“Oh, bother, what’s the use of going to that worry. A knife under his fifth rib will do as well.”
And accordingly the next morning, just before his breakfast was served, a low-browed ruffian would go to his cell, and Sir Thomas would get the knife under his ribs, and a hole would be dug, and that was the last of him. They generally stabbed them at seven in the morning, to save the expenses of the last breakfast. He might as well go into the hereafter on an empty stomach, and it was that much saved to the King’s treasury. They had a good notion of economy in some directions. Or a hasty trial might be had, and the illustrious prisoner might be led to the block and have his head chopped off. Anyhow it amounted to the same thing, Sir Thomas was bound to die in one way or another.
WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH SIR THOMAS BUSTER?
I have a profound respect for the murdered of the Tower, but not a particle for their sacred butchers, the Kings and Queens of that day. To have been murdered in the Tower, no matter by what means or in what way, was a certificate of good character that should have lasted till to-day. By chance, they might occasionally kill a bad man, but as a rule the victims were men who incurred the displeasure of the powers that were by opposing infamy; by making some sort of a stand, no matter how weak, for something good. I should liked to have had time to get flowers to drop on the spots where they were supposed to be interred, and I would have done it to some extent, only no one knows where these spots are. A flower dropped anywhere within the Tower would fall on some one’s grave, but you might possibly decorate the wrong man. I didn’t do it, and I don’t suppose the illustrious deceased would care much about it anyhow. If I cared anything about what posterity should say about me after I had gone hence, I shouldn’t want anything better than to have been butchered in the Tower. That is a better patent of nobility than any that King or Kaiser can confer. Whoso died there, died in a good cause, no matter what it was. The victim must have been good, for the kingly butcher was always bad.