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.