, Montagu, but also Henry Courtenay,

Marquis of Exeter, together with Sir Edward Nevill and Sir Nicholas

Carew. They were charged with maintaining a traitorous correspondence

with Cardinal Pole; and all perished on Tower Hill on 9th January

1539. Geoffrey’s brother, Henry de la Pole, Lord Montagu, was the son

of Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, and the brother of Cardinal Pole.

Born in 1492, he was consequently about fifty when he was executed.

He had served in the Army, had fought in France, and had been one of

the most conspicuous of Henry’s followers on the Field of the Cloth of

Gold. He had married Jane Nevill, a daughter of Lord Abergavenny, but

had no son to succeed him. Another of Geoffrey de la Pole’s victims,

Henry Courtenay, was one of the most distinguished of Henry’s nobles.

Three years previously he had commanded the Royal army, and only a few

months before his own trial he had presided as High Steward of England

at the proceedings which had resulted in the condemnation to death of

Lords Darcey and Hussey. He was son of the tenth Earl of Devonshire,

and head of the great house of Courtenay, whose descent from the

Eastern Emperors has been so eloquently set forth by Gibbon. His mother

was imprisoned in the Tower at the same time as himself; she shortly

afterwards died there. Courtenay was forty-five at the time of his

execution. Geoffrey de la Pole’s treachery brought him little good, for

shortly after the death of his kinsmen we find him a prisoner in the

Beauchamp Tower, where his name can still be seen carved with the date,

1562. He died there after Elizabeth’s accession.

There is in the possession of Lord Donnington, an interesting portrait

of a stately young lady in the costume of the days of Henry VII. The

face is handsome and refined, although somewhat too long; the neck

is finely formed, but this, too, is unusually long. In her jewelled

left hand she holds a sprig of honeysuckle, or it may have been the

intention of the artist to represent the broom flower, the French

_genet_ (Planta Genesta), the badge and origin of the name Plantagenet.

This portrait represents Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury,

the daughter of the murdered Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV.;

her mother was a daughter of the great Earl of Warwick, the King-maker.

Thus, as the representative of the Plantagenets and of the Nevills,

her position was second only to that of the reigning family. She had

married Sir Richard Pole, and was the mother of Lord Montagu, of the

distinguished prelate, Reginald Pole, who had fled to Rome, where a

Cardinal’s red hat awaited him, as well as of the traitor Sir Geoffrey.

Born in 1470, Lady Salisbury was nearly seventy years old when, by

Henry’s orders, she was imprisoned in the Tower. There was no charge

which could possibly be brought against the aged noblewoman, and she

was kept more as a hostage on her son, the Cardinal’s, account, than

for any alleged cause of offence. Her close relationship to the late

dynasty was in reality her only crime, but this was sufficient to bring

her grey head to the block.

Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in his history of Henry VIII., tells

the story of Lady Salisbury’s horrible but heroic death as

follows:—“Shortly after,” Lord Herbert writes, alluding to the death

of the Marchioness of Exeter, the mother of Courtenay, in the Tower,

“followed the Countess of Salisbury’s execution (27th May 1541), the

old lady being brought to the scaffold, set up in the Tower, was

commanded to lay her head on the block; but she, as a person of great

quality assured me, refused, saying, ‘So should traitors do, and I am

none’; neither would it serve that the executioners told her it was

the fashion, so turning her grey head every way, she bid him, if he

would have her head, to get it as he could; so that he was constrained

to fetch it off slovenly.” Lingard quotes a passage from a letter of

Cardinal Pole’s in which he says his mother’s last words were, “Blessed

are they who suffer persecution for righteousness sake”; but, to judge

from Lord Herbert’s account of the frightful scene at her death, the

poor old Countess, although she may have said these words at some

period of her imprisonment, could scarcely have uttered them at its

awful close. Henry appears to have added intentionally severe hardships

to his kinswoman’s imprisonment in the Tower, probably hoping that

she would die in consequence, and save him the ignominy of butchering

her in public. One of the Tower gaolers, named Phillips, writing to

a member of the Privy Council about Lady Salisbury, says, “The Lady

Salisbury maketh great moan, for that she wanteth necessary apparel,

both for change, and also to keep her warm. Her gentlewoman, Mistress

Constance, has no manner of change, and that she hath is sore worn”

(Miscellaneous Exchequer Documents).

Lady Salisbury was Lady of the Manor of Christchurch in Hampshire, and

there she had built a chapel in the church, called after her the

Salisbury Chapel. This building was adorned with elaborate carving and

tracery wrought in Caen stone, her effigy being within the chantry,

representing the Countess kneeling before the Trinity; beneath were

a coat of arms and the motto, “Spes in deo est.” Thomas Cromwell’s

Commissioners caused this chapel to be dismantled. The effigy was

destroyed, but the chantry itself still remains as a memorial of the

last of the Plantagenets. The aged Countess’s mutilated remains were

buried in St Peter’s Chapel in the Tower.

[Illustration: _St. Peter’s Chapel and the Site of the Scaffold on

Tower Green_]

Five years after the judicial murder of More and Fisher, their traducer

and bitter enemy, Thomas Cromwell, who had been created Earl of Essex

by Henry in 1540—only three months before his sudden fall—suffered

death on Tower Hill. A parallel has been drawn between Cromwell and

Jeffreys in their brutal administration of what they considered

justice, and a second parallel might very fittingly be drawn between

Henry’s secretary and Maximilian Robespierre. Both sprang from the

people; both rose to almost supreme power; both attained their ends

by the force of their overwhelming ambition and intense determination

of character; both were untroubled by any touch of pity or qualm of

conscience; and both ended their lives upon the scaffold.

Very little is known of Cromwell’s early years. He was the son of a

blacksmith, and was born at Putney in 1490. At Wolsey’s death he darted

into power, and his influence with the King became stronger than even

the Cardinal’s had ever been. Cromwell once owned to Cranmer, after

he had attained the position of the most powerful subject in the

realm, that in early life he had been a “ruffian,” and a ruffian he

remained until his death on Tower Hill. Henry required an unscrupulous

instrument to carry out his schemes in suppressing the religious

orders, and in Cromwell he found a man as utterly lacking in principles

as he himself. Cromwell was exactly what he described himself as having

been in his youth to Cranmer, but a ruffian without heart, feeling,

or conscience. I have compared Thomas Cromwell to Robespierre, and the

likeness can be even traced in their lineaments. There is an admirable

engraving which has all the marks of being a faithful likeness of

Cromwell in the “Herologia,” and a portrait of him in the National

Portrait Gallery, and in both the facial resemblance to Robespierre

is remarkable. The features are of the ferret type, not brutal by any

means, but the suggestion of the weasel in both faces is strongly

marked. Cromwell made a close study of Machiavelli, and “The Prince”

was his constant companion, philosopher, and guide; Cæsar Borgia could

not have followed the precepts of the cynical Florentine more literally

than did the ennobled son of the Putney blacksmith.

It was his aim to make the King supreme both in Church and State. In

order to achieve this object, the Church was first pillaged, and when

he and his master were glutted with the spoils of monasteries and

abbeys, he turned his attention to the State, sweeping off the heads

of those nobles whom he considered sufficiently independent in their

views to resist the merging of the supreme power in the sovereign. For

ten years—from 1530 to 1540—there was an English “Terror.” Even Henry

himself, who seemed to fear neither man nor God, feared Cromwell. It

was Cromwell who was more responsible than Henry for the deaths of

More and Fisher; it was Cromwell who, when the Pilgrimage of Grace

took place, carried fire and sword into Yorkshire, and afterwards into

Devonshire; it was Cromwell who instigated Henry to exterminate the

families of de la Pole and Courtenay; it was Cromwell who threatened

to destroy Cardinal Pole, although the latter had put the seas between

himself and the terrible instrument of the King’s enmity. “There may

be found ways enough in Italy,” he wrote to the Cardinal, “to rid a

treacherous subject. When justice can take no place by process of law

at home, sometimes she may be enforced to take new means abroad.” The

Cardinal soon learnt what Cromwell meant by “justice at home,” when the

news reached him in Italy that Cromwell and the King had butchered his

aged mother upon Tower Green. Shortly before his fall—and this fact

of his career is similar to that of Robespierre—Cromwell had attained

what was practically the supreme power. Besides being Earl of Essex,

he was also Great Chamberlain of England, Vicar-General of the Church,

the head of all foreign and domestic affairs, and President of the Star

Chamber—the most supreme and most redoubtable council in the land,

which corresponded in its power to the Council of the Ten at Venice.

Like Robespierre again, in private life Cromwell lived simply and

without ostentation—a strong contrast this to his old master and

patron, the magnificent Wolsey. Whether Cromwell possessed any

redeeming points in his character history has not recorded, but his

fall was singular, as sudden and as unexpected as had been his rise.

It was brought about by a woman, although indirectly. Cromwell had

arranged the marriage of Henry with Anne of Cleves, and when the King

found that princess lacking in all the charms with which she had been

accredited both by painters and courtiers, he not only spoke of her as

“a Flanders mare,” but visited his disappointment upon the negotiator

of the marriage, and, from being Henry’s most trusted adviser, Cromwell

became the object of his royal master’s implacable hatred.

The old historian Stowe thus relates the fall of the newly created Earl

of Essex: “The King’s wrath was kindled against all those that were

preferrers of this match, whereof the Lord Cromwell was the chief, for

the which, and for dealing somewhat too far in some matters beyond the

King’s good liking, were the occasions of his hasty death.” On the 10th

of June 1540, Cromwell, who had been in his place in the House of Lords

the same afternoon, was arrested and placed in the Tower; so sudden

was the effect of Henry’s rage. Cranmer, who appears to have been a

true friend of the fallen Minister, wrote to Henry in his behalf, but

with the usual result.

Foxe, the martyrologist, bears witness to the courage and unshaken

firmness evinced by Cromwell during his imprisonment. On the 29th of

the month he was condemned to death by both Houses of Parliament. The

day after he wrote a piteous letter to the King, which ends thus,

“Most Gracious Prince, I can say but mercy, mercy, mercy!” But Henry

and mercy were strangers, and the former slayer of women and children

must have bitterly regretted the little of the same quality that he had

shown to others in the days of his power.

A month later he was beheaded. On his way to Tower Hill he met Lord

Hungerford, bound on a similar errand—the distance from the Tower to

Tower Hill takes but five minutes, walking very slowly—and whilst these

two were making their way to their final earthly destruction, Cromwell

appears to have encouraged his fellow-sufferer, who was complaining and

bewailing the approach of death, as they faced the Hill together, and

the grim shadow that was closing round them. “And so,” writes Foxe,

“went they together to the place of execution, and took their death

patientlie.”

What Cromwell said in his dying speech on the scaffold has been made

uncertain by the garbled accounts of his words; but, to judge from

these, he made a better exit from the world than his career in it would

have led one to expect. The executioner was awkward, and, according to

the chroniclers, Stowe, Hall, and Foxe, “very ungoodly performed his

office.” Cromwell was fifty years of age when his career thus ended.

From the son of a blacksmith, and with no manner of advantages, he

had risen from his humble surroundings at Putney to become an Earl, a

Knight of the Garter, Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Keeper

of the Privy Seal, and Lord Great Chamberlain of England. He did much

evil, but he accomplished two good things for the benefit of his

country, which should be put upon the other side of his account; he

caused the Bible to be printed in English in 1538, and he instituted

the system of parish registers, which he himself superintended.

[Illustration: _St. Thomas’s and Curfew Towers_]

The Lord Hungerford of Heytesbury, who has been mentioned as having

been beheaded at the same time as Cromwell, had been accused of having

persuaded some persons to prophesy how long the King would live. It

was probably only a trumped-up charge, and certainly, if true, not of

any greater offence than that of _lèse majesté_, but it was considered

quite sufficient to bring the too curious inquirer to the scaffold.

In the same year, as has already been stated, Lord Leonard Grey was

executed.

An apparently justifiable execution took place in the year 1541, that

of Lord Dacre, on Tower Hill, he being, according to Holinshed’s

Chronicle, guilty of murder.

Cromwell, although not a professed Protestant, had always protected the

followers of that faith, but with his death they were again persecuted

by Henry, and at the end of July 1541 three of the most prominent of

the Lutherans, Dr Robert Barnes, Thomas Gerard, and William Jerome,

were haled to the dungeons of the Tower, and thence dragged through

the City on hurdles, and burnt at Smithfield. On the same day (30th

July) Henry, with his almost incredible impartiality when engaged

on persecution, caused four Roman Catholic priests—Doctor Abel,

Fetherstone, Powel, and Cooke—to be burnt to death at the same place

(Hall).

In the Beauchamp Tower is a carving, representing a bell, on which the

capital letter “A” is cut. This is a rebus carved by the learned and

unfortunate Dr Abel, while he was awaiting his trial and execution in

this tower. Abel was a man of great learning, and had been domestic

chaplain to Catherine of Arragon, and had offended the King by

championing Catherine’s cause during the trial of divorce between her

and Henry. Below Dr Abel’s rebus appears the name of “Doctor Cooke,

1540,” which is the inscription of Lawrence Cooke, Prior of Doncaster.

These four priests were martyrs for the old faith, like More and

Fisher, and many less known Roman Catholics, who preferred death rather

than acknowledge Henry’s supremacy in the Church of England.

QUEEN CATHERINE HOWARD

Six years after Anne Boleyn’s execution upon Tower Green, another of

Henry’s Queens was led out from her prison in the Tower, to a similar

doom on that same spot.

In the case of Queen Catherine Howard, one cannot, alas! feel that

the poor victim was innocent of the charge which the King had brought

against her. Catherine Howard was an erring woman, much to be pitied.

She confessed her guilt both to Archbishop Cranmer and many Lords of

the Council, to Suffolk, Southampton, and also to Thirlby, the Bishop

of Westminster—the only Bishop who ever occupied that see.

On the 10th of February 1542 Queen Catherine Howard was brought from

Sion House, where she and Lady Rochford had passed the winter in close

confinement, to the Tower, and three days later both these unhappy

ladies were beheaded on the scaffold on Tower Green. Both died with

courage, and both confessed their guilt before the axe fell, for on

this occasion the services of the Calais executioner were not called

into requisition. An eye-witness of their deaths, named Otwell Johnson,

in a letter written by him (and which is undoubtedly genuine, as Sir

Henry Ellice includes it in his first series of “Original Letters”),

declares that both victims “made the moost godly and chrystian end,

that ever was hard tell of I thynke sins the world’s creation.” So the

last act in these poor women’s lives atoned for the evil of which they

had been undoubtedly guilty. Weever, a contemporary, alludes thus

to the Queen’s burial: “Within the choir of this chapel (St Peter’s)

lieth buried near the relics of the said Annie Bollein, the body of

Katherine, the fifth wife of King Henry VIII., who, having continued

his wife but the space of one year, six months, and four days, was

attainted by Parliament and beheaded here in the Tower upon the 13th of

February 1542.” Lady Rochford shared her mistress’s place of interment.

Catherine Howard was but twenty-two years of age when her life closed

so tragically. Culpepper and Dereham, who were charged with being the

Queen’s paramours, were hanged at Tyburn, and some of her relatives

suffered imprisonment in the Tower on her account. Among these were

her grandmother, “old Duchess of Norfolk,” as Shakespeare calls her;

Lord and Lady William Howard, and the Countess of Bridgwater, the

daughter of Thomas, second Duke of Norfolk. By a singular coincidence,

the Duke of Norfolk, who had presided at the trial of Anne Boleyn,

was uncle both to that unfortunate Queen and to Catherine Howard, and

when the latter was attainted, he wrote thus to Henry: “The abominable

deeds done by two of my nieces against your Highness have brought me

into the greatest perplexity that ever poor wretch was in” (State

Papers: Domestic Series). The “poor wretch” himself came within an ace

of losing his own head by Henry’s orders, and the King’s death the

day before that fixed for Norfolk’s execution, alone saved him from

perishing on the scaffold.

An unusual occurrence happened in the Tower in this same year of

Catherine Howard’s death, Arthur Lisle Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle,

dying of joy, according to old Hall, on hearing that he was declared

innocent of the charge upon which he had been placed in the Tower,

that he had intended to betray the town of Calais. Arthur Lisle was

a natural son of Edward IV., and had served in the Navy, of which he

was a Vice-Admiral. He had been knighted and created Viscount Lisle in

1523, and given the Garter in the following year.

It is about this time that the first mention is made of that most

uncomfortable dungeon in the White Tower, named from the smallness of

its size, “Little Ease,” Hall, in his “Chronicles,” stating that one

of the officers belonging to the Sheriffs of London was placed in this

prison.

The disaster to the Scottish Army at Solway Moss in 1542 brought many

Scottish prisoners to the Tower, thus repeating the history of the

building during the reigns of the first and third Edwards. Among them

were the Earls of Cassillis and Glencairn, Maxwell, Oliphant, and

Somerville, together with some twenty knights; they were not long in

the Tower, however, being sent to various places to undergo their terms

of imprisonment.

ANNE ASKEW

One of the most memorable names connected with the Tower in the

reign of Henry VIII. is that of Anne Askew, or Ascue, as it is

sometimes spelt, the daughter of Sir William Askew, the head of an old

Lincolnshire family. In early life she had married a Mr Kyme, so that

when her persecution for her faith took place—a persecution which has

immortalised her name—it would have been more correct to have called

her by her husband’s name; however, her maiden appellation has clung to

her, and will always remain the one by which she is known. Kyme appears

to have been a bigoted Roman Catholic, and his wife’s strong attachment

to the Reformed faith may have been increased by his conduct towards

her, for he seems to have been a good-for-nothing fellow who made her

life the reverse of a happy one. Amongst Anne’s friends in London who

belonged to the Reformed faith, was no less a person than Catherine

Howard’s successor as Henry’s wife, Queen Catherine Parr. Anne, it

appears, had some post about the Queen’s person; at any rate, she was

known to many of the principal ladies of the Court. An Act known as

“The Six Articles,” which obtained the popular name of “The Whip with

Six Strings,” had been made law in 1539. The first clause of this Act

ordained that whoever disagreed with the declaration of the Statute of

Transubstantiation or the Real Presence, that the “Natural Blood Body

and Blood of Christ” were present in the Sacrament, should suffer death

by fire. Many men and women had been barbarously killed for denying

the truth of this doctrine, and amongst those who suffered martyrdom

was Anne Askew. To the horror of such a death Henry and his Council

added that of torture, in order to force the victim to recant; torture,

although illegal, was often, nay commonly, used in Henry’s reign.

Lord de Ros’s account of Anne Askew’s sufferings and death are too

interesting to need an apology for my quoting it here:

“In March 1545, she was summoned before an Inquest or Commission

at the Guildhall, and subjected to a long examination by one Dare,

when she displayed an intelligence and shrewdness, which, with her

modest, gentle demeanour, drew the admiration even of her enemies.

Being remanded to the Compter, she was shortly after brought before

Bishop Bonner for examination, who exercised all his subtlety to

entangle her in her replies; and at length drew out a written

summary, in which he had grossly perverted their meaning, and

desired her, after hearing it read, to declare whether or not she

would subscribe to its contents. Her answer merits to be recorded,

‘I believe,’ she said, ‘as much therof as is agreable to the Holy

Scriptures; and I desire that this sentence may be added to it.’

Furious at what he called her obstinate evasions, Bonner was about

to proceed to violent extremities, when by the interference of some

powerful friend, and probably for other reasons, she was allowed

to be released on the bail of her cousin, one Brittayne, who,

during the examination, at which he was present, had judiciously

cautioned her ‘not to set her weak woman’s wit to his lordship’s

great wisdom.’ We have no record of the cause, or rather pretext,

of her being, about three months afterwards, again arrested. This

time her husband, Kyme, was brought up along with her before the

Privy Council, sitting at Greenwich. Wriothesley, the Chancellor,

now undertook her examination, and chiefly on the great point of

Transubstantiation, on which she firmly refused to abandon her

own convictions, and was committed to Newgate; from whence she

wrote some devotional letters, which show her to have possessed

considerable talent. Her next appearance was before the Council at

the Guildhall, when, after an examination by a silly Lord Mayor

(Martin), in which she entirely foiled him by her simplicity

and good sense, she was plainly told, that unless she renounced

her errors, and distinctly declared her acquiescence in the Six

Articles, she must prepare to die; and, on her firm refusal,

she was condemned, without any trial by jury, to be burned as

an heretic. Meantime, instead of being sent back to Newgate,

she was committed to the Tower, with a view to subject her to

the torture of the rack, for which the gloomy seclusion of that

fortress afforded greater convenience than the ordinary prison of

Newgate, with the hope of inducing her to incriminate the Duchess

of Suffolk, the Countess of Sussex, the Countess of Hertford, and

other ladies who were supposed to have assisted her with money for

her support in prison. She was too high-minded and grateful to

betray them; and whatever might have been the case, she declared

that she had been chiefly kept from starvation by her faithful

maid, who went out and begged for her of the ‘’prentices and others

she met in the street.’

“The unhappy lady was now carried to a dungeon, and laid on the

rack in the presence of the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir A.

Knyvett, and Wriothesley, the Chancellor, Rich, a creature of

Bonner, and a secretary, sitting at her side to take down her

words. But when she endured the torture without opening her lips

in reply to the Chancellor’s questions, he became furious, and

seizing the wheel himself, strained it with all his force, till

Knyvett, revolting at such cruelty, insisted on her release from

the dreadful machine. It was but in time to save her life, for she

had twice swooned, and her limbs had been so stretched, and her

joints so injured, that she was never again able to walk without

support. Wriothesley hastened to Westminster to complain to the

King of the Lieutenant’s lenity; but the latter, getting into

his barge with a favourable tide, arrived before him, obtained

immediate audience, and told his tale so honestly and with such

earnestness, that Henry’s hard heart was softened for once, and

approving his conduct he dismissed him with favour. A stronger

reason for this may have been that the rack was regarded with such

horror by the people as to be applied only in secrecy; and had Anne

expired under it, and the fact became known, some violent outbreak

might have been apprehended in the City. She was shortly afterwards

carried to Smithfield and there burnt to ashes, together with three

other persons for the same cause, in the presence of the Duke of

Norfolk, the Earl of Bedford, Sir Thomas Wriothesley, the Lord

Mayor, and a vast concourse of people. One of the peers, learning

that there was some gunpowder about the stakes, became frightened

lest any accident should happen to himself from the faggots being

blown into the air; but the Earl of Bedford assuring him that no

such chance could occur, and that it was only to hasten the deaths

of the sufferers, he remained looking on with the same barbarous

indifference as the brutal mob who had assembled to witness the

dreadful spectacle.”

[Illustration: _Traitors’ Gate, from the Bloody Tower_]

Anne Askew’s fellow-sufferers were named John Lascels (? Lascelles),

John Adams, and Nicholas Beleinian; there is a woodcut of their

martyrdom in Foxe’s book.

Anne Askew’s death appears to have been fraught with some danger to

Queen Catherine Parr. Aware of the Queen’s sympathy for Anne, and

her leaning towards the Reformed faith, Wriothesley, the bigoted

Lord Chancellor, went so far as to draw up a warrant for Catherine’s

arrest. Fortunately for the Queen she was warned of her danger, and

either was actually frightened into a fever, or feigned illness.

During an interview with the King, the suffering Queen so worked upon

his feelings, that when Wriothesley appeared with a guard to take her

into custody, Henry turned upon him, and, heaping the foulest abuse

upon him, drove him from the presence (Speed’s Chronicle). Luckily for

Catherine Parr the days of Henry were near their end, or it is more

than probable that she would have shared the fate of Anne Boleyn and

Catherine Howard.

In 1546 peace had been made between England and France, and in order

to ratify the treaty the French sent their Lord High Admiral to

England, with the Bishop of Evreux, and some other nobles. Landing at

Greenwich, they were conducted with great ceremony to the Tower—where

a splendid banquet awaited them in the palace of the fortress—by the

Earls of Essex and Derby in the royal barge. After leaving the Tower

they proceeded to Lambeth Palace, and thence to Hampton Court, where

the treaty was signed. These were the last guests of the Sovereign in

the Tower. The last State prisoner to be executed in Henry’s reign was

the gifted and brilliantly endowed Earl of Surrey, the eldest son of

Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, who, as I have said before, also

narrowly escaped with his life.

Henry VIII., for the good of his people, was dying fast at the close of

the year 1546. His once handsome and athletic form had become a bloated

mass of corruption. His nature, always cruel, became fiend-like during

his later years, owing to his physical sufferings. He knew that death

was gaining upon him rapidly, but whilst he lived he determined still

to destroy, and when even in the very grasp of the King of Terrors,

still sent out his death orders. No cause can be assigned for the King,

while his wicked old life was fast ebbing away from him, ordering the

death of Norfolk and his son Surrey. The only possible reason was that

perhaps Henry feared they might wield too great an influence after his

death, when his heir, Edward, should have become King.

Henry intended that his son’s uncle, Lord Hertford, Queen Jane

Seymour’s brother, should be his sole guardian, and for a wretched

pretext Norfolk and Surrey were arrested, imprisoned in the Tower,

and sentenced to death. Of the Duke of Norfolk, Sir Walter Raleigh

wrote in the preface to his great History: “Henry knew not how to

value his deservings, having never omitted anything that concerned his

own honour and the King’s service.” Despite his weakness for tears,

Norfolk may rank amongst the English worthies, for he had done good

service to the State, both in arms and council. He had commanded the

English army at the Battle of Flodden, and had led another army during

a second victorious war in Scotland; he had also led the English van in

the war with France. In Ireland he had been one of the best and most

just of the English Lords-Deputy. By the accident of birth the Duke

was of the blood-royal, being descended from the Mowbrays; further

than this, he had married one of the daughters of Edward IV., and two

of his nieces had been Queens of England. For his own safety he was

perilously near the steps of the throne, and his birth was too high,

the story of his life too romantic, for Henry to tolerate his surviving

himself, consequently, with reason or without, his death was determined

upon; Henry was never troubled by lack of just cause. The dying King

excused his treatment of the Duke and his son Surrey to foreign courts,

by giving out that they had conspired to take upon themselves the

government of the State; this was a pure invention. Another and a

still more ridiculous charge brought against them was that Norfolk and

his son had quartered in their shield the royal arms of Edward the

Confessor. This charge could not have hoodwinked the most simple, for

it had been the custom of the Duke’s family long before he himself was

born to have these arms quartered upon their shield. However, on the

14th of January 1547, the House of Lords, without even the form of a

trial, and without examining either the Duke or his son, passed a bill

of attainder against them, and the end of the month was fixed for their

execution.

While awaiting his trial in the Tower Norfolk appears to have been

inclined—to make use of a racing expression—to “hedge,” as regarded his

religious opinions. The Duke had always professed himself a Catholic,

both by birth and conviction, but from his prison he sent a petition

to the Lords of the Council in which, after asking their permission

to have some books sent to him from Lambeth, he adds, “for unless I

have books to read ere I fall asleep, and after I wake again, I cannot

sleep, nor have done these dozen years. That I may have mass, and be

bound upon my life not to speak to him who says mass, which he may do

in the other chamber whilst I remain within. That I may be allowed

sheets to lie in; to have licence in the daytime to walk in the chamber

without, and in the night be locked in as I am now. I would gladly

have licence to send to London to buy one book of St Austin, ‘de

Civitate Dei,’ and one of Josephus, ‘de Antiquitatibus,’ and another

of Sabellius, who doth declare most of any book that I have read, how

the Bishop of Rome from time to time hath usurped his power against all

Princes by their unwise sufferance” (“Seward’s Anecdotes,” Ed. 1798).

Surrey was placed in the Tower at the same time as his father. Not

only was Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, a charming poet, especially

when writing of love, of which his verses addressed to the “Fair

Geraldine” are perhaps his best, but he was also remarkable in the

history of English literature as having been the first writer of blank

verse in our language; he was also a distinguished soldier. But thirty

years old when his fate came upon him, he was a national loss, and in

killing Surrey, Henry destroyed one of England’s most gifted sons. Not

being a peer, Surrey was tried before a Common jury at the Guildhall

on the 13th January 1547. He made a splendid defence where no defence

was necessary, and where no defence, however eloquent, and no career,

however blameless, would have saved him. With the axe’s edge turned

towards him he left the Guildhall for the Tower, and six days later one

of the wisest, noblest, and most gifted heads that England possessed,

rolled in the bloody sawdust of the scaffold on Tower Hill. Norfolk’s

life was only saved by the providential death of Henry VIII., which

took place only a few hours before the time fixed for the Duke’s

execution. He remained a prisoner in the Tower until the reign of Mary

Tudor, and lived to preside at the trial of the Duke of Northumberland,

and again to take up arms when Wyatt’s rebellion broke out, although

then in his eightieth year. He died a natural death in his bed—a rare

event with the heads of his house—in 1554, aged eighty-one. Norfolk had

lived in the reign of eight English sovereigns—from the reign of Henry

VI. to that of Mary Tudor.

[Illustration: _Back of the Byward Tower_]