Amazing True Stories of Execution Blunders (6 page)

As custom demanded, Thrift started to ask Lord Balmerino for forgiveness, but was interrupted, his victim saying that there was no need. However, another custom required that the executioner be paid. Balmerino apologised and, giving him three guineas, said, ‘Friend, I never had much money. This is all I have – I wish it were more for your sake. I am sorry I can add nothing else but my coat and waistcoat.’

Taking the garments off, he laid them on the coffin and, calling for the yeoman warder who had been his guardian and companion while he had been imprisoned in the Tower, he gave the man his periwig, replacing it with a nightcap of Scotch plaid, then took the axe from Thrift and, after feeling the edge, returned it to the executioner before finally approaching the block. There, he knelt down, but got to his feet again almost immediately to go round the other side and assume the kneeling position again, where he uttered his last prayer: ‘O Lord, reward my friends, forgive my enemies, bless and restore the King, preserve the Prince and the Duke of York [meaning the princes of the House of Stuart] and receive my soul.’ Victims were expected to signal their readiness for execution and Balmerino was no exception; throwing up one arm as if charging the enemy in battle, he braced himself for the blow.

Lord Balmerino Beheaded On Tower Hill

What happened next was recorded by General Williamson:

‘Lord Balmerino’s Fate was otherwais than Kilmarnock’s, for tho’ he was a resolute Jacobite and seemed to have more than ordinary Courage and indifference for death, yet when he layd his head on the block and made his own Signal for decollation [decapitation] he withdrew his body a little.’

By this time Thrift was almost in a state of collapse. The object of all eyes, he somehow managed to raise the axe, trembling as he did so; feebly he brought it down, Balmerino only sustaining a flesh wound. The General then reported that ‘the bystanders were forc’d to hold his body and head to the block while the Separation was making.’ At the shout of horror from a thousand or more throats, again Thrift raised the crude weapon, but again the Scot’s head remained attached to his body. Filled now with panic borne of desperation, the executioner raised the axe aloft once more, to bring it down more accurately – the block, indeed the scaffold itself shuddered with the force of the blow – and Lord Balmerino’s head finally fell onto the piece of red baize which had been spread out in readiness on the sawdust-strewn boards.

Ironically enough, after his trial at Westminster, Balmerino, ‘keeping his spirits up, showed Lord Kilmarnock, who had also been found guilty of committing high treason, how he must lay his head on the block; bade him not to wince lest the stroke should cut his skull or his shoulders, and advised him to bite his lips. He also begged that they might have another bottle together soon, as they should never meet any more till . . .’ and pointed significantly to his neck.

Some time later the date and details of Lord Balmerino’s execution were read out to him by the Lieutenant of the Tower while he was dining in his room. There with him was his wife, she having been permitted to take her meals with him during his last few days on earth, and on hearing the dread news she was not unnaturally overwhelmed with shock and horror. At that, Balmerino exclaimed angrily to the Lieutenant, ‘See, sir, with your damned warrant you have spoiled my Lady’s dinner!’

Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex

Good-looking, arrogant and self-assured, the Earl of Essex had been extremely popular at one time, winning deserved renown on many battlefields in France and Spain. Becoming Queen Elizabeth’s favourite and promoted to Master of the Horse and General of Cavalry, in 1599 she appointed him Governor of Ireland and ordered him to quell the rebels in that country. However, some months later, during a dispute concerning the appointment of a deputy, so insolent was his attitude towards the Queen that she boxed his ears, whereupon he laid his hand on his sword and exclaimed that it was an insult he would not have tolerated from her father (Henry VIII), much less than from a king in petticoats!

His difficulties in Ireland became insurmountable, much to the delight of his rivals at Court, and despite Elizabeth warning, ‘We do charge you, as you tender our pleasure, that you adventure not to come out of that Kingdom,’ he returned without her permission, appearing in her presence unannounced wearing muddy boots and an unbuttoned doublet. Elizabeth suspended him from most of his offices and, resentful at his downfall from her favour, he conspired against her, even referring to her as ‘an old woman, crooked in mind and body.’

On 8 February 1601 he led a body of three hundred fully armed men in a vain attempt to seize the Tower and the Palace of Westminster, but failed abysmally. Taken prisoner, he was charged with having plotted to surprise the Queen at her palace and take her life, to have broken out into rebellion, to have shut up the Lords of the Council, and assaulted the Queen’s subjects on the streets.

He confessed everything, even admitting that the Queen could never be safe as long as he lived. The court found him guilty of High Treason and sentenced him to death. Elizabeth, despite her feelings towards him, realised the danger he posed and reluctantly issued the final order for his execution.

On 25 February 1601, the 34-year-old Earl, wearing ‘a gown of wrought velvet, a black sattin suit, a felt hat blacke, with a little ruff about his neck,’ was escorted by sixteen yeoman warders from his prison in the Develin Tower (now known, appropriately enough, as the Devereux Tower) on to Tower Green. Such was his popularity with the Londoners that the authorities decided to perform the execution within the walls rather than risk a riot by the protesting public if it was carried out, as custom demanded, on Tower Hill.

The executioner was one Derrick, whose life, coincidentally, the Earl had saved when he had been sentenced to death for a rape in Calais, and whose name was later given to a type of crane which resembled a gibbet. Essex asked the executioner whether the waistcoat he was wearing would hinder him or not, and after praying he ‘laid himself flat’ and put his head in the fatal notch (it appears that the block was very low, requiring the victim to lie prone along the scaffold boards). He then spread his arms out as a signal for Derrick to strike, saying ‘Lord, into thine arms I commend my spirit’, but the executioner suddenly noticed that the target area, the back of the Earl’s neck, was concealed by the collar of his doublet, so told his victim that he must stand up again and remove the garment. ‘What I must do, I will do!’ exclaimed Essex, and getting up again, took off the doublet and resumed his position along the boards. Once more he spread his arms wide and, as recorded in the ancient annals, ‘at three strokes the executioner stroke off his head, and when his head was off and in his executioner’s hand, his eyes did open and shut as in the time of his prayer; his bodie never stirred, never any parte of him more than a stone, the first stroke howbeit deadly and depriving him of all sense and motion.’

According to a well-established story, Elizabeth had impatiently awaited the return of a ring which she had once bestowed on him with the assurance that if he were ever in danger and sent it to her, she would interpret it as a plea for pardon which she would assuredly grant. In the Tower, Essex, it seems, intended to take advantage of this royal concession for he gave the ring to the Countess of Nottingham with instructions to pass it to the Queen, but the vengeful Countess deliberately failed to do so. It was not until she lay dying that she confessed to Elizabeth what she had done – alas, too late for Essex.

Consort of Henry VIII, Queen Katherine Howard was found guilty of treason because of her allegedly adulterous life, and sentenced to death. She was committed to the Tower and when, on 12 February 1542, she was informed that she was to be executed by the axe the next day ‘she asked that the block might be brought to her room and, this having been done and the executioner fetched, to the amazement of her attendants she knelt and laid her head in the horrible hollow, declaring, as she rose to her feet, that she “could now go through the ordeal with grace and propriety.”’

Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots

Executioner Simon Bull was definitely not looking forward to his next assignment, the execution of Queen Elizabeth’s cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots who was accused of plotting to assassinate Elizabeth. Hanging was his usual line of work, but this was to be with the axe, with which he hadn’t had a great deal of practice. The execution was ordered to take place on 8 February 1587 in Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire, one of the few times such an event had taken place indoors, but this was considered necessary by the Queen’s Commissioners, the Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury, in order to avoid any public unrest should it have occurred in the open. Initially those two gentlemen objected to the doomed Queen being attended by her servants, the Earl of Kent saying that ‘they would seek to wipe their napkins in some of your blood [as holy relics], which were not convenient.’ Only when she had given her word that they would not do so, was she allowed to choose three or four attendants to accompany her.

A contemporary historian described what happened next.

‘After this, escorted by the lords, knights, and gentlemen, the Sheriff leading, she passed into the great hall and stepped up on to the scaffold, this being two feet high and twelve feet broad, with rails about, hanged and covered with black. She sat down on a low stool and, being thus seated, the warrant for her execution was read out. She listened unto it with as small regard as if it had not concerned her at all, and with as cheerful a countenance as if it had been a pardon from her majesty for her life. That done, the Protestant Dean of Peterborough stood in front of her and pressed his administrations, but she rejected them. But the Dean began to pray aloud, whereat she took her beads and a crucifix and said divers Latin prayers.

Her prayers ended, the executioner, kneeling, desired her to forgive him her death; she answered, ‘I forgive you with all my heart, for now I hope you will make an end to all my troubles.’ Then, with her two women helping her up, began to disrobe her of her apparel. All the time they were so doing, she had never changed her countenance, but with smiling cheer, uttered these words ‘that she never had such grooms to make her unready, and that she had never put off her clothes in such a company!’ Then being stripped of all her apparel saving her petticoat and kirtle, her two women beholding her made great lamentation and, crying and crossing themselves, prayed in Latin. Turning to them and embracing them, she said, ‘
Ne crie pas; j’ai promis pour vous
.’ Then she bade them farewell, whereupon one of them, having a Corpus Christi cloth, lapped up three corner ways, kissed it and put it over the Queen of Scots’ face and pinned it fast to the caul of her head. Then she, kneeling down on the cushion resolutely and praying, groped for the block. Laying down her head and putting her chin over the block, she stretched out her arms and cried out ‘
In manus tuas Dominie
’ three or four times.’

With his assistant holding her still with one hand on her back, Simon Bull brought down the axe, only to have his blow go badly off-aim, striking the knot of the blindfold and apparently stunning her. Again he struck, this time with more success, though in order to sever the head completely, he had perforce to cut through a little gristle with his knife.

The contemporary account continued,

‘The executioner then lifted up the head to the view of all the assembly and bade ‘God save the Queen’ [Queen Elizabeth, of course]. Then, her dressing of lawn [the Corpus Christi cloth] falling off, her head appeared as grey as one of three-score-and-ten years old, cropped very short, her face in an instant being so much altered from the form she had when she was alive, as few could remember her from her face. Her lips stirred up and down a quarter of an hour after her head was cut off. Then one of the executioners espied her little dog which had crept under her clothes, and it could not be gotten forth except by force, yet afterwards would not depart from the dead corpse, but came and lay down between her head and her shoulders, which being imbrued with her blood, it was carried away and washed. All things else that had any blood were either burned or clean washed.’

As evidence that the execution had actually taken place, the late Queen’s head was carefully washed and placed on a velvet cushion, then displayed at one of the windows overlooking the vast courtyard for the benefit of the crowds assembled there.

Simon Bull and his assistant were paid their due fees but were not permitted to claim their traditional perquisites of the victim’s clothes, thereby depriving them of the opportunity to sell them as holy relics or souvenirs.