While down in London for a few days, I took a walk one morning along the banks of the Thames to the Tower of London. Walking around the perimeter walls and against the tide of tourists heading to the entrance, I made my way up to Tower Hill and on to Trinity Square Gardens, a small park of well-tended lawns and flowerbeds. It was quiet there away from the hubbub of the busy metropolis, with a few other people here and there and a couple of old blokes in suits sitting together on a bench sharing a flask of tea. The tranquillity of the gardens was broken briefly when a tour guide, with a dozen tourists following behind her, wandered in to point out some rather grand memorials there that commemorate the Merchant Seamen lost in both world wars. In under a minute, she and her little group hurried off somewhere else.
I
wasn’t there to see these monuments though; I was there to see a memorial to
the dark past of this little park. Walking
round the path I came to a corner shaded by tall trees where, amongst some low
growing shrubbery, there were some rather unobtrusive plaques dedicated to the
memory of a host of people. For it was
here that the Tower Hill scaffold once stood.
For over four hundred years it was the site of public executions where
those convicted of anything from high treason to coin clipping met their end. Many others, however, were executed for holding
political or religious views that didn’t conform with those of whichever
monarch was on the throne at the time. It
is estimated that around 125 people were executed here.
You
may wonder why the tour guide with her little posse hadn’t thought to lead them
over to have a look at this, well it was probably because the most glamourous
victims of the executioner’s axe didn’t lose their heads here. Those A-listers
such as Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard and Lady Jane Grey were given the chop in
the grounds of the Tower of London rather than here. However, there were some big names in British
history who met their ends on Tower Hill.
Probably
the most famous person to be executed here was Thomas Cromwell. He was once one of the most powerful men in
England being the chief advisor to King Henry VIII. He was
a man who made many enemies during his illustrious career, and they brought
about his downfall by persuading Henry that he was plotting against him. He was condemned to death without a trial and
was executed at Tower Hill on 28th of July 1540. Recently, his name has become much more
widely known due to the Man Booker Prize winning novels of Hilary Mantel, Wolf
Hall and Bring up the Bodies, and the television series Wolf Hall,
an adaptation of the novels.
Another
of the big names in British history to meet his end here was John Dudley, the
1st Duke of Northumberland. He was the man
who, after the death of Henry VIII, became the power behind King Edward VI. When it became clear that the young King was
dying, Dudley used his influence to persuade him to change his will so that
Lady Jane Grey, who was Protestant and also Dudley’s daughter in law, would be
named as his successor, rather than Edward’s Catholic sister Mary. It didn’t turn out well. Much of the nobility supported Mary’s claim
to the throne and though Jane was proclaimed Queen she was deposed by Mary’s
supporters a few days later. Dudley was quickly
arrested, found guilty of high treason and executed on 22nd August
1553 at Tower Hill. His son, the husband
of the unfortunate Lady Jane, was executed at the same spot a few months later.
It
wasn’t always those that went against the monarch that ended up facing the
executioner’s axe here. Thomas
Wentworth, the 1st Earl of Strafford was sent to his death by Parliament. Wentworth was a trusted advisor to King
Charles I who made him the Lord Deputy of Ireland. In Ireland, Wentworth’s main goal seemed to have
been raising lots of cash for the Crown by seizing bits of land from various
landowners. This, and his rather
arrogant behaviour, made him very unpopular there. He was recalled to England by the King who
needed his help in crushing a rebellion by the Scots. Wentworth advised the King to recall
Parliament (which basically only sat when the King needed something) to raise
funds to crush the uprising, and he also tried to raise an army in Ireland. However,
Parliament was reluctant to raise the cash and was quickly dissolved
again. Meanwhile, the Scots army had
soon overrun parts of Northern England. Unable
to raise an army strong enough to deal with the Scots, the King was forced to make
peace with them and pay their war expenses.
The King though was skint. So, he
had to recall Parliament again. Those in
Parliament were now pretty fed up with the King and especially with Wentworth,
who was seen as a threat to the very existence of the Parliament itself. Many in Parliament believed that Wentworth
had been plotting against them and had intended to use the army he had raised in
Ireland against them rather than the Scots.
To rid themselves of him, they had him impeached and charged with
treason. At his subsequent trial Wentworth
skilfully defended himself and the impeachment failed. Nevertheless, it was decided that he had to
go, therefore the leader of Parliament, John Pym brought in a Bill of Attainder
(an act that declared someone guilty of a crime without trial and also provides
the punishment to be dealt on them).
This bill passed in Parliament and Wentworth was condemned to
death. On the 12th of May 1641,
Wentworth was beheaded on Tower Hill, with a huge crowd of onlookers attending
to watch.
In
1780 the last executions were carried out at Tower Hill when three people were
hanged there. They were William
McDonald, Mary Roberts and Charlotte Gardiner, who had been convicted of destroying
a house and property during the Gordon Riots, a series of anti-Catholic riots
that took place in London over several days.
After this, public executions in
London mainly took place on the gallows at Tyburn, near Marble Arch.
After
having a wander around the park and taking a few photos, I left the Skulferatu
that had accompanied me in one of the metal links of the chain fence around the
memorial.
The
coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are -
I
used the following sources for information on Tower Hill Scaffold Site –
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