QUEEN ELIZABETH
The important position occupied by the Tower at the commencement of
the reign of Elizabeth, and its connection with all branches of State
affairs is shown by the great antiquary of that reign, John Stowe, who
says it was “The citadel to defend and command the city, a royal palace
for assemblies and treaties, a State prison for dangerous offenders,
the only place for coining money, an armoury of warlike provisions, the
treasury of the Crown jewels, and the storehouse of the Records of the
Royal Courts of Justice at Westminster.”
Elizabeth’s imprisonment, four years previous to her accession, had
not left kindly impressions of the Tower, and although her first visit
to any royal palace after she became Queen on 28th November 1558, was
to the fortress, she did not take up her abode there for any length
of time, remaining at Somerset House, and at the palace at Whitehall,
until Mary’s funeral had taken place.
Three days, however, before her coronation, Elizabeth entered the
Palace of the Tower, the crowning taking place on Sunday the 15th
January 1559. Elizabeth’s love of show and magnificence must have been
amply gratified by the great pageant in which she was the central
figure, the procession from the Tower to the Abbey being more brilliant
than any in the history of the English Court.
Seated in an open chariot which glittered with gold and elaborate
carvings, Elizabeth, blazing with jewels, passed through streets hung
with tapestry and under triumphal arches, the ways being lined with the
City companies in their handsome liveries of fur-lined scarlet. In
Fleet Street a young woman, representing Deborah, stood beneath a palm
tree, and prophesied the restoration of the House of Israel in rhymed
couplets, whilst Gog and Magog received her Majesty at Temple Bar.
Although the horrors of Smithfield and other _auto-da-fés_ had ceased
with Mary’s reign, religious persecution on the part of the Reformers
was all too rampant under Elizabeth. The new Queen inherited far too
much of her father’s nature to brook any kind of opposition to her
wishes. She was a strange compound of the greatest qualities and the
meanest failings. Endowed with prodigious statecraft, her vanity was
no less immense, and her jealousy of all who came between herself and
those whom she liked and admired, caused her not only to commit acts of
injustice, but actual crimes. Her mind, which had a grasp of affairs of
state and policy that would have done credit to a great statesman, had
also many of the weaknesses and pettinesses of a vain, frivolous, and
foolish woman. Elizabeth’s conduct towards the unfortunate Catherine
Grey, her cousin, and the younger sister of Lady Jane, shows the
jealousy of her character in its worst light.
It was to Catherine Grey that Lady Jane, on the eve of her execution,
had sent the book in which she had written the “exhortation.” Lady
Catherine had married Lord Herbert of Cardiff, but had been separated
from him, being known by her maiden name. In 1560 she had met at
Hanworth, the house of her friend the Duchess of Somerset, the latter’s
eldest son, Lord Hertford, the result of this meeting being that an
affection had sprung up between them which was followed by a secret
marriage, as it was known that Elizabeth would not approve of the
match. The only confidante was Hertford’s sister, Lady Jane Seymour,
and the young couple—he was only twenty-two and she twenty—were married
as secretly as possible.
Catherine, accompanied by Lady Jane Seymour, walked from the Palace at
Whitehall—they were both ladies-in-waiting on the Queen—along the river
side at low tide, to Lord Hertford’s house near Fleet Street. Here the
marriage took place, but, by a strange want of foresight or by some
strange oversight, neither of the contracting parties were afterwards
able to remember the name of the clergyman who married them, “with such
words and ceremonies, and in that order, as it is there” (the Prayer
Book) “set forth, he placing a ring containing five links of gold on
her finger, as directed by the minister.” The Hertfords afterwards
described the minister as being of the middle height, wearing an auburn
beard and dressed in a long gown of black cloth.
The newly-wed Lady Hertford was too nearly related to the Queen to be
allowed to please herself with regard to whom she married, and when the
time drew near when further concealment was impossible, the poor lady
was in a terrible dilemma. Lord Hertford appears to have been the more
timid of the two, for when he found that his wife was about to become
a mother, he, dreading the Queen’s anger, fled to France, leaving poor
Lady Hertford to bear the brunt of Elizabeth’s imperious temper alone.
To complicate matters, Lady Jane Seymour, who throughout this adventure
had been the young couple’s only friend, died early in the year 1561.
When concealment was no longer possible, Lady Hertford threw herself
upon the mercy and generosity of her terrible mistress. But on being
informed of what had happened, Elizabeth’s anger knew no bounds, and
poor Lady Hertford was at once sent to the Tower, where shortly after
her arrival her child was born. Hertford now returned to England, and
was promptly arrested, being also imprisoned in the Tower, where he
remained for many a long year.
In the meantime the Queen declared that the marriage was illegal, and a
Commission sitting upon the matter, consisting of the Primate, Parker,
and Grindal, Bishop of London, declared it null and void. Matters
might perhaps have been arranged had not another child been born to
the Hertfords. When Elizabeth heard that Lady Hertford had been again
confined, her rage was ten times greater than before. She summarily
dismissed the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Edward Warner, for having
allowed the unfortunate couple to meet again, and ordered Hertford to
be brought before the Star Chamber, when he was heavily fined and sent
back to his prison, where he remained for the next nine years.
In the Wardrobe accounts of the Tower in the Landsdowne MSS. at the
British Museum, there is a list of the furniture supplied to Lady
Hertford in her prison. Tapestry and curtains are mentioned, also a
bed with a “boulster of downe,” as well as Turkey carpets and a chair
of cloth of gold with crimson velvet, with panels of copper gilt and
the Queen’s arms at the back. All this furniture, which sounds very
magnificent, is noted by the Lieutenant of the Tower as being, “old,
worn, broken, and decayed,” but in a letter he addressed to Cecil he
wrote that Lady Catherine’s monkeys and dogs had helped to damage it.
One is glad to know that the poor lady was allowed her pets, however
harmful to the furniture, to amuse her in her lonely prison, where she
lingered for six years, dying there in 1567.
Considering Elizabeth’s own experience of the amenities of imprisonment
in the Tower one would have thought that she might have shown more
mercy to her unfortunate kinswoman. In later years Hertford consoled
himself by marrying twice again, both his second and third wives being
of the house of Howard. His marriage with Catherine Grey was only made
valid in 1606, when the “minister” who had performed the ceremony was
discovered, a jury at Common Law proving it a _bonâ fide_ transaction,
and making it legal.
Another unfortunate lady who was a victim of Elizabeth’s implacable
jealousy was Lady Margaret Douglas, who married the Earl of Lennox.
The Countess, like Lady Catherine Grey, was one of Elizabeth’s
kinswomen, and owing to her near relationship her actions were a
source of continual suspicion to the Queen. Lady Lennox suffered three
imprisonments in the Tower; as Camden has it, she was “thrice cast
into the Tower, not for any crime of treason, but for love matters;
first, when Thomas Howard, son of the first Duke of Norfolk of that
name, falling in love with her was imprisoned and died in the Tower of
London; then for the love of Henry, Lord Darnley, her son, to Mary,
Queen of Scots; and lastly for the love of Charles, her younger son, to
Elizabeth Cavendish, mother to the Lady Arabella, with whom the Queen
of Scots was accused to have made up the match.” In the description of
the King’s House, reference has been made to the inscription in one of
its rooms recording the imprisonment of the Countess of Lennox there;
that inscription refers to her second incarceration in the Tower in
1565. Few women can have suffered so severely for the love affairs of
their relatives as this unfortunate noblewoman.
The long struggle between Elizabeth and Mary Stuart, which only closed
on the scaffold at Fotheringay in 1589, brought many prisoners of State
to the Tower. Some of the earliest of these belonged to the de la Pole
family, two brothers, Arthur and Edmund de la Pole, great-grandchildren
of the murdered Duke of Clarence, being imprisoned in the Beauchamp
Tower in 1562, on a charge of conspiring to set Mary Stuart on the
English throne. There are, as we have seen, several inscriptions in
the prison chamber of the Beauchamp Tower bearing the names of the two
brothers. These two de la Pole brothers ended their lives within their
Tower prison, whether guilty or not who can tell?
Few can realise the terrible and constant danger in which Elizabeth
lived from the claim of Mary Stuart to the throne of England. Compared
with France, England at the close of Mary Tudor’s reign was only a
third-rate power, and never had the country sunk so low as a martial
power as in the last years of her disastrous rule. We had no army, no
fleet, only a huge debt, whilst the united population of England and
Wales was less than that of London at the present time.
Motley has conjectured that at that time the population of Spain
and Portugal numbered at least twelve millions. Spain possessed the
most powerful fleet in the world, an immense army, with all the
wealth of the Netherlands and the Indies wherewith to maintain them;
consequently, when difficulties arose between France and England,
Philip trusted that to save herself England would become a firm ally
of Spain. But the Spanish monarch had left out of his reckoning the
magnificent courage of England’s Queen, and the indomitable pluck, and
bull-dog determination of her subjects to hold their own. All this
should be remembered when the stern repression of all and every kind
of conspiracy is brought against Elizabeth and her principal advisers,
of whom Walsingham and Burleigh were the foremost. It was a desperate
position, only possible of being defended and upheld by desperate
means. The horrors perpetrated by the Romish bishops in the name of
religion whilst Mary Tudor reigned, had given the English but too vivid
a suggestion of the fate that would befall their country if the King
of Spain were again to become its ruler, either as conqueror or as
King-consort. This terror was the principal cause of the passionate
tide of patriotism that under Elizabeth stirred our glorious little
island to its very foundations, and had it not been for the detestation
of foreign rule there would not have been that universal rallying round
the Queen and country in the hour of danger, which was the marked
feature of our people during that courageous woman’s reign.
A suspicion of conspiracy was sufficient in those days, electrical
with perils for the Queen and the country, and on the 11th of October
1589 Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, the son of the ill-fated
Surrey, and the grandson of the old Flodden duke, was brought a
prisoner to the Tower on the charge of high treason, his intended
marriage with Mary of Scots constituting the charge against him. In the
following month the Queen thus directed Sir Henry Neville to attend to
Norfolk’s safekeeping in the Tower. “The Lieutenant is permitted to
remove the Duke to any lodging in the Tower near joining to the Long
Gallery, so as it be none of the Queen’s own lodgings; and to suffer
the Duke to have the commodity to walk in the gallery, having always
of course the said Knollys in his company” (Hatfield Calendar of State
Papers). Owing to the plague which raged in London in the following
year, Norfolk was allowed to leave the Tower for his own home at the
Charter House, still a prisoner; but he was soon back again in the
fortress, a correspondence which he had carried on with Mary Stuart’s
adherents having been discovered. Others implicated in the undoubted
conspiracy to set Mary on the throne, were the Earls of Arundel and
Southampton, Lord Lumley, Lord Cobham, his brother Thomas Cobham, and
Henry Percy; these were all arrested. On his return to the Tower,
Norfolk was confined in the Bloody Tower. About this time a batch of
letters, written by a Florentine banker named Ridolfi to the Pope and
to the Duke of Alva, on the perpetually recurring subject of Mary’s
succession to the English throne after Elizabeth’s dethronement, were
intercepted by Elizabeth’s government, with the result that a fresh
batch of prisoners, with the Bishop of Ross, Sir Thomas Stanley, and
Sir Thomas Gerrard amongst them, entered the fortress. These letters
disclosed a conspiracy which was known under the name of the Italian
Ridolfi, its prime instigator. Ridolfi, who was a resident in London,
had crossed over to the Netherlands, where he had seen the Duke of
Alva, informing that Spanish general that he had been commissioned by
a large number of English Roman Catholic noblemen to send over a
Spanish army to drive Elizabeth from the throne, and place Mary Stuart
in the sovereignty in her stead. The Duke of Norfolk would then marry
Mary, and by these means the English would return to the benign sway
of the Holy Father, and become the faithful subjects of the gentle
Philip. Alva had suggested that Elizabeth should be got rid of before
he himself came to London with his army, Philip entirely agreeing with
his general as to the necessity for her removal.
[Illustration: _Queen Elizabeth’s Walk, from the Curfew Tower to the
Beauchamp Tower_]
The mere chance of a packet of letters being intercepted not only saved
Elizabeth’s life, but probably England as well from a terrible disaster.
The Ridolfi Plot conspirators were distributed in the various prisons
of the fortress, in the Beauchamp and the Salt Towers, and in the
Cold Harbour, much of the information regarding the conspiracy having
been obtained from a young man called Charles Bailly, who was seized
at Dover on his way to the Netherlands with a packet of treasonable
letters. He was brought back to London, placed in the Tower and
tortured, whereupon he confessed the names of several other persons
implicated. Bailly left several inscriptions on the walls of the
Beauchamp Tower where he was imprisoned.
On the 16th of January 1572 the Duke of Norfolk was taken from the
Tower to Westminster to undergo his trial. He was charged with having
entered into a treasonable conspiracy to depose the Queen and to take
her life; of having invoked the aid of the Pope to liberate the Queen
of Scots, of having intended to marry her, and for having attempted to
restore Papacy in the realm.
The Duke, who was not allowed counsel, pleaded in his own behalf,
attempting to prove that his intended marriage with Queen Mary of Scots
would not have affected the life or throne of Elizabeth. “But,” replied
the Queen’s Sergeant, Barham, “it is well known that you entered into a
design for seizing the Tower, which is certainly the greatest strength
of the Kingdom of England, and hence it follows, you then attempted
the destruction of the Queen.” By his own letters to the Pope the Duke
stood condemned, as well as by those written by him to the Duke of
Alva, and to Ridolfi, in addition to others written from the Tower to
Queen Mary by the Bishop of Ross. Norfolk was accordingly condemned,
but Elizabeth appears to have wavered regarding the signing of his
death warrant, for the Duke was her cousin. At length, however, the
House of Commons insisted that the Duke must die for the safety of the
State, and Elizabeth signed the warrant, and the 2nd of June was fixed
for his execution.
The Duke wrote very appealingly to the Queen for pardon, beseeching
her to forgive him for his “manifold offences” and “trusts that he may
leave a lighter heart and a quieter conscience.” He desired Burghley
to act as guardian to his orphaned children, and concluded his letter
thus: “written by the woeful hand of a dead man, your Majesty’s most
unworthy subject, and yet your Majesty’s, in my humble prayer, until
the last breath, Thomas Howard.”
Fourteen years had passed since anyone had been executed on Tower
Hill. The old wooden scaffold had fallen into decay, and it was found
necessary to build a new one. Compared with former reigns the fact of
no execution having taken place amongst the State prisoners for such a
length of time does credit to Elizabeth’s clemency, Norfolk being the
first to die for a crime against the State during her long reign. The
Duke has found apologists among historians, and has been regarded as a
hardly-used victim of Elizabeth and her Ministers. But his treason to
the Queen he had sworn to obey and defend was proved beyond all manner
of doubt, and his particular form of treason was the worst, having no
possible extenuation, since he plotted for the admission of a foreign
army into the realm, composed of the most bloodthirsty wretches that
ever desecrated a country, and led by a general whose cruelty
resembled that of a devil, and has left him infamous for all time.
[Illustration: _Queen Elizabeth’s Walk, from the Beauchamp Tower to the
Curfew Tower_]
Norfolk merited his doom, and the more illustrious his name and rank,
the more grievous his fault. As to finding cause for pitying him on the
ground of his attentions to Queen Mary, that, too, seems unnecessary.
The Duke had never seen the Scottish Queen, nor is he likely to
have felt much affection for a woman who had been implicated in her
husband’s murder, and had allowed herself to be carried off by that
husband’s assassin. Norfolk was accompanied to the scaffold by his old
friend, Sir Henry Lee, the Master of the Ordnance.[14] Norfolk refused
to have his eyes bandaged, and begging all present to pray for him,
met his fate with calmness. “His head,” writes an unknown chronicler
(Harleian MSS.), “with singular dexteritie of the executioner was with
the appointed axe at one chop, off; and showed to all the people.
Thus he finyshed his life, and afterwards his corpse was put into the
coffyn; appertaninge to Barkynge Church, with the head also, and so was
caryed by foure of the lyeutenant’s men and was buried in the Chappell
in the Tower by Mr Dean (Dr Nowell) of Paules.” The Duke’s last words
are worthy of remembrance. While reading the fifty-first Psalm, when
he came to the verse, “Build up the walls of Jerusalem,” he paused an
instant, and then said, “The walls of England, good Lord, I had almost
forgotten, but not too late, I ask all the world forgiveness and I
likewise forgive all the world.”
One of Queen Mary Stuart’s most devoted adherents was John Leslie,
Bishop of Ross, who, like Norfolk, had been deeply implicated in the
Ridolfi conspiracy, and had been imprisoned in the Bell Tower. When
tried for treason, the Bishop pleaded that being an Ambassador he was
not liable to the charge; he was kept for two years in the Tower and
then he was banished.
Priests, and especially those who were Jesuits, were very harshly dealt
with at this time, the utmost rigour being shown to all who opposed the
Queen’s acts or intentions. We have one instance of this in the fate
which befell that eminent theologian, John Stubbs, who had written a
pamphlet against the proposed marriage of Elizabeth with the Duke of
Anjou, the brother of the King of France, Charles IX., and himself
afterwards King of that country under the title of Henry III. Dr Stubbs
was sentenced to have his right hand cut off by the hangman, the
unlucky printers of his pamphlet being treated in the same barbarous
manner. Immediately his hand was cut off, Stubbs raised his cap with
the other, shouting, “God save the Queen!”; this truly loyal incident
was witnessed by the historian Camden.
Besides the penalty of losing the right hand for writing or printing
matter which might be disapproved by the Queen or her Council, the
same punishment was awarded to any person striking another within the
precincts of the royal palaces, of which the Tower was one. Peter
Burchet, a barrister of the Middle Temple, had been committed to the
Tower in 1573 for attempting to kill the celebrated Admiral Sir John
Hawkins, whom he had mistaken for Sir Christopher Hatton. During his
imprisonment he killed a warder, or attendant, by knocking him on the
head with a log of wood taken from the fire. For this he was condemned
to death, but before being hanged at Temple Bar, his right hand was
cut off for striking a blow in one of the royal palaces. At this time
Elizabeth found it essential to drastically assert her authority, and
in 1577 an individual named Sherin was not only imprisoned in the Tower
for denying her supremacy, but was afterwards drawn on a hurdle to
Tyburn, where he was hanged, disembowelled, and quartered. In that same
year six other poor creatures were treated in the same manner, after
being imprisoned in the fortress, for coining. From 1580 until the
close of Elizabeth’s reign the penal laws were enforced with terrible
rigour, owing to the invasion of the Jesuit missionary priests led by
Parsons and Campion. Cardinal Allen’s seminary priests were ruthlessly
hunted down, and when caught, imprisoned, generally tortured, and
invariably executed. The Cardinal, who had set up a seminary for
priests at Douai, maintained a large and ever increasing staff of young
men who were ready to sacrifice their lives in what they believed to
be the cause of Heaven. The first to suffer of these was Cuthbert
Mayne. Between Elizabeth and the Cardinal the war became fierce and
sanguinary. Plot was met by counter-plot, and Cecil showed himself as
astute and deep as any Jesuit of them all, the priests of Douai and
Allen’s Jesuits faring ill in consequence. Both Campion and Parsons
had been at the English Universities, and both for a time succeeded
in their mission of bringing over to their religion many from among
the higher classes of this country. But Elizabeth’s great minister
proved too strong for them, and Campion was arrested and sent to the
Tower, whilst Parsons sought safety on the Continent. Campion, with
two other priests named Sherin and Brian, was hanged at Tyburn. Many
of the imprisoned priests were tortured in the Tower; some were placed
in “Little Ease,” where they could neither stand up nor lie down at
full length; some were racked, others subjected to the deadly embrace
of the “Scavenger’s Daughter,” others being tortured by the “boot,” or
the “gauntlets,” and hung up for hours by the wrists. Sir Owen Hopton,
the Lieutenant of the Tower at this time, seems to have been a very
hard-hearted gaoler, and on one occasion when he had forced some of
these wretched priests, with the help of soldiers, into the Chapel of
the Tower whilst service was being held, he boasted that he had no one
under his charge who would not willingly enter a Protestant Church.
From 1580 onwards, the Tower was filled with State prisoners. In
that year the Archbishop of Armagh and the Earls of Kildare and
Clanricarde, and other Irish nobles who had taken part in Desmond’s
insurrection, were imprisoned in the fortress, and three years later
a number of persons concerned in one of the numerous plots against
Elizabeth’s life were likewise sent there, among them John Somerville,
a Warwickshire gentleman, and his wife, together with her parents, and
a priest named Hugh Hall, declared to have designs to murder the Queen.
Mrs Somerville, her mother, and the priest were spared; her husband
committed suicide in Newgate, where he had been sent to be executed,
and her father was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Smithfield. In the
following year (1584) Francis Throgmorton, son of Sir John, suffered
death for treason like his father, a correspondence between Queen Mary
and himself having been discovered. In the month of January 1585,
twenty-one priests lay in the Tower, but were afterwards shipped off to
France. In this same year Henry Percy, eighth Earl of Northumberland,
a zealous Roman Catholic, with Lord Arundel, the son of the fourth
Duke of Norfolk, were imprisoned in the Tower. But Northumberland
killed himself, locking his prison door, and shooting himself through
the heart with a pistol he had concealed about him, being supposed to
have committed suicide in order that his property should not come into
possession of the Queen—whom he called by a very offensive epithet—as
would have been the case had he been attainted of treason. Arundel died
in the Beauchamp Tower after a long imprisonment, as has been told
in the account of that building. His death was no doubt owing to the
severity of his confinement, combined with the austerities he thought
it his duty to inflict upon himself; he certainly deserves a place in
the roll of those who have died martyrs to their faith.
Another conspiracy against the Queen’s life came to light in this
same year, when a man named Parry was arrested on a charge of
having received money from the Pope to assassinate Elizabeth, a
fellow-conspirator named Neville being taken at the same time, it being
alleged that they intended to shoot the Queen whilst she was riding.
Neville, who was heir to the exiled Earl of Westmoreland, hearing
of that nobleman’s death abroad, turned Queen’s evidence, hoping by
this treachery to recover the forfeited Westmoreland estates. His
confederate was hanged, and although Neville escaped a similar fate, he
remained a prisoner for a considerable time in the Tower.
Axe and halter once more came into play in extinguishing what was known
as the Babington Plot in 1586. Elizabeth had never run a greater peril
of her life, and it was owing to this plot that Mary Stuart died on the
scaffold at Fotheringay on the 8th of February in the following year.
Anthony Babington was a youth of good family, holding a place at Court,
and, like many other of Elizabeth’s courtiers, belonged to the Roman
faith, the Queen being too courageous to forbid Roman Catholics from
belonging to her household. The soul of the plot was one Ballard, a
priest, who had induced Babington, with some other of his associates,
also of the Court, to adventure their lives in order to release Mary
Stuart, and to place her upon the throne after having got rid of
Elizabeth. Walsingham, with his lynx-eyed prevoyance, discovered the
plot, and Ballard with the rest were arrested, tried and condemned.
According to Disraeli the elder (in his “Amenities of Literature”)
the judge who presided at the trial, turning to Ballard, exclaimed,
“Oh, Ballard, Ballard! What hast thou done? A company of brave youths,
otherwise adorned with goodly gifts, by thy inducement thou hast
brought to their utter destruction and confusion.” Besides Ballard and
Babington, thirteen of these young conspirators were executed—to wit,
Edward Windsor, brother of Lord Windsor, Thomas Salisbury, Charles
Tilney, Chidiock Tichburn, Edward Abington, Robert Gage, John Travers,
John Charnocks, John Jones, John Savage, R. Barnwell, Henry Dun, and
Jerome Bellarmine. Their execution, accompanied with all its horrible
details, lasted for two days, Babington exclaiming as he died, “Parce
mihi, Domine Jesu!” On the second day the Queen gave orders that the
remaining victims should be despatched quickly without undergoing the
attendant horrors of partial hanging, drawing, and quartering.[15]
Mary’s execution followed in the next year, but it was Elizabeth’s
secretary, Davison—he had been appointed about this time co-secretary
with Walsingham—who had to bear all the odium of her death, Elizabeth
accusing him of having despatched the death-warrant without her
sanction. She sent him to the Tower and caused him to be fined
so heavily that he was completely ruined in consequence. Another
scandalously unjust imprisonment in the Tower of a loyal and faithful
servant of the Queen, was that of Sir John Perrot, a natural son of
Henry VIII. Perrot was a distinguished soldier, and had acted as
Lord-Deputy in Ireland, where, by his justice and humanity and clear
common-sense, he had done much to restore order and comparative
prosperity to that distracted island. Sir John Perrot was cordially
hated by the Lord Chancellor, Sir Christopher Hatton, who was
particularly noted for his skill in dancing, this hatred having been
aroused, it is said, by Perrot remarking that the Lord Chancellor “had
come to the Court by his galliard.” This criticism resulted in Perrot’s
being arrested, after being summoned from Ireland on a trumped-up
charge of treason, and committed to the Tower in 1590. At his trial
two years later, nothing could be proved against him except a few idle
words that he had uttered concerning the Queen, and which had been
repeated to her; nevertheless he was found guilty. When brought back
to the Tower, Sir John exclaimed angrily to the Lieutenant, Sir Owen
Hopton, “What! will the Queen suffer her brother to be offered up as
a sacrifice to the envy of my strutting adversary?” On hearing this,
the Queen burst out into one of her finest Tudor rages, and swearing
“by her wonted oath,” as Naunton writes, “declared that the jury which
had brought in this verdict were all knaves, and that she would not
sign the warrant for execution.” So Sir John escaped the headman,
but the gallant knight died that September in the Tower, Naunton
thus describing the close of his life: “His haughtiness of spirit
accompanied him to the last, and still, without any diminution of
courage therein, it burst the cords of his magnanimitie.” In his youth
Perrot had been distinguished for his good looks and strength of body.
“He was,” writes Naunton, “of stature and size far beyond the ordinary
man; he seems never to have known what fear was, and distinguished
himself by martial exercises.” During a boar hunt in France in 1551, it
was related of him that he rescued one of the hunters from the attack
of a wild boar, “giving the boar such a blow that it did well-nigh part
the head from the shoulders.”
From a memorandum drawn up by Sir Owen Hopton for the use of his
successor, Sir Michael Blunt, in the Lieutenancy of the Tower in 1590,
we find that the following prisoners were at that time confined in
the fortress:—James Fitzgerald, the only son of the Earl of Desmond,
who had come from Ireland as a hostage, Florence Macarthy, Sir
Thomas Fitzherbert (who died in the Tower in the following year),
Sir Thomas Williams, the Bishop of Laughlin, Sir Nicholas White, Sir
Brian O’Rourke, “who hath the libertie to walk on the leades over his
lodging,” and Sir Francis Darcy. All these prisoners were connected
with the war in Ireland, or were suspected of conspiring against the
Queen and her government.
The year 1592 is a memorable one in the life of the great Sir Walter
Raleigh, for it was then that he began his long acquaintance with the
prisons of the Tower, and from this time until his execution a quarter
of a century later, Raleigh’s days were mainly passed within the walls
of that building.
Raleigh’s first imprisonment in the Tower was owing to his marriage
with Elizabeth Throgmorton, one of the Queen’s ladies, and the daughter
of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton. Raleigh had wooed, won, and wedded his
wife without Elizabeth’s knowledge or consent. The Queen, then over
sixty years of age, was still as jealous and as vain as any young girl
of sixteen, and for any of her favourites—and Raleigh at this time
was the principal one—to marry without her august permission, and
especially to marry one of her ladies, was in her eyes a most heinous
crime, an aggravated form of _lése-majestè_, and it was only by the
most fulsome flattery, the most grovelling abasement, that Sir Walter
gained his freedom. In a letter from Sir Arthur Gorges, a cousin of
Raleigh’s, to Sir Robert Cecil, there is an account of an extraordinary
scene enacted by Sir Walter whilst in the Tower. “I cannot choose,”
writes Gorges, “but advertise you of a strange tragedy that this day
had like to have fallen out between the captain of the guard and the
lieutenant of the ordnance, if I had not by great chance come at the
very instant to have turned it into a comedy. For upon a report of
Her Majesty’s being at Sir George Carew’s, Sir Walter Raleigh having
gazed and sighed a long time at his study window, from whence he might
discover the barges and boats about the Blackfriars stairs, suddenly
he brake out into a great distemper, and swore that his enemies had on
purpose brought Her Majesty thither to break his gall in sunder with
Tantalus’s torment, that when she went away he might see death before
his eyes, with many such like conceits. And as a man transported with
passion, he swore to Sir George Carew that he would disguise himself,
and get into a pair of oars to cure his mind with but a sight of the
Queen, or else he protested his heart would break. But the trusty
jailor would none of that, for displeasing the higher powers, as he
said, which he more resented than the feeding of his humour, and so
flatly refused to permit him. But in conclusion, upon this dispute they
fell flat to choleric outrageous words, with straining and struggling
at the doors, that all lameness was forgotten, and in the fury of the
conflict, the jailor he had his new periwig torn off his crown, and
yet here the struggle ended not, for at last they had gotten out their
daggers. Which when I saw, I played the stickler between them, and so
purchased such a rap on the knuckles, that I wished both their pates
broken, and so with much ado they stayed their brawl to see my bloody
fingers. At first I was ready to break with laughing to see them two
scramble and brawl like madmen, until I saw the iron walking, and then
I did my best to appease their fury. As yet I cannot reconcile them by
any persuasions, for Sir Walter swears, that he shall hate him for so
restraining him from the sight of his mistress, while he lives, for
that he knows not (as he said) whether ever he shall see her again,
when she is gone the progress. And Sir George on his side, swears
that he would rather lose his longing, than he would draw on him Her
Majesty’s displeasure by such liberty. Thus they continue in malice
and snarling; but I am sure all the smart lighted on me. I cannot tell
whether I should more allow of the passionate lover, or the trusty
jailor. But if yourself had seen it, as I did, you would have been as
heartily merry and sorry, as ever you were in all your life, for so
short a time. I pray you pardon my hasty written narrative, which I
acquaint you with, hoping you will be the peacemaker. But, good sir,
let nobody know thereof, for I fear Sir Walter Raleigh will shortly
grow to be Orlando Furioso, if the bright Angelica persevere against
him.”
Here is a portion of a letter written by Sir Walter himself to Sir
Robert Cecil, which the writer evidently wished should be shown to the
Queen. “My heart,” he writes, “was never broken till this day, that I
hear the Queen goes away so far off, whom I have followed so many years
with so great love and desire, in so many journeys, and am now left
behind her in a dark prison, all alone.” (This “dark prison” from which
Raleigh writes, was probably the Brick Tower; in later years Sir Walter
was to become acquainted with other prisons in the Tower.) “While she
was yet at hand,” he continues, “that I might hear of her once in two
or three days, my sorrows were the less, but even now my heart is cast
into the depth of all misery. I, that was wont to behold her riding
like Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking like Venus, the gentle
wind blowing her fair hair about her pure face like a nymph, sometimes
sitting in the shade like a goddess, sometimes singing like an angel,
sometimes playing like Orpheus”—Alas! Sir Walter!
How long, in spite of the above fulsome letter, the Queen would have
kept “her love-stricken swain,” as Raleigh called himself, within
the Tower there is no knowing, if it had not been for the accident
of his good ship, the _Roebuck_—which had escaped from the Spanish
fleet sent to capture her—falling in, off Flores, with some great East
Indian carracks bound for Lisbon. When the _Roebuck_ had taken the
great Spanish ship, the _Madre de Dios_ and brought her into Dartmouth
with a huge treasure on board, which Raleigh himself estimated at
half-a-million pounds, Elizabeth’s covetousness completely overmastered
her resentment, and “her love-stricken swain” was set at liberty in
September 1592, to arrange the disposal of the Spanish treasure—of
which the Queen took the lion’s share.
Two attempts to poison Elizabeth were discovered in 1594. The first
of these dastardly schemes was concocted by the Queen’s physician, a
Spaniard or Portuguese named Lopez, who had been bribed by the Spanish
governors of the Netherlands, Fuentes and Ibara, to administer poison
to his royal mistress in some medicine. This plot is said to have
been discovered by Essex. Lopez and two of his confederates met the
fate they deserved, after being imprisoned in the Tower. According to
Camden, Lopez declared on the scaffold that “He loved the Queen as much
as he did Jesus Christ.” This sentiment coming from a Jew was received
with much merriment by the spectators at the execution. The second plot
was much more curious.
Walpole, a Jesuit priest, had bribed a groom in the royal stables,
named Edward Squire, to rub some poison on the pommel of the Queen’s
saddle, but, as may be supposed, the poison had no harmful effect, and
priest and groom, being convicted, were hanged at Tyburn.
The last year of the sixteenth century saw the fall of one of
Elizabeth’s most brilliant courtiers, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.
After forty years of stern repression, Ireland, towards the close of
Elizabeth’s reign, had become more Irish than ever. All the cruelties
committed in that country by the Government of the Queen, cruelties in
which Raleigh played so flagrant a part, had not crushed the Irish, and
a larger army of occupation was found necessary.
Essex and Raleigh were bitter enemies. The chief cause of their
dissension was the treatment of the Irish, Raleigh advising that they
should be completely trodden under foot, whilst Essex urged a show
of justice and some degree of goodwill towards the country and its
inhabitants; but the favour shown by the Queen to both these remarkable
men was also an additional cause for their mutual jealousy. Both were
extremely self-willed, and their immense egotism, and lust for place
and power, was the common ruin of each of them.
Essex was the youngest and last of that brilliant combination of
soldier, statesman, and courtier, that added to the glory and charm of
those “spacious days.”
Robert Devereux had many personal claims to Elizabeth’s good will.
Strikingly handsome in face and form, he shone equally in the Court or
in the field, and both by birth and marriage he was related to some
of the most prominent persons attached to the Court. His father had
been a personal friend of Elizabeth’s; his step-father was the Earl
of Leicester; Sir Francis Knollys was his grandfather; Walsingham his
father-in-law; Lord Hemsdon was his great-uncle, and the all-powerful
Burleigh his guardian. To us Essex’s most conspicuous merit was that
Shakespeare called him his friend. The poet was closely linked in
the bonds of friendship both with Essex and with his dearest friend
Southampton, and their fall is thought to have thrown the shadow of
their misfortunes over the drama composed about the time of Essex’s
execution, and Southampton’s disgrace and imprisonment. _A Midsummer
Night’s Dream_ had been written in honour of Essex’s marriage, and the
only two books of verse that Shakespeare published had been dedicated
to Southampton; and it was probably to the latter that the Sonnets were
addressed, if he was not their actual inspirer.
On the eve of Essex’s disastrous expedition to Ireland, Shakespeare
referred to his friend in the prologue of Act v. of the play of _Henry
V._ After “broaching rebellion in Ireland,” Essex is thus referred to:
“Were now the general of our gracious empress
As in good time he may, from Ireland coming,
Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,
How many would the peaceful city quit
To welcome him!”
But the poet’s prophecy was not to be fulfilled; for two years after
the declamation of these proud lines foretelling Essex’s glory, both
their subject and Southampton—who had accompanied Essex to Ireland as
Master of the Horse—were charged with treasonable conduct and neglect
of duty. Thus Shakespeare lost his two most influential friends by one
and the same fatality.
Essex, half mad with rage and disappointment at his failure, and
smarting under the bitterness of mortified vanity and ambition, and
under what he considered the ingratitude of the Queen, lost his
self-control. Raleigh, he believed, had poisoned Elizabeth’s mind
against him, quite forgetting his own insolences to his Sovereign
on many occasions. Had he not during one of his outbursts of temper
exclaimed in the hearing of some of the people attached to her person,
that Elizabeth was as crooked in her mind as she was in her body? Essex
must have been well aware that the aged monarch would never pardon such
a speech; and it was probably one of the chief causes which led her to
sign the warrant that consigned her former favourite to the scaffold.
[Illustration:
HIC TVVS ILLE COMES GENEROSA ESSEXIA NOSTRIS
QVEM QVAM GAVDEMVS REBVS ADESSE DVCEM.]
Enraged at the charges brought against him and the failure of the Irish
expedition, Essex formed a wild plot to seize the Queen’s person, being
assisted in the scheme by Southampton and some other hot-heads, amongst
them, Rutland, Sandys, Cromwell, and Monteagle; with these were a band
of about three hundred armed men. Although Essex was immensely popular
with the Londoners, the sober citizens had no idea of imperilling their
lives and possessions in such a harum-scarum adventure as this promised
to be. Consequently Essex and his friends found no support, and instead
of seizing the Queen and upsetting the Government they themselves were
taken prisoners after a short siege in Essex’s townhouse. Early in
February 1601 Essex with Southampton passed under Traitor’s Gate.
Essex occupied a prison in the Tower which owes its name to his having
spent the last days of his short and brilliant life within its walls.
On the 19th of February, Essex and Southampton were taken to their
trial at Westminster Hall, and there were both adjudged guilty of high
treason.
It appears that up to the last Essex expected a reprieve, as he took
no leave of his family or of his friends. Lady Essex appealed to Cecil
for her husband’s life, and Cecil perhaps might have saved him, had
it not been—one regrets to write it—that Raleigh strongly urged the
great minister by letter, to carry out the sentence (Lansdowne MSS. and
Ellis’s “Original Letters”) and the law took its cruel course. Essex
was so beloved by the people that, perhaps, for fear of an attempted
rescue by the Londoners when they saw their favourite led out to die,
his execution was arranged to take place within the gates of the
fortress instead of upon Tower Hill. Camden indeed states that it was
Essex’s own desire to die within the walls of the Tower, his reason for
doing so being that the “acclamations of the citizens should have heven
him up,” whatever that meant. He himself admitted that so long as he
lived the Queen’s life would not be in safety, a most suicidal remark
to make, but which he made nevertheless to Cecil four days before the
end.
The following account of Essex’s last evening upon earth, and of his
death, was written by an eye-witness of the execution, and is taken
from the Calendar of State Papers (Dom. Series, 1598–1601).
“Feb. 25. 112.—Account of the execution of the Earl of Essex at 8 A.M.
in the Tower.
“On Tuesday (24th February) night, between ten and twelve o’clock, he
opened his window and said to the guards, ‘My good friends, pray for
me, and to-morrow you shall see in me a strong God in a weak man; I
have nothing to give you, for I have nothing left but that which I must
pay to the Queen to-morrow in the morning.’ When he was brought from
his lodging by the Lieutenant, he was attended on by three divines,
and all the way from his chamber to the scaffold he called to God to
give him strength and patience to the end, and said: ‘O God, give me
true repentance, true patience, and true humility, and put all worldly
thoughts out of my mind’; and he often entreated those that went with
him to pray for him.
“Being come upon the scaffold which was set up in the midst of the
court, he was apparelled in a gown of wrought velvet, a satin suit, and
felt hat, all black; and first turning himself towards the divines,
he said, ‘O God, be merciful unto me, the most wretched creature
on the earth,’ and then turning himself towards the noblemen that
sat on a form placed before the scaffold, he vayled his hat, and
making reverence to the Lords, laid it away, and with his eyes most
attentively fixed up to Heaven, spoke to this effect: ‘My Lords, and
you my Christian brethren who are to be witnesses of this my just
punishment, I confess to the glory of God that I am a most wretched
sinner, and that my sins are more in number than the hairs of my head;
that I have bestowed my youth in pride, lust, uncleanness, vainglory
and divers other sins, according to the fashion of this world, wherein
I have offended most grievously my God, and notwithstanding divers
good motives inspired unto me from the Spirit of God, the good which I
would I have not done; and the evil which I would not I have done; for
all which I humbly beseech our Saviour Christ to be the Mediator unto
the Eternal Majesty for my pardon; especially for this my last sin,
this great, this bloody, this crying and this infectious sin, whereby
so many, for love of me, have ventured their lives and souls, and have
been drawn to offend God, to offend their Sovereign, and to offend the
world, which is as great grief unto me as may be. Lord Jesus, forgive
it us, and forgive it me, the most wretched of all; and I beseech Her
Majesty, the State, and the Ministers thereof, to forgive it us. The
Lord grant Her Majesty a prosperous reign, and a long one, if it be his
will, O Lord, grant her a wise and understanding heart; O Lord, bless
her and the nobles, and ministers of Church and State. And I beseech
you and the world to have a charitable opinion of me for my intention
towards Her Majesty, whose death, upon my salvation and before God, I
protest I never meant, nor violence to her person; yet I confess I have
received an honourable trial, and am justly condemned. And I desire all
the world to forgive me, even as I freely and from my heart forgive all
the world.
“‘And whereas I have been condemned for my religion, I was never, I
thank God, Atheist or Papist, for I never denied the power of my God,
not believing the word and scriptures, neither did I ever trust to
be justified by my own works or merits, but hope as a true Christian
for my salvation from God only, by the mercy and merits of my Saviour
Jesus Christ, crucified for my sins. This faith I was brought up in,
and therein am now ready to die; beseeching you all to join with me
in prayer, not with eyes and lips only, but with lifted-up hands and
minds, to the Lord for me, that my soul may be lifted up above all
earthly things, for now I will give myself to my private prayer; yet
for that I beseech you all to join with me, I will speak that you may
hear.’
“Then putting off his gown and ruff and presenting himself before the
block, he was, as it seemed, by one of the chaplains encouraged against
the fear of death; to whom he answered, that having been divers times
in places of danger, yet where death was never so present nor certain,
he had felt the weakness of the flesh, and therefore desired God to
strengthen him in that great conflict, and not to suffer the flesh to
have any rule over him.
“Preparing to kneel down, he asked for the executioner, who on his
knees also asked his pardon, to whom he said, ‘Thou art welcome to
me; I forgive thee; thou art the minister of true justice.’ And then,
with eyes fixed up to Heaven, he began his prayers, ‘O God, creator
of all things and judge of all men, thou hast let me know by warrant
of thy word, that Satan is then most busy when our end is nearest,
and that Satan being resisted, will fly, I humbly beseech thee to
assist me in this my last combat, and since thou acceptest even of our
desires as of our acts, accept of my desires to resist him as with
true resistance and perfect grace; what thou seest of my flesh to be
frail [strengthen?] and give me patience to be as becometh me, in this
just punishment inflicted upon me by so honourable a trial. Grant me
the inward comfort of thy Spirit; let the Spirit seal unto my soul an
assurance of thy mercies; lift my soul above all earthly cogitations,
and when my life and body shall part, send thy blessed angels to be
near unto me, which may convey it to the joys in Heaven,’ then saying
the Lord’s Prayer, he iterated this petition, ‘As we forgive them that
trespass against us,’ saying, ‘As we forgive _all_ them that trespass
against us.’
“Then one of the divines put him in mind to say over his belief, which
he did, the doctor saying it softly before him, and added these words,
‘Lord Jesus, receive my soul; into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my
spirit.’ He was likewise remembered by the divines to forgive and pray
for his enemies. Whereupon he beseeched God to forgive them as freely
as he did, ‘because,’ said he, ‘they bear the image of God as well as
myself.’
“Asking what was fit for him to do for disposing himself to the block,
and his doublet being taken off, after he had asked the executioner
whether he would hinder him or no in a scarlet waistcoat, he bowed
himself towards the block, and said, ‘O God, give me true humility and
patience to endure to the end, and I pray you all to pray with me and
for me, that when you shall see me stretch out my arms and my neck
on the block, and the stroke ready to be given, it would please the
everlasting God to send down his angels to carry my soul before his
mercy seat,’ and then lifting up his eyes devotedly towards Heaven, he
said, ‘Lord God, as unto thine altar I do come, offering up my body and
my soul for a sacrifice, in humility and obedience to thy commandment,
to thy ordinance, and to thy good pleasure, O God, I prostrate myself
to my deserved punishment.’ Lying flat along the boards, his hand
stretched out, he said, ‘Lord, have mercy upon me, thy prostrate
servant,’ and therewithal fitting his head to the block, he was willed
by one of the doctors to say the beginning of the 51st Psalm, Have
mercy upon me, O God, etc., whereof he said two verses; the executioner
being prepared he uttered these words, ‘Executioner, strike home.
Come, Lord Jesus, come, Lord Jesus, and receive my soul; O Lord, into
thy hands I commend my spirit.’ In the midst of which sentence his head
was severed by the axe from the corpse at three blows, but the first
deadly, and depriving all sense and motion.
“The noblemen present at his death were the Earls of Cumberland and
Hertford, Lords Bindon, Darcy, Compton, and Thomas Howard, Constable
of the Tower, Sir John Peyton, lieutenant with fifteen or sixteen
partizans of the guard, and three divines, Messrs Montfort, Barlow, and
Ashe Ashton.”
Writing of Essex’s death, Stowe says, “The body and the head were
removed into the Tower, put into a coffin ready prepared, and buried
by the Earl of Arundel and Duke of Norfolk in the Church of St Peter.”
The above reads as if Essex’s remains had been buried by Arundel and
Norfolk, but it is of course intended to convey the fact that the body
of the Earl was placed alongside their graves.
There is a ghastly story told by G. S. Brandés in his work on
Shakespeare, in which the Duke de Biron, Henry III. of France’s envoy
to Elizabeth, relates a conversation he held with Elizabeth about
Essex, in which she jested over her departed favourite; the Queen
opened a box and took out of it Essex’s skull which she showed to
Biron. This story has no shadow of proof or foundation, for had Essex’s
head been taken out of the historic soil in which it mouldered in St
Peter’s Chapel, and been given to the Queen, such an extraordinary
proceeding would have been recorded; besides Elizabeth was not a
monster, as such conduct with which Biron here credits her, would
proclaim her to be.
Raleigh, at his own execution and speaking on the edge of the grave,
solemnly denied that he had rejoiced over the death of Essex. He had,
he acknowledged, watched the execution of his rival from the windows of
the Armoury, those at the north end of the White Tower, which commanded
a view of the scaffold—“where I saw him,” Sir Walter said, “but he
saw not me, and my soul hath been many times grieved that I was not
near to him when he died because I understood afterwards that he asked
for me at his death, to be reconciled to me.” Thus at the early age of
thirty-three ended the noble and gifted Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex
and Eu, Viscount Hereford and Bourchier, Baron Ferrers of Chartley,
Bourchier and Louvain.
When quite a youth Essex had married Frances, daughter of Sir Francis
Walsingham, and his son Robert, born in 1592, lived to lead the army of
the Parliament against Charles the First.
Contemporary writers have extolled Essex’s charm of character and
beauty of person. Sir Robert Naunton, in his “Fragmenta Regalia,”
writes that “there was in this young lord, together with a most goodly
person, a kind of urbanity or innate courtesy.” So popular was Essex
with the Londoners that he scarcely ever quitted the capital without a
poem or song being sung and sold in the streets. After Essex’s death
Raleigh, who, probably owing to his arrogance, was never a favourite
with the citizens, was hooted by the mob, as were also Bacon and
the other judges who had condemned the Earl. Even Elizabeth’s own
popularity paled after Essex’s death, and she was ever after coldly
received whenever she appeared amongst her lieges.
Southampton was kept a prisoner in the Tower until released by the
order of James I. in the month of April 1603. During his imprisonment,
a favourite cat of his appeared suddenly in his room, having come to
his master by way of the chimney, and after his deliverance Southampton
had his portrait painted with his faithful friend beside him. At
Welbeck Abbey there are two portraits of this nobleman, and in one of
them the cat appears by its master’s side.
Of the other conspirators in Essex’s plot, Sir Christopher Blunt, Sir
Charles Danvers, Sir Gilley Merrick, and Henry Cuffe were executed,
the first four being beheaded, and the two last hanged at Tyburn.
Cuffe, who was Essex’s private secretary, appears to have been the
principal instigator in the scheme for kidnapping the Queen; the other
prisoners were pardoned.
For a long time the Queen hesitated to sign her old favourite’s death
warrant; but finally wrote her name upon the fatal document, and by
so doing probably shortened her own time on earth, for after Essex’s
execution she fell into a state of morbid dejection which never
lightened till the end. Her last days were lonely and full of terror,
if not of despair. There are few accounts more tragic in history than
the description given by those who saw the poor, painted old woman at
this time—half delirious as the shades of death closed around her,
thrusting a sword through the tapestry of her chamber, or lying on the
ground propped up with cushions, refusing all nourishment, and having
no one near her to whom she could turn for one loving look or tender
word. There is no truth in the popular tale of the ring which Elizabeth
is supposed to have given to Essex to be returned to her in any time of
trouble, and detained until too late by Lady Nottingham.
Thus in domestic trouble and bloodshed closed the great Queen’s reign.
When Elizabeth mounted the throne England was wretchedly weak and
distracted, and apparently almost in the grasp of the huge Spanish
octopus, the baleful arms of which were closing in around her. When the
great Queen died, England was self-reliant and powerful. Elizabeth had
not only been regarded by her own people with pride and admiration,
but all Europe proclaimed her greatness. Bacon truly said that little
or nothing was wanting to fill up the full measure of Elizabeth’s
felicity; she had triumphed over all her enemies; and her bitterest
foe, Philip of Spain, had gone to his grave five years before her
own death, beaten and discredited, and like his so-called Invincible
Armada, a wreck and a derision. The only other European sovereign who
in any way could be compared with Elizabeth, and who survived her, was
Henry of Navarre; and he had called Elizabeth his “other self.” In the
next generation Cromwell, a still greater man than Henry IV. of France,
speaking of Elizabeth said, “Queen Elizabeth of famous memory; we need
not be ashamed to call her so.”
END OF VOL. I.
THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH
[Illustration: The Tower
T. Way, Lith: London.]
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| FOOTNOTES: |
| |
| [1] Mr G. H. Birch, F.S.A., the Curator of the Soane Museum, |
| says of the extent of the Roman city, that it was “originally |
| of smaller extent, and did not include the space now marked out |
| by the line of apparently Roman walls, the proof being that |
| interments have been found in the extended space, notably at |
| the Union Bank of London and at Bow Churchyard, Cheapside. The |
| first Roman city extended from the Tower to Aldgate, then along |
| Leadenhall Street to Cornhill, returning by Wallbrook to Dowgate, |
| and thence along Thames Street. Several of the bastions, notably |
| the one in Camomile Street, are composed of destroyed Roman |
| buildings and sculpture, and the work, although built in the |
| Roman manner—that is, with courses of Roman tiles or bricks—is |
| coarser in execution than the portion of the real Roman wall at |
| Postern Row and Aldgate.” |
| |
| [2] “As to the date of the extension,” writes Mr Birch, “it is |
| difficult to say, but it was probably after the withdrawal of the |
| Romans, but I hardly think as late as Alfred. The building points |
| to the work of partly Romanised inhabitants, who would have been |
| able to build only in the manner taught them by the Romans.” |
| |
| [3] The wax effigies of the Kings and Queens covered with tawdry |
| robes and gilt pasteboard crowns are far more attractive to the |
| holiday crowd of visitors in the Abbey of Westminster than the |
| tombs and shrines of the dead; and Madame Tussaud’s show attracts |
| the public more than the National Gallery. |
| |
| [4] This is the King’s or Queen’s House, according to the sex of |
| the reigning Sovereign. |
| |
| [5] He was the youngest son of John Apsley of Pulborough, Sussex. |
| He purchased the office of Lieutenant of the Tower from his |
| predecessor Sir George Moore, for £2500, and was sworn into |
| office, March 3rd, 1617, which he held until his death, May 24th, |
| 1630; he was also Surveyor of Victuals for the Navy. Whilst |
| Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Walter Raleigh was in his custody. |
| He was thrice married. His second wife was Anne, daughter and |
| heiress of Sir Peter Carew, by whom he had issue two sons and |
| a daughter, Jocosa or Joyce, who married Lyster, second son of |
| Sir Richard Blount, of Mapledurham, whose ancestors were also |
| Lieutenants of the Tower. His third wife was Lucy, youngest |
| daughter of Sir John St John, Knight of Lydiard Tregoz, Wilts, |
| to whom he was married at St Anne’s, Blackfriars, on the 23rd |
| December 1615, at which time he was of the age of forty-eight, |
| whilst the lady was but sixteen. By this marriage he became |
| brother-in-law of Sir Edward Villiers, Viscount Grandison, |
| half-brother of George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham. His |
| eldest son by this marriage, who also became Sir Allen Apsley, |
| was a zealous Royalist, and was successively Governor of Exeter |
| and Barnstaple Castles, and, after the Restoration, Falconer to |
| King Charles II., and Treasurer of the Household to James, Duke |
| of York, afterwards James II. His daughter Frances married Sir |
| Benjamin Bathurst, Knight, Governor of the Royal African and East |
| India Companies and Cofferer to Queen Anne, and ancestor of Lord |
| Chancellor Bathurst. Sir Allen Apsley, the Lieutenant of the |
| Tower, had also four other sons and two daughters; of the latter, |
| Barbara married Lieutenant-Colonel Hutchinson, and Lucy became |
| the celebrated wife of his brother, Colonel John Hutchinson, |
| Governor of Nottingham Castle, an earnest Parliamentarian. The |
| life of the latter was written by his wife, who also left behind |
| her her own autobiography, printed in 1808. |
| |
| [6] Mr Birch thinks this improbable, and that the depth and clay |
| bottom of the river would have rendered such a work impossible. |
| |
| [7] Thomas of Woodstock, seventh son of Edward III., Duke of |
| Gloucester and Aumarle, was born in 1355. He had held many |
| important offices in the State. Froissart says he was “orguilleux |
| et présomptueux de maniére.” At the time of his death he was |
| fifty-two years of age. |
| |
| [8] |
| “When he was brought again to the bar, to hear |
| His knell rung out, his judgment, he was stirr’d |
| With such an agony, he sweat extremely, |
| And some thing spoke in choler, ill, and hasty: |
| But he fell to himself again, and sweetly |
| In all the rest show’d a most noble patience—” |
| |
| _Henry VIII._, Act i. scene 4. |
| |
| [9] There is a large number of records now in the State Paper |
| Office, which are known as the “Baga de Secretis,” and are |
| the official papers connected with many of the most important |
| State trials; these records are kept in ninety-one small bags |
| or pouches, whence the name of the collection. They have been |
| calendared in the third, fourth, and fifth Reports of the |
| Deputy-Keeper of the Public Records. These interesting documents |
| begin with the trial of Edmund Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, |
| in 1499, and end in the year 1813. In Pouch Nine there are |
| the reports of the trials of Anne Boleyn and her brother Lord |
| Rochford. |
| |
| [10] On her father’s side Lady Jane Grey’s descent was as |
| follows:—Thomas Grey was Queen Elizabeth Woodville’s (the Queen |
| of Edward IV.) eldest son by her first marriage to Sir John Grey, |
| eighth Lord Ferrers of Groby in Leicestershire. Sir John was |
| killed at the second battle of St Albans, fighting on the side of |
| King Henry. His son Thomas Grey was created Earl of Huntingdon in |
| 1471 and Marquis of Dorset in 1475. In the latter year he married |
| Cicely, the daughter and heiress of William, Lord Bonville and |
| Harrington. By this marriage he had a family of seven sons and |
| eight daughters, and his grandson was the father of Lady Jane |
| Grey. |
| |
| [11] I know of only one satisfactory portrait of Lady Jane Grey, |
| and that belongs to Lord Beauchamp and is kept at Madresfield |
| Court. By Lord Beauchamp’s kindness I am allowed to reproduce |
| that portrait, together with its companion picture of Lord |
| Guildford Dudley. |
| |
| [12] The minutes of this trial are in the Baga de Secretis, Pouch |
| xxiv. in the Public Record Office. |
| |
| [13] This book, a manual of prayers in square vellum, is now in |
| the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum. It is thought that Lady |
| Jane had borrowed it from Sir John Brydges, carrying it with her |
| to the scaffold, and there returning it to its owner by the hands |
| of his brother, although, as the Lieutenant was present, it is |
| difficult to understand why she did not give it to him personally. |
| |
| [14] Sir Henry Lee was a great lover of jousts and tournaments, |
| and was noted for his prowess in the lists. He died in 1611. His |
| descendant, the present Lord Dillon, has inherited his ancestor’s |
| love of armour and all that appertains to the study of knightly |
| panoply and weapons. The country owes Lord Dillon a debt of |
| gratitude for the admirable manner in which he has classified and |
| re-arranged the collection of arms and armour in the White Tower, |
| and for the exhaustive and excellent catalogue of the same. |
| |
| [15] These executions took place on the 20th and 21st September |
| 1586. Seven on the first day, and the remainder the next. The |
| centre of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which at that time had not been |
| laid out, was the scene of these horrible barbarities. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
Transcriber’s Notes:
- Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
- Blank pages have been removed.
- Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.