In the case of Queen Catherine Howard, one cannot, alas! feel that the poor victim was innocent of the charge which the King had brought against her. Catherine Howard was an erring woman, much to be pitied. She confessed her guilt both to Archbishop Cranmer and many Lords of the Council, to Suffolk, Southampton, and also to Thirlby, the Bishop of Westminster—the only Bishop who ever occupied that see.

On the 10th of February 1542 Queen Catherine Howard was brought from Sion House, where she and Lady Rochford had passed the winter in close confinement, to the Tower, and three days later both these unhappy ladies were beheaded on the scaffold on Tower Green. Both died with courage, and both confessed their guilt before the axe fell, for on this occasion the services of the Calais executioner were not called into requisition. An eye-witness of their deaths, named Otwell Johnson, in a letter written by him (and which is undoubtedly genuine, as Sir Henry Ellice includes it in his first series of “Original Letters”), declares that both victims “made the moost godly and chrystian end, that ever was hard tell of I thynke sins the world’s creation.” So the last act in these poor women’s lives atoned for the evil of which they had been undoubtedly guilty. Weever, a contemporary, alludes thus to the Queen’s burial: “Within the choir of this chapel (St Peter’s) lieth buried near the relics of the said Annie Bollein, the body of Katherine, the fifth wife of King Henry VIII., who, having continued his wife but the space of one year, six months, and four days, was attainted by Parliament and beheaded here in the Tower upon the 13th of February 1542.” Lady Rochford shared her mistress’s place of interment. Catherine Howard was but twenty-two years of age when her life closed so tragically. Culpepper and Dereham, who were charged with being the Queen’s paramours, were hanged at Tyburn, and some of her relatives suffered imprisonment in the Tower on her account. Among these were her grandmother, “old Duchess of Norfolk,” as Shakespeare calls her; Lord and Lady William Howard, and the Countess of Bridgwater, the daughter of Thomas, second Duke of Norfolk. By a singular coincidence, the Duke of Norfolk, who had presided at the trial of Anne Boleyn, was uncle both to that unfortunate Queen and to Catherine Howard, and when the latter was attainted, he wrote thus to Henry: “The abominable deeds done by two of my nieces against your Highness have brought me into the greatest perplexity that ever poor wretch was in” (State Papers: Domestic Series). The “poor wretch” himself came within an ace of losing his own head by Henry’s orders, and the King’s death the day before that fixed for Norfolk’s execution, alone saved him from perishing on the scaffold.

An unusual occurrence happened in the Tower in this same year of Catherine Howard’s death, Arthur Lisle Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle, dying of joy, according to old Hall, on hearing that he was declared innocent of the charge upon which he had been placed in the Tower, that he had intended to betray the town of Calais. Arthur Lisle was a natural son of Edward IV., and had served in the Navy, of which he was a Vice-Admiral. He had been knighted and created Viscount Lisle in 1523, and given the Garter in the following year.

It is about this time that the first mention is made of that most uncomfortable dungeon in the White Tower, named from the smallness of its size, “Little Ease,” Hall, in his “Chronicles,” stating that one of the officers belonging to the Sheriffs of London was placed in this prison.

The disaster to the Scottish Army at Solway Moss in 1542 brought many Scottish prisoners to the Tower, thus repeating the history of the building during the reigns of the first and third Edwards. Among them were the Earls of Cassillis and Glencairn, Maxwell, Oliphant, and Somerville, together with some twenty knights; they were not long in the Tower, however, being sent to various places to undergo their terms of imprisonment.

Anne Askew

One of the most memorable names connected with the Tower in the reign of Henry VIII. is that of Anne Askew, or Ascue, as it is sometimes spelt, the daughter of Sir William Askew, the head of an old Lincolnshire family. In early life she had married a Mr Kyme, so that when her persecution for her faith took place—a persecution which has immortalised her name—it would have been more correct to have called her by her husband’s name; however, her maiden appellation has clung to her, and will always remain the one by which she is known. Kyme appears to have been a bigoted Roman Catholic, and his wife’s strong attachment to the Reformed faith may have been increased by his conduct towards her, for he seems to have been a good-for-nothing fellow who made her life the reverse of a happy one. Amongst Anne’s friends in London who belonged to the Reformed faith, was no less a person than Catherine Howard’s successor as Henry’s wife, Queen Catherine Parr. Anne, it appears, had some post about the Queen’s person; at any rate, she was known to many of the principal ladies of the Court. An Act known as “The Six Articles,” which obtained the popular name of “The Whip with Six Strings,” had been made law in 1539. The first clause of this Act ordained that whoever disagreed with the declaration of the Statute of Transubstantiation or the Real Presence, that the “Natural Blood Body and Blood of Christ” were present in the Sacrament, should suffer death by fire. Many men and women had been barbarously killed for denying the truth of this doctrine, and amongst those who suffered martyrdom was Anne Askew. To the horror of such a death Henry and his Council added that of torture, in order to force the victim to recant; torture, although illegal, was often, nay commonly, used in Henry’s reign.

Lord de Ros’s account of Anne Askew’s sufferings and death are too interesting to need an apology for my quoting it here:

“In March 1545, she was summoned before an Inquest or Commission at the Guildhall, and subjected to a long examination by one Dare, when she displayed an intelligence and shrewdness, which, with her modest, gentle demeanour, drew the admiration even of her enemies. Being remanded to the Compter, she was shortly after brought before Bishop Bonner for examination, who exercised all his subtlety to entangle her in her replies; and at length drew out a written summary, in which he had grossly perverted their meaning, and desired her, after hearing it read, to declare whether or not she would subscribe to its contents. Her answer merits to be recorded, ‘I believe,’ she said, ‘as much therof as is agreable to the Holy Scriptures; and I desire that this sentence may be added to it.’ Furious at what he called her obstinate evasions, Bonner was about to proceed to violent extremities, when by the interference of some powerful friend, and probably for other reasons, she was allowed to be released on the bail of her cousin, one Brittayne, who, during the examination, at which he was present, had judiciously cautioned her ‘not to set her weak woman’s wit to his lordship’s great wisdom.’ We have no record of the cause, or rather pretext, of her being, about three months afterwards, again arrested. This time her husband, Kyme, was brought up along with her before the Privy Council, sitting at Greenwich. Wriothesley, the Chancellor, now undertook her examination, and chiefly on the great point of Transubstantiation, on which she firmly refused to abandon her own convictions, and was committed to Newgate; from whence she wrote some devotional letters, which show her to have possessed considerable talent. Her next appearance was before the Council at the Guildhall, when, after an examination by a silly Lord Mayor (Martin), in which she entirely foiled him by her simplicity and good sense, she was plainly told, that unless she renounced her errors, and distinctly declared her acquiescence in the Six Articles, she must prepare to die; and, on her firm refusal, she was condemned, without any trial by jury, to be burned as an heretic. Meantime, instead of being sent back to Newgate, she was committed to the Tower, with a view to subject her to the torture of the rack, for which the gloomy seclusion of that fortress afforded greater convenience than the ordinary prison of Newgate, with the hope of inducing her to incriminate the Duchess of Suffolk, the Countess of Sussex, the Countess of Hertford, and other ladies who were supposed to have assisted her with money for her support in prison. She was too high-minded and grateful to betray them; and whatever might have been the case, she declared that she had been chiefly kept from starvation by her faithful maid, who went out and begged for her of the ‘’prentices and others she met in the street.’

“The unhappy lady was now carried to a dungeon, and laid on the rack in the presence of the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir A. Knyvett, and Wriothesley, the Chancellor, Rich, a creature of Bonner, and a secretary, sitting at her side to take down her words. But when she endured the torture without opening her lips in reply to the Chancellor’s questions, he became furious, and seizing the wheel himself, strained it with all his force, till Knyvett, revolting at such cruelty, insisted on her release from the dreadful machine. It was but in time to save her life, for she had twice swooned, and her limbs had been so stretched, and her joints so injured, that she was never again able to walk without support. Wriothesley hastened to Westminster to complain to the King of the Lieutenant’s lenity; but the latter, getting into his barge with a favourable tide, arrived before him, obtained immediate audience, and told his tale so honestly and with such earnestness, that Henry’s hard heart was softened for once, and approving his conduct he dismissed him with favour. A stronger reason for this may have been that the rack was regarded with such horror by the people as to be applied only in secrecy; and had Anne expired under it, and the fact became known, some violent outbreak might have been apprehended in the City. She was shortly afterwards carried to Smithfield and there burnt to ashes, together with three other persons for the same cause, in the presence of the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Bedford, Sir Thomas Wriothesley, the Lord Mayor, and a vast concourse of people. One of the peers, learning that there was some gunpowder about the stakes, became frightened lest any accident should happen to himself from the faggots being blown into the air; but the Earl of Bedford assuring him that no such chance could occur, and that it was only to hasten the deaths of the sufferers, he remained looking on with the same barbarous indifference as the brutal mob who had assembled to witness the dreadful spectacle.”