Henry VII would have been glad to learn at the time when Perkin Warbeck was declaring that he was one of the alleged murdered boys. It was not until the reign of Charles II that two skeletons were found under the old stone steps of the royal chapel in the great keep. They were covered with earth and had been carefully bestowed. As they answered in every way to the bones which had been vainly sought after it was concluded, and certainly with probability, that they were the bones of the murdered children, and they were laid, by King Charles’s command, in a royal sepulchre in Westminster Abbey.
CHAPTER IV
IN THE TIME OF THE TUDOR KINGS
Henry VII.—Battle of Bosworth—Thomas Wyatt and the Cat—Edward, Earl of Warwick—Perkin Warbeck—Sir William Stanley—Edmund de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk—Sir John Tyrrell—Sir John Wyndham—Marriage of Prince Arthur and Katharine—His Death and Death of his Mother, Elizabeth of York—Death of Henry VII—Henry VIII—Empson and Dudley—Marriage with Katharine of Aragon—High Festival—Building of the Lieutenant’s House and other Improvements—Stafford, Duke of Buckingham—Marriage with Anne Boleyn—Completion of the Tower Buildings—Birth of the Princess Elizabeth—Execution of Anne—Fisher and More—Lord and Lady Howard—The “Pilgrimage of Grace” and its Victims—Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter—The Pole Family—Treachery of Geoffrey Pole—Thomas Cromwell, his Rise and Fall—Marriage with Anne of Cleves and Divorce, 1540—Marriage with Katharine Howard, and her Execution—Anne Askew, Protestant Martyr, Friend of Katharine Parr—Festivities to French Ambassadors—Dukes of Norfolk and Surrey Condemned—Death of Henry VIII—Edward VI—His Uncles the Seymours—Their Fall—Ascendancy of the Duke of Northumberland—Other Executions—The King’s Death.
We have come to the end of secret murders, but the Tower was never more in use as a State prison than under the house of Tudor, which began its royal course after the battle of Bosworth, August 22, 1485.
In the reign of Richard III Henry Wyatt, a gentleman of Surrey and member of the House of Commons, was thrown into the Tower for favouring the claims of Henry Tudor. According to his son’s statement, Richard had him tortured, vinegar and mustard being forced down his throat, and afterwards remonstrated with him. “Wyatt, why art thou such a fool?” said he, “Henry of Richmond is a beggarly pretender; forsake him and become mine. Thou servest him for moonshine in water. I can reward thee, and I swear to thee, I will.” “If I had chosen thee for my master,” answered the prisoner, “I would have been faithful to thee. But the Earl of Richmond, poor and unhappy though he be, is my master, and no allurement shall drive me from him, by God’s grace.” And here comes a pretty legend, we hardly dare regard it otherwise, which is told in the Wyatt papers. King Richard, in a rage, had him confined in a low and narrow cell, where he had not clothes sufficient to warm him and was a hungered. A cat came into this cell, he caressed her for company, laid her in his bosom and won her love. And so she came to him every day and brought him a pigeon when she could catch one. He complained to his keeper of his short fare, and received for answer, that “he durst not better it.” “But if I can provide any,” said Sir Henry, “will you dress it for me?” “I may well enough promise that,” was the answer, and so he promised. And he was as good as his word, and dressed each time the pigeon which the faithful cat brought. When Richmond became King Henry VII he rewarded his faithful liegeman by making him a Privy Councillor and giving him rich offices enough to enable him to buy Allington Castle, one of the finest in Kent. He was equally well regarded by Henry VIII, who visited him at Allington; but more of this farther on.
The two most noteworthy occupants of the Tower, however, in this reign, strangely different in character and circumstances, were brought into close connexion with each other. Edward, Earl of Warwick, was the eldest son of the Duke of Clarence, and was three years old when his father was put to death in the Tower. His early history is obscure; at one time Richard III, after the death of his son, thought to nominate him as his heir, but changed his mind, and sent him to Sheriff Hutton Castle, Yorkshire. After Bosworth Henry VII brought him from thence and shut him up in the Tower, his only offence being that he was the representative of the fallen dynasty of York. The injustice of this was widely felt, and this, combined with the uncertainty as to the whereabouts or movements of the youth, induced a usurper named Lambert Simnel to personate him in Ireland in 1487, and he was actually crowned in Dublin Cathedral. King Henry found it advisable to bring the Earl forth for a day and march him through the streets to St. Paul’s. It was the last day of his life that he spent outside the limits of the Tower. He was taken back and remained there for twelve years longer. And here we have to take up another history. Perkin Warbeck was the son of a citizen of Tournay, who came to England as a serving man to two or three English gentlemen, and in 1491, moved by vanity and ambition, whilst in Ireland, where feeling against Henry VII was strong, declared himself to be the Duke of York, who had been reported murdered in the Tower with his brother Edward V. The King of Scotland, James IV, acknowledged him, and two years later gave him his own cousin, Catherine Gordon, to wife. Charles VIII of France also for a while acknowledged him. But his strongest ally was Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy. This remarkable woman has little to do with the Tower, but is too much connected with English history to be passed over. She was the sister of Edward IV, fifteen years old when he became King. In 1467 she married Charles, Duke of Burgundy, and is favourably remembered as having patronized Caxton, who gave up the Mastership of the Merchant-Adventurers of Bruges to enter her service, and produced his first great printing work under her patronage. In 1477 her husband was killed at the battle of Nancy, and she was left a childless widow. The rest of her life was spent in the Netherlands, and when Henry VII confiscated the dowry which her brother King Edward had granted her, nothing more was needed to ensure her hatred of his rule, and desire to get the Yorkist dynasty restored. She had abetted Simnel, and now furnished Warbeck with means to carry out his attempt. When the latter, after repeated failures, was taken prisoner in October, 1497, his life was spared on his making full confession of his imposture, and he was then placed in the Tower, after being paraded through the streets in mockery. In 1498 he escaped, but was captured in a week, placed in the stocks in Westminster Hall and in Cheapside, and then sent back to the Tower. Next year he renewed his attempt at escape by bribing his gaolers, and unhappily induced the Earl of Warwick, who was of course nothing loth, to join him. The plot was discovered, and on November 23 Warbeck was hanged at Tyburn, and five days later Warwick was beheaded on Tower Hill. This last was a shameful act of injustice, but Henry longed to get rid of him, and it is said that his aversion was furthered by the refusal of King Ferdinand of Aragon to marry his daughter Katharine to Arthur, Prince of Wales, so long as a son of the Duke of Clarence existed as a possible claimant of the succession. When, years later Katharine of Aragon was bewailing the injustice done to her, she observed that it was a judgment of God upon her because her former marriage was sealed with blood, namely Warwick’s.
