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.
On this day..
- 1733: Henry Neal, for shoes and breeches - 2020
- 1726: Thomas Craven and William Anderson, reluctant autobiographers - 2019
- 1696: Thomas Randal, obstinate - 2018
- 2015: Robert Ladd, "let's ride" - 2017
- 1802: Joseph Wall - 2016
- 1745: Eve, her smoke visible throughout the country - 2015
- 1879: John Achey and William Merrick, the first hanged in Indianapolis - 2015
- 1253: P. Morret, poor guesser - 2014
- 1913: Edward Hopwood, clumsy suicide - 2013
- Daily Double: Century-Old English Legal Novelties - 2013
- 1912: Albert Wolter, white slaver - 2012
- 1869: Chauncey W. Millard, candy man - 2011
- 1810: Pedro Domingo Murillo, for Bolivian independence - 2010
- 2006: A female spy by al Qaeda - 2009
- Themed Set: The English Reformation - 2008
Entry Filed under: 16th Century,Beheaded,England,Lucky to be Alive,Nobility,Not Executed,Politicians,Power,Scandal,Treason
Tags: 1540s, 1547, anne boleyn, catherine howard, henry howard, henry viii, january 29, katherine howard, kathryn howard, The Tower of London, thomas howard, tudor england
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