The Tower of London is one of the grizzliest landmarks in the United Kingdom, having been
the setting for countless executions over the years. But do you know the stories of
the people who died there — and can you guess when the final execution took place?
Sir Thomas More held various positions in the 1520s, including chancellor of
England and speaker of the House of Commons. He was also the secretary,
confidant, and "intellectual courtier" to King Henry VIII.
More was also a writer, publishing his satirical book Utopia in December 1516.
More's religious views were staunchly Catholic, which became a problem for King Henry when he
forced his kingdom's split with the Roman church in 1534. The break from Rome was enacted by the
Act of Supremacy, which declared Henry as the Supreme Head of the Church of England, allowing
the tyrant-king to divorce and remarry at will. The law also demanded that all public officials
accept Henry's new religion by taking the Oath of Supremacy — which More could not accept.
When More refused to accept the oath, Henry imprisoned him for treason.
More could have taken the oath and received a pardon, but the man stuck to his principles.
Before his beheading on Tower Hill on July 6th, 1535, More said:
"I die the king's good servant, and God's first."
In his desperate pursuit of a male heir, Henry VIII had Thomas Cranmer,
the first Archbishop of Canterbury, annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon on May 23rd,
1533. Shortly before that, on January 25th, Henry had secretly married Anne Boleyn,
who was over 20 years younger than Catherine. She quickly fell pregnant,
although the child would turn out to be another daughter — the future Elizabeth I.
After a further miscarriage and a stillborn son, Henry is said to have lost interest
in his second wife, quickly engaging in trysts with other women. On May 2nd, 1536,
Henry charged Boleyn with adultery and incest, committing her to the Tower of London. Boleyn
was seen as arrogant by the court, who found her guilty of dubious — yet serious — offenses.
Boleyn was executed by sword just 17 days after her arrest, on May 19th,
1536. Hers is one of the most iconic deaths to have ever taken place at the Tower of London.
The son of Henry VIII's aunt, Henry Courtenay had been a supporter of King Henry VII and served in
the English navy during the French Wars of 1512 and 1513. As a close childhood friend,
Henry VIII rewarded him for his loyalty, appointing him to the Privy Council in
1520 and bestowing roles and titles such as Knight of the Garter and Marquis of Exeter.
However, despite this relationship, Courtenay would soon fall foul of Tudor England's brutal
politics. After a falling out with Thomas Cromwell, one of Henry's closest servants, the
king sent Courtenay to suppress the Pilgrimage of Grace. Courtenay failed to redeem himself during
the so-called Pilgrimage, which is remembered as one of the greatest uprisings of the Tudor period.
On November 5th, 1538, Courtenay was arrested on grounds of conspiracy. After a brief trial,
he was found guilty on December 9th, 1538, and promptly beheaded on Tower Hill.
A mortal enemy of Henry VIII, Margaret Pole's death was a horrific affair. Born into the royal
Plantagenet family, Pole enjoyed great wealth at the beginning of Henry's reign owing to her title,
Countess of Salisbury, which came with substantial income from land and estates.
However, her intense Catholic faith, which she shared with her son Reginald,
put Pole in a very dangerous situation. When Reginald expressed his stern disapproval of
Henry's Act of Supremacy, the king rounded up every family member he could. In 1539,
Pole was stripped of her land and title and sent to the tower, where she was sentenced to death.
On May 27th, 1541, Pole was beheaded by an executioner who a contemporary
account referred to as a "blundering youth" who, quote, "hacked her head and shoulders to pieces."
Catherine Howard met an older Henry VIII as he entered the final years of his life.
Howard knew how to get a man's attention, and she successfully enticed the increasingly corpulent,
miserable king. They wedded just three weeks after Henry annulled his marriage to Anne of Cleves.
Howard had previously discovered her sexuality with Henry Manox, her music teacher, and Francis
Dereham, a handsome and affluent young man. Six months into their marriage, Howard is said to have
exchanged letters and gifts with Thomas Culpeper, a man with whom she also met privately. Further
rumors began to spread, eventually reaching Henry, who demanded that an investigation be launched.
Any illusions of virginity were shattered when both Manox and Dereham admitted to their
intimacies with Howard, the latter of whom wrote a desperate letter to Henry. It read, in part:
"The sorrow of mine offenses was ever before mine eyes, considering the infinite goodness
of your Majesty toward me from time to time ever increasing and not diminishing."
Her pleas went unheard, however, and on February 13th, 1542, Howard was beheaded
on Tower Green. Despite having died on the other side of the city, Howard's ghost is
famously said to wander the halls of Hampton Court Palace, the principal residence of Henry VIII.
"It's on this gallery that the specter of Catherine Howard comes running,
screaming for her life."
Known as the "Nine Days' Queen," Lady Jane Grey was beheaded on February 12th, 1554.
As her moniker suggests, Grey's curious reign began just nine days prior, following the
death of her cousin, King Edward VI, who chose Grey to be queen because she was a protestant.
The Royal Council's support for Grey's reign was challenged by Mary I,
the Catholic daughter of Henry VIII, who had a whole army of supporters who considered her
the rightful heir to the English throne. Grey's husband, Lord Guildford Dudley,
subsequently assembled a host of his own, but the Royal Council reneged on their support for Grey,
declaring Guildford a traitor and naming Mary as the queen.
By July 20th, support for Lady Jane Grey had all but vanished. She was
detained at the Tower of London, where she and her husband were charged with treason.
Both were found guilty and sentenced to death, but Mary I wasn't to sign their
death warrants until the Wyatt Rebellion, which shocked Mary into killing basically
all of her political adversaries. Lady Jane Grey was the last person to be executed on Tower Green,
which was traditionally reserved for the private executions of high-status individuals.
Most people executed at the Tower of London were beheaded, but this method was occasionally deemed
insufficient for certain enemies of the crown. Thomas Wyatt was one such offender.
Wyatt was the leader of the Wyatt Rebellion, which was a plot to dethrone Catholic Mary
I and replace her with her half-sister, Princess Elizabeth, who was a Protestant.
However, the plan failed to materialize owing to a lack of organization by the rebels.
In February 1554, Wyatt marched on Ludgate with a small army, but he was outnumbered
and outmaneuvered by Mary's soldiers, who forced Wyatt and his men to surrender.
Wyatt was tried at Westminster Hall on 15th March and protested his innocence,
but a death sentence was all but inevitable. Just under a month later, on April 11th,
Wyatt was taken to the scaffold at Tower Hill, where he was beheaded and carved into four pieces.
In grisly Tudor fashion, his quartered remains were parboiled and nailed up in Newgate,
while his head was displayed in St James'... before being promptly stolen. Still,
Wyatt arguably got the last laugh, as his chosen queen-to-be, Elizabeth, survived
the political fallout from the rebellion — and later took the throne on the death of Queen Mary.
Robert Devereux was an aristocrat, known for his charm and energy, who was particularly popular
with Queen Elizabeth I — despite their 33 age gap. However, Devereux was also jealous, thin-skinned,
and easily irritated by female authority. For example, he once turned his back to Elizabeth in
frustration, which was a grave violation of royal etiquette. Outraged, the queen hit Devereux on the
side of the head, causing him to get even angrier. As penance, Devereux was sent to repress an Irish
uprising in 1599, yet he failed in his objective and blamed pretty much everyone but himself.
Upon his return to England, Devereux was suspended from his duties and placed under house arrest.
No doubt furious, Devereux assembled a mob of a hundred men on February 8th, 1601. He
led this baying crowd towards the City of London, encouraging passers-by to join him in his mission.
On February 19th, Devereux was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death.
As he was escorted to Tower Green, the disgraced nobleman claimed that he was, quote,
"thus justly spewed out of this realm." It took three strikes of the ax to finish the job.
Known for his bravado and violent inclinations, Simon Fraser was the last man to be beheaded in
England on April 9th, 1747. Fraser was killed on suspicion of supporting the Jacobites and
their leader, Charles Edward Stuart, who is better known as "Bonnie Prince Charlie."
Fraser's actions constituted part of the Jacobite rising, which was a Scottish effort to restore
the House of Stuart to the British throne. Bonnie Prince Charlie assembled fighting
forces to attack inexperienced English troops, defeating a group led by Sir John Cope at the
Battle of Prestonpans on September 21st, 1745. The Jacobites continued southwards,
but exhaustion caused Bonnie Prince Charlie to retreat. The Jacobite cause would come to a head
at the Battle of Culloden on April 16th, 1746. Fraser rallied his own fighting clan for the
battle, but his men were butchered on Culloden Moor, forcing him to flee to the Highlands.
Fraser was caught on Loch Morar and taken to London, where he was found guilty of treason.
Moments before his execution on Tower Hill on April 9th, 1747, Fraser remarked:
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."
This is a Latin expression meaning "It is sweet and seemly to die for one's country".
From 1914 to 1916, 10 German spies were executed by firing squad at
the Tower of London. The first of these spies was Carl Hans Lody,
a German naval officer who arrived in Britain at the beginning of the First World War.
Posing as an American, Lody traveled to Scotland, where he had orders to spy on
Britain's naval capacity. However, Lody was poorly equipped and ill-experienced.
He was quickly identified by MI5, captured, found guilty of espionage, and sentenced to death.
Soon after, he was executed by firing squad at the Tower of London's firing range on November 6th,
1914. Lody was the first man in over 150 years to be executed at the tower.
Over the next two years, his death would be followed by the executions of nine fellow spies.
Josef Jakobs was a spy who worked for the Abwehr, Germany's military intelligence unit.
Trained in wireless communication, Jakobs was transported to England in the hold of a
German bomber on January 31st, 1941. However, Jako bs injured his ankle when he left the
aircraft's hatch and only worsened his injury when he parachuted into a farm in Huntingdon.
It was some time after 8:30pm and Jakobs was in extreme pain — so he stayed put
and chain-smoked throughout the night. The next morning,
Jakobs was found by two farm hands who handed him over to local police; they
diagnosed a broken ankle but sent the German spy to London, where he was held in Brixton prison.
After enduring several months' worth of fevers, bouts of sepsis, and interrogations, Jakobs was
charged with violating the Treachery Act of 1940 on July 24th, 1941. Soon after, on August 5th,
he was found guilty and sentenced to death. 10 days later, Jakobs was taken to the same miniature
firing range used at the Tower of London during the First World War. He was strapped to a chair,
cloaked with a hood and shot dead. Jakobs was the last person to be executed at the Tower of London.
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