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Executions at the Tower of London
DIRECTIONS
Leave the White Tower and walk left to the grassy area lined with huge plane trees and patrolled by sinister-looking ravens.
There is an old prophecy that, if the ravens leave the Tower, the monarchy will fall. These proud territorial birds are protected by royal decree, and the future of the monarchy is assured by the clipping of the ravens’ wings. Go to the plaque marking the site of the scaffold and stand upon the spot where numerous illustrious people ended their days on the headsman’s block. Many are buried in the church you are facing – St Peter Ad Vicula.
One execution, however, stands out as more shameful and gruesome than all the others, that of seventy-two-year-old Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury. Her crime was that she was the mother of Cardinal Pole, who from his safe haven in France had vilified Henry VIII’s claim as head of the Church in England.
Unable to punish the Cardinal, Henry opted to exact savage retribution by sentencing his mother to death. On 27 May, 1541, she stepped onto the scaffold and stared contemptuously at the executioner. When told to place her head on the block she refused. ‘So should traitors do and I am none.’ The executioner raised his axe, took a swing at her, then chased the screaming countess around the scaffold and hacked her to death. Her last moments have been played out on the anniversary of the shameful event ever since, as her screaming phantom attempts to escape from a ghostly executioner.
DIRECTIONS
With your back to the block, walk along the pathway to the left of the lawn, pause by the final plane tree and look across to the dark brick house with the blue front door.
Here another tragic resident, Lady Jane Grey, ‘The Nine Day Queen’, was kept prisoner. On 12 February, 1554, she watched from an upstairs window as her husband, Guildford Dudley, was led, sobbing, to his execution. Later that day, the sixteen-year-old girl, who had been pushed onto the throne by an ambitious father-in-law, walked bravely to her own death. Ever since, her ghost has appeared on the anniversary of her execution as a white shimmering figure that floats from the rolling river mists, strolls sadly around the green or glides along the battlements, then withers slowly away.
The black-and-white timbered building to the left, known as the Queen’s House, dates from 1530 and is the lodging of the Governor of the Tower of London. It was here that Anne Boleyn spent the days prior to her execution on 19 May, 1536, and it is here that her wraith returns – often with alarming consequences.
In 1864 a sentry was astonished by a headless figure, dressed in white, that suddenly came at him from the darkness. When his challenge failed to halt the spectre’s advance, he raised his bayonet and charged. The weapon went straight through the figure and the sentry fainted from sheer terror. Found by his commanding officer, he was court-martialled for dereliction of duty, but was saved from disciplinary action by two witnesses who testified that they had seen the entire episode.
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