Tales From the Tower of London

by Donnelly, Mark P.

  The two remained locked in adjoining cells until late in 1499. The boys, both now about twenty-five, were accused of plotting to burn down the Tower of London in order to escape and make their way to Flanders where they planned to launch another bid to put Warwick on the throne. In retribution for this supposed plot, Henry ordered the execution of the boys, along with a Tower warder who was accused of being their accomplice. On 23 November 1499 the Earl of Warwick was beheaded on Tower Hill while Warbeck and the gaoler were hanged at Tyburn.

  Henry VII could now rest easy, but the rest of us are left with an endless string of questions. How did the son of an illiterate Flemish boatman come to have the education, linguistic skills and social graces that allowed him to pass himself off as an English prince in front of half the crowned heads of Europe and still look so much like the missing prince that he could fool various members of his own family? Stranger still, of all the countries Perkin Warbeck might have hailed from, how is it that he just happened to be from the place Sir James Tyrell had travelled to on behalf of Richard III?

  Whatever really happened to the princes following their mysterious disappearance, and the murder of Henry VI twelve years previously, the Tower had developed such a malign reputation that no future monarch of England would live in it. The venerable fortress now began the long descent from royal residence to state prison that would mark its future.

  An interesting footnote to the centuries of accusations that have swirled around Richard III and the disappearance of his nephews took place in the United States in 1997. In an extraordinary mock trial, Richard III was brought up on charges of murdering his nephews. Presiding was a panel of three US Supreme Court judges. Cases for both prosecution and defence were duly presented. The judges returned a unanimous verdict of ‘not guilty on all counts’.

  PART II

  State Prison of the Tudors

  4

  THE WARDEN, THE WOLF AND THE WOMAN

  John Wolfe and Alice Tankerville 1533–4

  It is one of history’s better-known facts that Henry VIII had marital problems. Less well known than his acrimonious relations with six successive wives, however, is the fact that in at least one instance, a clever and beautiful woman nearly got away with picking Henry’s pocket without being married to him, or ever even having met him. Like two of Henry’s wives her story, too, ended in the confines of the Tower of London.

  In October 1531, agents of the king and parliament arrived at the London docks expecting to collect a shipment of 366 gold crowns that had been shipped from the continent to help replenish King Henry’s perpetually depleted royal treasury. With a modern equivalent value of more than £700,000 it was, quite literally, a king’s ransom. To the guards’ surprise, despite having been transported in an iron bound chest, which was securely locked, chained to the floor of the ship and kept under constant guard while at sea and in port, the gold had vanished.

  A massive investigation was launched to recover the gold and bring the perpetrators of the theft to justice, but it took nearly two years before the scanty trail of evidence pointed the finger at a ne’er-do-well sailor named John Wolfe. Wolfe had a reputation as a petty thief, sometime pirate and general thug, but there was little evidence to connect him with the theft beyond the fact that he had been part of the crew that was aboard while it lay at anchor in the London docks. Under the circumstances, however, that was enough for the crown to issue a warrant for Wolfe’s arrest. By the early summer of 1533 he had been apprehended and dragged off to the Tower where he awaited arraignment on charges of conspiracy, theft and treason: not easy charges to face at any time, but especially not under the somewhat tyrannical reign of Henry VIII.

  While Wolfe languished in his cell, his common-law wife Alice Tankerville, who, by all accounts, was a charmer, visited him almost daily. Over the course of her visits, the comely and seductive Alice made friends with two of her husband’s jailers, William Denys and John Bawd. Denys and Bawd were both young and unmarried and more than a little taken with Alice’s obvious charms. They allowed her to bring wine, decent food and treats to her husband, and Bawd and Denys probably received more than their fair share of the woman’s attention in appreciation of their leniency.

  Nearly six months after his arrest, the case against Wolfe collapsed for lack of evidence and he was released. Although free, he decided it would probably be a smart move to leave the country until things cooled off. Ireland seemed a good choice for an extended holiday, but before he left Wolfe met privately with John Bawd and asked him if he would look after Alice while he was gone. Already desperately smitten, Bawd readily agreed.

  Only weeks after Wolfe’s departure, new evidence turned up in the case of the king’s missing gold and it would seem that it not only pointed directly at Wolfe himself, but also implicated Alice Tankerville as an accomplice. Wolfe, of course, was long gone; so to avoid losing any more time over the case both he and Alice Tankerville were tried in absentia by parliament. Even Alice, who was often seen around the Tower where she went to visit John Bawd, was not notified of the charges, or the trial, in which she had been named as a co-defendant. Within days the pair were found guilty of theft and treason and sentenced to death. Only then were formal arrest warrants issued.

  In February 1534, Alice Tankerville was seized and thrown into a windowless cell in Coldharbour Tower, located near the west side of the original White Tower. The only light that filtered into her cell came through a tiny, barred window in the heavy oak cell door. Her hands and feet were shackled, and the shackles were attached to heavy chains looped through iron rings set into the wall. Here she would wait until John Wolfe was recaptured, the authorities decided to execute her alone, or she simply died. Even by the standards of the day Alice’s treatment was so unusually harsh that the daughter of Sir Edmund Walsingham, the Lieutenant of the Tower, interceded with her father on Alice’s behalf. Reluctantly, Walsingham agreed to remove the heavy irons so long as both her cell door and the outer door of Coldharbour Tower remained locked at all times. Food would have to be pushed through a gap beneath the cell door.

  During Alice’s confinement, one of the guards whose schedule placed him on guard duty in the Coldharbour Tower was her old friend, Will Denys. Distressed and concerned for this lovely woman who had been so nice to him while he had guarded her husband, Denys brought Alice small gifts and visited her even when he was not on duty. As his visits increased in regularity and length, gossip filtered back to his boss, Sir John Walsingham, and within a few short weeks Denys was out looking for a new job.

  No matter, Alice Tankerville was a very resourceful young woman. Somehow, John Bawd had his schedule changed so he was Alice’s guard on an almost daily basis. Through the tiny window in her cell door, Bawd’s and Alice’s relationship developed into a romance, at least on John Bawd’s part, and together they conceived a daring escape plan. Alice told Bawd that Will Denys had once mentioned a possible escape route out of Coldharbour Tower, and urged him to verify its feasibility. Together they would work out the final details. At the risk of losing both his job and his head, Bawd agreed. He had already lost his heart to her, so no risk was thought too great to save his Alice from the sort of grisly death that inevitably awaited her.

  Over the next few days, Bawd had a long conversation with a trusted friend named Jeffrey Harrison and a much shorter one with an hosteller who kept a stable not far from the Tower. He also purchased two lengths of rope from a dockside merchant named Sampson at a cost of 13 pence. Next he needed a copy of the key to the outside door of Coldharbour Tower, which had been constantly locked since Alice’s shackles had been removed. There was no way his usual key could be used. When the last guard went off duty at ten o’clock at night, all keys had to be returned to the main guard office. Carefully, Bawd made a duplicate key, filing it away a bit at a time and hiding it in his uniform so he could test it in the lock until it worked perfectly. Finally, he found a smooth, round stick about 18 inches in length.

  When
this strange collection of tools was complete, John Bawd smuggled them in to work with him. Through the bars of Alice’s cell door, he passed the key, the rope and the stick so she could hide them under the straw on her cell floor where they were far less likely to be noticed than if he put them in his trunk in the warder’s dormitory. Now, the pair made their final plans and waited impatiently for a moonless night when the near-total darkness was most likely to cover their escape.

  Two weeks later it was the new moon. That night, as his shift ended, Bawd told Alice to pass the rope back through the cell door. With the coil of rope over his shoulder, he hurried out of the tower before his replacement showed up for work. At ten o’clock that night, Alice’s last guard of the day went off duty, dousing the torches on his way out as he always did. When she heard the ‘clunk’ of the lock in the outside door, Alice went to work. After tucking the duplicate key safely in her bodice, she took the stick Bawd had smuggled in to her, and reached through the gap under the cell door where food was passed to her. With the end of the stick she began fumbling blindly for the pin that secured the hasp on the door. After locating the pin she began tapping it upwards to drive it out of the hasp, jarring the door with her knee to help work it loose. After several nerve-racking minutes, the pin fell to the floor and the door swung open. Feeling her way along the darkened hall and down the steps to the outer door, Alice took the duplicate key from her bodice, unlocked the door and stepped into the darkness of the tower yard.

  To make herself as invisible as possible, she pulled the hood of her long, dark cloak over her head. In the chill March night, Alice hurried away from Coldharbour Tower, feeling her way through the narrow alleyways and up the stone stairs leading to the flat roof of the tower straddling Traitors’ Gate and the small wharf where the condemned were brought into the Tower from the Thames. Here, on the roof of St Thomas’s Tower, John Bawd was waiting. He had tied one end of the rope to an old iron hook embedded in the stone parapet wall and now waited anxiously for Alice to arrive before dropping the rope down the outside of the tower so they could make good their escape. Peering over the parapet, they waited till the night watch passed on their regular rounds of the streets on the opposite side of the moat. Once passed, it would be at least half an hour before they returned. By then John and Alice would be long gone.

  Sliding carefully down the rope, first John and then Alice landed silently on the tiny wharf next to Traitors’ Gate. Untying the small boat used to ferry prisoners from the shore into the Tower, they glided silently across the moat and up to Iron Gate Steps on the far shore. As they stepped out, John pushed the boat back into the moat and towards the wharf; it might look strange if it were spotted tied to the shore and they had to do everything possible to buy time before their escape was discovered.

  As the couple walked across the grassy verge towards a nearby road lined with cottages inhabited by Tower guards with families, Bawd told Alice that he had rented a pair of horses and tethered them nearby. These would carry them to the home of his friend Jeffrey Harrison who had agreed to let them hide out for a few days until the guard had stopped looking for them in the immediate vicinity of the Tower. This should give them enough time to escape London and find passage to the continent. Walking slowly towards the horses, the pair held each other close, talking in hushed tones. Undoubtedly they were excited to be so close to freedom and at the same time terrified they would be discovered. They clung to each other out of excitement, desperation and in the hope that a pair of young lovers would not attract any undue attention from anyone who might pass them on the road.

  Just as they rounded the last corner on their way up Tower Hill to the waiting horses, they were confronted by a group of men carrying lanterns coming in the opposite direction down the narrow lane. The two huddled closer, trying to hide their faces from anyone who might recognise them. Glancing up, Bawd recognised the night watch. They were early. They shouldn’t be at this point for at least another ten minutes. Had the escape taken longer than he thought? Too late. One of the guards, Charles Gore was an old friend and immediately recognised Bawd, calling out a greeting. Waving and mumbling a reply, Bawd and Alice hurried on, pressing themselves against the cottages to stay beyond the reach of the lantern light. But Gore was also an occasional guard of Alice Tankerville and when the pair squeezed past the guard he recognised her. In a few seconds of panic and confusion, the guard fell on John Bawd and Alice Tankerville, snatching away all hope of escape and freedom. There was now no doubt what the future held for either of them.

  Alice was hauled back to her cell where a padlock was put on the door and a 24-hour guard posted outside. At the same time, John Bawd was taken temporarily to the Counter Gaol for questioning. Even without torture, he confessed everything, insisting that he was driven to betray his office and his king ‘only by the love and affection he bore her’.

  For Sir Edmund Walsingham, Lieutenant of the Tower and devoted servant of the crown, the next day must have been one of very mixed emotions. On the one hand, a member of his staff had nearly helped a condemned prisoner escape justice. If the breakout had been successful it would almost certainly have cost Sir Edmund his job, and considering the mercurial temperament of the king, it could also have cost him his head. On the other hand, the plotters had been recaptured and a messenger had brought word that John Wolfe had been apprehended attempting to slip back into England. Evidently, word of his trial and conviction had not reached him in Ireland. Now, everyone would pay for their crimes.

  John Bawd was moved to the notorious cell known as ‘Little Ease’, a cramped hole so small a man could neither stand up nor lie down in it but was constantly forced to remain in a foetal position. Bawd’s interment there is the first of a few scant references to Little Ease, and its exact location has never been determined. Some historians insist it was in the White Tower, but it is more likely that it was located in the cellars beneath the old Flint Tower which was rebuilt in the eighteenth century, obliterating any evidence of the cell. Wherever it was, Little Ease was undoubtedly a nasty place. Bawd was only allowed out for an occasional torturing; not to make him confess, he had already done that freely. The torture was simply a gruesome part of his punishment for treason, of which more was to come.

  For Alice Tankerville and John Wolfe, the end came soon, but not quickly. On 31 March 1534 the pair were carted from the Tower to the stone retaining walls lining the Thames embankment. Here they were securely wrapped in chains and lowered into the water at low tide. Their guards and a crowd of ghoulish fun-seekers gathered to watch as the tide turned and began to creep back in. Inch by inch, the filthy water of the Thames crept up over their legs to their waist and on to their chest; finally drowning the helpless, terrified couple as they struggled frantically to hold their heads above the relentless rising tide. According to the official State Papers of Lord Lisle, an entry for Sunday, 28 March of that year states: ‘Wolfe and his wife Alice Tankerville will be hanged in chains at low water mark upon the Thames on Tuesday. John Bawd is in Little Ease cell in the Tower and is to be racked and hanged.’

  For his part in helping plot history’s only attempted escape by a woman from the Tower of London, John Bawd was racked until his muscles tore and his arms and legs were pulled from their sockets, leaving him in excruciating pain and unable to move on his own. As a final humiliation he was wrapped in chains and suspended over the outer walls of the Tower complex where he slowly died of exposure and dehydration. His body was left to hang there for months, picked at by the crows and the Tower ravens, a festering public display intended to serve as an example to anyone foolish enough to think they could escape the king’s justice.

  For all this mayhem, tragedy and treason, and despite the legitimate efforts of the courts and official investigators, the historical record never mentions that Henry VIII’s 366 gold crowns were ever recovered, leaving open the question of whether John Wolfe and Alice Tankerville were actually guilty of any involvement in the crime. If they were, their
punishment, gruesome as it was, was no more than could be expected by a convicted traitor during the harsh reign of Henry VIII. If they were innocent, their deaths were not only horrible, but a gross miscarriage of justice.

  5

  TREASON IN THE BEDROOM

  Queen Katherine Howard 1540–2

  Henry VIII came to the throne of England in 1509 as a rather awkward seventeen-year-old whose life had been sheltered from nearly all the world’s realities. But within a few years he developed into the very model of a fairy-tale prince. Shortly before his twenty-fifth birthday the Venetian ambassador described him this way: ‘His majesty is the handsomest potentate I ever set eyes on; above the usual height . . . his complexion [is] fair and bright, with auburn hair combed straight and short . . . his throat rather long and thick. . . . He speaks French, English and Latin and a little Italian, plays well on the lute and harpsichord, sings from books on sight, draws the bow with greater strength than any man in England, and jousts marvellously. Believe me he is in every respect a most accomplished Prince. . .’. But as is the case with so many people, time and the harsh realities of life turned Henry into something very different from what was promised in his youth.

  By 1540 Henry had gone through three wives and was on the verge of taking a fourth. When his first Queen, Catherine of Aragon, grew fat and ugly and had only provided her husband with one child, a daughter, Henry divorced her in favour of the young, haughty Anne Boleyn. When she, too, could do no better than give him a single daughter, Henry trumped up sufficient evidence of adultery to send her to the block after less than three years of marriage. His third wife, Jane Seymour, was a gentle, pious woman who gave him the son he longed for but died less than a week after Prince Edward’s birth.