February 13, 1542: Katheryn Howard's Bloody Valentine

Seven or eight thousand people crowded the Tower green on a cold February morning. It was the day before Valentine's Day, 1542, and the people were gathering to see a rare spectacle, the execution of a Queen of England.

When Anne Boleyn was awaiting the executioner, her jailers fretted that she would declare her innocence before the crowd. To try to keep the audience small - and limit those who might be exposed to her words - they attempted some confusing tactics. This time, they had no such concerns. The young woman lodged in the royal apartments was resigned to her fate.

Katheryn and Jane Parker had been condemned by an Act of Attainder on Saturday and brought to the Tower that afternoon for execution. The stories say Katheryn struggled and cried when the council came to escort her to the Tower, and the weeping young girl had to be physically forced onto the barge.

But the following day was Sunday, a day on which an execution could not take place. They would have to wait until Monday morning. Considering the anguish she had been in since her arrest, one wonders if Katheryn was grateful for one more day of life, or if it merely added to her torment.

The curious people flooded through the gates of the Tower to watch her die. This was no innocent martyr to Henry's desires, as the people saw it. Katheryn Howard had sinned, and now she would pay for it with her life. It was the kind of execution parents loved to bring their children to, illustrating the wages of sin to impressionable young minds.

The doors to the royal apartments opened and Katheryn stepped out into the cold morning air. She was a tiny girl, plump and pretty, possibly only sixteen or seventeen years old. That morning, she wore a black velvet gown, chosen from among the six she had been allowed. Its fabric suited her rank; its color suited the solemn occasion to which she wore it.

Katheryn had been shamed before all of England. The salacious details of her pre-marital affairs had been aired to the public, all of her secrets known. They had never proved adultery, only managing to wrest a confession from Thomas Culpepper that he would sleep with the young queen if given the opportunity.

That intent was enough to condemn them.

Henry VIII alternated fits of weeping and rage at the "betrayal" of his teenaged bride, that "rose among women" whose petals had been caressed by others. When Anne had languished in the Tower, Henry had partied like a frat boy, cheerfully indifferent to his cuckold's horns, claiming openly that Anne Boleyn had slept with a hundred men.

Now, learning that Katheryn had intercourse with one man, and had been intimately touched by another before she married Henry was enough to send him screaming for a sword to kill her himself and mourning so bitterly that his council feared for him. Chapuys writes that Henry blamed his council his lamentable fate of marrying such "ill-conditioned wives." Their response to that is not recorded, but perhaps it's best left to the imagination.

In the end, Henry couldn't even bring himself to sign Katheryn's death warrant. The council had done it for him, adding The king wills it at the bottom, dubiously legal, but no one was arguing that particular point.

The men accused with her were dead already. Francis Dereham - whose only crime had been to sleep with an unmarried girl before she came to the king's attention - had suffered a horrid traitor's death of disemboweling. Thomas Culpepper, once one of Henry's favorites, was given the more merciful death of beheading. His crime had been to meet with the queen for whispered conversations and furtive exchanges of gifts.

Behind Katheryn walked Jane Parker, Lady Rochford, who had arranged these secret meetings. Both Katheryn and Culpepper had tried to put the blame squarely on her shoulders, insisting Lady Rochford had goaded them into meeting. Lady Rochford had broken down under the stress and appeared to have gone insane, but she had apparently found peace, because she walked with quiet dignity behind Katheryn as they headed to the scaffold.

They likely followed the same route as Anne Boleyn, moving from the royal apartments (marked in red) around the Jewel House and through the Coldharbour Gate (marked in green), until they reached the north corner of the White Tower. The scaffold was erected where the black X is marked on the map. The Chapel of St. Peter-ad-Vincula is indicated in blue. Today, the spot of the scaffold is where visitors to the Tower gather to see the Crown Jewels.

Katheryn had to be terrified. She was not to be granted the elegant, swift death delivered by a swordsman as her cousin had before her. No, Katheryn would bow her head to the block under the brutal blade of an axe.

Frightened she might be, but Katheryn remembered she was a Howard, and she was determined to die with dignity. The night before, she had asked her jailer, Sir John Gage, to bring the block to her chambers so she could practice laying her head on it and not fumble before the crowd. Reportedly, she asked the ladies serving her which position made for a better presentation. She may have had the hideously botched execution of Margaret Pole in mind.

She climbed the few steps of the scaffold now. It was likely the same one used for Anne Boleyn - stored away and reassembled when needed - but this time, the niceties hadn't been observed. There's no mention of the yards of expensive black velvet that had adorned the scaffold like a macabre parade float when Anne died. Anne had been an anointed Queen; Katheryn had been stripped of the rank that had been a courtesy title due to her marriage to the king and was now "merely Katheryn Howard." She had been granted her last request for a "private death" inside the walls of the Tower, but that was all.

Katheryn walked across the raw boards covered with a thick layer of straw meant to absorb her blood and faced the crowd.

She had not been raised as a courtier, and taught from birth how deal gracefully with public scrutiny as Anne Boleyn had. Katheryn was just a simple gentlewoman with scant education, and little adult supervision in her formative years. She'd only reigned as queen for one year, a position she had to learn "on the job" as it were, completely unprepared for court etiquette. Certainly, nothing in Katheryn's short life had prepared her for this. But in her last moments, Katheryn comported herself like a queen.

Some accounts say Katheryn looked pale and frightened - one says she seemed so weak that she could barely speak. The French Ambassador had written that Katheryn spent her last days in constant tears, but now she stood solemn and composed, though she could not completely conceal her fear. God knows how hard it was for her, but she did her duty, and she did it with grace and dignity.

A witness wrote of her last moments in a tone of pride, saying that Katheryn

[...] made the most godly and Christian end that ever was heard tell of (I think) since the world's creation [...]

We don't have an exact record of her words, but Katheryn said the things that were expected of a condemned traitor. They were so ordinary that no one bothered recording the exact wording, just the gist of it. She would have thought long and hard about what she would say, knowing it would be publicized far and wide, and her words could have repercussions on her family if the king was displeased by them. Katheryn praised the king for his goodness to her, confessing that she deserved death, and exhorting the people to take example from what happened to her, and amend any sin in their own lives.

When she finished speaking, Katheryn disrobed, stripping off her outer gown and sleeves. She had no jewelry to remove, it having been seized as soon as the investigation into her affairs began. But the fabric was costly and the French hood she wore had valuable gold trim. The garments would be laid aside for the executioner as part of his payment.

Unlike Anne Boleyn, there's no mention of the council buying the clothing back from the executioner, or redeeming the items Katheryn had left behind in her rooms in the royal apartments, which now belonged to John Gage. The council let both men keep their prerogatives, apparently having no concern souvenirs would be made.

Wearing only her kirtle, petticoat, and chemise in the February chill, Katheryn prayed as knelt down in the pile of straw in front of the block. Her auburn hair would have been tucked up into a white linen cap to leave her little neck bare. She laid her throat on the bare wood as she had practiced. Tradition was that the condemned would thrust out their arms as a signal that they were ready. Sometimes, a friend would take their hands and hold them stretched forward, but Katheryn's friends had been taken from her when she was brought to the Tower.

The axe rose and fell. The executioner was good - it took only one blow before Katheryn's head was severed. Anne Boleyn's ladies had rushed forward to throw a cloth over her head as soon as it left her shoulders to protect her dignity. There's no mention this was done for Katheryn.

Chapuys records that Katheryn's torso was covered by a black cloak and pulled aside for the next occupant of the block. Lady Rochford stepped forward.

Chapuys had written she had periods of lucidity during her spell of madness. The legislation passed to make it legal to execute the insane had implied Lady Rochford was faking. Either way, she was calm and dignified now, and she made a speech similar to Katheryn's before she knelt down in the bloody straw and laid her neck on the dripping block.

The witnesses all reported both women made a "goodly end." Katheryn had done her name proud in this last, as had the much maligned Lady Rochford. Later, a legend would arise that Katheryn had declared she died a queen but would rather have died as Culpepper's wife, and that Lady Rochford had said she deserved to die for lying about her husband and Anne Boleyn. Fanciful nonsense, and nothing more.

It was over. The crowd wandered away, leaving behind the two bodies which lay on the scaffold while their blood drained out through the boards, dripping onto the grass below.

Sometime later - how long the records do not say - Katheryn and Lady Rochford's bodies were  were carried to the chapel of St. Peter-ad-Vincula where Anne and George had been buried. There is no mention of them being wrapped in cerecloth - the heavy white, waxed cloth used for burial shrouds - only the black cloak with which Katheryn had been covered after death. Since the cloak was valuable and would not have been buried with her, the implication is that the bodies were put directly in the earth. I hope it is simply an omission and both Katheryn and Lady Rochford were given at least the scant courtesy of a shroud.

A few feet beneath the paving stones to the right of the altar, hasty graves were scratched out for both of them and they were buried with no marker above them.

But someone wanted nothing of Katheryn Howard to remain. Her grave was filled with lime, meant to hasten decomposition. This was - by no means - an ordinary part of the burial process. It raises the question of who gave the order and why. It seems we'll never know for certain, but there was one person who wanted to erase the "rose without a thorn" from memory.

Three hundred years passed, and the little chapel fell into a pitiful state of disrepair. Thomas Babington Macaulay, in his History of England wrote in 1848:

In truth there is no sadder spot on the earth than that little cemetery. Death is there associated, not, as in Westminster Abbey and Saint Paul's, with genius and virtue, with public veneration and with imperishable renown; not, as in our humblest churches and churchyards, with everything that is most endearing in social and domestic charities; but with whatever is darkest in human nature and in human destiny, with the savage triumph of implacable enemies, with the inconstancy, the ingratitude, the cowardice of friends, with all the miseries of fallen greatness and of blighted fame. Thither have been carried, through successive ages, by the rude hands of gaolers, without one mourner following, the bleeding relics of men who had been the captains of armies, the leaders of parties, the oracles of senates, and the ornaments of courts.

Thither was borne, before the window where Jane Grey was praying, the mangled corpse of Guilford Dudley. Edward Seymour, duke of Somerset, and protector of the realm, reposes there by the brother whom he murdered. There has mouldered away the headless trunk of John Fisher, bishop of Rochester and Cardinal of Saint Vitalis, a man worthy to have lived in a better age, and to have died in a better cause. There are laid John Dudley, duke of Northumberland, Lord High Admiral, and Thomas Cromwell, earl of Essex, Lord High Treasurer. There, too, is another Essex, on whom nature and fortune had lavished all their bounties in vain, and whom valour, grace, genius, royal favour, popular applause, conducted to an early and ignominious doom. Not far off sleep two chiefs of the great house of Howard, Thomas, fourth Duke of Norfolk, and Philip, eleventh Earl of Arundel. Here and there, among the thick graves of unquiet and aspiring statesmen, lie more delicate sufferers; Margaret of Salisbury, the last of the proud name of Plantagenet, and those two fair queens who perished by the jealous rage of Henry. Such was the dust with which the dust of Monmouth mingled.

His words helped bring the sad condition of the chapel to public attention, and soon Queen Victoria gave her permission for a restoration. She ordered that an attempt be made to identify the famous persons buried in the chapel, a task which proved more difficult than anticipated, because the tiny chapel had been in continuous use as a parish church, and there were over a thousand within its walls. The bones of a grave's prior occupant would be pushed aside to make room for another.

The bones believed to be Anne Boleyn's had been pushed aside for a lead coffin occupied by a woman who had died in 1760. In other places, the bones of unknown persons mingled with older burials.

Close by, somewhat in a south-east direction, and nearer to the wall of the chancel, gathered together in two distinct groups, were found the bones of two females; these were examined and carefully sorted, they appeared to belong to a person of about thirty to forty years of age, and to another who must have been considerably advanced in years. It is worthy of note that these latter remains were a little to the south-east of the younger female.

These groups had been much disturbed, and many bones are missing: the younger female had been of rather delicate proportions, the elder had been tall, and certainly of above average height.

These remains are believed to be those of Lady Rochford and Margaret of Clarence, Countess of Salisbury: and, as was subsequently discovered, they had been removed somewhat to the east of their original resting places, in order to make room for two unknown persons, who had been buried close to the step of the chancel, probably about one hundred years ago.

Search though they might, they found no trace of Katheryn Howard. They speculated that the lime had dissolved her young bones to dust.

No remains which could be identified as those of Queen Katharine Howard were found; it should, however, be borne in mind that lime has been most extensively used in these interments, and as Katharine Howard was only twenty years old when she was beheaded (at which age the bones have not become hard and consolidated), it is very possible that even when Judge Jeffreys was interred in the chancel, her remains had already become dust. It was at first supposed, as she had been buried on this spot, that her remains had been discovered, when the group of female bones were found lying near the Duke of Northumberland; but a closer examination showed that the age and size of the bones (Katharine Howard is said to have been very small in stature) would not support that supposition, and these are now believed to be the remains of Lady Rochford.

Only Katheryn Howard's memory remains.

History has tended to judge her harshly, and even today, she is thought of as the queen who deserved her execution, a foolish little adulteress that had the misfortune of getting caught. Even those who accept she may not have been "technically" guilty charge her with terminal stupidity in putting herself into the situation with Culpepper.

But we don't know why Katheryn chose to meet with him. Some have suggested she might have been being blackmailed to keep her past hidden. Or it could be as simple as Katheryn being a teenage girl in the throes of love who never imagined talking with a man in secrecy could get her in such dire straights.

In the end, Katheryn Howard died because she had premarital sexual experience. The king passed a law that made it treason for a woman to conceal her sexual history if the king showed interest in marrying her. The meetings with Culpepper were just icing on the proverbial cake. She died because Henry could not stand the thought of her being touched by others, and she broke his heart.

Despite her paltry education, there is evidence Katheryn tried to be a good queen to her people. She pleaded with the king for mercy towards convicted criminals. And despite her image as a silly girl only interested in fashion, one of the largest expenses on her privy purse accounts was purchasing warm clothing for the elderly Margaret Pole.

In recent years, the legacy of Anne Boleyn has begun to be re-examined. Even Lady Rochford has been the subject of new scholarship, sweeping away the layers of myth that have clung to her memory. Perhaps it's time we do the same with Katheryn Howard. Share on Tumblr

Lady Margaret Pole

The death of Lady Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, stands out in a brutal and bloody reign as one of its more terrible moments. To put it simply, she was brutally killed because Henry VIII couldn't take his wrath out on her son, and her execution was like a horror movie.

Lady Margaret was born in 1473 to George, Duke of Clarence and his wife, Isabel Neville. George was the brother of King Edward IV, but their relationship was strained at best, especially in regards to Elizabeth, the king's wife. Margaret's early years were tumultuous, as the Wars of the Roses tore through her family. Her grandfather was killed while fighting against her uncle Edward IV.

When Margaret was only three years old, her mother gave birth to a boy they named Richard, after his uncle. Isabel had apparently suffered from difficult pregnancies in the past, but she seemed to be recovering from this latest birth, though baby Richard was "sickly" according to later court records. Isabel remained under the care of a midwife named Ankarette Twynyho, who nursed the mother and baby with herbal concoctions. About ten weeks after the birth, Isabel fell violently ill, supposedly after drinking ale given to her by Ankarette, and died three days before Christmas. Baby Richard died shortly thereafter.

Margaret's father, George, was crushed by grief and was convinced Isabel and Richard had been poisoned by Ankarette at the behest of his enemy, Queen Elizabeth Woodville. George tracked Ankarette down in April, had her charged with poisoning Isabel, and accused a man named John Thuresbury of poisoning the infant. Both of them were swiftly convicted and hanged.

The king decided he'd had enough of his brother's behavior and wild allegations against the queen. His agents arrested several of George's retainers, who confessed under torture to using black magic to try to kill the king. When George made a stink about their innocence in parliament, the king had him arrested and thrown into the Tower.

Instead of humbly throwing himself on the mercy of the king, George slandered his brother's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, claiming it was bigamous, and set out to arrange a powerful marriage of his own that might have put his brother's crown at risk.

The king demanded parliament pass a Bill of Attainder against his brother for treason, which they did. Following it, George was "privately executed" within the confines of the Tower. The old stories have it that he was drowned in a barrel of wine.

After George's execution, Margaret found herself stripped of her inheritance, and sent to live with her aunt. When she was ten years old, her uncle, Edward IV died, and her uncle Richard III, took the throne. He declared that since George had been attainted for treason, his children were ineligible as heirs to the throne.

Only a few years later, Richard III was defeated at the Battle of Bosworth. The Tudor dynasty had begun. The new king Henry VII and decided to marry Margaret to his cousin, Sir Richard Pole. We don't know the exact year of their marriage, but it was probably around 1487, which would make Margaret about fourteen years old at time. Sir Richard was around twenty-eight or twenty-nine.

Margaret was described as tall for a woman, slender and elegant, with the auburn hair of the Plantagenets, and pale skin. We don't have a portrait of her that can be identified for certain.

Margaret and Sir Richard seem to have had a happy - or at least stable - marriage. They had five children together, and Sir Richard held a variety of highly-favored positions in the new king's court. Margaret was assigned as a lady in waiting to Katharine of Aragon, who had wed the king's son, Arthur. Her behavior as a courtier was impeccable, with never a hint of scandal attached to her name. She and Katharine became close friends in the short time they were together.

While she was pregnant with her son, Reginald, Margaret's brother - seen by many as the rightful heir to the throne - was executed after the uprising by Perkin Warbeck. His only crime, it was said, was his royal blood. Margaret never held it against Katharine that her own parents had urged the king to execute Margaret's brother to secure the throne.

When Arthur died in 1502, Katharine's household was dissolved, and Margaret was sent back to her own estates, while the widowed Katharine was at the mercy of her father-in-law, bickering over her dowry with Spain.

Only two years later, Sir Richard died, leaving Margaret a widow with only a small income from her jointure. She couldn't even pay for her husband's funeral; the king loaned her the funds on generous terms. Out of desperation, Margaret dedicated her younger son, Reginald, to the church, so she could save money on his upbringing and education. Reginald did well in the church, rising so high that he was once considered for the office of pope, but he seems to have resented his mother for it. He once wrote to Margaret, chiding her for her lack of care for him:

And though you had so done with all your children, yet in me you had so given all right from you and possession utterly of me that you never took any care to provide for my living nor otherwise, as you did for other, but committed all to God, to whom you had given me. This promise now, Madam, in my [Maister]es name I require of you to maintain, [the wh]iche you cannot keep nor make good if y[ou] now beginne to care for me.

When Henry VIII came to the throne, Margaret's situation improved. He allowed her to buy back the Earldom of Salisbury, which gave her income from its properties. It made her the only woman in England to hold a peerage in her own right until Anne Boleyn was created Marquess of Pembroke. Margaret managed those lands carefully and became a very wealthy woman.

Margaret was also re-appointed to serve Katharine of Aragon after the king married her. Katharine must have been joyful to have her dear friend back in her company. They had much in common, considering the struggles they had both endured.

Both women were deeply pious. Henry called Margaret "the most saintly woman in Christendom," and said he "honored and loved her as his own granddame." Katharine chose Margaret to be the godmother of her daughter, Princess Mary, and later made her the child's governess.

Margaret's own children did well at court. Her eldest son, Henry, became a baron and served in the House of Lords. Arthur Pole became a gentleman of the privy chamber, though he died young. Her daughter, Ursula, married the son of the Duke of Buckingham, and Geoffrey Pole married an heiress.

Reginald, the son dedicated to the church, studied at Oxford, where he obtained a degree at age fifteen. Henry VIII himself sponsored Reginald to study at Padua, and the young man began collecting offices and benefices, though he had not yet taken vows as a priest. He seems to have been extremely gifted, corresponding with the great humanist scholars of the age, including Erasmus and Thomas More. For a time, it seems Katharine considered marrying Reginald to her daughter, since he had not yet taken his vows.

Then, in 1527, Henry began to pursue an annulment of his marriage to Katharine of Aragon so he could marry Anne Boleyn. Margaret took the side of her friend, Katharine, and of the princess she loved like a daughter.

Reginald initially helped speak to scholars in Rome about the annulment, but ultimately decided the king was wrong in his determination to marry Anne. Henry asked him to come back to England to take the offices of the Archbishop of York and the See of Winchester. Reginald saw it as a bribe to gain his support of the Boleyn marriage. He spoke to Henry in person, and whatever it was he said to the king made him so angry that Henry is said to have laid his hand on his dagger.

It can be imagined from what Reginald wrote in his scathing letter laying out the gross hypocrisy of Henry wanting to divorce his wife because she had been the widow of his brother, in order to marry a woman who was the sister of his former mistress. In the eyes of the church, it was equally incestuous.

Now what sort of person is it whom you have put in the place of your divorced wife? Is she not the sister of her whom first you violated? And for a long time after kept as your concubine? She certainly is. How is it, then, that you now tell us of the horror you have of illicit marriage? Are you ignorant of the law which certainly no less prohibits marriage with a sister of one with whom you have become one flesh, than with one with whom your brother was one flesh? If the one kind of marriage is detestable, so is the other. Were you ignorant of this law? Nay, you knew it better than others. How do I prove that? Because, at the very time you were rejecting your brother’s widow, you were doing your utmost to get leave from the pope to marry the sister of your former concubine.

Henry cast Katharine and Princess Mary into exile. He removed Margaret from her post as Mary's governess, though Margaret begged to be allowed to stay, even offering to host Mary's household at her own expense. But Henry believed the pious Margaret was one of those who was encouraging Mary to be "stubborn" about refusing to accept her father's stance that his marriage to Katharine was invalid.

Chapuys even once went to plead with Henry to allow Mary to resume living with Margaret, but the king's affection and esteem for Margaret was gone.

I did not wish to dispute with him on the subject, but asked that he would at least put the Princess under the care of her old gouvernante, the countess of Salisbury, whom she regarded as her second mother. He replied that the Countess was a fool, of no experience, and that if his daughter had been under her care during this illness she would have died, for she would not have known what to do[.]

Safe on the Continent, Reginald denounced the king's marital machinations, writing a book about the case. Margaret did the only thing she could - she denounced her son as a traitor, and wrote him a letter chastising him for his "folly."

"Son Reginald," I send you God's blessing and mine, though my trust to have comfort in you is turned to sorrow. Alas that I, for your folly, should receive from my sovereign lord "such message as I have late done by your brother." To me as a woman, his Highness has shown such mercy and pity as I could never deserve, but that I trusted my children's services would express my duty. And now, to see you in his Grace's indignation,—"trust me, Reginald, there went never the death of thy father or of any child so nigh my heart." Upon my blessing I charge thee to take another way and serve our master, as thy duty is, unless thou wilt be the confusion of thy mother. You write of a promise made by you to God,—"Son, that was to serve God and thy prince, whom if thou do not serve with all thy wit, with all thy power, I know thou can not please God. For who hath brought you up and maintained you to learning but his Highness?" Will pray God to give him grace to serve his prince truly or else to take him to his mercy.

Margaret had no choice but to denounce Reginald. To do anything else would be to endanger herself and her family. Even though she likely agreed with all he was saying, to not denounce it publicly would be suicide. It was a terrible and agonizing choice for a mother - and a faithful Catholic - to make.

Even after Anne's execution, the king still insisted that his marriage to Katharine had been invalid and was enraged by Reginald's refusal to acknowledge the royal supremacy. It's said he tried unsuccessfully to have Reginald assassinated at one point. Reginald was now a Cardinal (despite not having taken vows) and was urging the other monarchs of Europe to depose Henry and install a Catholic government in England.

The enraged king, unable to strike at Reginald himself, began arresting his relatives. Anyone known to have corresponded with Reginald was sent to the Tower. In November of 1538, after the failed uprising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, Margaret herself was arrested. Her houses and property were searched for any possible evidence of treasonous activities, and she was brutally interrogated for hours on end.

Eventually, Cromwell produced a silk robe that was embroidered with the arms of England, marigolds (a symbol of Princess Mary), pansies (a symbol of the Pole family) and the five wounds of Christ (a symbol of the Pilgrimage of Grace.) Cromwell believed it demonstrated Reginald's intentions to marry Mary and restore papal authority in England.

Considering the robe wasn't produced until six months after her possessions had been searched, many today believe it was planted. Margaret was convicted as a traitor by an Act of Attainder. Her eldest son, Henry, was executed, and her son Geoffrey had been forced to testify against him. He was pardoned for his cooperation and fled the country. Geoffrey, it seems, carried the heavy burden of this betrayal on his conscience and wasn't able to free himself of its weight until he was later pardoned in person by the pope.

Margaret was imprisoned in the Tower for over two years, and there she was left to wait to see if she would be pardoned or the death sentence would be carried out. She was housed as a noble in one of the better cells, with the comforts of fine furniture and the like, but she was an elderly lady in her seventies who suffered badly during the winters in its stone rooms. The young queen Katheryn Howard took pity on her and sent her fur-lined clothing.

Around Easter, there was another small pro-Catholic uprising, and as it turned out, one of the ringleaders was a relative of the Nevilles, the family of Margaret's mother, Isabel. Henry may have believed it was egged on by Reginald Pole. He decided it was time to get rid of Margaret once and for all.

On the morning of May 27, 1541, Margaret was awakened and informed she was to die in a few hours' time.

Henry had learned from the execution of Anne Boleyn and wanted to limit the number of witnesses. Likely, this is why the execution was carried out suddenly, not even building a scaffold to alert people an important person was to be executed. Henry knew that the sad spectacle of this elderly, pious woman climbing the scaffold wouldn't have the deterrent effect he wanted, but would instead reflect badly on him.

Chapuys wrote to the Queen of Hungary about the execution that followed. His is the fullest description we have of the event, and though his biases are well-known, it seems the most likely to be an accurate account:

About the same time, the very strange and lamentable execution of Mme. de Salisbury, the daughter of the duke of Clarence, and mother of Cardinal Pole, took place at the Tower in the presence of the Lord Mayor of London and about 150 persons more.

At first, when the sentence of death was made known to her, she found the thing very strange, not knowing of what crime she was accused, nor how she had been sentenced; but at last, perceiving that there was no remedy, and that die she must, she went out of the dungeon where she was detained, and walked towards the midst of the space in front of the Tower, where there was no scaffold erected nor anything except a small block.

Arrived there, after commending her soul to her Creator, she asked those present to pray for the King, the Queen, the Prince (Edward) and the Princess [Mary], to all of whom she wished to be particularly commended, and more especially to the latter, whose god-mother she had been. She sent her blessing to her, and begged also for hers.

After which words she was told to make haste and place her neck on the block, which she did. But as the ordinary executor of justice was absent doing his work in the North, a wretched and blundering youth (garçonneau) was chosen, who literally hacked her head and shoulders to pieces in the most pitiful manner.

As ghastly as Margaret's demise was, an even more horrible tale has become the popular legend. It originates in 1649, in another account of Margaret's execution: (Modernized spelling and punctuation.)

Shortly after followed the Countess of Salisbury's execution, which, whether occasioned by the late rebellion (as being thought of Cardinal Pole's instigation) or that she gave some new offence, is uncertain. The old lady being brought to the scaffold (set up in the Tower) was commanded to lay her head on the block, but she (as a person of great quality assured me) refused, saying, "So should traitors do, and I am none." Neither did it serve that the executioner told her it was the fashion. So turning her gray head every way, she bid him, if he would have her head, to get it as he could. So that he was constrained to fetch it off slovenly. And thus ended (as our authors say) the last of the right line of the Plantagenet.

The tale is unlikely for several reasons. It doesn't fit in with what we know of the expected behavior of Tudor nobles facing execution. Even the innocent submitted with grace to the will of the king. Dying with dignity was a point of pride. Margaret's supposed defiance may seem brave to modern readers, but it would have been shameful in the Tudor era, when nobles were expected to make a pious, Godly end of submission and prayer. Secondly, Margaret was an ill and elderly woman, unlikely to be spry enough to make an executioner chase her.

In the end, Chapuys seems most likely to be right about what happened. We know of other executions of the era which were terribly botched, causing unnecessary suffering to the condemned. So the tale of Margaret's sad and bloody end may be true. If the execution was ordered suddenly, there would have been no time to erect the scaffold. There also may have been no time to send for an experienced headsman to execute Margaret. The woman Henry had once said he "loved and honored as his own granddame" suffered a hasty, botched execution in front of only a handful of witnesses.

Margaret had constructed a lovely chantry chapel she intended for her burial site, but she was buried beneath the floor of St. Peter-ad-Vincula, near the grave of Anne Boleyn.

She was Lady of the manor of Christchurch, in Hampshire, and had erected in that church on the north side of the altar the elegant chapel, still called the Salisbury chapel, for her own burial-place. In the central boss of the fan tracery of the roof is a representation, much mutilated, of the Trinity, with the figure of the Countess in front, kneeling at the feet of God the Father. The armorial bearings of the Countess were on the eastern boss, and below can still be read her motto "Spes mea in deo est."

The commissioners for the suppression of monasteries reported, "in thys churche we founde a chaple and monument curioslie made of Cane stone, paryd (prepared) by the late mother of Regnold Pole for herre buryall, whiche we have causyd to be defacyd, and all the arms and badgis clerly to be deleted:" and in this condition does the chapel remain at the present time.

During the repairs in 1834, two receptacles for coffins were discovered below the floor of this chapel, which were probably intended for the countess, and her son the cardinal, but seemed never to have been used.

In the Victorian era, the chapel of St. Peter-ad-Vincula was renovated and remains were found that were thought to belong to Margaret.

Close by, somewhat in a south-east direction, and nearer to the wall of the chancel, gathered together in two distinct groups, were found the bones of two females; these were examined and carefully sorted, they appeared to belong to a person of about thirty to forty years of age, and to another who must have been considerably advanced in years. It is worthy of note that these latter remains were a little to the south-east of the younger female. 

These groups had been much disturbed, and many bones are missing: the younger female had been of rather delicate proportions, the elder had been tall, and certainly of above average height.

These remains are believed to be those of Lady Rochford and Margaret of Clarence, Countess of Salisbury: and, as was subsequently discovered, they had been removed somewhat to the east of their original resting places, in order to make room for two unknown persons, who had been buried close to the step of the chancel, probably about one hundred years ago. [...] A broken tobacco pipe of the 17th century and a fragment of silk were found between this body, and the supposed remains of Lady Rochford and the Countess of Salisbury.

 In 1886, Margaret was beatified by Pope Leo XIII as one of the English Martyrs to the Catholic faith. May 28 is her feast day. Share on Tumblr

Did Anne Boleyn Watch her Brother's Execution?

On May 17th, 1536, George Boleyn and the other men accused of being Anne's lovers were led to Tower Hill and executed one by one.

Chapuys writes:

The Concubine saw them executed from the Tower, to aggravate her grief.

It implies someone made the cruel effort to force Anne to watch her beloved brother die in order to further torment the condemned woman, but it's unlikely to have happened.

Anne could not have seen what happened on Tower Hill from her lodgings. The map to the left shows the Tower layout as it was in Anne's day. The royal apartments where Anne was lodged is marked in red. Tower Hill was to the left the area shown on the map.

Another view of Tower Hill gives a sense of the distance and angles involved. The Bell Tower isn't visible in this view, obstructed by the roofs of the Lieutenants' Lodgings.

Unless Anne was taken to one of the towers along the wall, she would not have been able to see Tower Hill.

Kingston, who recorded Anne's every word, does not mention the prisoner being moved to witness the execution. He does not record that Anne made a protest at being forced to watch, and it seems like that would have stirred some comment from her. It further seems likely that if Anne witnessed it, she would have said something about how her brothers and the others died bravely.

A narrative poem of the era records that when Anne was informed the executions had taken place, she said that she had no doubt the executed were now in the presence of God, and asked if Mark Smeaton had recanted his testimony about sleeping with her. No mention of witnessing it personally.

Since Chapuys ends up being the only source for this mean-spirited claim, it seems it can be safely discounted.

Thomas Wyatt was lodged in the Bell Tower, marked in purple on the map above. His poem relates that he saw what happened on those "bloody days" out of a grate, so he didn't appear to have an unobstructed view from his rooms. He likely couldn't see Tower Hill either, but it's probable he could see the spot of the scaffold where Anne was executed, marked with a black X.


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Elizabeth Barton, The Nun of Kent

In Under These Restless Skies, Will and Emma witness the execution of Elizabeth Barton, the Nun of Kent. Barton was a mystic who incurred the wrath of the king when she prophesied Henry's death if he married Anne Boleyn.

Barton was probably born around 1506 in the village of Aldington. She was from a lowly background, and as with most of the girls of her class, she became a servant. We don't know if she had a religious vocation from a young age, but it wouldn't have mattered if she did. Convents required dowries to enter - just like a marriage - unless the convent was extremely wealthy and decided to waive the requirement. Barton's family likely couldn't come up with the funds. Working-class girls like Barton would work as a domestic servant to save up their own dowries.

Barton entered service at the home of Thomas Cobb, who was a steward at one of the estates of Archbishop Warham. While there, Barton fell ill, lying in a rigid, catatonic state - by some reports, upwards of seven months, though that is almost certainly an exaggeration. She may have been epileptic, given the description of the "terrible faces" she made when she was attacked by one of her fits.

 Cromwell wrote about it in a letter to a cleric:

[H]er face was wonderfully disfigured, her tongue hanging out, and her eyes being in a manner plucked out, and laid upon her cheeks, and so greatly disordered.

When Barton began to speak again, she uttered prophecies. At one point, she accurately predicted the death of one of Cobb's children, who was also lying ill. Word of this strange and seemingly miraculous event spread through the neighborhood.

Her visions continued, and she described things occurring in far-off places, and of souls in the afterlife. What awed her contemporaries was that her lips were not seen to move, and the voice seemed to issue from deep within her belly, as though from within a barrel. When she spoke of heaven, her voice was sweet and melodic, and when she spoke of hell, it was "terrible" and frightening to the listeners. To modern ears, this sounds like simple ventriloquism, but to those of the Tudor age, it seemed supernatural.

According to the sermon preached after her downfall, the attention went to her head:

When this said parson [Richard Masters] came home, he shewed her that the said archbishop [Warham] took the matter very well, and said it was notable; and commanded him to be present if she had any more such speeches and to mark those same: affirming that the speeches that she had spoken came of God, and that she should not refuse neither hide the goodness and works of God. And likewise said unto her Thomas Cobb her master. And as soon as she was able to sit up her master caused her to sit at his own mess with her mistress and this Parson of Aldington. 

And thereupon she, perceiving herself to be much made of, to be magnified and much set by by reason of the said trifling words spoken unadvisedly by idleness of her brain, conceived in her mind how she (having so good success and furtherance of so small occasion, being nothing to be esteemed in deed) might further enterprise and essay what she could do, being in good avisement and remembrance, to illude the people giving audience unto her, who were so ready to make so much of her idle and trifling words aforesaid.

She prophesied she would be cured of her illness if she was taken to the nearby chapel of Our Lady of Court-at-Street, and so her growing number of followers carried her there. One report says Barton was accompanied by a crowd of thousands, drawn to hear the miraculous "holy maid." Upon arrival at the chapel, Barton fell into an ecstatic state in front of the icon of the Virgin Mary, and arose cured, as she had predicted.

Her visions had  pious, Catholic fervor, exhorting people to renounce sin and live a good, Christian life. Barton admonished listeners to eschew the sin and vanities of the world, and embrace the values of the church, and she had the charisma to incite her listeners to religious fervor as well. The parson of her parish, Richard Masters, came to visit and listen to her, and was apparently convinced the girl had been touched by God. Masters began to record her prophecies, filling reams of paper with her words.

Small pamphlet-style books containing Barton's pronouncements published, a respectable run of 700 copies. Some of the prophecies/exhortations were either uttered in rhyming couplets, or recorded that way in the book, which Thomas More later lamented was "full rude" and unimpressive. She touched on some somewhat obscure theological matters, which later was pointed to as evidence of coaching by her spiritual adviser, but others saw as evidence the untutored girl had been chosen by God to voice His word.

Archbishop Warham formed a commission to look into the matter of this prophesying girl. They questioned Barton about the conventional matters of the faith, and after reading over her pronouncements and prophecies, Warham said he saw ho heresy in her. They were in line with Catholic doctrine, and Barton was urging her followers to obey the Church in all things. Warham decided to sponsor her so she could enter the tiny Benedictine convent at St. Sepulcher in Canterbury.

The prioress was reluctant. Even if Barton wasn't a heretic, she was a sickly peasant girl with no dower. The convent was very small, with only five nuns and the prioress. They couldn't afford to take on the burden of caring for a girl who might fall comatose again, and the prioress wasn't sure she wanted the notoriety of housing a mystic. But Warham's personal involvement convinced her, and after joining the order, Barton came to be known as the Nun of Kent.

This source says that because Barton was a fully ordained choir nun, she must have been literate in Latin, but I think that's unlikely. She may have learned to read and write while in the convent - as evinced by the fact she was able to read her confession aloud - but she probably had little or no prior education to joining the convent.  She was put under the tutelage of a spiritual advisor, a monk named Dr. Edward Bocking.

As Barton's fame spread, she began to correspond with the learned theologians of the day, including Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, and  at one point, she even wrote to the pope, himself. Barton's rise must have indeed, seemed miraculous to her. Only a few years ago, she had been a poor peasant servant, and now she was a mystic with a following of thousands. The shrine she favored was becoming wealthy from the attention she brought it as pilgrims came to leave offerings at the site of the miracle, and to meet with the Holy Maid of Kent.

Barton began to produce souvenirs of her mystical travels. She had a veil that had been scorched in the fires of hell, a manuscript in gold supposedly personally written by Mary Magdalene in heaven, and a befouled handkerchief with which she'd wiped her face after Satan spat on her when she spurned his advances. She was also said to have performed miracles:

[She] continued her accustomed working of wondrous myracles resorting often (by way of traunce onely) to our Lady of Court of Streete, who also ceassed not to shew herself mighty in operation there, lighting candels without fire, moistning womens breastes that berfore were drie and wanted milke, restoring all sorts of sicke to perfect health, reducing the dead to life againe, and finally dooing al good, to all such as were measured and vowed (as the popish maner was) unto her at Court of Strete.

[...]

If these companions could have let the King of the land alone, they might have plaied their pageants as freely, as others have beene permitted, howsoever it tendeth to the dishonour of the King of heaven.

As Lambard above notes, Barton might have continued indefinitely as a holy mystic had she not turned her attention to the matter of the king's annulment. By 1527, everyone knew Henry wanted to set aside his wife, Katharine, and marry Anne Boleyn. Barton was outraged about it and began to predict dire consequences for the king, for the pope - if he agreed to it - and to any other supporters of the annulment.

The king ignored Barton for as long as he could, but her popularity was steadily growing, and not just among the peasants. She was also attracting the attentions of the nobility, including the Marchioness of Exeter, and others - some of whom had Yorkist blood in their veins. Barton told Lady Exeter that her husband would inherit the crown - deeply dangerous words. (Though she said on an occasion prior to that Princess Mary would inherit the throne, and would marry another Yorkist, Lord Montague; Barton does not seem to have noticed she contradicted herself in these statements.)

Thomas More and Bishop Fisher are both known to have corresponded with her. Bishop Fisher seems to have been more enthusiastic about her; Thomas More was unimpressed.

Barton pleaded to meet with Katharine of Aragon or Princess Mary, but both refused an audience, though an ambassador noted they were very interested in her. It may be that Katharine and the princess were concerned about appearing to support Barton's political pronouncements and angering the king. She wrote to both of them, but there's no evidence they ever replied to her letters.

 In 1528, Warham wrote to Wolsey and said Barton wished to speak with Henry, though he didn't know if what she wanted to say was good or bad. Oddly enough, the king decided to grant her an audience.

Barton was either extremely brave or foolhardy. We don't have an eyewitness account (which is a pity!) but she apparently warned him that the Archangel Michael had told her there would be terrible consequences if he separated from his wife, Katharine. She urged Henry to destroy the heretics of the New Learning who were beginning to question papal authority in the wake of Luther's teaching. Henry seems to have dismissed Barton as delusional, and sent her back to Canterbury, but Warham kept him up to date on her pronouncements with regular dispatches.

In 1529, Barton had second audience with the king in which her rhetoric had escalated to threatening. She said if he married Anne Boleyn, he would not survive for an hour afterward. Henry tried to convince her of the soundness of his theological argument for the annulment, but Barton was unmovable in her conviction. It's said by some sources that Anne Boleyn's partisans tried to bribe Barton to silence - even going as far as to offer her a place in Anne's court, but Barton refused.

Henry's apparent patience in the matter of Elizabeth Barton seems remarkable, especially in light of what happened to others who stood in his way, but what seems to have stayed his hand was that they didn't have anything to charge her with. Henry was oddly particular about obeying the law. If the law got in the way of what he wanted, he changed it so his actions were nicely legal. In this case, they technically had nothing to charge Barton with. Not yet, anyway.

Unfortunately for Henry, these two meetings in which Barton had boldly condemned the king to his face and walked away unscathed only increased her esteem in the eyes of her followers. Even Henry was in awe of her, as they saw it.

Bishop Fisher interrogated Barton not long after her meeting with the king. She told him about her interview with Henry. Since Barton told him she'd said the same things to his majesty, Fisher didn't bother informing king of the visit, which later turned out to be a terrible mistake.

When Wolsey died, Barton claimed he'd managed to get into heaven because he hadn't capitulated to the royal will, and she had intervened on his behalf to save him from damnation. Wolsey's death marked a change in Henry's religious policy. Wolsey's replacement - Archbishop Cranmer - was to prove a facilitator of that royal will, and to take England in the direction Barton abhorred.

In November of 1532, Henry sailed for France with Anne Boleyn to meet with King Francis and to essentially obtain his seal of approval on Anne as royal consort. Barton claimed that during the visit, Henry had attended mass with Francis, but since Henry was in such a state of sin, the Virgin Mary had taken the communion host from Henry and given it to the invisibly present Barton to consume instead. The Virgin had shown Barton the spot in hell that Henry would occupy after he "died a villain's death" within a month if he married Anne. She claimed to have used her powers to prevent Henry from marrying Anne in Calais - but somehow missed the wedding that actually did take place as soon as they returned to England.

When Henry appeared hale and hearty enough after marrying Anne, Barton said that her prophecy had been fulfilled in that the king had been deposed in the eyes of God. She claimed to have seen a devil whispering in Anne Boleyn's ear as she tried to influence the king's policy.

Around this time, Thomas More wrote to Barton and told her to leave off prophesying on political matters. He warned her of what had happened to others who meddled with these matters, reminding her specifically of the Duke of Buckingham, who had been executed in 1521, and it was said he'd been incited to aspirations to the throne by a "holy monke."

She didn't take his advice. She had reached a critical point. Warham and Wolsey were dead. Thomas More had resigned as chancellor. Bishop Fisher had fallen from favor. Henry was done with tolerance. Barton was popular. She was loud. And she could no longer be ignored. Barton had to be silenced, and she had to be discredited.

In the autumn of 1533, Barton was placed under arrest, along with Dr. Bocking. She was examined by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, and it didn't take long for her to break. He wrote later to Archdeacon Hawkins about the matter:

Now about Midsummer last, I, hearing of these matters, sent for this holy maid, to examine her and from me she was had to Master Cromwell, to be further examined there. And now she hath confessed all, and uttered the very truth, which is this: that she never had vision in all her life, but all that ever she said was feigned of her own imagination, only to satisfy the minds of them the which resorted unto her, and to obtain worldly praise: by reason of the which her confession, many and divers, both religious men and other, be now in trouble, forasmuch as they consented to her mischievous and feigned visions, which contained much perilous sedition and also treason, and would not utter it, but rather further the same to their power.

Once upon a time, Barton's status as a nun would have protected her, but now Henry was the head of the church. Barton was also a commoner, which made her eligible for torture. None is mentioned in her case, but perhaps it wasn't needed.

The charges against Dr. Bocking and Barton are outlined in the Letters and Papers:

Edward Bocking, D.D., frequently railed against the King's marriage before the false nun of St. Sepulchre's, whose ghostly father he was. She, to please him, feigned to have a revelation from God that the King would not live a month after his marriage; and when this did not come true, feigned another revelation to the effect that the King was no longer accepted King, by God. after his marriage. They reported this among those whom they knew to be opposed to the King's marriage.

[...]

The Nun has confessed that the letter purporting to have been written by Mary Magdalene in Heaven, and sent to a widow in London, was written by a monk of St. Augustine's, in Canterbury, named Hawkeherst, who has confessed to the writing thereof and the lymning of the golden words “Jesus Maria" above the letter.

Barton was accused of being in a conspiracy with the pope's agents and other persons to put the king "in a murmur and evil opinion of his people," and thus endanger his crown and royal dignity. Her prophecies were deemed to be

lyes by them unlawfully and traiterously practysed devysed ymagyned and conspired, as well to the blasphemy of Almyghty God.

Her voluminous recorded prophecies and admonitions were searched for anything that could be deemed heretical, and anything contrary to Catholic doctrine was pointed out in the sermons that condemned her. It was important to show she was not as perfectly in line with doctrine as she'd been made out to be. She could not be the voice of God is she had errors in her teachings.

Bishop Fisher and Thomas More also stood in jeopardy, but More was able to produce the letter in which he urged her to stop speaking on political matters, and Bishop Fisher was let off with a fine ... for a time. Lady Exeter threw herself on the mercy of the king, pleading her gender as a defense: 

I am but a woman whose fragility and brittleness is such as most facile easily and lightly is seduced and brought into abusion.

Chapuys wrote to the emperor about Barton's arrest, and says there were efforts to tie her activities to Katharine:

Some days ago the King ordered the arrest and trial of a nun who had hitherto borne both the name and reputation of a good, simple, and sanctified creature, and of having been blessed at times with Divine revelations. The cause of her imprisonment is her having said, written, and affirmed in public, as well as in private, that she had had a revelation to the effect that within a very short period of time not only would this king lose his crown, but would also be expelled from the kingdom and damned, and that she had had a spiritual vision of the particular place and spot destined to him in Hell.

Various friars and other worthy people have been committed to prison charged with having stirred up this said nun to deliver that and other prophecies for the express purpose of promoting revolution among the people. And yet it would seem as if at all times God had inspired the Queen to behave in such a manner as to avoid the possibility of the King's suspicions falling on her; for notwithstanding the many and oft-repeated efforts made by the nun to obtain an audience, in order, as she said, to console her in her affliction and adversity, it was always denied her. The Queen, in fact, would never receive her, and now finds that she acted wisely.

All this time the King's Privy Councillors are making most diligent search and inquiries as to whether the Queen ever wrote or sent a message to the said nun; but she is perfectly at ease on that score, for she declares that she never had anything to do with her, but only with the marquis and marchioness of Excestre (Exeter), and with the good bishop of Rochestre (Fisher), who, it must be said for the sake of truth, have been on very intimate terms with the said nun.

The charges against Barton weren't quite enough. Henry didn't want to create a martyr in the eyes of the people. The king's agents began to spread rumors that Barton had been unchaste. The sermon preached against her at St. Paul's after her arrest said she left her cell at all hours of the night, and she "went not about the saying of her Pater Noster!" She was said to have been brought to Dr. Bocking at night by his servants and returned to the convent in the morning.

As Dr. Bocking was accused of coaching her as to what to say in her "revelations," Barton was reduced from a "holy maid" to a woman faking visions to please her lover. Instead of a holy mystic, she was merely the tool of traitorous men, or perhaps those who wanted to enrich themselves and the little shrine by making it a site of pilgrimage.

In the end, there was no trial. Henry was uncertain he had enough to legally condemn Barton and her followers of treason, since the laws were not yet in place which he would use to condemn later "traitors" who merely spoke against him. Barton and her followers were condemned by Act of Attainder.

They hunted down every copy of Barton's books of prophecy, and did the job so effectively that not a single copy survives to the the present day.

John Capon, a protegee of Anne Boleyn - who hoped for an appointment as a bishop - preached the sermon which denounced barton at St. Paul's. Barton stood on a platform before the crowd as the sermon was delivered condemning her as a fraud. The sermon debunked the "souvenirs" of her mystical travels, such as the veil she'd said were scorched in the fires of hell as being burned by Barton herself. She'd had a local monk create the gold-embellished manuscript, and had simply rubbed the handkerchief on some smelly thing to make it stink. "You know wot I mean," the sermon reads after that last line, presumably with a waggle of the eyebrows for comedic effect. The sermon stated Barton had gotten fat off the offerings of her followers while ordering them to fast to starvation for their sins.

When the hour-long sermon ended, Barton and her followers read a confession admitting what had been said was all true and begging for forgiveness from the king. They were taken to the Tower to await their fate.

Barton would not have been housed in the luxurious apartments where Anne Boleyn was later imprisoned, nor even in the stark confines of the Bell Tower where Bishop Fisher later languished. Barton would have been thrown into one of the miserable dungeon cells, chained to the wall in a dank, dark stone chamber, perhaps with a thin handful of straw scattered on the floor and a bucket for her waste.

On March 24, the Bill of Attainder passed Parliament, and three weeks later, Elizabeth Barton, Dr. Bocking, Richard Masters, and seven others were transported to Tyburn. Barton was dressed only in a shift. Her nun's habit had been stripped from her. She was likely filthy from her long imprisonment, starved and weak. Prisoners of the era had to pay for their food, water and bedding, and Barton was indigent. Her nun's habit had probably been taken to pay her jailor.

She made a brief speech, almost certainly not of her own authorship:

Hither I am come to die, and I have not been only the cause of mine own death, which most justly I have deserved, but also am the cause of the death of all those persons which at this time here suffer. And yet to say the truth, I am not so much to be blamed, considering that it was well known to these learned men that I was a poor wench without learning, and therefore they might easily have perceived that the things that were done by me could not proceed in no such sort; but their capacities and learning could right well judge, from whence they proceeded, and that they were altogether feigned; but because the thing which I feigned was profitable to them, therefore they much praised me, and bore me in hand, that it was the Holy Ghost and not I, that did them; and then I, being puffed up with their praises fell into a certain pride and foolish fantasy with myself, and thought I might feign what I would, which thing hath brought me to this case: and for the which now, I cry God and the King's Highness most heartily mercy, and desire you, all good people, to pray to God to have mercy on me, and on all them that here suffer with me.

Perhaps it was this willingness to confess in public that saved Barton from the usual execution for a woman of burning at the stake. 

Hanging in the Tudor era didn't involve a swift snap of the neck like modern hanging. The condemned stood in the back of a cart while nooses were looped around their neck, tied to the triangular frame above them. The horses were slapped and the cart drawn away from under them. They slowly strangled as the crowd watched.

Some condemned paid for the privacy of hoods to cover their faces. Barton wouldn't have had the money for that. They could also pay the executioner to ensure a quicker death; he would grab hold of their legs and pull downward to make them strangle quicker. Barton wouldn't have been given the courtesy.

She would have died with the sound of the crowd laughing and jeering at her reddened face, and protruding tongue. The Tudors loved executions and saw them as a jolly good time, and Henry's agents had done a fine job of destroying her image as a holy woman. 

After her body finished jerking in their death throes, it was cut down and beheaded. Her head was boiled to preserve it and then impaled on Tower bridge as a warning to other traitors. 

Her followers fared far worse, suffering the full horrors of a traitor's death. They were cut down while still alive, castrated, then their stomachs cut open and their entrails burned before them. Only then were they beheaded, ending their torment. Their bodies were hacked into quarters to be sent all over the kingdom and displayed as an object lesson in what happens to those who fall afoul of the wrath of the king.

Their clothing was stripped as a payment for the executioner. Barton's headless corpse was buried in a mass grave in the cemetery of the Grey Friars. 

St. Sepulchre convent was dissolved in 1537, and the land later granted to one of Henry's courtiers. No trace of the convent buildings remains today. Barton's ghost is said to haunt the church of Grey Friars.

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