Some passages in the life of Eleanor Cobham, first mistress and afterwards wife of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, furnish an insight into the superstitions of the period. She was tried in 1441 for treason and witchcraft. The chief charge against her was that she and her accomplices had made a waxen image of the reigning monarch, Henry VI., and placed it before a slow fire, believing that as the wax melted the king’s life would waste away. She was found guilty and had to do public penance in the streets of London, and was imprisoned for life in the Isle of Man. Three persons who had assisted her crimes suffered death. One Margaret Jourdain, of Eye, near Westminster, was burned in Smithfield. Southwell, a priest, died before execution in the Tower, and Sir Roger Bolinbroke, a priest, and reputed necromancer, was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn, and his head was fixed on London Bridge. The Duchess, in the event of Henry’s death, expected that the Duke of Gloucester, as nearest heir of the house of Lancaster, would be crowned king.
The details of Jack Cade’s insurrection are well-known, and perhaps a copy of an inscription on a roadside monument at Heathfield, near Cuckfield in Sussex, will answer our present purpose:—
| Near this spot was slain the notorious rebel JACK CADE, By Alexander Iden, Sheriff of Kent, A.D. 1450. His body was carried to London, and his head fixed on London Bridge. This is the success of all rebels, and this fortune chanceth even to traitors. Hall’s Chronicle. |
In 1496 two heads were placed on London Bridge; one was Flammock’s, a lawyer, and the other that of a farmer’s who had suffered death at Tyburn, for taking a leading part in a great Cornish insurrection.
John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, was tried, and executed on June 22nd, 1535, nominally for high treason, but, as a matter of fact, because he would not be a party to the king’s actions. Shortly before his execution the Pope sent to him a Cardinal’s hat. Said the king when he heard of the honour to be conferred upon the aged prelate, who was then about seventy-seven years old, “’Fore heaven, he shall wear it on his shoulders then, for by the time it arrives he shall not have a head to place it upon.”
Fisher met his death with firmness. At five o’clock in the morning of his execution he was awakened and the time named to him. He turned over in bed saying: “Then I can have two hours more sleep, as I am not to die until nine.” Two hours later he arose, dressed himself in his best apparel, saying, this was his wedding day, when he was to be married to death, and it was befitting to appear in becoming attire. His head was severed from his body, and after the executioner had removed all the clothing, he left the corpse on the scaffold until night, when it was removed by the guard to All Hallows Churchyard, and interred in a grave dug with their halberds. It was not suffered to remain there, but was exhumed and buried in the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula in the Tower. The head was spiked on London Bridge. Hall and others record that the features became fresher and more comely every day, and were life-like. Crowds were attracted to the strange sight, which was regarded as a miracle. This annoyed the king not a little, and he gave orders for the head to be thrown into the river.
A similar offence to that of Fisher’s brought to the block a month later the head of a still greater and wiser man, Sir Thomas More. He was far in advance of his times, and his teaching is bearing fruit in our day. His head was placed on London Bridge, until his devoted daughter, Margaret Roper, bribed a man to move it, and drop it into a boat in which she sat. She kept the sacred relic for many years, and at her death it was buried with her in a vault under St. Dunstan’s Church, Canterbury.
AXE, BLOCK, AND EXECUTIONER’S MASK.
(From the Tower of London.)
We learn from the annals of London Bridge, that in the year 1577, “several heads were removed from the north end of the Drawbridge to the Southwark entrance, and hence called Traitors’ Gate.”