Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [35]
Once he was dead, his naked corpse was displayed at the site of the execution, as Henry had demanded, and his head put on a spike. Nine days later, More’s sentence of a traitor’s death was commuted from disembowelment to beheading in deference to his former office. He was butchered on July 6 with one stroke of the ax. His corpse was taken to the Chapel Royal of St. Peter ad Vincula within the Tower, where it was interred; his head was parboiled and impaled on a pole on London Bridge.13
News of the executions shocked Europe. In Italy the bishop of Faenza described his horror on reading that the English king had caused “certain religious men” to be “ripped up in each other’s presence, their arms torn off, their hearts cut out and rubbed upon their mouths and faces.”14 Meanwhile, Anne Boleyn urged Henry to mete out punishment to the real traitors, as Chapuys recounted: “She is incessantly crying after the King that he does not act with prudence in suffering the Queen and the Princess to live, who deserved death more than all those who have been executed and that they were the cause of all.”15
Fearing for their lives, Mary wrote to the emperor, pleading for immediate intervention, while Katherine addressed the pope.
Most Holy and Blessed Father,
I have for some time ceased from writing to Your Holiness, though my conscience has reproached me for my silence…. [Now] once more … I do entreat you to bear this realm especially in mind, to remember the King, my lord and husband, and my daughter. Your Holiness knows, and all Christendom knows, what things are done here, what great offence is given to God, what scandal to the world, what reproach is thrown upon your Holiness. If a remedy be not applied shortly, there will be no end to ruined souls and martyred saints…. I write frankly to your Holiness, as one who can feel with me and my daughter for the martyrdom of these good men, whom, it comforts me to hope, we may follow in their sufferings though we cannot imitate their lives…. We await a remedy from God and from Your Holiness. It must come speedily or the time will be past!16
Through a letter to Chapuys, Mary urged her cousin Charles to take action:
Now more than ever those services on your part are urgently required, considering the miserable plight and wretched conditions of affairs in this country, which is such that unless His Majesty, the Emperor, for the service of God, the welfare and repose of Christendom, as well as for the honour of the King, my father, takes pity on these poor afflicted creatures, all and everything will go to total ruin and be irretrievably lost. For the Emperor to apply a prompt remedy, as I hope and trust he will, it is necessary that he should be well and minutely informed of the state of affairs in this country…. I would dare to ask this favour of you, that you dispatch forthwith one of your men, an able one … to the Emperor, and inform him of the whole and beg him, in the name of the Queen, my mother and mine, for the honour of God, and the considerations above mentioned, to take this matter in hand, and provide a remedy for the affairs of this country. 17
Mary was now desperate to escape England. A servant of the imperial ambassador who visited her at Eltham reported that “she thinks of nothing else than how it may be done, her desire for it increasing every day.”18 Chapuys had raised the prospect frequently over the previous two years, but then the immediate danger had receded and plans had not developed further. This time it was different: Mary felt the danger to be greater than ever. She sent word to Chapuys, “begging him most urgently to think over the matter, otherwise she considered herself lost, knowing they wanted only to kill her.”19
Suspicious of Mary’s intentions, Henry ordered that armed watches be kept around every house Mary stayed at and troops were placed at every seaport within a day’s ride of these residences. On November 6, Chapuys wrote that according to Gertrude Blount, marchioness of Exeter, the king “has lately said to some