1547: Not Thomas Howard, because Henry VIII died first
January 29th, 2008 Headsman
On this date in 1547, the Duke of Norfolk was to have been beheaded.
But thanks to the previous day’s death of the corpulent 55-year-old King Henry VIII, the duke’s death warrant was never signed, and the condemned noble died in bed … seven years later.
A force in the gore-soaked arena of English politics for two generations, Thomas Howard had steered two nieces into the monarch’s bed. Both girls had gone to the scaffold,* and the disgrace of the second, Catherine Howard, brought a collapse in the whole family’s fortunes. Thomas Howard’s son Henry was not as lucky as the father: Henry was beheaded just a few days before the king succumbed, on the same charge of treason that almost claimed Thomas this day.
Though Howard pere would survive long enough to see his title restored, this day was far from the last chapter of his grasping family’s encounter with that classic Tudor denouement, the chopping-block. Thomas, his executed son, and his executed grandson today stock the family tombs at St. Michael, Framlingham — itself a sort of late monument to the aristocracy unmade by Henry’s reforms more than by his executioners.
* “She has miscarried of her savior,” Howard famously remarked of the male heir his niece Anne Boleyn delivered stillborn. A few months later, the Duke presided over Anne’s trial and voted to condemn her to death. (Hat tip: Fiz.)
Part of the Themed Set: The English Reformation.
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Entry Filed under: 16th Century, Beheaded, England, Lucky to be Alive, Nobility, Not Executed, Politicians, Power, Scandal, Treason
Tags: The Tower of London
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5 Comments Add your own
1. ExecutedToday.com »&hellip | February 11th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
[...] VI; for this, he was convicted of treason in a trial managed by his old friend and fellow-survivor Thomas Howard. (Source) The Queen spared him execution on this charge in order to have him up on heresy instead, [...]
2. ExecutedToday.com »&hellip | February 13th, 2009 at 1:21 am
[...] Howard* was born sometime between 1518 and 1524 to Lord Edmund Howard (a younger brother of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk) and his wife Joyce Culpepper. Joyce died while Kathryn was young and her [...]
3. ExecutedToday.com »&hellip | July 16th, 2009 at 1:31 am
[...] she evidently became a pawn in courtly politics; with the obese and aging king liable to drop dead any moment, religious and political authority during the succession was at [...]
4. ExecutedToday.com »&hellip | July 28th, 2009 at 1:23 am
[...] by: with the German princess on the outs, the king’s wandering eye had fallen upon a niece of Cromwell’s enemy. On the day that Cromwell lost his head, Henry married Catherine Howard. No matter your brilliance, [...]
5. ExecutedToday.com »&hellip | November 14th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
[...] 1853: Nicholas Saul and William Howlett, teenage New York gangsters 1547: Not Thomas Howard, because Henry VIII died first [...]
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