The Tower of London

by William Benham

The reign of Henry VIII forms an epoch in the history of the Tower. There are tragical events in plenty, but there are other notes on which it is pleasant and interesting to dwell. He began his reign by imprisoning Empson and Dudley, who had been his father’s instruments of extortion. He did so because he knew how they were hated by the nation, though he profited by their misdeeds, for Henry VII bequeathed him what was then the enormous sum of £1,850,000. Next year they were both beheaded on Tower Hill. Meanwhile the King was holding high festival to celebrate his marriage with his brother’s widow Katharine. He was now nineteen years old, and she twenty-five. Surrounded by a splendid retinue he created four and twenty Knights of the Bath, after which there was a gorgeous procession from the Tower to Westminster; the details are given at length, and dismal enough they are when one sees the hollowness of them all in what followed. Henry was bent on improving the Tower buildings, and appointed Commissioners to take the work in hand. In the S.W. corner a Lieutenant’s house was built with many chambers, having a free passage both into the Beauchamp and Garden Towers. This house was flanked by two smaller buildings, warders’ houses, one on the West, the other on the South. The Bell Tower part of this building had a stone vault pierced for archers, who from it could sweep the outer works. This is called in old records the Strong Room. Though not intended for the reception of prisoners, it presently received an illustrious one, as we shall see. In the State Papers of the reign are the following memoranda of repairs done in the Tower during the summer of 1532: “Work done by carpenters and taking down old timber, etc., at St. Thomas’ Tower, and for alterations in the palace.” “There has also been taken down the old timber in the four turrets of the White Tower; and the old timber of Robert the Devil’s Tower—that is Julius Caesar’s tower; and of the tower near the King’s wardrobe. Half of the White Tower is now embattled, coped, indented, and cressed with Caen stone to the extent of 500 feet.” The cost is given as £3,593 14s. 10d.

A Tournament.

From a MS. of the Romance of the Sire Jehan de Saintré.
British Museum, Nero D. IX.

But we have perforce to return to the tragical records. We have already recorded how the Earl of Suffolk, Edmund de la Pole, was beheaded in 1513. Edward Stafford, third Duke of Buckingham, was the great grandson of Humphrey Stafford, son of Anne, daughter of Thomas of Woodstock, son of Edward III. Humphrey Stafford had received his dukedom for his services under Henry VI, had tried in vain to reconcile Queen Margaret with the Yorkists, and was slain at the battle of Northampton. His grandson was executed at Salisbury by Richard III in 1483. The Duke with whom we are now concerned was sworn a Privy Councillor in 1509, and was for a while high in favour with Henry VIII. But he hated Cardinal Wolsey, and the hatred was returned, and the Cardinal appears to have brought before the King some boasting speeches of the Duke about his royal lineage, implying a claim to the throne. For this he was sent to the Tower, was tried for high treason, and on May 17, 1521, was beheaded on the Green. Shakespeare gives us several pathetic touches in his Henry VIII. Half a dozen Augustinian friars, in gratitude for the many kind deeds which the Duke had done to poor religious men in his lifetime, took up his body and buried it in the Church of Austin Friars.

We come to scenes of revelry again in May, 1533, when the King brought hither his new wife Anne Boleyn; painful enough to read in connexion with the rest of the history. He had gone through a marriage service with her in the previous January, before his divorce from Katharine had been pronounced. Anne was now some months advanced in pregnancy. She was brought to the Tower preparatory to a stately march to Westminster for her coronation, and it was all very magnificent to look at, but the people viewed it in sullen silence; enthusiasm there was none. What was yet worse, the King’s passion for her was already on the wane. She gave birth to the future Queen Elizabeth on September 7, 1533, had a miscarriage the next year, and a still-born child in January, 1536, only three weeks after the death of Katharine of Aragon. On Mayday following she was charged with unfaithfulness to the King, was brought a prisoner to the Tower next day, tried in the Great Hall on the 15th, beheaded on Tower Green on the 19th. This is not the place to discuss the question of her guilt or innocence. The twenty-five peers who tried her gave a unanimous verdict against her; the President of the Court was her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. Mr. Gairdner expresses his opinion that the evidence against her was not conclusive, but that her conduct had long been indecorous.

But between her coronation and execution two illustrious victims had passed away. John Fisher, who as a College Principal had done splendid service in the way of advice and assistance to the munificent works of the “Lady Margaret,” Countess of Richmond, Henry VII’s mother, was raised in 1504 to the bishopric of Rochester. He was a man of saintly life, and eager to promote learning. There seems to have been a mutual distrust between him and Wolsey, which Burnet bluntly attributes to Fisher’s grief at the Cardinal’s lax morality. When the question of King Henry’s divorce was raised Fisher expressed himself firmly against it, and when, further, the doctrine of the royal supremacy was proposed to Convocation, he declared that the acceptance of it would “cause the clergy of England to be wiped out of God’s holy Catholic Church.” When it was carried in Convocation, it was he who procured the addition of the saving clause “quantum per Dei legem licet.” Unfortunately he compromised himself by giving countenance to Elizabeth Barton, “the nun of Kent,” when the soi-disant prophetess threatened calamity to the King for his marriage with Anne Boleyn. In April, 1534, he and Sir Thomas More were summoned to Lambeth to take the oath to the Act of Succession. They both agreed to that portion of the Act which fixed the succession to the offspring of the King and Anne, but firmly objected to call the Princess Mary illegitimate, and to the words denying faith, truth, and obedience to the Roman Church. The commissioners were anxious, Cranmer at the head of them, to accept the submission as sufficient for the occasion, but they were both sent to the Tower; and when the Act of Supremacy was passed in November, 1554, Secretary Cromwell read it to Fisher, with the clause making it high treason to deny the King’s right to the claim. Fisher declined to subscribe to it. Henry was unwilling to proceed to extremities, but at this very moment Pope Paul III, ignorant (as he afterwards declared) of the unhappy relations between King and bishop, and desirous of rewarding learning, made Fisher a Cardinal. Henry broke out into ungovernable fury when he heard it, and declared that the red hat might come, but that there should be no head on which to place it. The bishop was brought to trial at Westminster and beheaded on Tower Hill June 15, 1535. “There is in this realm no man,” said Sir Thomas More, “in wisdom, learning, and long approved virtue together, meet to be matched and compared with him.” He died with perfect calmness and dignity. The head was fixed on London Bridge, and the body lay exposed to insult all day. In the evening it was buried without ceremony in the Church of Allhallows Barking.

A fortnight later Sir Thomas More shared the same fate, and on the same charge. His brilliant abilities, wit, and virtue have made his name illustrious. Many of his noble friends visited him in confinement and did all they could to persuade him to yield, but in vain. Not only his firmness, but his cheerfulness remained undiminished. When he was brought through Traitors’ Gate the porter, according to ancient custom, demanded his uppermost garment as his fee. More handed him his cap, telling him that this was his “uppermost garment,” and that he wished it was of more value. When he ascended the scaffold he observed that it was somewhat insecure. “Prythee, good fellow,” he said to one of the guards, “help me up; when I come down let me shift for myself.” And when the headsman prayed his forgiveness, “I forgive thee, good fellow, with all my heart,” he said as he laid his head on the block. Immediately after he raised it for a moment to remove his beard. “That,” he said, “has not committed treason; pity it should be cut.”

Every succeeding year of this darkening reign brought more prisoners to the Tower. Thence Lord Howard was sent with his wife, the King’s niece, because they had married without the royal consent. Here the husband died and then the widow was released. She afterwards became the mother of Darnley.