The Tower of London throughout History have been a remarkably tough medieval and tudor
prison to break out of.
It’s considered one of the most notorious execution sites in History, but also a place
where torture and justice was administered with brutality and savagery at times.
One of the most shocking stories to emerge from the Tudor times was of a woman who managed
to coerce her guard inside the fortress to helping her escape.
But the story of Alice Tankerville led to the executions of not just one person, but
3 and one of them was one of the Beefeaters or Yeoman Warders who was supposed to be on
guard.
Join us today as we look at the brutal execution of Alice Tankerville remember as always to
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Henry VIII in October 1531 dispatched a group of men to London Docks and then believed they
were awaiting to collect a shipment of 366 gold crowns which had been sent to England
from Europe.
This money would help the king’s depleted treasury and wealth, and this was around around
£100,000 in todays money.
However when the boat arrived, the group found out that the iron chest that the gold had
been transported on which was secured to the floor of the ship and kept under guard had
disappeared.
A huge search was launched to find the thieves, and around 2 years later suspicion fell on
John Wolfe.
Wolfe was a thug and a brute, and he was actively engaging in acts of piracy, but there wasn’t
much that linked him to the theft, just his reputation and the fact he was part of the
crew onboard when the ship arrived at the docks.
This was enough to order his arrest, and in Summer 1553 Wolfe was sent to the Tower of
London.
He was charged with theft and treason, and also conspiracy, and these crimes would have
certainly indicated that he would have been executed during the reign of the Bloody King
Henry VIII.
At the Tower of London, John’s wife a lady named Alice Tankerville visited him almost
every day.
She was considered flirtacious and a charmer, and she became very friendly with two of her
husband’s jailers or guards, Yeoman Warders William Denys and John Bawd.
The two saw here as lovely and charming, and they allowed her to bring food and even wine
into the Tower for her husband, and the jailers also enjoyed her gifts.
After being impirsoned for 6 months, John Wolfe was let free and released as his trial
collapsed due to a lack of evidence, and if he was smart he would have left England and
exiled himself.
Wolfe instead went to Ireland for a short while, and he asked Beefeater John Bawd to
look after Alice his wife for some time, but Bawd was already in love with Alice Tankerville.
Whilst her husband was away, Alice found out about new evidence linking her husband to
the King’s missing gold, and Alice was considered an accomplice and with this she was held under
suspicion.
Wolfe had disappeared seemingly, and he left his wife to face any punishment.
But to avoid wasting time, Alice Tankerville and her husband were tried in absentia, despite
Alice being in London still.
She was known for regularly visiting the Tower of London and specifically John Bawd, and
she didn’t really know much about the developments in the case.
However the husband and wife were sentenced to death for treason, and Alice was formally
arrested in February 1534.
She was thrown into a windowless cell at the Tower inside of the Coldharbour Tower, and
there was hardly any natural light, only through a tiny barred window in the heavy oak cell
door.
Each day her hands and feet were kept shackled in chains and she was secured to the wall,
and she was forced to wait as her husband needed to be captured.
Alice was treated very harshly, and the leftentant of the Tower did agree to remove her chains
as long as the cell door and the outer door of the Coldhabour Tower was to be kept locked
and shut at all times.
But one of the guards tasked with looking after her was her old friend William Denys.
He was worried about how she was being treated, and he brought her a number of gifts.
But Denys was later fired for this, but she still had John Bawd, the beefeater who was
falling in love with her to rely upon.
The two spoke through the cell door and it’s believed ended having a relationship.
This allegedly then became romantic between the guard and the prisoner, but together the
pair came up with an escape plan.
Alive was told by John Bawd of a possible escape route from the Coldharbour Tower to
the Tower’s walls, and John Bawd agreed to help her.
He was overwhelmed by his love for Alice Tankerville and he managed to get a copy of the key for
her cell and the Tower and he hid it.
Alice was passed the key, along with a rope and a stick, and she hid them until they came
up with the final plan.
They waited for two weeks when it was a new moon, and that night John Bawd helped Alice
Tankerville to escape the Tower of London.
At 10pm, the guard on duty left and Alice began to break herself out the Tower.
She lifted the pin locking her inside the Tower off its hinge, and unlocked the door,
and then quietly snook out of the Coldhabour Tower.
She went through some alleyways, and then went towards the stone steps leading to a
flat roof above Traitor’s Gate.
Here John Bawd was waiting for her on the Roof of St Thomas’s Tower and he tied a
rope to an iron hook, and as the night watch passed their rounds on the street, they decided
to make a break for it.
John Bawd himself was highly respected, and he knew when the scheduled guards would be
in certain areas of the Tower.
The pair slid down the rope and then landed on a small wharf opposite Traitors Gate.
They untied a small boat used to take prisoners into the Tower and then crossed the moat quietly.
dThey had almost done it, guard and prisoner walked up the grass verge and near a road
where cottages were lived in by the guards of the Tower.
John had hired some horses, and the pair then would hide out at his friends house following
their escape.
This is what he hoped would happen, and then the pair would be allowed to start their new
lives together, but this did not happen.
They made their way around one of the final corners near to where the horses were, and
they were then confronted by a group of men who carried lanterns coming in the opposite
direction.
The two huddled together and tried to conceal their identity, and Bawd knew these were the
nights watch.
They were ahead of schedule, and should not have been at this part of Tower Hill at this
time.
He thought they were 10 minutes early, and one of the guards an old friend of John’s
named Charles Gore recognised him and waved.
Bawd replied quietly and they tried to continue, but Gore also had been a guard of Alice Tankerville,
and he recognised her.
The guards then grabbed John Bawd and Alice Tankerville.
It was clear that their escape attempt had failed, and with this horrific justice was
applied to both of them for their crimes of escaping.
Alice was dragged back to her cell where a new padlock was placed on the door and she
was kept under 24 hour guard at all times.
But John Bawd who had been an esteemed guard, was now taken away for questioning and was
now a prisoner.
He was tortured it’s believed on the rack, and he confessed everything, saying that he
betrayed his livelihood our of love for Alice, and was driven to help her escape by love.
But things would get worse, as at this time news reached the leftannt of the Tower that
Alice’s husband John Wolfe had been captured trying to return to England, and now all of
the 3 would pay heavily for their crimes.
John Bawd was holed up inside of Little Ease, an oubliette style cell in the dungeon of
the White Tower and he would have been forced to crouch over all day.
It was so small you could not sit down or stand, and this would be very tough mentally
and physically.
But things got much worse for ex-guard John Bawd.
Alice Tankerville and her husband John Wolfe for stealing from the King on the 31st March
1534 were given a pirates death.
The pair were taken from the Tower to the stone retaining wall lining the embankment
of the River Thames.
They were then secured in chains, and were lowered into the water at low tide.
But as the tide crept in and the water level in the Thames rose, the pair inch by inch
were drowned by the River.
The dirty water of the thames covered their legs, then their waists and chests, before
they were both drowned and they could not hold their heads any longer.
This would have been tragic and a horrific death with Tankerville and Wolfe left pondering
this for a number of hours.
But for the ex-guard John Bawd, he was brutalised by a number of his former beefeater colleagues.
For his role in helping Alice escape, he was racked further until his muscles tore, bones
popped and arms and legs dislocated.
He was a broken man, and then was thrown over the walls of the Tower of London, being hanged
in chains and suspended from the fortress.
He died slowly from exposure and dehydration along with his injuries caused by the rack.
His body was left to hang for months and he was picked at by the Ravens and the Crows,
and served as a strong reminder of Henry VIII’s justice.
The story of Alice Tankerville and John Bawd is one of a love story gone wrong.
She had fallen in love with a beefeater, and a guard of the Tower of London but then used
his knowledge to plan an elaborate escape plan.
It’s not known if Bawd was blinded by love, or was foolishly used, but what is for certain
is that the three main characters in this story were all brutally executed.
Thanks for watching
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