The final scene took place on the succeeding day. At nine o’clock the scaffold was ready, and Sir John Gates, with young Lord Warwick, were brought forth to receive Communion in the chapel (“Memorandum,” says the chronicler again, “the Duke of Somerset’s sons stood by”). By one after the other, their abjuration had been made, and the priest present had offered what comfort he might to the men appointed to die.
“I would,” he said, “ye should not be ignorant of God’s mercy, which is infinite. And let not death fear you, for it is but a little while, ye know, ended in one half-hour. What shall I say? I trust to God it shall be to you a short passage (though somewhat sharp) out of innumerable miseries into a most pleasant rest—which God grant.”
As the other prisoners were led out the Duke and Sir John Gates met at the garden gate. Northumberland spoke.
“Sir John,” he said, “God have mercy on us, for this day shall end both our lives. And I pray you, forgive me whatsoever I have offended; and I forgive you, with all my heart, although you and your counsel was a great occasion thereof.”
“Well, my Lord,” was the reply, “I forgive you, as I would be forgiven. And yet you and your authority was the only original cause of all together. But the Lord pardon you, and I pray you forgive me.”
So, not without a recapitulation of each one’s grievance, they made obeisance, and the Duke passed on. Again, “the Duke of Somerset’s sons stood thereby”—the words recur like a sinister refrain.
The end had come. Standing upon the scaffold, the Duke put off his damask gown; then, leaning on the rail, he repeated the confession of faith made on the previous day, begging those present to remember the old learning, and thanking God that He had called him to be a Christian. With his own hands he knit the handkerchief about his eyes, laid him down, and so met the executioner’s blow.
Gates followed, with few words. Sir Thomas Palmer, having witnessed the ghastly spectacle, came last. That morning, whilst preparations for the executions were being made, he had been walking in the Lieutenant’s garden, observed, says that “resident in the Tower” in whose diary so many incidents of this time have been preserved, to seem “more cheerful in countenance than when he was most at liberty in his lifetime”; and when the end was at hand, he met it, as some men did meet death in those days, with undaunted courage, and with a heroism not altogether unaffected by dramatic instinct.
Though apparently implicitly included amongst the prisoners who had made their peace with the Church, he is not recorded to have taken any prominent part in the affair, and his dying speech dealt with no controversial matters, but with eternal verities confessed alike by Catholic and Protestant. At his trial he had denied that he had ever borne arms against the Queen; though, charged with having been present when others did so, he acknowledged his guilt. He now passed that matter over, with a brief admission that his fate had been deserved at God’s hands: “For I know it to be His divine ordinance by this mean to call me to His mercy and to teach me to know myself, what I am, and whereto we are all subject. I thank His merciful goodness, for He has caused me to learn more in one little dark corner in yonder Tower than ever I learned by any travail in so many places as I have been.” For there he had seen God; he had seen himself; he had seen and known what the world was. “Finally, I have seen there what death is, how near hanging over every man’s head, and yet how uncertain the time, and how unknown to all men, and how little it is to be feared. And why should I fear death, or be sad therefore? Have I not seen two die before mine eyes, yea, and within the hearing of mine ears? No, neither the sprinkling of the blood, or the shedding thereof, nor the bloody axe itself, shall not make me afraid.”
Taking leave of all present, he begged their prayers, forgave the executioner, and, master of himself to the last, kneeling, laid his head upon the block.