CHAPTERVIII

HENRYVIII.

Aftersucceeding to the throne, HenryVIII.passed a few tranquil days in the Tower, but his sanguinary nature soon showed itself, and his first victims were his father’s most trusted counsellors. Having formed a new Council, Henry had Sir Henry Stafford (the Duke of Buckingham’s brother), Sir Richard Empsom, and Edmund Dudley arrested, the former on some slight charge of disaffection of which he was able to clear himself, and the two others on the charge of extortion during the late reign.

Empsom and Dudley were disliked throughout the country, having been the tools of the late King’s intense avarice, which became his consuming passion towards the close of his life; both men appear to have enforced his tyrannical policy with extreme harshness. HenryVIII.benefited by his father’s miserliness, however, for the seventh Henry left the colossal sum, for those times, of one million eight hundred thousand pounds. His son, in order to obtain popularity at the beginning of his reign, gave up his father’s ministers to gratify the popular clamour against them, and although Empsom and Dudley both deserved punishment, it was deemed necessary for form’s sake not to condemn them without a specified charge. The Council was instructed, therefore, to trump up a charge of conspiracy against the King’s person; and, upon this the two men were condemned and executed upon Tower Hill.

Henry then bethought himself of marriage, and tookto wife his sister-in-law, Catherine of Arragon, he being then only nineteen years of age, and Catherine five-and-twenty. For the first few years this appears to have been a happy union; but it was one much to be regretted, as it brought Mary Tudor into the world.

Henry possessed a handsome presence and a genial bluff manner, and as long as all went well with him, and his least wish was carried into instant execution, he could be amiable and even attractive. But his character was both cruel and crafty, and, in later years, these defects became more strongly marked. With old age and infirmity, he became more akin to a wild animal than to aught human; and although he was personally popular amongst the great bulk of the people, on account of his magnificence and prodigality, no greater tyrant ever sat upon the English throne.

Froude has in vain tried to whitewash Henry’s character. The early years of his reign were indeed years of promise, but Henry must be judged, not by his promise, but by his life and deeds; and the butcher of Anne Boleyn, of More and Fisher, can only be regarded as a worthy colleague of the worst tyrants that have from their height of place been the curse and bane of their subjects.

Henry, with his love of show and splendour, gave himself and Catherine a gorgeous wedding ceremony. They had held their court at the Tower previous to their nuptials, and on the 21st of June the wedding took place. Never had the English court made so magnificent a show as at this time. The costumes of the men vied in splendour with those of the women, and many of the great nobles literally bore their fortunes upon their backs. The King blazed in a habit of crimson velvet, lined with ermine and covered with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and other gems. And as he rode through the streets, bareheaded, on a charger arrayed in damasked cloth of gold, he was surrounded and followed by a suite of knights and nobles, all in crimson velvet or scarlet cloth, SirThomas Brandon, the Master of the Horse, being the most splendid figure in the procession next to the King. Brandon, the chronicler tells us, was arrayed in “tissue broudered with roses of fine gold, and having a massy balderick of gold.” He led the King’s spare horse by a silken rein, “trapped barde wise, with harneis broudered with bullion golde,” and he was followed by nine children of honour, “apparelled in blewe velvet, poudered with floure delices of gold and chains of goldsmithes woorke, every one of their horses trapped with a trapper of the King’s title.”

The Queen’s cortege was no less magnificent. Catherine was seated in a chariot drawn by two white palfreys, and was attired “in white satyn embroidered, her heire hangyng downe to her backe, and on her hedde a coronall, set with many rich orient stones.” She was followed by a crowd of ladies riding white palfreys, dressed in cloth of gold and silver, these again being followed by an army of attendants.

The coronation was soon followed by executions; Henry seems to have required blood-shedding as a kind of relaxation, and to have caused it to flow with as much delight as he participated in the pomps and splendours of his regal state. His next victim, after Empson and Dudley, was Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk. Although the only crime that could be brought against him was his consanguinity to the Blood Royal of the Plantagenets, it was quite a sufficient excuse for the King, and Suffolk was beheaded in 1513. He had been born in 1464, his father being John de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, and his mother Elizabeth Plantagenet, daughter of Richard, Duke of York, consequently he was of the Blood Royal by his mother’s side, and, through her, nephew to EdwardIV.and RichardIII.Edmund de la Pole had surrendered the Dukedom of Suffolk in 1493, but was attainted in 1504, imprisoned in the Tower in 1506, and executed seven years later. “Audacious,strong and prompt in council” is the character given to Suffolk by a contemporary writer. The title of Duke of Suffolk was bestowed by Henry upon his brother-in-law, Charles Brandon, who had made such a fine figure at his marriage.

Half-a-dozen years passed, and again the Tower prisons were filled, some of the prisoners there having been concerned in a City riot. With these was a Dr Bell, charged with “inflammatory and seditious preaching.” During this riot the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Roger Cholmondeley (whose effigy is in St Peter’s Chapel), fired the Tower guns upon the City, but the damage done by the cannonade seems to have been very slight.

In 1521 a descendant of EdwardII.was brought to the fortress; this was Edward Bohun, Duke of Buckingham, who traced his descent from the grandfather of RichardII.through Anne the eldest daughter of Thomas of Woodstock. Wolsey, now all-powerful, hated Buckingham for the arrogance of his manner towards him, the Duke never troubling to conceal his contempt for the lowly born, but ambitious Cardinal. Wolsey’s opportunity for being revenged upon the nobleman for his insolence came, when some ill-guarded expressions uttered by Buckingham were repeated to him; the Duke was immediately arrested and taken to the Tower. This was on the 16th of January 1521, and on the 13th of the following month he was tried on the charge of high treason and sentenced to death. Holinshed, in his Chronicle, describes how Buckingham was taken by water from the Tower to Westminster. A barge had been furnished for the occasion with a carpet and cushions, and when the Duke was brought back from Westminster in the same manner, but with the axe’s edge turned towards him, he refused to take the seat which he had occupied on his way to his trial, saying to Sir Thomas Lovel, “When I came to Westminster I was Lord High Constable, and Duke of Buckingham, but now, poor EdwardBohun.” It is interesting to see how closely Shakespeare has followed Holinshed’s description of this episode in Buckingham’s condemnation, in his play ofHenryVIII.:

In Brewer’s Introduction to the third volume of “Foreign and Domestic State Papers of the Reign of HenryVIII.,” is the following interesting account of Buckingham’s trial and execution:—

“As trials for treason were conducted in those days it was little better than a question of personal credibility, assertion against assertion; and very few reasonable men could entertain doubts as to the issue. The King had already pronounced judgment, he had examined the witnesses, encouraged and read their correspondence, and expressed his belief in the Duke’s guilt. Who was to gainsay it? Who should be bold enough to assert that the King had arrived at a false conclusion, and that such manners of procedure were fatal to justice? In a court also, constituted of men who were not lawyers by profession, who had received no training for such nice questions, who understood nothing of the salutary laws of legal evidence, what hope could there be for the accused? How could he expect that protection which not only innocence but guilt had a right to demand until the charge be fairly and fully proven? The only lawyer employed was the Attorney-General, on behalf of the Crown. But in those days Attorneys-General regarded themselves as the servants of the Crown, who had to earn their wages by establishing the guilt of the prisoner. So the Lords retired, and on their return into court the sentence of each peer was taken one by one. Then saidthe Duke of Norfolk to the Duke of Suffolk, ‘What say you of Sir Edward, Duke of Buckingham, touching this high treason.’ ‘I say that he is guilty,’ answered the Duke, laying his hand upon his heart. Every peer made the same response; and against each of the names entered on the panel—a little scrap of dirty parchment, still preserved in the Record Office—there is to be seen to this day, in the handwriting of the Duke of Norfolk, ‘Dicit quod est culpabilis.’

“Then was the Duke brought to the bar to hear his sentence. For a few moments he was overpowered by his situation. In the extremity of his agony, he chafed and sweat violently.[8]Recovering himself after a while, he made his obeisance to the court. After a short pause, a death-like silence! ‘Sir Edward,’ said the Duke of Norfolk, ‘you hear how you be indicted of high treason, you pleaded thereto not guilty, putting yourself to the judgment of your peers, the which have found you guilty.’ Then bursting into tears (he was an old man, and had faced death unmoved in the field of Flodden), he faltered out: ‘Your sentence is, that you be led back to prison; laid on a hurdle, and so drawn to the place of execution; there to be hanged, to be cut down alive, your members cut off and cast into the fire, your bowels burnt before your eyes, your head smitten off, your body quartered and divided at the King’s will. God have mercy on your soul. Amen.’ The Duke heard this horrible sentence with proud dignity and composure. Turning to the Duke of Norfolk, he quietly replied, ‘You have said, my lord, as a traitor should be said unto; but I was never one.’ Then addressing the court, he requested that those present would pray for him, assuring themthat he forgave them his death, and expressing his determination not to sue for mercy. In compliance with the custom of the time he entered his barge at Westminster stairs, and was delivered, on landing at the Temple, to Sir Nicholas Vaux and Sir William Sandys, by whom he was conducted through the city to the Tower. This was about 4P.M.The trial had lasted some days, having commenced on a Monday, and on the following Friday (17th of May), between eleven and twelve in the forenoon, when the hills of Surrey were cloathed in their freshest verdure, and the then unoccupied banks of the Thames, steeped to the water’s edge with the tender green and delicate blossom of the white thorn, the Duke’s favourite flower, the sombre procession threaded its way through the dark passages of the Tower, and emerged upon the Green. Amidst the sobs and tears of the spectators, the Duke, led by the Sheriffs, mounted the scaffold with a firm and composed step. Turning himself to the crowd, he requested all men to pray for him, ‘trusting,’ he said, ‘to die the King’s true man; whom through his own negligence and lack of grace he had offended.’ With this brief request, he kneeled at the block. There was a sudden glimmer for an instant in the air, then a dull thud, and the head rolled heavily from the body. The headsman wiped his axe; the attendants threw a cloak over the headless trunk, to conceal the blood which streamed in a torrent over the scaffold and dripped through the platform on the grass beneath. In rough frieze, barefooted and bareheaded, six poor Augustinian friars, shouldering a rude coffin, emerged from the shuddering and receding crowd. Gathering up the remains of the once mighty Duke of Buckingham, for the King, satisfied with his condemnation, had commuted the last extremities of the sentence, they carried the corpse to the church of the Austin Friars. The Duke in his lifetime had been kind to poor religious men, and this was the last and only office they could render him.”

Queen Anne Boleyn(From an Engraving after a portrait of the time.)

Thus closed the life of Edward Bohun, Duke of Buckingham, Earl of Hereford, Stafford, and Northampton.

Lords Montague and Abergavenny, and Sir Edward Nevil, were also committed to the Tower with Buckingham, being charged with having concealed their knowledge of his so-called treason; but they were all three liberated after an imprisonment of some months duration.

In the fifth volume of “Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic,” in the reign of HenryVIII.is the following memorandum of repairs made in the Tower during the summer of 1532:—“Work done by carpenters and taking down old timber, etc., at St Thomas’s Tower; and for alteration 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 Robyn the Devil’s Tower—that is, Julius Cæsar’s Tower; and of the tower near the King’s Wardrobe. Half of the White Tower is new embattled, coped, indented, and cressed with Caen stone to the extent of 500 feet.” The return to this memorandum estimates the total expense of the alteration at £3593, 14s. 10d.

The Tower was again the scene of festivities when, in the month of May 1533, Anne Boleyn—to whom Henry had been secretly married on January 25 of the previous year—was taken there in state. Again, as five-and-twenty years previously, the old fortress put on its gala apparel and became splendid for the new Queen’s coronation. The old chronicler Hall describes the wondrous scene of “marvellous cunning pageants,” of the fountains running wine, “Apollo and the Muses, the Graces and all the Virtues, Mary, the wife of Cleophas, and her children” welcoming the beautiful Queen, coming in all the glory of youth and loveliness from Greenwich to the Tower, where she landed at “five of the clocke, where also was such a pele of gonnes as hathe not byn harde lyke a great while before, and on her landing was met by the Kyng, whoreceived her with loving countenance, at the Posterne by the Water syde, and kyssed her.”

The next day, through streets strewn with gravel and gay with tapestry, silks, and velvets, Anne wended her triumphal way to the old Abbey at Westminster. The order of Anne’s coronation has been given at full length by Shakespeare in the scene in the Abbey inHenryVIII.:

“At length her grace, and with modest pacesCame to the altar; where she kneel’d, and saintlikeCast her fair eyes to heaven and pray’d devoutly.Then rose again and bow’d her to the people:When by the Archbishop of CanterburyShe had all the royal makings of a queen;As holy oil, Edward Confessor’s crown,The rod, and bird of peace, and all such emblemsLaid nobly on her: which performed, the choirWith all the choicest music of the kingdom,Together sung ‘Te Deum.’ So she partedAnd with the same full state paced back againTo York Place where the feast is held.”(HenryVIII., Activ.scene 1.)

“At length her grace, and with modest paces

Came to the altar; where she kneel’d, and saintlike

Cast her fair eyes to heaven and pray’d devoutly.

Then rose again and bow’d her to the people:

When by the Archbishop of Canterbury

She had all the royal makings of a queen;

As holy oil, Edward Confessor’s crown,

The rod, and bird of peace, and all such emblems

Laid nobly on her: which performed, the choir

With all the choicest music of the kingdom,

Together sung ‘Te Deum.’ So she parted

And with the same full state paced back again

To York Place where the feast is held.”

(HenryVIII., Activ.scene 1.)

Three short years passed away and a pall of darkness falls over this brilliant scene, and Anne’s regal state and “royal makings of a queen” are changed to the prison and the scaffold.

In September 1533, Anne brought a daughter into the world, the future Queen Elizabeth. In the following year Parliament passed an Act of Succession, devised by Henry, by which his former marriage with Catherine of Arragon was declared to be an unlawful one, and Anne’s daughter was made successor to the Crown, thus excluding the Princess Mary from the succession. All the King’s subjects were commanded to acknowledge this new Act, but the Chancellor, Sir Thomas More, and Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, whilst willing to obey the Act as an Act of Parliament, declined to allow that the King’s marriage with the Spanish Princess was illegal. Henry, on hearing this, burst into one of his Tudor furies, andboth More and Fisher were, by his orders, sent to the Tower. At the same time Henry sent Commissioners through the length and breadth of England to suppress all the religious communities that refused to obey the Act, and also those who were not willing to conform to his new Law of Succession.

Thomas Cromwell was the principal agent in carrying out Henry’s commands against the monasteries. No fitter man for the task could have been found. Risen from a humble station, Cromwell, who had been introduced to the King’s notice by Wolsey, after his patron’s fall had become private secretary to the sovereign; and in 1534 he was appointed Henry’s Vicar-General in all matters appertaining to Ecclesiastical affairs.

One of the Orders of Friars, styled Friars Observant, had openly expressed their opinion concerning Henry’s second marriage, and for this the Order was ruthlessly suppressed, many of its members being executed. The same fate befell the Carthusians, some of whom were imprisoned in the Tower for refusing to conform to the oath of this Act of Succession. The Prior of Sion Hospital was hanged as a felon, and many other priests and friars were put to death with every brutal detail appertaining to the manner of execution for high treason.

Among all these martyrs for their faith, none were more eminent for holy living than the aged prelate, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. He was in his seventy-ninth year when Henry ordered him to be imprisoned in the Tower; he appears to have been a frail, emaciated old man, and, to judge from the life-like drawing of him by Holbein, had the look of a man who has but a few years before him. So beloved was he in his diocese, that when the order came to remove him from his see, the whole city of Rochester turned out to bid its revered Bishop farewell. The grounds for the charge of treason that was brought against him were that he had listened to the prophecies of a woman known by the name of the “Nunof Kent”; but Henry’s real reason for ridding himself of Fisher was the Bishop’s refusal to comply with the Act of Succession. Fisher, being a fervent servant of Rome, declared that Henry’s first marriage had the sanction of the Pope, and consequently of the Church, and therefore could not be declared illegal and invalid. Neither would he acknowledge Henry’s new title of “On earth supreme Head of the Church of England,” a title assumed by the King in 1534. This combined refusal was, in the eyes of Henry and his Council, tantamount to a penal offence, and both More and Fisher were condemned and executed for denying the King’s supremacy in the State.

Fisher was imprisoned in the Bell Tower on the 21st April (1534), and in the following November an Act of Parliament declared him to be attainted of high treason, and his Bishopric to be vacant. His household goods were seized and his library, which he had intended bequeathing to his College of St John’s, Cambridge, was confiscated. In the chapel of that same College the good Bishop had prepared his tomb, which, however, was fated never to contain his shrunken frame. The aged Bishop suffered much from the cold of the winter, 1534–35, in his prison, and there is a piteous letter from him, still existing, addressed to Cromwell, in which he describes his hardships. “Furthermore,” he writes, “I byseche you to be gode, master, unto me in my necessite; for I have neither shirt nor sute, nor yett other clothes that are necessary for me to wear, but that bee ragged, and rent so shamefully. Notwithstanding I might easily suffer that, if they would keep my body warm. But my dyett also, God knoweth how slender it is at any tymes, and now in myn age my stomak may nott awaye but with a few kynd of meats, which if I want, I decay forthwith, and fall into coafs and diseases of my bodye, and kan not keep myself in health.” He then begs Cromwell to soften the King’s heart on his behalf; he might as well have asked Cromwell to soften the nether millstone.

John Fisher. Bishop of Rochester(From the drawing by Holbein at Windsor.)

Bishop Burnet has written that news of Fisher’s sufferings reached the ears of Pope Clement, who, “by an officious kindness to him, or rather to spite King Henry, declared him a Cardinal, and sent him a red hat. When the King heard of this, he sent to examine him about it; but he protested that he had used no endeavour to procure it, and valued it so little that, if the hat were lying at his feet, he would not take it up. It never came nearer him than Picardy, yet did this precipitate his ruin.” Henry had sworn that before the cardinal’s hat could arrive the Bishop should have no head upon which to place it.

When asked by the Lord Chancellor, after he had been declared guilty of high treason, what he had to say in arrest of judgment, the venerable old man answered: “Truly, my lord, if that which I have said be not sufficient I have no more to say; but only to desire Almighty God to forgive them who have condemned me, for I think they know not what they have done.” The Chancellor then read out the sentence by which the Bishop was doomed, by the usual ghastly form of words, to a traitor’s death. As Fisher was passing under Traitor’s Gate, where he had been landed on his return to the Tower from his trial, he turned to his guard of halberdiers and said: “My masters, I thank you for all the great labours and pains which ye have taken with me to-day. I am not able to give you anything in recompense, because I have nothing left, and therefore I pray you accept in good part my hearty thanks.” Those who were present were struck by the “fresh and lively colour in his face, as he seemed rather to have come from some great feast or banquet rather than from his trial and condemnation, showing by all his carriage and outward behaviour nothing else but joy and satisfaction.” Three more days of prison and the good old man’s troubles ceased.

At five o’clock in the morning, on the 22nd of June, the Lieutenant of the Tower awoke Fisher from his sleep, telling him that he had come with a message from the King—namely, that he was to die that day. “Well,”answered the Bishop, “If this be your errand you bring me no great news, for I have sometime looked for this message. I most humbly thank his Majesty that it pleases him to rid me of all this worldly business, and I thank you also for your tidings. But pray, Mr Lieutenant,” he added, “when is my hour that I must go hence?” “Your hour,” said the Lieutenant, “must be nine of the clock.” “And what hour is it now?” said Fisher. “It is now about five.” “Well then, let me by your patience sleep an hour or two, for I have slept very little this night; and yet, to tell you the truth, not for any fear of death, thank God, but by reason of my great weakness and infirmity.” “The King’s further pleasure is,” said the Lieutenant, “that you should use as little speech as may be upon the scaffold, especially as to anything concerning his Majesty, whereby the people should have cause to think otherwise than well of him and his proceedings.” “For that,” remarked the Bishop, in answer to this practical confession of the injustice of his sentence, “for that you shall see me order myself so, by God’s grace, as that neither the King nor any one else shall have occasion to dislike what I say.”

He then slept on for two hours more, when he rose and was helped to dress; a hair shirt, which he wore next to his body, he removed, replacing it with a clean white one. Upon his ordering his attendant to give him his best clothing, the latter remarked upon the care and attention that he was bestowing upon his dress that day. “Dost thou not mark that this is our wedding-day,” said Fisher in answer, “and it behoves me therefore to be more nicely dressed than ordinary for the solemnity of the occasion.”

At nine o’clock the Lieutenant called for him. “I will wait upon you straight,” said the Bishop, “as fast as this body of mine will give me leave.” He then called for his furred tippet, which he placed round his neck, “Oh, my Lord,” said the Lieutenant, “what need you be so careful of your health for this little time, which you know is notmuch above an hour.” “I think the same,” said Fisher, “but yet, in the meantime, I will keep myself as well as I can to the very time of my execution. For I tell you truly, though I have, I thank our Lord, a very good desire and a willing mind to die at this present, and so that of His infinite goodness he will continue it, yet will I not willingly incommodate my health in the meantime one minute of an hour, but I will still continue the same as long as I can by such reasonable ways and means as God Almighty hath provided for me.” With that, taking a little book in his hand—it was a Latin New Testament—that lay by him, he made the sign of the cross upon his forehead, and then went out of the chamber with the Lieutenant, being so weak that he could scarcely go down the stairs. For this reason he was placed in a chair, and carried by two of the Lieutenant’s men to the Tower Gate, surrounded by a small number of guards. At the Gate he was to be delivered over to the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex for his execution, but when the procession arrived there it had to wait until a messenger, who had been sent to the Sheriffs, returned to say whether those officials were ready to receive him. During this waiting the Bishop rose from his chair, and stood leaning against the wall with his eyes raised to the sky. Then he opened the Testament he was carrying in his hand, and said, “O Lord, this is the last time that I shall ever open this book, let some comfortable place now chance to me, whereby I, Thy poor servant, may glorify Thee in this my last hour!” Looking into the book, the first words he espied were these! “And this is the life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. I have glorified Thee on the earth, I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Thou me with thine own self.” Fisher then closed the book, saying, “Here is learning enough for me to my life’s end.” From the Gate he was carried to the scaffold on Tower Hill, praying as he went, andwhen several persons offered to help him to mount the steps, he turned to them and said, “Nay, masters, seeing that I am come so far, let me alone, and you shall see me shift for myself well enough.”

The sun shone brightly on the old man’s face when, standing on the scaffold, with uplifted hands, he pronounced the words “Accedite ad eum et illuminamini, et facies vestrae non confundentur.” The headsman, as was the custom, knelt and asked the Bishop’s forgiveness for the task he was about to perform. “I forgive thee with all my heart, and I trust thou shalt see me overcome this storm with courage,” answered the Bishop. Before kneeling down, he spoke a few words to the dense crowd gathered around the scaffold. He had come there, he said, to die for the Faith of Christ’s Holy Catholic Church, he begged their prayers that he might be enabled at the point of death, and at the moment of the supreme stroke, to continue steadfast without wavering in any one point of that Faith. Then he prayed for the King, and for the realm, being so cheerful that he seemed glad to die, and “although he looked death itself in the human shape,” according to one of the writers of the time, “his voice was full, strong, and clear.” When on his knees before the block, the venerable Bishop repeated certain prayers, the Te Deum, and the Thirty-first Psalm, “In te Domine speravi.” Then the axe fell, and his head rolled on the scaffold. Thus died John Fisher, a true martyr to his Church and Faith, far worthier of canonisation than many enrolled in the long list of hagiology.

Henry was not content with merely putting this aged and venerable man to death, but, if Cardinal Pole is to be believed, he ordered the headless body of the Bishop to be treated with insult. It was left naked for hours on the scaffold, until some charitable soul with a touch of humanity, cast some straw over the poor remains of one who, but a short time before, had been among the best, if not the greatest of English Churchmen (Dr Hall’s “Lifeof the Bishop of Rochester”). Fisher’s head was stuck upon a pike and placed on London Bridge. Dodd, in his history of the Church, recounts that after the head had been some days on the Bridge, it was taken down and thrown into the river, the reason for this being that rays of light were seen shining around it. Hall, in his “Life of the Bishop,” states that “the face was observed to become fresher and more comely day by day, and that such was the concourse of people who assembled to look at it, that almost neither cart nor horse could pass.”

Sir Thomas More(From the drawing by Holbein at Windsor.)

The Bishop of Rochester’s judicial murder was immediately followed by that of Sir Thomas More; it would not be easy to say which execution was the greater crime: their blood lies equally on Henry’s soul.

In many respects a parallel might justly be drawn between More and Gladstone. Their fame as statesmen and scholars in both cases was European. More’s life was equally pure, learned, and brilliant as that of Gladstone. Both men were as well known on the continent of Europe as in their own country, and the friend of Erasmus in Germany, and Colet in England, in the sixteenth century, was as celebrated as the friend of Dollinger and Hallam in the nineteenth. Their very faults only brought their great qualities into higher relief. More showed a stern severity to the Reformers which must always be deplored; Gladstone, in his Irish and foreign policies, proved the frailty of even the best intentioned motives. But the very fact of these being the only shadows of weakness that obscured the brilliancy of both these noble lives, speaks trumpet-tongued to their undying renown.

Although More had been one of Henry’s greatest friends, and had been treated by him like a close companion—for Henry could appreciate More’s humour and admire his learning—at the first sign of his old favourite standing in the way of his wishes, the monarch turned upon the subject in deadly rage.

Condemned for the same reason as that for whichFisher had been executed, More met his fate with similar firmness and cheerful courage. Neither complaint nor remonstrance troubled the serene calm of his demeanour throughout the last days of his beautiful life. After his condemnation, when he had been brought back from judgment to the Tower, the porter at Traitor’s Gate asked for More’s cloak as a perquisite. Sir Thomas gave him his cap as well, regretting that they were “not better.” He was allowed one attendant in his prison, who was unable to read or write, and although Sir Thomas had no writing materials, he managed, with a coal in lieu of ink, to write a letter to his beloved daughter, Margaret Roper. That letter was full of the perfect peace that reigned in him, and of the affection he felt for her to whom he wrote; it concludes with these words,—“Written with a cole by your tender, loving father, who in hys pore prayers forgetteth none of you all, nor babes nor your nurses, nor your good husbands, nor your good husbands shrewde wyves, nor your fathers shrewde wyfe neither, nor our other frendes. And thus fare ye hartely well, for lack of paper. Thomas More, Knight.” Sir Thomas was allowed ink and paper after he had written this letter, and he passed the time of his imprisonment in writing a treatise on Our Lord’s Passion; but his writing materials were then taken away from him, and he spent the rest of his days in prayer and meditation.

One day the Lieutenant asking him why he kept his prison room so dark, More answered, “When all the wares are gone, the shop windows are to be shut up.” Early in the next year (1535) his wife was allowed to see him; she urged him to conform to the King’s wishes, but it is needless to say that he declined to do so. And when he was told that the King had been mercifully pleased to allow him, as having held the highest office in the realm, to be beheaded instead of being hanged, drawn, and quartered, Sir Thomaslaughingly said, “God forbid the King shall use any more such mercy to any of my friends.”

A Daughter of Sir Thomas More, supposed to be Mʳˢ. Roper(From the original drawing by Holbein)

There are few more touching scenes in the history of the Tower than that when, after his final trial, More’s daughter, Margaret Roper, made her way through the crowd to give her father a farewell embrace when he landed at the fortress, and to receive his last blessing. Kneeling before him, the poor creature could only say again and again, “Oh, my father! oh, my father!” Those standing around, hardened as they were to scenes of cruelty, could not help being moved at the piteous sight.

Early on the morning of the 6th July Sir Thomas Pope, an old friend of More’s, entered his prison to tell him that the hour for his execution was fixed for nine o’clock that day. As in the case of Fisher, Sir Thomas More was asked not to “use many words” on the scaffold, for the King feared the effect of a speech from his old friend upon the public. At parting Sir Thomas said to Pope, who was deeply moved, “Be not discomfited, for I trust that we shall in Heaven see each other full merrily, where we shall be sure to live together in joyful bliss eternally” (Roper’s “Life of Sir T. More”).

Punctually at nine o’clock Sir Thomas left his prison. He was dressed in an old frieze cloak; his beard had grown long, and his face and form were thin and worn; in his hand he carried a red cross. At what appears to have been a kind of public-house, near the gate of the Tower, a woman came out and offered him a glass of wine, but he refused it, saying, “Marry, my good wife, I will not drink now, my Master had vinegar and gall, and not wine given Him to drink.” Another woman asked him for some papers that she had given him to keep for her when he was Lord Chancellor: to her he said that she must have patience for an hour, “and by that time the King’s Majesty will rid me of the care I have of thy papers, and all other matters whatsoever.”

On reaching the scaffold he found it in a very shaky condition, and turning to the Lieutenant, he said, laughing, “I pray you, Mr Lieutenant, see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself.” When on the platform he turned to the people, and, like Fisher, told them he had come there to die for the Holy Church and begged their prayers; then, kneeling down, he repeated the Misere to the end. When the executioner asked his forgiveness Sir Thomas, who meanwhile had risen from his knees, embraced him, saying, “Pluck up thy spirits, man, and be not afraid to do thy office. I am sorry my neck is short, therefore strike not awry.” He then bound a cloth which he had brought with him over his eyes, and placed his head upon the block. An instant before the axe fell he turned his head towards the executioner while he moved his beard, “Pity that should be cut,” he said, “that has not committed treason.”

The head was placed on London Bridge, but Margaret Roper obtained that sacred relic, and it was buried with her when she followed her beloved father in 1544, “to where beyond these voices there is peace.” Both the bodies of Bishop Fisher and of Sir Thomas More were buried in St Peter’s Chapel in the Tower, where they rest side by side.

One of the earliest inscriptions to be found on the walls of the Beauchamp Tower is that of Thomas Fitzgerald, who was known as “Silken Thomas,” from the costliness of his attire. He was the eldest son of Gerald Fitzgerald, ninth Earl of Kildare, Lord-Deputy of Ireland. Earl Gerald had been summoned to London, leaving Thomas in Ireland as Deputy in his place during his absence. On arriving in London, the father was arrested and thrown into the Tower. When the news reached Thomas Fitzgerald he broke into open rebellion, and together with five of his uncles laid siege to Dublin Castle, and having captured Archbishop Allen, put him to death. Dublin Castle was defended by Sir J. White,and would probably have fallen into the hands of the rebels had not the Earl of Ormonde raised the siege with a powerful force. In retaliation, the Castle of Maynooth, one of the Geraldine strongholds, was taken, and the garrison incontinently hanged by Lord Leonard Grey; when the news of this disaster reached Earl Gerald in the Tower, he died, it is believed, of a broken heart, on the 12th December 1534, and was buried in St Peter’s Chapel. “Silken Thomas” surrendered with his five uncles, on the promise of a pardon, to Leonard Grey, who, oddly enough, was another of his many uncles, Lord Leonard’s sister having married Earl Gerald. These Geraldines were imprisoned in the Beauchamp Tower, where, as we have seen, a fragmentary inscription cut by “Silken Thomas” is still visible in the principal dungeon. Despite the promise of pardon, Thomas and his uncles were all hanged at Tyburn, only one member of the Fitzgeralds, a youth, escaping the King’s fury; and so great was Henry’s anger, that he ordered Grey to be condemned to death for allowing the youth in question to save himself: Henry had determined to utterly extirpate the whole Geraldine race. The unfortunate Grey was beheaded, six years after these events occurred, on Tower Hill. “The fair Geraldine,” sung by Surrey, was the sister of “Silken Thomas.”

On May Day of the year 1536 a tournament was held at Greenwich Palace, at which great surprise was caused by the King leaving suddenly whilst the jousting was in progress. The next day Queen Anne Boleyn was arrested, and interrogated by some members of the Council, of whom her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, was the President. From Greenwich the Queen was brought to the Tower by water, arriving at five o’clock in the afternoon; with her came Secretary Cromwell, the LordChancellor, Sir J. Audley, and the Constable of the Tower, Sir William Knighton. Her journey up the river and her reception at the grim old fortress were in bitter contrast with the triumphant progress she had made the day before her brilliant coronation. Arrived at the Tower, Anne sank upon her knees in prayer, and, rising, declared her innocence to those about her. She then inquired of the Constable where she was to be lodged, and was told that she would occupy the rooms in which she had lived at the time of her coronation three years before. “It is too good for me,” said the poor Queen. She appears to have fallen into violent hysterics, “weeping a great pace, and in the same sorrow fell into a great laughing, and so she did several times afterwards,” writes Knighton to Cromwell.

The Queen’s sudden arrest must have fallen upon the Court like a bolt from the blue, although probably some of the courtiers had noticed Henry’s growingpenchantfor Jane Seymour: Anne herself had seen it only too clearly, as well as the peril in which this new attachment of the King’s placed her.

On the 3rd May, Archbishop Cranmer wrote as follows to the King:—“I think your Grace best knoweth, that next unto your Grace I was most bound unto her of all creatures living, and my mind is clean amazed, for I never had better opinion in woman than I had in her; which maketh me to think that she should not be culpable. I wish and pray that she may declare herself inculpable and innocent.” But this would not have served Henry’s purpose, even if the poor Queen could have proved her innocence. He was determined to be rid of her, and as quickly as possible, in order that he might satisfy his new passion, and all the Archbishops in Christendom would not have stopped him.

A letter, supposed by such good authorities as Sir Henry Ellice and Froude to be authentic, was written by Anne to the King from her prison. This letter was found amongst Cromwell’s papers, being endorsed by the Secretary thus, “To the King from the Ladye in theTower.” It is too long to quote in its entirety, but concludes as follows:—

“Try me, good King, but let me have a lawful trial; and let not my sworn enemies sit as my accusers and my judges; yea, let me receive an open trial, for my truth shall fear no open shame. Then you shall see either mine innocency cleared, your suspicions and conscience satisfied, the ignominy and slander of the world stopped, or my gilt lawfully declared; so that, whatsoever God or you may determine of me, your Grace may be freed of an open censure; and mine offence being so openly proved, your Grace is at liberty, before God and man, not only to execute worthy punishment upon me as an unlawful wife, but to follow your affection already settled on that party for whose sake I am now as I am, whose name I could some good while since have pointed unto; your Grace not being ignorant of my suspicion therein.” (This pointed allusion to Henry’s attentions to Jane Seymour was surely unfortunate?) “But if you have already determined of me; and that not only my death, but an infamous slander, must bring you the joying of your desired happiness; then I desire of God that He will pardon your great sin therein and likewise my enemies, the instruments thereof; and that He will not call you to a straight account for your unprincely and cruel usage of me, at His general judgment seat, where you and myself must shortly appear; and in whose judgment I doubt not, whatever the world may think of me, mine innocence shall be openly known and sufficiently cleared.“My last and only request shall be, that myself may only bear the burden of your Grace’s displeasure, and that it may not touch the innocent souls of those poor gentlemen, who, as I understand, are likewise in straight imprisonment for my sake. If ever I have found favour in your sight, if ever the name of Anne Boleyn hath been pleasing in your ears, then let me obtain this request; and I will not so have to trouble your Grace any further; with mine earnest prayers to the Trinity to have your Grace in His good keeping, and to direct you in all your actions. From my doleful prison in the Tower, this 6th of May. Your most loyal and ever faithful wife, Anne Boleyn.”

“My last and only request shall be, that myself may only bear the burden of your Grace’s displeasure, and that it may not touch the innocent souls of those poor gentlemen, who, as I understand, are likewise in straight imprisonment for my sake. If ever I have found favour in your sight, if ever the name of Anne Boleyn hath been pleasing in your ears, then let me obtain this request; and I will not so have to trouble your Grace any further; with mine earnest prayers to the Trinity to have your Grace in His good keeping, and to direct you in all your actions. From my doleful prison in the Tower, this 6th of May. Your most loyal and ever faithful wife, Anne Boleyn.”

This does not read like the letter of a guilty person; it has a fine brave note running all through it, and the petition for the unfortunate men accused with her, shows Anne’s unselfish nature in thinking of others in her own time of dire misfortune.

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