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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.