The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn (48 page)

It is unlikely that Anne was allowed to watch with Wyatt, so she may have been looking out from another room in the Bell Tower, or from high up in the Byward Tower, which also afforded a view of Tower Hill.

According to John Husee, the men all “died very charitably.”
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In the sixteenth century, great store was set by the way one met one’s death. Redemption could be implicit in confession, repentance, and resignation. There was also a code of etiquette to be observed on the scaffold, and it was customary for those about to die to make a pious farewell speech for the edification of those watching, in which they confessed their fault, acknowledged the justness of their fate, and made their final peace with God before making a Christian end. Their words were meant to serve as a warning to others. This was not the place to deny one’s guilt, or to criticize the King’s justice; to do so might have led to a severer penalty being imposed, or could have rebounded on the often destitute relatives who were left behind, while those rash enough to plead innocence, such as the fourth Duke of Norfolk in 1572, would find the sheriff intervening to stop them.
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On this day, George Constantine was in the crowd, within earshot of the condemned men, and would tell Cromwell that he watched them die
and “heard them, and wrote every word they spake.” He added that “in a manner” every one of them confessed, although clearly it was not necessarily to the crimes they were to suffer for. All admitted that they had deserved to die for having led sinful lives, but none alluded to the specific offenses for which they had been condemned. They could have been acknowledging only the general sins of a lifetime.

Rochford, as the highest in rank, mounted the scaffold first and “with a loud voice”
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made a long and pious speech, of which several versions survive. Crispin de Milherve says that Rochford “exhorted those who suffered with him to die without fear; and [he] said to those that were about him that he came to die since it was the King’s pleasure that it should be so. He exhorted all persons not to trust to courts, states, and kings, but in God only” and prayed that he “might be forgiven by all whom he had injured.” He admitted “he deserved a heavier punishment for his other sins, but not from the King, whom he had never offended. Yet he prayed God to give him a long and good life.” If these were truly his words, then this was as close to sniping at the King as a prisoner on a scaffold dared get, but Rochford would have realized that Henry could hardly take vengeance on his widow, since it was her evidence that had secured his death. In affirming that he had never offended the King, Rochford was, with his dying breath, proclaiming himself innocent of the charge of incest.

Another, similar version of this speech is in the
Chronicle of Calais
, which has Rochford stating:

Rochford’s description of his sinfulness in this reliable account of his speech went way beyond what was normally required of a last confession, and goes a long way toward confirming the theory that he had indulged in what were then regarded as unnatural sexual practices.

There are many reported versions of Rochford’s scaffold speech, and great similarities in all of them: he acknowledged his sinful life, regretted he had not followed the teachings of the Gospel he had preached, exhorted the people to beware the flatteries of the court, and submitted to the law that had condemned him. But there are a few significant discrepancies. Milherve and Chapuys both assert that Rochford denied he had offended against the King, while the Portuguese account claims that he did acknowledge his crimes against God and his sovereign, and prayed Henry to pardon him. These discrepancies may have arisen from his words becoming garbled in the telling, or because different observers reported the passages that impressed them, while some either misheard what was said or elaborated in order to make a political or moral point.
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Certainly Rochford spoke at some length before he submitted to the axe and died bravely as befit a gentleman, and we cannot begin to imagine the thoughts of the men who were awaiting their turn to die. Even if the axe hit home cleanly, on the nape, it was a brutal death, for it did not so much as slice neatly through the neck as hew through flesh and bone. And
because beheadings were rare in England, hanging being the customary form of judicial execution, executioners were often unpracticed in the art. There was no guarantee of a swift end, and when Rochford “lay upon the ground with his head on the block, the headsman gave three strokes.”
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According to Lancelot de Carles, when the other three gentlemen came to die, “they said nothing, as if they had commissioned Rochford to speak for them”—or maybe they were appalled at the butchery they had just witnessed. The Imperialist account also claims that the four men who followed Rochford to the block “said nothing except to pray for God’s and the King’s forgiveness, and to bid us pray for their souls.”
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None spoke at length, yet obviously they did say more than Carles and the Imperialist—who may not have been able to hear everything—would have us believe, as the gist of their words was written down by other witnesses.

The Portuguese asserted that, after Rochford, “Norris was beheaded, then Weston and Brereton, and Mark”;
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against this is the statement in the
Histoire de la Royne Anne de Boullant
, which also gives the order of the executions, that Weston was next to mount the scaffold. Yet it is more likely that Norris, who was next in rank and importance after Rochford, came second. According to his man Constantine, “the others confessed [he does not say to what], all but Mr. Norris, who said almost nothing at all.” However, Burnet has him stating, “I do not think that any gentleman of the court owes more to [the King] than I do, and hath been more ungrateful and regardless of it than I have.” The crowd might well have thought this to be an admission of guilt, but then he fearlessly spoke out in Anne’s defense, and “loyally averred that in his conscience, he thought the Queen innocent of these things laid to her charge; but whether she was or not, he would not accuse her of anything, and he would die a thousand times rather than ruin an innocent person.” Constantine does not mention this brave and provocative declaration, but then his account of Rochford’s speech is greatly truncated. The “Spanish Chronicle” states that Norris “made a great long prayer” and said he had been ungrateful to the King and deserved death, but again, this source is unreliable.

Weston followed. “I had thought to live in abomination yet this twenty or thirty years, and then to have made amends,” he said mournfully. “I thought little I would come to this.” His mention of a life of “abomination” might be understood to refer to illicit sexual acts, although there must have been those among his hearers who took it to mean his adultery
with the Queen or just his general sinfulness. His last words were an exhortation to learn “by example of him.”

Brereton was beheaded next. “I have deserved to die if it were a thousand deaths,” he declared, probably referring to his nefarious activities in Wales, “but the cause whereof I die judge ye not. But if ye judge, judge the best.” Hearing him repeat this last sentence “three or four times,” and remembering that no witnesses had testified against Brereton at his trial, Constantine clearly
was
inclined to judge the best. “If any of them was innocent, it was he,” he wrote, “for if he were guilty, I say therefore that he died worst of them all.” He meant by the latter that Brereton, if guilty, should have made a less ambiguous speech, confessing his crimes and calling on God’s forgiveness, for dying with a sin unconfessed would have been seen as inviting eternal damnation.
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Brereton’s admission that he deserved to die a thousand deaths seems a rather overstated confession of human frailty, and may suggest that he, like Rochford and Weston, was guilty of indulging in forbidden sexual practices.
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The “Spanish Chronicle” contradicts Constantine’s evidence, and (probably falsely) asserts that Brereton said nothing but “I have offended God and the King; pray for me.”

Finally it came to Smeaton’s turn; being of low degree, he was obliged to wait until last. By now the block and the scaffold would have been awash with blood and piled with butchered bodies, so it is hardly surprising that he faltered when making his speech, which was brief and damning, and in which he declared “he was justly punished for his misdeeds.”
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“Masters,” he cried, “I pray you all pray for me, for I have deserved the death.”
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Possibly he feared, even at this late stage, that he might be made to suffer the full horrors of a traitor’s end if he protested his innocence, for the privilege of dying by the axe was not normally accorded to a “varlet”
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such as he. Milherve says that his confession of guilt gave rise to “many reflections.” Maybe some wondered if he felt he deserved death for betraying Anne, rather than for having betrayed the King.
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The Imperialist commentator, who was certainly watching, reported that “Brereton and Mark were afterward quartered,”
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and on June 2, Jean Hannaert of Lyons was to inform the Empress how “the bodies were quartered.”
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Yet it is possible that this eyewitness left immediately after the beheadings and merely assumed that the bodies were quartered, for no other witness makes any mention of quartering, and it was usually
done so the quarters could be displayed on spikes as a warning to would-be traitors. In this case, there is ample evidence that the “bodies” and heads of all the men were buried that same day.

The executions sparked much comment. The conventional references to sinfulness in the scaffold speeches were clearly seen by some as confessions of guilt, thus further tarnishing Anne’s reputation. George Constantine wrote that to begin with, he himself and all true friends of the Gospel—that is, the reformists whom Anne had championed over the years—had found it impossible to credit what they had heard of the Queen. “Now because she was a favorer of God’s Word, at the leastwise so taken, I tell you few men would believe that she was so abominable. As I may be saved, before God,
I
could not believe it.” That was “afore I heard them speak at their death. But on the scaffold, in a manner all confessed except Mr Norris,” and Constantine found himself convinced that all were guilty as charged.

Milherve, more sympathetic, was of the opinion that all the men “suffered a death which they had no way deserved.” Even the executioner “shed tears, but the bloody corpses were allowed to lie on the scaffold for hours, half dressed,”
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after he and the Tower officials stripped them of the clothing that was their perquisite. When Wyatt wrote, “The axe is home, your heads be in the street” (in a poem he composed during or soon after his captivity), he was not referring to the heads being displayed on pikes above London Bridge, as was customary after traitors had been beheaded, for both Chapuys and Wriothesley make it clear that the condemned men’s “bodies, with their heads, were buried in the Tower of London”;
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instead, Wyatt’s words may be taken to mean that the heads had been lifted or rolled off the scaffold as each new victim mounted it, and then left on the ground before being finally laden on to the cart that would trundle the remains of the five men back into the Tower.

Because he had been a nobleman, “the lord of Rochford’s body and head” were interred before the high altar
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in the royal chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula within the Tower, which had been founded in the twelfth century and largely rebuilt by Henry VIII in 1532, after a disastrous fire in 1512; the rest were laid to rest in the adjacent churchyard, with “Mr. Weston and Mr. Norris in one grave” and “Mr. Brereton and Mark in another.”
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Wriothesley states that “the bodies with the heads” were placed in the graves, but Norris’s family are said to have obtained permission
to claim his head, which they later buried in the private chapel of Ockwells Manor, their house near Maidenhead, Berkshire.
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That house still stands, but only parts of the chapel survive, with no clue as to where the head—if it was ever there at all—might rest.