Catherine Howard- Wife and Mistress by D Lawrence-Young

Author:D Lawrence-Young [Lawrence-Young, D]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sharpe Books
Published: 2018-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

“You shall cause such dreadful execution to be done upon a good number of every town, village and hamlet that have offended as they may be a fearful spectacle to all others hereafter that would practice any like matter.”

As a result, we sent the leaders, bound hand and foot to London, where they were imprisoned in the Tower. We hanged many of the lesser folk and left their bodies swinging from the trees and gibbets in all of the northern towns and villages we passed through. There were no trials and no appeals. The duke had a list of men to be executed and we were forced to work our way through this terrible list. We carried out some gruesome work and I couldn’t sleep at night thinking about what I’d been part of. How many widows had we made? How would they and their children live now that their husbands and fathers had been executed? I was haunted for days on end by the scenes in my head of the weeping women and children as we pushed them roughly aside as they begged us to save their husbands and fathers.

My duty was to carry out our grim instructions. Even though I knew I’d never forget what I was doing, I had to ignore the crying of the women and the howling of the children as they saw us tie up their husbands and fathers and hoist them roughly up into the air. There, under the branches of trees or from the beams of the gibbets their bodies twisted and their legs kicked until they stopped, their lives having been strangled out of them. Sometimes this scene was made even grimmer as we hanged several men from the same tree and then gave orders that they were not to be cut down afterwards to be given a decent Christian burial. The king wanted his rule and his punishments to be seen and felt for a long time to come.

And not only did we have to hang the simple folk, but also the local knights and priests as well. Many were hanged from gibbets and trees, but others were hanged in chains and made to suffer even more. If hanging the local farmers was hard enough for me, then hanging the priests was even harder. I am not a religious person, but these men were men of the cloth, men of God who were trying to do His holy work. But the wrath of His Majesty knew no bounds. All in all, we hanged over two hundred and fifty men as well as a few women. Robert Aske was given a short trial in York, but, it was a foregone conclusion that his defense was to no avail. He was found guilty and hanged immediately after his trial. The Pilgrimage of Grace was over, brought to an end by a vengeful king and his obedient soldiers. One of them, I’m ashamed to say, was me.

By the time we marched back to London I felt as miserable as I’d ever felt during my whole life.

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