The reason, or reasons, for Felton killing Buckingham have never been made clear. He appears to have been a soured religious fanatic, but the crime was doubtless owing to some fancied injustice regarding his promotion in the army; and it has been thought that it was merely an act of private vengeance, rather than one of political significance. But after his arrest a paper was found fastened in Felton’s hat, with the following writing upon it:—“That man is cowardly, base, and deserveth not the name of a gentleman or soldier, that is not willing to sacrifice his life for the sake of his God, King, and his countrie. Lett no man commend me for doing of it, but rather discommend themselves as the cause of it, for if God hath not taken away our hearts for our sins, he would not have gone so long unpunished.—Jno. Felton.” A sentiment which goes to show that Felton assassinated Buckingham with the fanatical idea of benefiting his country.
So hated was Buckingham by the people, that Felton passed into the Tower amid blessings and prayers. He was placed in the prison lately occupied by Sir John Eliot in the Bloody Tower, and before his death made two requests—one, that he might be permitted to take the Holy Communion, and the other that he might be executed with a halter round his neck, ashes on his head, and sackcloth round his loins. On being threatened with the rack in order to induce him to give the names of his accomplices, Felton said to Lord Dorset that, in the first place, he would not believe that it was the King’s wish that he should be tortured, it being illegal; and, secondly, that if he were racked, he would name Dorset, and none but him—a capital answer. When he was asked why sentence of death should not be passed upon him, he answered: “I am sorry both that I have shed the blood of a man who is the image of God, and taken away the life of so near a subject of the King.” As a last favour, he begged that his right hand might be struck off before he was hanged. He suffered at Tyburn, and his body was gibbeted in chains at Portsmouth. “His dead body,” writes Evelyn, “is carried down to Portsmouth, hangs high there. I hear it creak in the wind.” An eye-witness describes Felton as showing much courage and calm during his trial and at his death, and Philip, Earl of Exeter, who attended the execution, declared that he had never seen such valour and piety, “more temperately mixed,” as in Felton’s demeanour. This is surely one of the strangest mysteries in our history.
Prisoners still continued to come to the Tower, and in 1631, Mervin, Lord Audley, was executed on Tower Hill for a crime not of a political nature. Six years later a very distinguished ecclesiastic, John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, was imprisoned for four years within the Tower walls. Williams, who was a Privy Councillor, had repeated some remarks made by the King, in which His Majesty had advocated greater leniency in the treatment of the Puritans, and was accused of revealing Charles’s private conversation, and being an enemy of Laud’s was very hardly dealt with in consequence. He was deposed from his bishopric, fined £10,000, and imprisoned in the Tower, where he caused some surprise, if not scandal, by not attending the church services in the fortress. However, after his release, Williams was reconciled to the King, and in 1641 became Archbishop of York. He had been successively Dean of Salisbury and Dean of Westminster, and had succeeded Bacon as Lord Chancellor in 1621, just before he had been appointed to the See of Lincoln. Williams certainly belonged to the Church Militant, and during the Civil War defended Conway Castle most gallantly for the royal cause. At the end of December 1641, he was back again in the Tower, with ten other Bishops who had protested that, owing to their being kept out of the House of Lords by the violence of the mob, all Acts passed during their absence were illegal. The Peers arrested the protesting Bishops on a charge of high treason; and on a very cold and snowy December night they were all sent to the Tower, where they remained until the May of 1642.
Lord Loudon, who had been sent by the Scottish Covenanters to Charles, had a narrow escape of leaving his head on Tower Hill in 1639. According to Clarendon, a letter was discovered of a treasonable nature, signed by Loudon, addressed to Louis XIII. of France, and Charles ordered Sir William Balfour, by virtue of a warrant signed by the royal hand, to have the Scottish lord executed the following morning. In this terrible dilemma Loudon bethought him of his friend, the Marquis of Hamilton, and gave the Lieutenant a message for that nobleman. Now it was one of the privileges of the Lieutenant of the Tower that he could at any time, or in any place, claim an audience with the sovereign. Hamilton persuaded Balfour to go with him to Charles, but on arriving at Whitehall, they found that the King had already retired for the night. Balfour, however, taking advantage of his privilege, entered the room with Hamilton, and together they besought Charles to re-consider his decision, pointing out to him that Loudon was protected by his quality as Ambassador from the Scotch. The King, as was his wont, was obdurate. “No,” he said; “the warrant must be obeyed.” At length the Marquis, having begged in vain, left the chamber, saying, “Well, then, if your Majesty be so determined, I’ll go and get ready to ride post for Scotland to-morrow morning, for I am sure before night the whole city will be in an uproar, and they’ll come and pull your Majesty out of your palace. I’ll get as far as I can, and declare to my countrymen that I had no hand in it.” On hearing this, Charles called for the warrant and destroyed it. Loudon was soon afterwards released (Oldnixon’s “History of the Stuarts”).
Now comes the story of the last days of one of Charles’s most noted counsellors—last days that, as in the case of many before him, were passed within the grim precincts of the Tower, and were the prelude to execution. On the 11th of November 1640, the Earl of Strafford was at Whitehall laying before Charles a scheme for accusing the heads of the parliamentary party of holding a treasonable correspondence with the Scotch army, then encamped in the North of England. Whilst he was with the King the news reached him that Pym at that very moment was impeaching him in the House of Commons on the charge of high treason. Strafford at once made his way to the House, but was not allowed to speak, and shortly afterwards heard his committal made out for the Tower. At the same time Archbishop Laud was arrested at Lambeth Palace, and carried off to the great State prison. “As I went to my barge,” Laud writes in his diary, “hundreds of my poor neighbours stood there and prayed for my safety and return to my home.” But neither he nor Strafford were ever to return to their homes. Perhaps Strafford’s life might have been saved had it not been for the King’s action, for when it became known that Charles had plotted with the hope of inducing the Scottish army to march on London, seize the Tower and liberate Strafford, the great Earl was practically doomed. The city rose as one man, a huge mob surging round the Houses of Parliament and the Palace of Whitehall, shouting “Justice.”
For fifteen days Strafford faced his accusers and judges at Westminster Hall, his defence being a splendid piece of oratory. He proved that on the ground of high treason his judgment would not count, and his judges were compelled to introduce an Act of Attainder in order to convict him; but for the next six months he was kept in the Tower, uncertain as to his ultimate fate until the 12th of May 1641, when the Bill of Attainder was passed by the Lords.[3]
Charles had sworn to Strafford that not a single hair of his head should be injured; but on the Earl writing to him and offering his life as the only means of healing the troubles of the country, the King yielded, and deserting his minister, gave his assent to the execution, and signed the warrant.
On the following morning Strafford was led out to die. There is no more dramatic episode in the great struggle between Charles and his people than that when Strafford, amidst his guards, passed beneath the gateway of the Bloody Tower, where, from an upper window, his old friend, Archbishop Laud, gave him his blessing. The Archbishop, overcome, sank back fainting into the arms of his attendants. “I hope,” he is reported to have said, “by God’s assistance and through mine own innocency that when I come to my own execution, I shall shew the world how much more sensible I am to my Lord Strafford’s loss than I am to my own.”
Knowing how bitterly Strafford was hated by the people, the Lieutenant of the Tower invited him to drive to Tower Hill in his coach, fearing he might be torn to pieces if he went on foot. Strafford, however, declined the offer, saying, “No, Mr Lieutenant, I dare look death in the face, and I trust the people too.” With the Earl were the Archbishop of Armagh (Ussher), Lord Cleveland, and his brother, Sir George Wentworth. On reaching the scaffold Strafford made a short speech, followed by a long prayer, and giving his final messages for his wife and children to his brother, said: “One stroke more will make my wife husbandless, my dear children fatherless, my poor servants masterless, and will separate me from my dear brother and all my friends; but let God be to you and to them all in all.” He then removed his doublet, and said, “I thank God that I am no more afraid of death, but as cheerfully put off my doublet at this time as ever I did when I went to bed.” Then placing a white cap upon his head, and thrusting his long hair beneath it, he knelt down at the block, the Archbishop also kneeling on one side and a clergyman upon the other, the Archbishop clasping Strafford’s hands in both his own. After they had left him Strafford gave the sign for the executioner to strike by thrusting out both his hands, and at one blow, “the wisest head in England,” as John Evelyn, who was present, says, “was severed from his body.” On that night London blazed with bonfires, and the people rejoiced as if in celebration of some great victory.
The great Earl’s mistake was in serving and trusting such a king as Charles. Later on it transpired that Charles had a plan of removing Strafford from the Tower by throwing a hundred men into the fortress, thus relieving the Earl, and keeping possession of the Tower as a check upon the city. In pursuance of this plan, on the 2nd May 1641, Captain Billingsby with a force of one hundred men presented himself at the gates of the Tower, but Sir William Balfour refused to admit them, and the King’s scheme for taking the fortress fell to the ground.