Tag Archives: England

Frederick Douglass in Newcastle upon Tyne, England

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Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne banner in the Library of the Great North Museum: Hancock, Newcastle, England

Wednesday, August 29th, 2018

Since my work on Frederick Douglass took me to the University of Edinburgh to live and study, I had expected to open my Douglass in the British Isles series in Edinburgh or at least one of the many cities in Scotland where Douglass traveled, lived, and worked. I have lots of that research already done and am raring to go. But there are some exciting things happening this fall and winter throughout Scotland in celebration of this bicentennial year of his birth that I’d like to include in my story, so I’m going to plan my trips around them and tell you all about that I’ve learned and experienced there. It just so happened, in the meantime, that I had the opportunity to travel to Newcastle for a couple of days. Since an especially important thing happened for Douglass in Newcastle, I decided to take the opportunity and start this series here.

I have a list of sites and events to explore for this story but my geographical information is very incomplete. So, I begin my inquiry at the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne. It’s located in the Library on the top floor of the Great North Museum: Hancock at Newcastle University. I head east and north from Newcastle Central Station, taking my time and exploring a bit along the way. I know that this journey will take me to sites that are all pretty centrally located since Newcastle was much smaller then, later growing outwards from the older parts of town in all directions. I check out many of the city’s major historical structures, the Castle and its Black Gate, the Cathedral Church of St. Nicholas, remaining sections of its ancient city walls, and Grey’s Monument, making mental notes of the layout of old Newcastle along the way. I veer east from the monument and eventually, I approach the University from King’s Walk and admire the Arches, which access the Quadrangle from King’s Road across from the end of the King’s Walk. It’s a handsome red brick, three-story building with lovely details topped by a castellated decorative roof. It was erected in 1911 when this place of learning was still called Armstrong College. I turn right at the King’s Road and continue past campus buildings, ascending a short rise across the road where, to my left, I find a classical, clean-lined cream stone building with ‘The Hancock Museum’ engraved in the grey stone-edged roof. I pass museum case after museum case, exhibit after exhibit, of all manner of things with of scientific, historic, and cultural interest. I make a mental note to make time to return next time I’m in town.

The Arches, King’s Road, Newcastle University

A few floors up, I find a small cozy library stuffed with old histories, directories, and all manner of local records and documents. First another patron who, as she explains, spends a great deal of time in the collection, then the librarian, help me in my search. I’m here, first, to find out the precise locations of sites associated with Douglass in Newcastle. For three of them, I only have the name or description and the street that they’re on. For one of them, the street no longer exists under that name, so I’ll have to do some more digging. With the patron’s help, I locate an 1847 Newcastle directory. The directory gives me names and addresses of people associated with this story, but there are no maps or atlases to locate them on so that I can compare them with current street names and addresses. For maps, the librarian refers me to Newcastle City Library on New Bridge Street. It turns out to be an excellent resource, with a wealth of maps, directories, and more. By the time it comes to leave and rejoin my travel companion for dinner, I’ve gathered a good deal of information about the city, the places I’ve seen thus far, and the sites I’m seeking for my Douglass journey, though I have a bit more digging to do before I go and visit those sites tomorrow. On my way back, I chance to see a historical plaque, high up on near the corner of a building over a shop window, related to the stories I’m following. I make another mental note to return the next day, and I’ll tell you all about it then.

Summerhill Grove, looking east with Summerhill Park to the left, Newcastle

Thursday, August 30th, 2018

I begin my day with lots of coffee and more research, mostly online following up on yesterday’s discoveries at Newcastle City Library, and putting two and two together with previous Douglass research I’ve done. It’s a lovely day with a blue, puffy-cloud-scattered sky, balmy, with just enough coolness in the air to keep one from getting too warm on a brisk walk. I make my way north and east from the coffeeshop near Central Station, passing sections of the ancient city wall. At Westgate Road, I turn left. It’s a wide thoroughfare which takes me uphill past tree-lined Blandford Square and shops and eateries. At Elswick Road, I find I’ve overshot the mark a bit and make my way back west through a lovely old neighborhood. My destination, 5 Summerhill Grove, is on a quiet, pretty little street across from Summerhill Park. Part of the three-story red brick house is under repair, its left side fronted by scaffolding.

Frederick Douglass plaque at 5 Summerhill Grove, Newcastle

There’s a round black plaque to the right of the doorway. Placed by the City of Newcastle upon Tyne, it’s dedicated to Frederick Douglass. It commemorates the time he stayed here with the Richardson family, who spearheaded the effort to ‘formally buy his freedom in 1846.’ This was the home of Anna and Henry Richardson. Anna, her husband Henry, and his sister Ellen were abolitionists who aided others who had escaped from slavery as well. In addition to welcoming Douglass into their home and raising the money to purchase his freedom, they did the same for Douglass’ abolitionist colleague, fellow self-liberated slave, and fellow author William Wells Brown.

The Richardsons’ and their fellow abolitionists’ payment to Hugh Auld for Douglass’ freedom was controversial. Many abolitionists and fellow self-liberated slaves believed that buying Douglass’ freedom was tantamount to participating in the slave trade and acted as a tacit recognition of the legitimacy of trafficing in human flesh, regardless of intentions. Abolitionist and fellow activist in the ‘Send Back the Money!’ campaign Henry C. Wright made these arguments in a strong letter of rebuke to Douglass for accepting these arrangements on his behalf. Douglass responded affectionately but firmly to Wright. As Douglass saw it, this payment was no different in kind to the payment of a ransom or handing over money to an armed robber. The fault was not with those who pay such forms of ransom, the fault was with those who extorted money so that their fellow human beings could enjoy the life and freedom they were naturally entitled to.

Frederick Douglass inscription to Ellen Richardson, 1860, in a copy of My Bondage and My Freedom in the Fliegelman Collection at Stanford University (image credit S.U.)

The Richardsons were a well-to-do Quaker family who dedicated themselves to all manner of religious and moral societies and causes including antislavery and temperance work, making goods available not produced through slave labor, education for poor and working-class children, and religious improvement. Anna also visited prisons to offer cheer, comfort, and spiritual support. The Richardsons and their extended family, women and men alike, took leading roles in the church; for example, Ellen was an Elder for a time until her failing eyesight made it too difficult to fulfill that role. In accordance with Quaker beliefs, the women of the family were well-educated and very active in religious and public life even as they were responsible for keeping a well-run family home. Though city directories list mostly male members of the Richardson family as prominent members of religious and moral societies, Jonathan Mood of the University of Durham describes Anna, Ellen, and other women in the family as generally even more involved, especially in the correspondence and day to day running of things.

Like many others who benefited from their good works and generosity, Douglass never forgot what the Richardson family had done for him. In 1860, he sent Ellen a copy of his second autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom, dedicating it to her as his ‘friend and benefactress.’

5 Summerhill Grove in its row of houses, red brick with cream and white trim, Newcastle, England

Anna Richardson of Newcastle, image via Newcastle ChronicleLive.co.uk

5 Summerhill Grove, with scaffolding, Newcastle

I find the door of the house ajar, with a large black extension cord passed over the doorsill. I ring the doorbell, but there’s no answer. I knock and call, but still, no answer. Since the door’s open and there’s construction work apparently going on, it seems to me at first that the house is unoccupied. I enter and stop in the foyer, again calling out again to announce my presence and ask if I could take a look around. But only a few seconds reveal that, though the door was open and new appliances are in the foyer awaiting installation, the house appears to be occupied, or soon to be. From where I stand, it’s an attractive home with a high foyer, steep winding stairway through tall-ceilinged stories, and well-cared-for old wood floors. I can see, through an open door, a large windowed entryway to a sunny, tree-filled back garden. It looks like a cozy, cheerful home with lots of natural light. My history detective instincts have me agog with curiosity but since I’m still unable to discover anyone here after a few more calls and rings of the doorbell, I depart.

From here, I head to my next destination via St James’ Blvd, where I cut over to the narrow green park that runs along a long section of the ancient city walls and towers (including Morden Tower), past Chinatown, then east on Gallowgate, then north on Percy St. I’m led here by an entry in Hannah Murray’s site Frederick Douglass in Britain and Ireland which describes and maps out Douglass’ travels in the British Isles.

Leazes Park Rd, formerly Albion St, showing the approximate site of George and Ellen Richardson’s house in Newcastle. The nearest brick building on the right of the photo stands on or near where that house once stood.

One of the map’s entries for Newcastle reads: ’28 Dec 1846: Music Hall, Albion Street, evening. Meeting of the Newcastle branch of the Antislavery League. 700 people there.’ The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One, Volume I also lists two late December speeches in Newcastle, one on December 28th with no listed location, and one on December 29th at the Music Hall. Try as I might, I can find no evidence of a Music Hall on Albion Street in directories, maps, or other contemporary documents about the people and places in Newcastle. The only listed music hall in Newcastle is elsewhere, and I’ll tell you about that location shortly. However, I have found other intriguing clues which indicate that Douglass may have visited, attended a meeting, or given a talk at a location on this street.

From White’s General Directory of the Town and County of Newcastle-upon-Tyne…, 1847, Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne Library

First, I consulted an 1847 Newcastle directory yesterday at the Antiquities Society for listings of locations on Albion St. There is no music hall or other public building listed there. It does, however, show that three George Richardsons lived at 9 Albion street, one ‘sen.’ (senior), one ‘jun.’ (junior), and one ‘gentleman.’ This likely describes a grandfather, father, and a grandson not yet employed, or perhaps a nephew or cousin. Then this morning, I found two more sources of information about the Richardsons of Newcastle: a website by a Benjamin S. Beck which has a series of pages detailing the genealogy and history of his family, especially the page ‘Children of George and Eleanor Richardson,’ and Mood’s journal article  ‘Women in the Quaker Community: The Richardson Family of Newcastle, C. 1815-60‘. The first of these list Ellen Richardson as living first at 9 and then at 21 Albion St. When Douglass was at Newcastle in 1846, Ellen was still living at no. 9. Though there are two address for Albion St over time, all of the sources I’ve consulted indicate that the family lived in the same home for a very long time. I suspect, then, that the two different addressed reflect only a change in the numbering over the years rather than a move to another nearby location.

Ellen and her sister-in-law Anna’s leadership in the anti-slavery movement in Newcastle may very well have meant that antislavery society meetings may have been held at Ellen’s family home on Albion St, and if so, Douglass would surely have attended if he was in town. However, an entry in the Newcastle Courant of Friday, Jan. 1st, 1847 specifies that the speech Douglass delivered for a soiree of the ‘the Newcastle branch of the Anti-Slavery League’ for 700 ‘members and friends’ was held at the ‘Music-hall’ on ‘Monday evening.’ December 28th, 1846 was a Monday, so it appears that both the December 28th and 29th speeches listed in the Frederick Douglass Papers were held at the Music Hall. This does not preclude Douglass giving a talk at an event held at the Richardsons’ home on Albion St, however, if such an event took place.

Albion St, Newcastle upon Tyne, from Thomas Oliver’s 1830 plan of the city at the National Library of Scotland

Even given the address at 9 Albion St, however, I still would not have enough information to find this location. That’s because, first, there is currently no Albion St in Newcastle. The man who helps me find sources at the Newcastle City Library, however, is able to help me with that one. He just so happens to have recently read something which informed him that the street once named Albion is now called Leazes Park Road. The maps room of the National Library of Scotland is able to provide the final piece of the puzzle. When I visit Albion St, I can only guess at the exact location given the maps, plans, and directories of Newcastle I find during my visit. In the following days, Louise and Rosemary help me locate a city plan and its guide for 1830-1831, also published by Thomas Oliver, which show that George Richardson lived at plot 352. The street has undergone very little change, if any, in its layout, and the nearest cross-street retains its old name. By comparing the location of the old map to Google Maps, I find that the Richardson family home used to stand on or near the place where 23 Leazes Park Road now stands, just south of the parking lot at the southwest corner of Leazes Park Road and Strawberry Place.

At the other side of the street at Leazes Park Rd and Strawberry Pl, there’s a nice roomy bar called Soho. The tablet I’m using for maps and photography is nearly out of power and I’ve forgotten to bring my portable charger, so I take a break with a pint of Guinness while it’s plugged in. As I wait, I read more about the Richardson family.

From William Whellan & Co.’s History, Topography, and Directory of Northumberland… and a History of the Town and County of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, National Library of Scotland

As mentioned earlier, Ellen, her sister in law Anna, her brother Henry, her brother George, and her father George were all very active in various societies. In addition to Ellen and Anna’s anti-slavery and charity work, the Richardsons were active in promoting their Quaker religion. White’s 1847 directory lists George Richardson, senior (or rather, his house), as the ‘depository for the bible society’ and Whellan’s 1855 History of Northumberland and Newcastle lists George (presumably junior) as treasurer of the Bible Society, with George Sr. serving as accountant and ‘depositary.’ Ellen, who never married, cared for her father after the death of her mother in 1846 (the same year she and Anna organized Douglass’ ‘ransom’) and dedicated herself to education and other worthy causes. She worked for the school for impoverished children called, quaintly to modern sensibilities, the Girls Ragged School, and made other efforts on behalf of impoverished members of the community as well. On November 5th, 1859, for example, she wrote a letter to the editor of the Newcastle Guardian and Tyne Mercury about the plight of a large Jewish family, explaining why they were appropriate and worthy recipients of ‘parochial charity.’ She signed her letter ‘Ellen Richardson, Secretary to the Jubilee School.’ It just so happens that there’s a link between Ellen and two of the places I visited yesterday: in 1864, at a meeting held in the Castle, she donated a book of Arabic prayers and a document containing the seal of Elizabeth I to the Newcastle Society of Antiquaries. She lived a long life, dying at the age of 87 after a long-time chest ailment worsened as she developed other ailments. Mary Spence Watson wrote of her recently departed cousin ‘I believe she is the last proper Quakeress in Newcastle, & the last who wore the Quaker’s dress, & she was so splendid.’

Building at the corner of Grainger and Nelson Streets with a Giuseppe Garibaldi, Louis Kossuth, and William Lloyd Garrison historical plaque, Newcastle

Once my tablet has charged sufficiently, I continue my tour by heading east and south toward Grey’s Monument, erected honor of the second Earl Grey, who was instrumental in the passage of the Reform Act of 1832 and namesake of that delicious bergamot-flavored black tea. Besides vastly expanding the electoral franchise in Britain, the Reform Act also led directly to the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire in 1832. At the monument square, I turn south down Grainger St then stop at the corner of Grainger and Nelson Streets. This is the place I spotted yesterday with the historical plaque above the shop window. The plaque reads: ‘To commemorate visits to this city and to a book shop in this house by Giuseppe Garibaldi in 1854, Louis Kossuth in 1856, W. Lloyd Garrison in 1876.‘ William Lloyd Garrison was, famously, the abolitionist colleague and eventual ideological rival of Douglass who had given him his start in the movement only to later oppose Douglass’ moving on from Garrison’s abolitionist society to found his own paper The North Star, and Douglass’ newfound commitment to political activism and armed resistance to slavery. Since this city had a vibrant antislavery movement, Garrison visited Newcastle more than once in his multiple tours of the British Isles, including at least twice in 1846, so it’s a delight but no surprised to stumble across this plaque. I less expected to find, and am very interested to have done so, this link to Louis Kossuth, the revolutionary 19th-century Hungarian president lauded by Douglass and his colleague James McCune Smith as a great freedom fighter.

Facade of the old Music Hall at 10-12 Nelson Street, Newcastle, England

Behind me on the other side of the road and a few buildings west, I find my next destination: the facade of the Music Hall I mentioned more than once earlier in my story, at 10-12 Nelson St. According to Thomas Oliver’s reference book for his 1844 plan of Newcastle, it stood to the ‘east of the Primitive Methodist Chapel,’ which can still be seen in the 1896 Ordnance Survey I find later at the National Library of Scotland. According to Oliver, the Lecture Room was located underneath the Music Hall. It was in that room that Douglass delivered his 1860 speeches. Today, the only remnants of the Nelson St Music Hall and its rooms is its arch-windowed facade with the name and date carved in the front door’s pediment. There’s a City of Newcastle upon Tyne historical plaque on the building to the left of the doorway, like the one at 5 Summerhill Grove, but unfortunately The Alchemist, the bar and restaurant now occupying the spot, has placed a big umbrella right in front of it. I could crane my neck from under the umbrella just enough to read the plaque: ‘Music Hall, Nelson Street, Charles Dickens 1812-1870. Charles Dickens gave public readings of his works in this theatre during 6 visits to Newcastle between 1852 and 1867. “A finer audience is there not in England.” City of Newcastle upon Tyne.‘

Frederick Douglass ca. 1847-52, Samuel Miller, American 1822-1882, Art Institute of Chicago, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

This is where Douglass almost certainly spoke at that 700-person antislavery event in December 1846, and where he did speak on February 19th and the 23rd, 1860. Douglass had returned once again to the British Isles that year, fleeing possible arrest and prosecution in connection with his militant abolitionist friend John Brown‘s unsuccessful raid on Harper’s Ferry. While he was back in Britain, he embarked on another abolitionist speaking tour. In 1860, Douglass was dismayed to find that anti-black prejudice, which he was so grateful to find nearly absent during his last visit to the Isles fourteen years before, had become more commonplace in British sensibilities. Nevertheless, the talk was so highly anticipated that the event space was packed as full as could be and many who sought tickets had to be turned away. Douglass told the crowd that he feared that the ‘malign influence’ of the American slave system and its apologists were infecting the mother country even though she had already abolished it. Yet Douglass was here once again to seek British support for the cause. American slavery was proving so difficult to eradicate that American abolitionists needed the moral and religious example and support of their freedom-loving British counterparts more than ever.

Even with that support, however, it seemed that armed resistance may have been necessary to end slavery, and in that, Britain could lend its support by withdrawing its trade with and support to slaveholding states. Douglass ended his speech with a defense of Brown’s raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry in hopes of inciting a slave insurrection. Though Douglass had, in person, turned down his friend’s plea to assist the raid on the grounds he thought it unlikely to succeed, Douglass defended the raid’s practicability and propriety to his Newcastle audience. For one thing, he said, the location of Harper’s Ferry was in proximity to a series of mountain ranges perfect for insurrectionists to hide, plan their course of action, and attack from. For another, the raid and planned guerrilla war to follow was not the cruel and criminal attack on peaceable citizens as it was generally portrayed. Slavery was essentially a cruel and bloody system of oppression that placed all involved in it in a state of war already. Slave resistance was merely the counterattack by those who had been savaged in the first place.

Ordnance Survey of Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead and Environs 1896, showing the location of the Music Hall on Nelson St, here designated Central Hall, and the apparent site of the Salem Methodist Chapel, here designated Church of England Institute, at the National Library of Scotland

My last destination leads me just a little ways south and east to Hood Street. According to Oliver’s reference to his 1844 city plan, the Salem Methodist Chapel ‘forms the centre building to the north side of Hood Street; the front is of polished stone, with a recessed Grecian Doric portico of four columns, approached by stone steps.’ It opened its doors in 1836. There is a building at number 11, at about the right location but a bit further west than I’d expect from the 1896 ordnance survey, which has a small portico supported by two full Doric columns and two pilasters, with three steps leading to the modest-sized front entry. However, the building doesn’t seem otherwise to have the appearance of a church. Photos I find of old Hood St online from 1912 and onward, few as they are, don’t appear to show a church or other building with a Doric-column-decorated entryway. It appears to me that there’s nothing left of the old Salem Chapel.

Buildings on the center north side of Hood Street around the approximate site of the old Salem Chapel, Newcastle, England

Douglass spoke at the Salem Chapel on August 3rd and 13th of 1846 at meetings of the Newcastle Antislavery Society. On the first occasion, the 1200-capacity church was packed nearly to overflowing, evidence of the strong popular support in Britain, particularly Newcastle, for the abolitionist cause. Douglass, the only lecturer at the August 3rd event, opened his speech by pointing out the danger of characterizing too many things as forms of slavery that were not, in fact, comparable to American chattel slavery, with all its depredations and horrors, its thorough denial of the rights and humanity of a certain class of human beings. Since chattel slavery was far away and out of sight in the free British Isles, he could see how some Britons might tend to conflate slavery with such practices as the exploitation of workers, unjust taxation, or political disenfranchisement. However, Douglass stressed, to do so undermined the message and urgency of the antislavery cause.

Douglass’ impassioned plea against equating actual slavery with other forms of exploitation, coercion, or cruelty reminds me of the trend I see so often in our hyperbolic age with its outrage culture run amok. So many things are characterized as assaults, as rape, as silencing, or as other trespasses on human rights and dignity that in some ways serve to equate minor with egregious forms with minor or less egregious forms, or at least serve to confuse them in the public consciousness. For example, speaking disrespectfully to or groping women, however deplorable, is not akin to physically raping them. Aggressive speech, leering looks, and insults are not akin to physical assault. Promoting one set of views, however loudly, meanly, or distastefully is not akin to silencing competing views. There are plenty of grounds for demanding we treat each other in ways that respect human rights and dignity without conflating these important issues. In fact, conflating the less egregious wrongs we do one another with more egregious ones undermine human rights causes. When it’s not clear what precise harms we are arguing about, the degree to which they damage ourselves and others, and the rights we are violating when we inflict them, then the arguments against them are hard to craft and defend, and our efforts to counteract them are rendered scattershot and ineffective.

Constitution of the United States, first page of the original, provided by the National Archives and Records Administration, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Douglass went on to criticize the various ways the legal system of the United States systematically supported and protected the institution of slavery, from the federal Constitution to the laws of states and municipalities. To remove any doubts in the minds of his audience that he might be embellishing his rhetoric with hyperbole, he read out example after examples of such laws so that they could judge for themselves. Over time, Douglass changed his mind about the Constitution as a proslavery document. To Douglass, interpreting the Constitution correctly as an antislavery document meant it could no longer be used as a tool by proponents of the slave system. It also made local laws supporting slavery that much more egregious, since they not only infringed on the natural rights of black people, they infringed on Constitutionally guaranteed rights as well. Armed with this Constitutional interpretation, Douglass went on after his early years as an abolitionist moral suasionist in the United States and the British Isles to focus on political and social activism.

My search for Douglass in Newcastle has proved to be an invigorating and fascinating one, and he has led me to learn about and appreciate not only more about his own work and his circle of friends and colleagues, but about the history of one more great city as well. I look forward to my next adventure following Douglass in the British Isles, stay tuned!

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Sources and Inspiration

Alston, Charlotte. ‘William Lloyd Garrison visits Newcastle.’ Mapping Radical Tyneside website

Beck, Benjamin S. ‘Children of George and Eleanor Richardson.’ Ben Beck’s Website

‘Black Plaque № 48714.’ Open Plaques website

Richardson, Ellen. ‘The Board of Guardians: To the Editor of the Newcastle Guardian.‘ Newcastle Guardian and Tyne Mercury. Saturday, 12 November 1859

‘Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey.‘ History: Past Prime Ministers at GOV.UK

Douglass, Frederick. ‘Antislavery Principles and Antislavery Acts.‘ Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews Volume 2: 1847-1854

Douglass, Frederick, annotated by Henry L. Gates. Autobiographies: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave: Written by Himself (1845), My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1893). New York: The Library of America, 1996

Douglass, Frederick. ‘British Racial Attitudes and Slavery‘ Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews Volume 3: 1855-1863

Douglass, Frederick. ‘Frederick Douglass to Henry C. Wright, Manchester, 22 Dec 1846.’ Frederick Douglass Papers, Series Three: Correspondence Volume 1: 1842-1852

Douglass, Frederick. ‘Men and Brothers.‘ Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews Volume 2: 1847-1854

Douglass, Frederick. ‘Slavery, the Free Church, and British Agitation Against Bondage.’ Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews Volume 1: 1841-1846

‘Frederick Douglass Speaks: 3 August 1846.’ Mapping Radical Tyneside (website)

Garrison, William Lloyd. ‘Letter from Mr. Garrison, Oct 1846.’ The Liberator, October 30, 1846

Garrison, William Lloyd. ‘Letter from Mr. Garrison, Liverpool, Oct 20, 1846.’ The Liberator, Nov 20th, 1846

General Directory of the Town and County of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Gateshead. Francis White & Co, 1847

Greenspan, Ezra. William Wells Brown: An African American Life. W. W. Norton & Company: 2014

Hodgson, Barbara. ‘Former Slave ‘Freed’ by Newcastle Couple is to be Honoured in Martin Luther King Anniversary Year.’ ChronicleLive, Nov 5, 2016

‘Hood Street.‘ Co-Curate (website)

Levine, Robert S. The Lives of Frederick Douglass. Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London, England: Harvard University Press, 2016. (Online via DiscoverEd)

‘Local & General Intelligence.’ Newcastle Journal, 25 February 1860.

‘London, Thursday December 31.’ Newcastle Courant, 1 January 1847.

Macartney, Carlile Aylmer. ‘Lajos Kossuth.’ Encyclopædia Britannica

Mood, Jonathan. ‘Women in the Quaker Community: The Richardson Family of Newcastle, C.1815-60.‘ Quaker Studies: Vol. 9: Iss. 2, Article 5

Murray, Hannah. Frederick Douglass in Britain, website http://frederickdouglassinbritain.com/

‘The Nelson Street ‘Music Hall’ of 1838.’ Gen UKI: UK and Ireland Geneology

O’Connor, Peter. ‘The Richardson Family Help Free Frederick Douglass: Oct 1, 1846 to 31 December 1846.’ Mapping Radical Tyneside (website)

Oliver, Thomas. Plan of the Town and County of Newcastle upon Tyne and the Borough of Gateshead… From an Actual Survey by T. Oliver. 1830

Oliver, Thomas. Reference to a Plan of the Town and County of Newcastle upon Tyne and the Borough of Gateshead… From an Actual Survey. Thomas Oliver, 43 Blacket Street: 1831.

Ordinance Survey, Newcastle, 1861-62

Ordnance Survey, Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead and Environs 1896 (revised 1894)

Pettinger, Alasdair. Frederick Douglass and Scotland, 1846: Living an Antislavery Life. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019 (forthcoming)

A Plan of the Borough of Newcastle Upon Tyne, Thomas Oliver,1844.

‘Quandrangle Gateway (The Arches).‘ Historic England website

Reference to A Plan of the Borough of Newcastle Upon Tyne. Thomas Oliver, 1844

‘Society of Antiquaries.‘ Newcastle Journal, 3 November 1864

‘To commemorate visits to this city and to a book shop in this house by Giuseppe Garibaldi in 1854, Louis Kossuth in 1856, W. Lloyd Garrison in 1876.’ Open Plaques website

’Tyne and Wear HER(7109): Newcastle, Nelson Street, Nos. 10 and 12, Music hall – Details.’ SiteLines (website)

Ward, Brian. ‘Frederick Douglass: The Ex-slave and Transatlantic Celebrity Who Found Freedom in Newcastle.’ The Conversation, Feb 21, 2018

Whellan, William & Co. History, Topography, and Directory of Northumberland… and a History of the Town and County of Newcastle-upon-Tyne… London: Whittaker and Co, 1855

White, Francis & Co. General Directory of the Town and County of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Gateshead… Francis White, 1847

Wright, Henry C. ‘Henry C. Wright to Frederick Douglass, Doncaster, 12 Dec 1846.‘ Frederick Douglass Papers, Series Three: Correspondence Volume 1: 1842-1852

Following Frederick Douglass in the British Isles

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Hello, friends of Ordinary Philosophy!

From time to time, I take a trip to some corner of the globe, to explore the lives and ideas of great thinkers in the places where they lived and worked. For this series, I follow in the footsteps of thinkers who are no longer alive, since those who are still telling their own stories. But those who are no longer alive in the body live on in the ideas that they pass on, and in the example they provide for us to follow.

I’m pleased and excited to announce my ninth philosophical-historical themed adventure following in the footsteps of Frederick Douglass throughout the British Isles. This series continues from and builds on my first Douglass series in the United States.

Frederick Douglass’s life story is inspiring and humbling in the strength, character, and dazzling intellect he reveals, rising to such greatness in the midst of such adversity. Born a slave on the eastern shore of Maryland in the early 1800’s, he was an autodidact, having overheard his master say that learning to read leads to learning to think, rendering a slave too independent-minded to submit to domination by another. Hearing this, young Frederick knew what he had to do. Attaining literacy and learning a skilled trade gave him the wherewithal to escape to New York City in 1838 at about 20 years of age. A few years later, as a result of an impromptu but impassioned and eloquent speech about the hardships of a life enslaved, he was recruited as a public speaker for the abolitionist cause. Douglass spent the rest of his life as an activist for all manner of human rights causes, from the abolition of slavery to universal suffrage to women’s rights and beyond.

Douglass is an especially compelling subject for a student of history and philosophy; observing the true nature and ramifications of slavery led him to think deeply about the most essential questions in human life, which, in turn, spurred him on to a life of thought and action on behalf of oppressed peoples. In these roles, Douglass had a heavy influence on American thought and on the course of American history. He asked, and answered: What does it mean to be a person? What does it mean to be a person of conviction and of faith? What are rights, and why are we entitled to them? What is dignity, and does possessing it entail certain obligations to ourselves and others? Given the frailties and strengths of human nature, how can we best live together and form just societies? What do the Constitution, its Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence really say about slavery, equality, and other human rights issues?

Following Douglass’ life and thought led me on a journey that took me much further than I could have imagined. I first came to Edinburgh as a student of philosophy following David Hume; now I live here, pursuing my higher education at the University of Edinburgh with Douglass as one of my primary subjects of inquiry. So I’ll continue my journey, which began in Oakland, CA and took me on a broad tour of the East Coast of the United States, then here to the British Isles. As I follow Douglass, I’ll visit landmarks associated with his life, places where he lived and died, worked, thought, wrote, studied, and rested, to see for myself how the places informed the man, and vice versa.

Frederick Douglass in Newcastle upon Tyne, England

~ Ordinary Philosophy is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Any support you can offer will be deeply appreciated!

New Podcast Episode: The Bell Tower, Tower of London: Thomas More, Elizabeth I, and Other Histories, Part 3

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Approaching the Lower Wakefield Tower, Tower of London, England

Listen to this podcast episode here or on Google Play, or subscribe on iTunes

Saturday, May 4th, 2018, continued

After parting with Simon, Laurence and I step out of the Tower grounds for a quick lunch, though when we return, our first stop features sights and stories that could turn anyone’s stomach. As you may have guessed, it’s the torture room of the Lower Wakefield Tower. As the signage indicates, the chamber now dedicated to the history and artifacts of the Tower’s legacy of torture was likely not used for that purpose at the time. However, it’s well chosen for its current purpose. The underground stone chamber is entered via a series of short stairways and small narrow doorways, evoking an increasing sense of entrapment among stones as cold and impassive as were the torturer’s sympathies.

There is no direct link between this chamber and Thomas More or Elizabeth I, but both of them had strong associations with the use of torture… Read the written version here

~ Ordinary Philosophy is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Any support you can offer will be deeply appreciated!

The Bell Tower, Tower of London: Thomas More, Elizabeth I, and Other Histories, Part 3

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Approaching the Lower Wakefield Tower, Tower of London, England

Saturday, May 4th, 2018, continued

After parting with Simon, Laurence and I step out of the Tower grounds for a quick lunch, though when we return, our first stop features sights and stories that could turn anyone’s stomach. As you may have guessed, it’s the torture room of the Lower Wakefield Tower. As the signage indicates, the chamber now dedicated to the history and artifacts of the Tower’s legacy of torture was likely not used for that purpose at the time. However, it’s well chosen for its current purpose. The underground stone chamber is entered via a series of short stairways and small narrow doorways, evoking an increasing sense of entrapment among stones as cold and impassive as were the torturer’s sympathies.

There is no direct link between this chamber and Thomas More or Elizabeth I, but both of them had strong associations with the use of torture. This comes as no surprise when it comes to Elizabeth, since, infamously, torture was used particularly often on political and religious prisoners during her reign. At the time, torture was regarded by many as an effective method of wresting confessions and information from accused enemies of church and state. Though it was illegal under English common law, torture or the threat of torture was nevertheless used in some cases, especially those in which the crime was considered particularly harmful to the state. England had been rife with religious and political turmoil for decades by the time Elizabeth ascended the throne, so there was a driving political interest in restoring order by cracking down on religious and political dissidents. Protestant Elizabeth reversed her elder sister and royal predecessor Mary I’s policies designed to restore England to Catholicism, religious ties which their father Henry VIII had severed so that he could divorce his wife and marry Elizabeth’s mother Anne Boleyn. So, plots and intrigues against Elizabeth’s reign by papal loyalists abounded, and private citizens practiced their Catholic religion in secret since it was once again illegal.

Sign for the torture exhibit at the Lower Wakefield Tower, Tower of London

Elizabeth believed that national unity necessarily included unity of creed as well as nationwide fealty to her, and under her administration fines, imprisonment, torture, and even death were seen as effective deterrents to dissent and disloyalty. Many claim that Elizabeth harshly persecuted Catholics and other religious dissenters for practicing their faith at least as ruthlessly as Mary’s administration had persecuted Protestants, or at least that Elizabeth had failed to interfere when her officers did so. But other historians characterize Elizabeth’s suppression of Catholicism as comparatively mild except when it was linked to religiously-motivated plots to undermine or delegitimize her rule. Elizabeth had many friends who were known Catholics and dissenters and, especially earlier in her reign, rarely punished them for it so long as they kept their beliefs to themselves. She famously stated that she had ‘no desire to make windows into men’s souls.’ But those who were perceived threats to the security of Elizabeth’s throne were often dealt with ruthlessly, though Elizabeth herself was sometimes reluctant to order such punishment.

Regnans in Excelsis, Pius V’s papal bull excommunicating Elizabeth I

Initially more hands-off regarding the practice of religion by otherwise loyal private citizens, Elizabeth’s administration cracked down more severely on the practice of Catholicism after Pope Pius V excommunicated her in 1570. Prior to this excommunication, Elizabeth seemed to have considered the practice of Catholicism as a private matter of conscience so far as this didn’t interfere with their duties as loyal subjects. After the excommunication, however, English Catholics and Elizabeth were all placed in untenable positions. Pope Pius V was not content merely to banish Elizabeth from the Church; he called on Catholics to renounce their loyalty and obedience to her on pain of their own excommunication. In doing so, Pius bound politics to religion far more firmly than Elizabeth had done or wanted to do. Since Elizabeth believed in the legitimacy of her own reign and was bound to promote and protect it, she was unable to overlook this attack on her right to rule and felt forced to act.

More’s connection to torture may be much more troubling since he’s a Catholic saint, let alone given that he was in many other ways an admirable character. However, not all see More in such a glowing light. One of the most controversial facts about More is that he advocated torturing recalcitrant heretics. Some might find it more understandable that Elizabeth, as head of state responsible for enforcing the rule of law, would include torture as a tool of enforcement since it was at least somewhat consistent with the standards of the time. More likewise, in his tenure as Chancellor of England, was responsible for upholding the rule of law and maintaining national security, and in an era when church and state were so intertwined, this entailed enforcing religious uniformity. Neither More nor Elizabeth had access to the large modern body of evidence that torture is not, in fact, effective in gathering reliable intelligence, nor does it deter ideological extremism.

Pages from Thomas More’s A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, 1532

However, as writer Michael Shermer notes, even then, many doubted the rightness and effectiveness of torture, especially those who routinely heard startling and manifestly untrue ‘confessions’ extricated from those under duress. It seems that the otherwise kindly and intelligent More may have been capable of similar insights if he was not himself blinded by his own zealotry. More’s customarily mild and forbearing disposition may have given way to harshness in dealing with heretics because of his deep religiosity in his particular brand of Catholicism. As his biographer Peter Ackroyd writes, ‘More believed in the communion of the faithful, living and dead, while [to More, the heretical Martin] Luther affirmed the unique significance of the individual calling before God.’ According to author and Tudor specialist Melita Thomas, More regarded the Catholic Church as a community of souls whose unity with the divine was threatened by heresy much in the same way as a healthy body is threatened by disease. Like a cancerous tumor, heresy must be identified and ruthlessly cut off from the body of the church. In the case of heretics, there could be no mercy without sincere and complete repentance, since nothing less than the eternal salvation of souls was at stake. Thomas does not offer this as an excuse for More’s bloodthirstiness in this regard but as an explanation.

Historian Brian Moynahan is not among those who believe that this explanation excuses More’s advocation of torture for heretics. He believes that More was at best inconsistent and at worst hypocritical in this matter. In more than one instance, More confessed to his daughter Margaret Roper his fear of the pain he might suffer if he was tortured or put to death for his refusal to swear to the Act of Succession, which, among other things, rejected papal authority over the Church in England. More’s refusal had already led to his imprisonment and, he was sure, would ultimately lead to his execution. In a letter to Margaret on the 3rd of June, 1535, More wrote that his interrogators made the point that More himself, when Chancellor, ‘examined heretics’ and ‘compel[ed] men to answer’ on pain of death. Why shouldn’t More himself, his interrogators asked, suffer the same treatment he had recommended for others? After all, those accused of heresy likewise refused to submit to the authority of the state and the church. More defended himself on the grounds that he could not submit since it was a matter of conscience. But, as his interrogators observed, his defense comes off like a case of special pleading since that was arguably true of accused heretics as well.

A door to the room with torture instruments and exhibits in the Lower Wakefield Tower, Tower of London

Besides, when it comes to those who we honor for their exceptional virtue and expansive moral imagination, commonly used defenses such as ‘well, they were a person of their time’ sound less convincing. The point of bestowing the status of sainthood or sage seems to be that those so honored are exceptional, that they should be able to reason and feel beyond the limitations of their own time, especially in matters of morals and justice. For example, I’ve never accepted the excuse that Thomas Jefferson’s slave-owning was just an understandable manifestation of his ‘being a man of his time.’ The plain fact is, Jefferson knew better but persisted in slave-owning (and -buying and -selling) anyway because freeing them would have caused him personal inconvenience. For both Jefferson and More, insights about the wrongness of their worst practices were available to them, so it’s not as if it’s a matter of 20/20 hindsight or unfair retroactive judgment according to new standards not yet conceived of at the time. As discussed above, torture was illegal under English common law and recognized by many as a cruel infringement on personal integrity, and an accomplished and well-read lawyer such as More was surely cognizant of this. It was also a common charge at the time that torture was used to force false confessions from people just as it was supposed to force true ones, a charge that Catholics later made against Elizabeth and her administration. It seems that Elizabeth and More, like Jefferson, failed their own best selves when it came to an important issue of justice and human rights, and they could and should have known better.

As I look at the instruments of torture and the descriptions of how they were used, I find I have no stomach for lingering or for taking or sharing photos of the instruments or displays. It’s true that these artifacts and the uses to which they were put are of historical interest. But there are photos and articles galore featuring these dreadful things in books and on the internet, and I get the feeling that this room is more often a scene of gruesome entertainment than a place of somber reflection on humankind’s history of inhumanity to one another. I’ve no doubt the latter very often takes place here too, but perhaps the gloomy, creepy mood of the room puts me in a pessimistic state of mind. I’ve seen enough representations of these instruments and read enough about them already that I feel I’m learning nothing new nor am I having an experience of particular value in this room. I take no photos and beat a quick retreat.

Traitors’ Gate under St Thomas’ Tower, from inside the walls of the Tower of London. As you can see, the sky has a grayish cast to it: I took this photo last time I was here at the Tower in January

Elizabeth I When a Princess, c. 1546, attributed to William Scrots, via Royal Collection Trust

We leave the chamber and head toward the southwest corner of the Tower complex. On the way, we pass St. Thomas’ Tower, originally built in the 1270’s by Edward I, and the Traitors’ Gate below it. This is where both Elizabeth and More entered the Tower as prisoners. This wide arched entryway was built so that small boats could easily and securely enter the Tower and deposit their detainees. Then-Princess Elizabeth entered this archway by boat on March 18, 1554, as Mary’s prisoner. As discussed in the previous installment of my Tower visit story, Elizabeth had been connected to Sir Thomas Wyatt’s rebellion, the purpose of which was to prevent Mary’s marriage to King Philip of Spain and to place Elizabeth on the throne. Elizabeth was reported to have said as she entered this gate, ‘Oh Lord! I never thought to have come here as a prisoner; and I pray you all, good friends and fellows, bear me witness, that I come in as no traitor, but as true woman to the queen’s majesty as any is now living.’ As our guide Simon told us earlier today, the truth of Elizabeth’s protestation of total innocence is still debated to this day.

When More entered Traitors’ Gate as Henry VIII’s prisoner on April 17th, 1534, he made no such impassioned protestations of innocence. Instead, as was his wont, More made a joke. When asked for his ‘upper garment,’ More offered his hat, though he would have known that what was required from him was his gown or outer coat. In addition to the warm coat he was loathe to give up, More also wore his gold chain of livery en route to the Tower, which appears to be a form of protest against losing his freedom and his job because he acted according to his religious beliefs. Simon told us earlier today that More’s chain is still worn by Mayor of London. The rooms in St. Thomas’ Tower over the Traitors’ Gate had just been rebuilt and refurbished as part of the many improvements Henry made to the Tower in preparation for Anne’s coronation celebrations. Since Henry’s desire to make Anne his queen was the impetus for More’s imprisonment here, the irony is a bit thick.

William Roper, by Hans Holbein the Younger, ca. 1535-1536, Metropolitan Museum of Art, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Returning to More’s stated fears of suffering and death during his imprisonment, he seemed nevertheless to refuse to let them rule his decisions, through sheer force of will. Prior to his entering the Tower, More said to his son-in-law William Roper on his way to Lambeth Palace where he had been summoned to take the Oath of Succession, ‘Son Roper, I thank our Lord the field is won.’ Ackroyd thinks More’s statement admits of two interpretations: that he had conquered his feeling for his family enough to be able to leave them behind if that’s what it took to stay true to his conscience, or that he had managed to conquer his fears on his own behalf so that he could better plan how to conduct himself. I’d like to think it was the latter. However, commenting as the direct observer when More made this statement, Roper believed it was the former.

Roper also made an important observation about More’s beliefs that landed him here in the Tower. Ackroyd, like Melita Thomas of Tudor Times, points out that More, as we have seen, believed strongly in the Church as a community. More believed further that its spiritual authority rests on its divinely-guided consensus expressed through papal decrees. Yet both Thomas and Ackroyd point out that More’s views on papal supremacy shifted somewhat over the years. Initially, Roper, also More’s earliest biographer, described it, More thought that insofar as he was also a temporal prince, the Pope’s authority should not be urged so strongly by Henry VIII in his 1521 treatise A Defense of the Seven Sacraments. Henry VIII consulted More as an editor and advisor for the work; More’s involvement was later used in the attempt to coerce and destroy him in the case that eventually led to his death. According to Roper, More was accused of ‘unnaturally procuring and provoking’ Henry to argue strongly in favor of the Pope’s authority, thereby putting ‘a sword into the Pope’s hands to fight against himself,’ Yet, as we see, More remembered that affair quite differently. When it comes to spiritual rather than temporal matters, More thought of papal authority emanating from, and therefore in some sense secondary to, the Church, the body of Christ on earth. But over time, More’s belief in the final authority of the Pope over the earthly Church strengthened to the point that he, at least in part, bet his life on it.

The Salt Tower and adjoining arched structure where menagerie was, Tower of London

Entry to the lower chamber of the Salt Tower, Tower of London

Turning left at St. Thomas’ Tower, we head for the Salt Tower at the southeast corner of the Tower compound. It was built in the 1230’s under King Henry III’s reign. Simon told us earlier today that this is the other prime candidate as the site of More’s imprisonment. It was also among the most secure chambers, so influential prisoners whose cases were most politically charged were often held here.

This is perhaps, then, the site of his daughter Margaret’s visits and where More received and composed letters to her, the closest of his children. From the beginning of his imprisonment, Margaret acted as the go-between for More and his family, relaying messages and news between them. Margaret had, rather slyly, made herself welcome as a visitor to the Tower by taking the Oath of Succession in full while adding the exculpatory clause ‘so far as will stand the law of God.’ While More was required to take the full Oath with no amendments or additions whatsoever, Margaret was allowed leeway in this because she was seen as ‘covered’ by her husband Roper’s swearing to the unalloyed Oath anyway. Since she was his wife and therefore, by law and custom, his subservient, his Oath applied to her as well. Since Margaret had taken the Oath, it was hoped that she could influence her father to do so. Until More’s imprisonment became more harsh and restrictive in the months preceding his death, Margaret was allowed a great deal of access to her father.

Left, Historical placard and right, lower chamber of the Salt Tower, Tower of London

Margaret Roper by Hans Holbein the Younger, ca. 1536, Metropolitan Museum of Art, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Margaret was highly educated, a rarity for Tudor women, studying Latin, Greek, philosophy, theology, science, and mathematics from an early age. She wrote letters to her father in Latin to improve her skills and became an expert in that language to the extent that she translated one of Erasmus‘ Latin works into English for publication when she was 19. She was also a well-respected scholar though little else of her work survives outside of her famous correspondence with her father. Among the many topics of their in-person discussions and letters, More and Margaret adapted fables he had told to her as a child to refer to the current political situation and his dispute with the king. She and More also composed a long letter in dialogue form to show clearly and compellingly why More felt he could not take the Oath of Succession without flouting his conscience and damning his soul.

More wrote a great deal when he was imprisoned as long as he had access to writing materials, a privilege denied him as the circumstances of his imprisonment became more severe as the pressure to conform was ramped up. In addition to his correspondence, More wrote religious treatises and two of his most famous works after Utopia: The Sadness of Christ and the Dialogue of Comfort. In the latter, More retold, through one of its characters, a fable that his own mother told him, about a priest fox who hears a wolf’s and an ass’s confessions. Utopia, a tale of an imaginary land with a system of philosophically-derived, seemingly idealized customs and governance that are nevertheless as problematic as the idealized society in Plato’s Republic, reads like a fable as well as satire. As we can see, fables played a strong role in More’s imagination.

A view of the upper chamber of the Salt Tower, Tower of London

Memorial plaques at Tower Hill Scaffold Site near the Tower of London

Laurence and I explore the upper and lower chambers of the Salt Tower, examining the fascinating inscriptions and drawings carved into the walls by prisoners held in these rooms over the years. We continue on and explore other parts of the Tower unrelated to this story.

Our last stop pertaining to this exploration takes us outside the Tower walls to the Tower Hill Scaffold Site in Trinity Gardens, only a mile from where More had been born on Milk Street. Trinity Gardens is a pretty little park on a rise across the A100 / Tower Hill road from the Tower, dominated by the Tower Hill Memorial to those of the Merchant Navy and Fishing Fleets who died in World War II. The Scaffold Site, small and somewhat easy to miss, is just to the east of the Memorial. A stand of palm trees that I had seen when here last in January helps me find the site again. It’s surrounded by a very low concrete wall or curb interspersed with short concrete obelisk-shaped posts. Bronze green-patinaed plaques contain some of the names of over 125 people (according to one of the plaques) that were put to death here over the space of around 400 years. Thomas More’s, Thomas Cromwell’s, and Thomas Wyatt’s are among them, three Thomases all closely connected to the histories I’m here to follow.

After one year and three months of imprisonment in the Tower, after persuasion, influence, separation from his family, financial pressure, and increasingly harsh confinement failed to bend him to Henry VIII’s will, More could no longer escape the executioner. More was executed on July 6th, 1535, just five days after his trial. Henry never took kindly to opposition from anyone, but the perceived lack of loyalty from his friends and those he had shown special favor in the past irked him most and provoked his harshest responses. Despite a long string of promises not to force his old friend More to betray his conscience, Henry ordered his execution after More refused to go along with Henry’s change of mind. Henry extended one mercy to More: instead of the protracted and agonizing traitors’ death by hanging, drawing, and quartering to which he had originally been condemned, More’s sentence was commuted to the relatively humane death by beheading. By all accounts, More died courageously, swearing his personal loyalty and friendship to Henry while affirming his primary loyalty to the will of God as he saw it. Characteristically, some of his last remarks were kindly and joking ones, apparently to cheer up the executioner, who More assured was simply sending him to heaven where he wanted to go anyway. More exhorted the executioner to escort him safely up the platform’s wobbly steps but to let him make his own way down afterward, and admonished him to strike carefully since More’s short neck might make him accidentally botch the job.

Scaffold Site at Tower Hill, to the north near the Tower of London

Margaret was not there to witness More’s execution. In my further research, I find that it’s still uncertain as to whether this was out of grief, or because she wasn’t informed in time to get there, or because she and the rest of More’s family weren’t allowed to attend. Despite her absence, More was no doubt comforted by the memory of his last encounter with her. Margaret waited among the crowd where she knew More would pass when he was returned to his Tower cell after his trial in Westminster Hall. Upon seeing him, she discarded the dignified bearing expected of her as a gentlewoman, pushing her way through the crowd and, recklessly, past his armed guards, and flung herself on More, showering him with embraces and kisses. According to Roper, there was scarcely a dry eye among those who witnessed this scene. Margaret was loving and solicitous of More’s legacy as she had been of himself. After his severed head had been displayed for a time, Margaret conspired to have it retrieved and it was buried with her. She quickly went to work collecting, arranging, annotating, and publishing a collection of her father’s works and letters. It’s as much the work of Margaret as anyone else that her father’s memory remained so prominent, and so positive, in English, Catholic, and Renaissance history.

UPDATE: in researching the practice and legality of torture in Tudor England, I found more information about the inscription I found as I left the Bell Tower chamber where Elizabeth was imprisoned which includes ‘In forture strange, My trouth was tried, Yet of my liberty ye denied…’ According to scholar Elizabeth Hanson, it was written in 1581 by Thomas Myagh, who had been imprisoned and tortured at the Tower under suspicion of involvement in an Irish rebellion against Elizabeth’s reign.

*Patron of this Tower of London journey: Laurence Murphy ~ With warmest gratitude, thank you!*

*Listen to the podcast version here or on Google Play, or subscribe on iTunes

~ Ordinary Philosophy is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Any support you can offer will be deeply appreciated!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sources and inspiration:

Ackroyd, Peter. The Life of Thomas More. London: Chatto & Windus, 1998

‘Annual Survey of Visits to Visitor Attractions: Latest Results.‘ VisitBritain.org

Borman, Tracy. The Story of the Tower of London. London: Merrell Publishers Limited, 2015

Borman, Tracy. ‘The Tudors and the Tower.‘ Tudor Times website, 3 Aug 2015

Bowker, M. ‘Roper [née More], Margaret (1505–1544), Scholar and Daughter of Sir Thomas More.’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Camden, William Norton, Robert; Hans and Hanni Kraus. The historie of the most renowned and victorious Princesse Elizabeth, late queen of England. Contayning all the important and remarkeable passages of state both at home and abroad, during her long and prosperous raigne. Composed by way of annals. Neuer heretofore so faithfully and fully published in English.
Sir Francis Drake Collection Library of Congress. London: Printed by N. Okes for B. Fisher; 1630

Collinson, Patrick. ‘Elizabeth I (1533–1603), Queen of England and Ireland.‘ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

English Monarchs website: ‘The Bell Tower’ and ‘The Queen’s House‘

Erasmus, Desiderius, Margaret Roper, and Richard Hyrde. A Deuoute Treatise vpon the Pater Noster, Made Fyrst in Latyn by the Moost Famous Doctour Mayster Erasmus Roterodamus, and Tourned in to Englisshe by a Yong Vertuous and Well Lerned Gentylwoman of. XIX. Yere of Age. London: Thomas Berthelet, 1525

Freeman, Thomas S. (2002). ‘`As true a subiect being prysoner’: John Foxe’s notes on the imprisonment of Princess Elizabeth, 1554-5.‘ (Notes And Documents). The English Historical Review, 117(470), 104-116

Furness, Hannah. ‘Wolf Hall is ‘Deliberate Perversion’ of History, says David Starkey.‘ The Telegraph, 26 Jan 2015

Graham, Beckett and Susan Vollenweider. ‘Episode 43: Elizabeth I, Part One‘ and ‘Episode 44: Queen Elizabeth 1, Part Two‘ for their History Chicks podcast

Guy, John. A Daughter’s Love: Thomas and Margaret More. London: Fourth Estate, 2008

Guy, John. ‘For What Did Thomas More So Silently Die?’ Lecture published at Tudors.org

Hanson, Elizabeth. ‘Torture and Truth in Renaissance England.’ Representations, no. 34, 1991, pp. 53–84

House, Seymour Baker. ‘More, Sir Thomas [St Thomas More] (1478–1535), Lord Chancellor, Humanist, and Martyr.‘ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Jones, Jonathan. ‘Wolf Hall is Wrong: Thomas More was a Funny, Feminist Renaissance Man.‘ The Guardian, 29 Jan 2015

Marc’hadour, Germain P. ‘Thomas More.’ Encyclopædia Britannica

Massie, Allan. ‘Let’s Not Overlook the Gory Details of Gloriana.‘ The Telegraph, 02 Jun 2012

More, Thomas. The Apology of Sir Thomas More, Knight. from The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, Vol. 9. Yale University Press, published online by The Center for Thomas More Studies

More, Thomas. Conscience Decides: Letters and Prayers from Prison Written Between April 1534 and July 1535. Selected and arranged by Dame Bede Foord; preface by Trevor Huddleston; introduction by Germain Marc’hadour. London: Geoffrey Chapman Ltd, 1971

More, Thomas. The English Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, 1947 Rogers edition, Princeton University Press, published online by The Center for Thomas More Studies

Moynahan. God’s Bestseller: William Tyndale, Thomas More, and the Writing of the English Bible – A Story of Martyrdom and Betrayal. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003

Pius V. Regnans in Excelsis: Excommunicating Elizabeth I of England. 1570 (encyclical). From Papal Encyclicals Online

Roper, William. The Life of Sir Thomas More. 1556. Ed. Gerard B. Wegemer and Stephen W. Smith. From Center for Thomas More Studies, 2003

Shermer, Michael. ‘We’ve Known for 400 Years That Torture Doesn’t Work.‘ Scientific American, May 1, 2017

Stanford, Peter. ‘Sir Thomas More: Saint or Sinner?’ The Telegraph, 20 Jan 2015

Teysko, Heather. ‘Catholics in Elizabethan England.‘ Renaissance English History Podcast: A Show About the Tudors, episode 26, Jul 6, 2015

Teysko, Heather and Melita Thomas. ‘Tudor Times on Thomas More.’ Renaissance English History Podcast: A Show About the Tudors, episode 55, Sep 16, 2016

‘Tower Hill Memorial.‘ Commonwealth War Graves Commission website

Weikel, Ann. ‘Mary I (1516–1558), Queen of England and Ireland.’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

New Podcast Episode: The Bell Tower, Tower of London: Thomas More, Elizabeth I, and Other Histories, Part 2

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Entrance to the burial chamber below St Peter ad Vincula, Tower of London, England

Listen to this podcast episode here or on Google Play, or subscribe on iTunes

Saturday, May 4th, 2018, continued

Simon, Laurence, and I leave the Queen’s House and follow Simon past the Tower Green to the Royal Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula (‘St Peter in Chains’). We descend a narrow stone stairway which leads to a chamber underneath the chapel and find ourselves in a chamber with low, arched ceilings. The room is constructed of stone or brick, perhaps both; it’s hard to determine exactly which since it’s thickly painted, and plastered in some places. The walls are lined with black tablets with names inscribed in curly script. Before the names, some contain such inscriptions as ‘Here lieth the body of…’ or ‘To the memory of…’

A tablet on the north wall, above several of these black name-inscribed tablets, explains:

‘Within this wall are deposited in two chests the remains of many distinguished persons who suffered death on Tower Hill and which were for a time interred beneath the floor of the chancel and nave of St Peter ad Vincula of the Tower of London * The removal of which was necessitated by repairs and alterations within the chapel by H.M. Office of Works in the years 1876-7 * The reinterment of these remains was under the supervision of Lieut-General Milman * Major of the Tower * A member of the committee appointed to carry out the alterations April 1877.’…

… Read the written version here

~ Ordinary Philosophy is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Any support you can offer will be deeply appreciated!

The Bell Tower, Tower of London: Thomas More, Elizabeth I, and Other Histories, Part 2

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Entrance to the burial chamber below St Peter ad Vincula, Tower of London, England

Saturday, May 4th, 2018, continued

Simon, Laurence, and I leave the Queen’s House and follow Simon past the Tower Green to the Royal Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula (‘St Peter in Chains’). We descend a narrow stone stairway which leads to a chamber underneath the chapel and find ourselves in a chamber with low, arched ceilings. The room is constructed of stone or brick, perhaps both; it’s hard to determine exactly which since it’s thickly painted, and plastered in some places. The walls are lined with black tablets with names inscribed in curly script. Before the names, some contain such inscriptions as ‘Here lieth the body of…’ or ‘To the memory of…’

A tablet on the north wall, above several of these black name-inscribed tablets, explains:

‘Within this wall are deposited in two chests the remains of many distinguished persons who suffered death on Tower Hill and which were for a time interred beneath the floor of the chancel and nave of St Peter ad Vincula of the Tower of London * The removal of which was necessitated by repairs and alterations within the chapel by H.M. Office of Works in the years 1876-7 * The reinterment of these remains was under the supervision of Lieut-General Milman * Major of the Tower * A member of the committee appointed to carry out the alterations April 1877.’

At the west end of the chamber near the door where we entered, there’s a large alcove with a pointed ceiling, and within the alcove is a large darkly-painted sort of chest with a portrait bust of Thomas More on the center top. It’s flanked by two large candles, with one small one in blue glass burning in the center in front of the bust, and two long narrow holders containing many more small candles below. There are two kneelers directly in front of the alcove, and one off to the left below two framed portrait prints, one of John Fisher and one of More. The large chest in More’s alcove is inscribed:

Thomas More
Knight * scholar * writer * statesman
Lord Chancellor of England 1529 – 32
Beheaded on Tower Hill, buried in this Chapel
1535
Canonized by Pope Pius XI 1935

This may be the actual resting place of his remains or it may be a cenotaph, an empty tomb memorializing a person whose remains are elsewhere, in this case, elsewhere within the chamber.

Thomas More memorial shrine below the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula, Tower of London

Thomas More portrait bust in his memorial shrine below St Peter ad Vincula, Tower of London

This chamber is where, as Simon confirms, More’s body is buried. His head, however, is not buried with it. As was the usual practice for those executed by beheading, More’s head was boiled for preservation then placed on a spike over London Bridge, on the very spike upon which John Fisher’s severed head had already been displayed for two weeks. They were placed there to serve as a warning to others. More’s daughter Margaret Roper, so distraught that she could not bring herself to witness his execution, managed to retrieve it after it was displayed for some time (my sources disagree about how much time), and the skull was buried with her in Chelsea Old Church when she died nine years later.

More and his family regularly attended services at Chelsea Old Church since they lived nearby; Roper’s Garden across the street may be on land that belonged to the More estate where Henry VIII would come to visit More during happier times. The More chapel in Chelsea Old Church is among the few sections that stand today after surviving the 1941 bombing that reduced most of the church to rubble. The church has since been restored to nearly its original appearance. More’s head and Margaret’s body are no longer buried there, however. After Margaret’s husband and More’s early biographer William Roper died in 1578, their remains were all buried together in the Roper family vault at St. Dunstan’s Church in Canterbury.

Burial chamber below St Peter ad Vincula, Tower of London

The Royal Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, Tower of London

Next, we ascend the stairs from low light of the burial chamber into the bright sunshine, then enter lovely St Peter’s chapel proper. Simon tells us stories about many things found in the chapel and people buried within it. While they’re very interesting to hear, I won’t include them in this account since they’re unrelated to the subjects I journeyed here to explore. St Peter ad Vincula was first converted from a simple parish church when the Tower walls were extended outward in the 11th century, placing the church within its walls as the complex was enlarged. Henry III expanded and redecorated it as a royal chapel in the 13th century. Though it had remained in use, the chapel had fallen into a sad state of repair by the latter half of the 19th century. The extensive restoration of 1876-77, which had led to the aforementioned reburials in the chapel’s subterranean chamber, also removed many of the seventeenth- and eighteenth- century additions that gave the chapel an ornate but dark and crowded look. Today, the interior has a bright and airy look while still very decorative with its arches and stained glass windows, a significant improvement.

This photo of the Royal Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London is courtesy of TripAdvisor. Photography is not allowed within the chapel, though evidently, it’s possible to obtain permission

Lady Jane Grey, perhaps after a lost Holbein portrait by Magdalena and/or Willem de Passe, published by Frans van den Wyngaerde 1620, via Project Gutenberg

The names of many famous persons buried in and below the chapel are listed on a scrolled brass plaque on the wall near the front door. They include among them, in the order listed: John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester; Sir Thomas More; Queen Anne Boleyn; Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex; Queen Katherine Howard; Sir Thomas Arundel (his name is carved into the walls of Beauchamp Tower in numerous places); John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland; and Lady Jane Grey.

After touring the chapel, we part ways from Simon for about quarter of an hour: he discovers that he needs to fetch a key from his colleague in order to visit our next destination. Laurence and I bask in the sun and talk over what we’ve seen and heard thus far. What an adventure! we agree. When Simon returns, we head back past the Queen’s House towards the Beauchamp Tower.

Speaking of Lady Jane Grey… Simon points out a darker brick building on the way back past the Queen’s House. It’s a three-story structure not including the low attic rooms beneath its pointed gables, with brightly painted blue doors. Through the smudged windows, I see evidence of its use at least in part as a storage space. Before it can welcome visitors, the building needs to be restored, says Simon, and there are plans to do so. This is where Lady Jane Grey stayed during her brief nine-day reign, from July 10th, 1553, when she was proclaimed Queen after Henry VIII’s son Edward VI’s early death until July 19th when Henry VIII’s eldest daughter Mary was proclaimed Queen by her supporters. Mary won out, and Jane was then held here until executed seven months later.

Section of Queen’s House where Lady Jane Grey was kept in the Tower of London

Jane Grey was a distant cousin of Mary; Jane was Henry VIII’s great-niece. Although Mary was the next in line to the throne after her younger brother Edward, according to Henry VIII’s third and final Act of Succession of 1543, the dying fifteen-year-old king named Jane Grey as his heir in hopes that foreign powers would not gain access to the throne through marriage to his elder sisters. It wasn’t just a matter of international politics, however: the Protestant Edward was anxious to keep the throne in Protestant hands and Mary was a committed Catholic. When Mary took power, Edward’s fears were realized: she released all of the Catholics still imprisoned since Henry VIII had them arrested, and worked to return England to the Catholic fold.

Queen Mary I by Master John, 1544, now at the National Portrait Gallery in London, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Mary did not want to execute Jane. She was actually very fond of her, just as she was of her little brother Edward, despite their religious differences and despite the fact that they were rival claimants to the throne. Jane was persuaded by her husband Guildford Dudley, her parents, and her ambitious father-in-law the Duke of Northumberland to take the crown according to Edward’s wishes. Mary held the view that many historians still do today, that Jane was an unwilling pawn used to further the interests of power-hungry family members and their connections. Some, however, believe that Jane was more ready and willing to be queen then many of her later chroniclers would admit. She was and still often is portrayed as an innocent martyr to duty, family, and religious conflict. It is true that she was forced into the marriage with Dudley, that she harshly condemned her father-in-law Northumberland’s power grabs, and supported Mary’s ascendancy to the throne. So Mary was more than willing to spare Jane’s life, though she did keep her imprisoned in the Tower for security’s sake. But during her imprisonment, members of Jane’s family and their connections continued to involve themselves in plots to undermine Mary’s reign, and in the interests of removing these persistent threats around their Protestant figurehead Jane, Mary felt forced to act. Jane was executed on the same day as her husband, on February 12th, 1554. According to eyewitness accounts, after watching, at her own insistence, her husband’s execution, Jane faced her death stoically, proclaimed her innocence firmly but not self-pityingly, and held fast to her Protestant beliefs. Her father-in-law Northumberland had already been executed the previous August. Her father Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, was executed eleven days later, after having taken part in one too many anti-Mary conspiracies.

Entrance to the Beauchamp Tower, Tower of London, England

In the long run, Edward VI’s hopes of England continuing as a Protestant country were realized: the unpopular Mary I died on November 17th, 1558, after only a five-year-reign. Her younger sister, the daughter of Anne Boleyn who ascended to the throne as Elizabeth I, broke the pattern her siblings had set of dying after very short reigns. More about Elizabeth shortly.

As we continue past the Queen’s House, Simon points out the upper sections in white plaster supported by dark wood beams, in that classic Tudor style. It was originally built as a living space for Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife and the reason he broke off communion with the Church of Rome, but it was not to be used as such. Instead, Anne was imprisoned there for about 18 days before her husband had her executed on May 19th, 1536, not even one year after More was executed in part for opposing her marriage to Henry VIII. I’ve decided not to tell the story of Anne Boleyn here. There’s been a glut of Anne Boleyn-related documentaries, miniseries, and television specials in the last several years, and I feel a bit of Boleyn-related-fatigue at this point. There’s also a five-day-a-week, twice-daily reenactment here at the Tower of Anne’s ‘tragic final days at the famous fortress, from her imprisonment and interrogation, through to her trial and execution,’ according to the Tower of London’s website. During our later Tower explorations, we see the troupe’s retinue, beautifully costumed and equipped, make the solemn march behind the faux Anne from the archway leading from the Traitor’s gate up to the Tower green. Though I won’t tell her story, she will figure in the next one, though.

Elizabeth’s Walk leading from the Beauchamp Tower to the Bell Tower, Tower of London

Alcove in the upper cell of the Bell Tower, Tower of London. Note the portraits of Bishop John Fisher, executed two weeks before More, and then-Princess Elizabeth

So, to continue: we follow Simon through the Beauchamp Tower door and up a narrow spiral staircase. There’s some uncertainty as to whether Simon had been given the right key, but after a little fumbling with its inability to smoothly open the lock, it gives way, and we step out onto a long balcony walk with a crenelated wall running along the Tower Green side.

This walkway leads from the Beauchamp Tower to the upper chamber of the Bell Tower, no longer accessible by the old small staircase that had been there in More’s time. Simon confirms that this is the walkway commonly known as Elizabeth’s Walk. Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife Anne Boleyn, younger sister of Mary, and older sister of Edward, was held here in 1554 following the Wyatt rebellion. This was one of those in which some of Jane’s family and connections were implicated, though the purpose of this one was to prevent Mary from marrying the Catholic Philip of Spain and to put Elizabeth, not Jane, on the throne. A few weeks after the plot was foiled and many involved it in were imprisoned and executed, Mary had Elizabeth committed to the Tower.

Queen Elizabeth I by unknown English artist, oil on panel, ca 1600, at the National Portrait Gallery, London

Unlike Jane and Edward, Mary did not particularly like Elizabeth. Religion must not have been that much of an issue since Mary loved her brother and cousin despite their religious differences, though it may have contributed. Rather, sibling rivalry likely had much more to do with it, sibling rivalry of a very particular sort, exacerbated or perhaps entirely created by the adults in their lives. When Henry VIII divorced Catherine of Aragon and married Anne Boleyn, he had Mary declared illegitimate as an additional way to bolster the perception of legitimacy for his new marriage. After Anne bore Elizabeth, the new Princess and heir apparent was given the honors and retinue that was stripped from Mary, who was required to stop referring to herself as Princess. Though she could do nothing about the other indignities of losing her place in the royal household, she refused to recognize her demotion to ‘Lady Mary.’ Henry VIII was angered at his daughter’s stubbornness in this matter and punished her for it in various ways, but she would not relent. He may have recognized and even come to respect that the steely will Princess Mary exhibited echoed his own, and over time he softened in his stance toward her.

Upper cell of the Bell Tower, Tower of London, England

As we continue along Elizabeth’s Walk, Simon explains that evidence could not be produced that was sufficient to legally convict Elizabeth for her purported connections to plots to undermine or overthrow Mary’s reign. I think this was true for the court of public opinion as well. Immersed in the constantly shifting dangerous royal sand trap that was the Tudor family, the highly intelligent Elizabeth had grown wise and wary very early on. She was just too canny to accept communications from suspicious persons. But, says Simon, since she lied at least by omission since she knew about the plots, Elizabeth was technically guilty. Mary would have been far more legally justified in executing Elizabeth than Jane and nearly did so more than once, but she had reasons to hold back. One, it seems, was her religious compunction against killing her own sister. Another was Mary’s realization that she was growing increasingly unpopular and she was afraid of rousing support for Elizabeth and the Protestant cause by making a martyr of her. Simon tells us that Elizabeth was the only prisoner ever held in this room to survive their imprisonment here.

Another view of the upper cell of the Bell Tower, Tower of London

Then Simon opens the door to the Bell Tower’s upper chamber and we enter. In this rough-walled stone room, Princess Elizabeth was held for a time. All told, she was imprisoned in the Tower from mid-March to May 19th of 1554, but according to Patrick Collinson for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, she was held for much or most of that time in the aforementioned nearby upper floor apartments-turned-prison built for her mother Anne Boleyn, where the Queen’s House now stands. Perhaps this thickly-built, secure upper room of the Bell Tower we’re in now, above Thomas More’s cell and the same one which reportedly held John Fisher in 1535, may have been the room in which Elizabeth was initially held in or held anytime there seemed to be a danger of her rescue or escape.

Toilet installed for Hitler outside the upper cell of the Bell Tower, Tower of London

Next, Simon leads us down a tiny hallway off to the side of the main chamber. Perhaps, I’m guessing, it leads to where the old communicating stairway was. Whatever its original purpose, we find something very much unexpected: a toilet. Not just any toilet, it turns out. Simon explains that it this room was readied as a possible place to hold Adolf Hitler upon capture. Hitler’s imprisonment here never happened, and this toilet was therefore never used. And so, here it remains. I’m a little surprised it was never removed given its architectural incongruousness and the general depressing creepiness it evokes, but I suppose it’s just too interesting a historical reminder of that time of England’s crisis, tenacity, and triumph.

Simon has other interesting stories to tell us about World War II and his military history in general, which particularly fascinates Laurence. At one time, Simon says, he guarded the imprisoned Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler’s right-hand-man, for three years as I remember. Held in the Queen’s House for four days in May of 1941, Hess was the Tower’s last high-profile prisoner, as historian Tracy Borman writes. I won’t go into Simon’s stories of Hess and other military affairs here as they are unrelated to my quest here, but it’s a great starting point for digging into more of the long and fascinating history of the Tower.

‘Years of Peril’ document in upper cell of the Bell Tower, Tower of London

Returning to the main chamber, I spot a framed document upon a table, leaning against the southeast wall, and move in for a closer look. It’s entitled ‘Years of Peril’, and it’s neatly written by hand in an old-fashioned script, in black highlighted in places with red and surrounded by a green leafy decorative border. In many places, the document is wrinkled and the ink has run from the damp. It’s a great overview of the history we’ve just considered, laid out as a timeline. It reads:

1533

Whit Sunday [1st of June] –  Queen Anne goes to Her Coronation from the Queen’s House
7th September  –  Princess Elizabeth born at Greenwich

1536

19th May  –  Queen Anne to her execution and burial in the Chapel Royal of Saint Peter ad Vincula from the Queen’s House

1553

6th July  –  King Edward dies at Greenwich
10th July  –  Northumberland proclaims Lady Jane Grey, now married to his son Guildford Dudley, as Queen, they enter the Tower
3rd August  –  Queen Mary welcomed to London and enters the Tower
22nd August  –  Northumberland executed on Tower Hill
1st October  –  Queen Mary goes to Her Coronation from the Tower, having made 15 Knights of the Bath
31st October  –  Queen Mary announces intention of marrying Philip of Spain, arousing widespread opposition
13th November  –  Jane and Guildford Dudley condemned to death. No apparent intention to carry out sentence. Guildford in Beauchamp Tower, Jane with Yeoman Gaoler’s wife.

1554

25th January  –  Sir Thomas Wyatt leads Protestant rebellion from Kent. Bombards the Tower from Southwark.
27th January  –  Princess Elizabeth, though ill, ordered from Ashridge to Whitehall under escort. Queen Mary refuses to see Her half-sister.
7th February  –  Rebels defeated at Ludgate and Charing Cross. Wyatt captured.
12th February  –  Guildford Dudley executed on Tower Hill and Jane on Tower Green. They are buried by the Chapel Royal altar with their fathers.
6th March  –  Proxy marriage of Queen Mary to Philip of Spain
18th March  –  Princess Elizabeth brought by water to the Tower.
At the Water (Traitor’s) Gate, Princess Elizabeth says: –
“Here landeth as true a subject, being a prisoner, as ever landed at these stairs.”
At the Bloody Tower arch, when the Yeoman Warders say, “God Preserve Your Grace,” she replies: –
“…..I come no traitor, but as true a woman to the Queen’s Majesty as any is now living, and thereon I will take my death.”
Imprisoned in the Upper Chamber of the Bell Tower, being supposedly involved in the Wyatt Plot. Kate Ashley, her governess and companion, quartered elsewhere.
Interrogated by Bishop Gardiner and the Council.
In view of her poor health, permitted to walk on the battlements, still known as Elizabeth’s Walk, past her mother’s old room.
Robert Dudley, later Leicester, still imprisoned in the Beauchamp Tower.
Princess Elizabeth is permitted to walk in the Privy Garden, now Tower Green, escorted by the Constable and Lieutenant. Dines with them in Queen’s House but a little boy, who brings her flowers, is denied access.
11th April  –  Thomas Wyatt executed on Tower Hill, having exonerated Princess Elizabeth.
19th May  –  Princess Elizabeth released from the Tower. Conveyed under escort to Woodstock through demonstrations of loyalty to her.

1558

17th November  –  Princess Elizabeth proclaimed Queen on Mary’s death and begins Her Glorious Reign

1559

15th January  –  Goes to Her Coronation from the Tower

====================
10th May, 1982

Thirty years after Her Accession, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was entertained by Her Royal Highness, The Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon in this Upper Bell Chamber. Together they paced Elizabeth’s Walk, mindful of the imprisonment of the first Princess Elizabeth here, dined in the Queen’s House and attended the Ceremony of the Keys.’

The Bell Tower cupola and a view of London and the Thames, Tower of London

The bell in the cupola of the Bell Tower, Tower of London, England, photo 2018 Amy Cools

The bell in the cupola of the Bell Tower, Tower of London

In the end, not only was Edward VI’s hopes of England remaining Protestant realized; his fears of a foreign prince taking power in England through marriage to one of his sisters came to naught. As her early chronicler William Camden described, Elizabeth was courted vigorously and widely by princes and aristocrats all over the Western world, some of whom she was personally fond of, and many of which could have helped replenish England’s exhausted coffers and bolster its world influence. Yet, she refused all of them. Her determination to remain single followed a severe bout of smallpox in 1562 which nearly killed her; such crises have a way of centering the mind and inspiring one to firmly establish priorities. As Camden reports, the next year Elizabeth replied to Parliament’s urging that she take a husband and produce heirs: ‘Yea, to satisfy you, I have already joined myself in marriage to an husband, namely, the Kingdom of England. And behold [taking a ring off her finger and showing it to them] the pledge of this my wedlock and marriage with my kingdom.’ And to underscore her determination to rule with authority in her own right, dominated by no man, Elizabeth continued, ‘But I commend you that ye have not appointed me a husband, for that were most unworthy the majesty of an absolute princess, and unbeseeming to your wisdom, which are subjects born.’ Elizabeth I was known through her long reign and ever after as the Virgin Queen.

After I do some photography, we leave the chamber through a little door, climb another little stairway,  and emerge onto the rooftop of the Bell Tower. The views up here are amazing, especially on this bright sunny day. The scattered clouds are puffy, the sky is a bright clear blue, and London is gleaming. We enter the pointy-roofed cupola and examine the old bell within. Simon tells us that this bell, once rung at executions, is now rung twice a day at curfew. We take in the views, talking all the while. Simon answers my questions about the histories I’m telling here and about good resources for researching my stories. He also tells us more interesting stories from his military career and of military history in general, again outside of the scope of this piece.

Simon Dodd and Amy Cools atop the Bell Tower, Tower of London

Inscription and clarification in the upper cell of the Bell Tower, Tower of London

As we go down again, on our way out of the Bell Tower chamber, I spot a section of stone that’s been inscribed and covered with a protective clear covering of glass or plastic, and a black slate underneath it with a transcription, strapped to the wall. In answer to my question, Simon tells me there’s a tradition that it was carved when Elizabeth was imprisoned here but it’s not really known just who carved it. Both texts are both worn and difficult to read. Here’s my best attempt to decipher what they say:

In forture strange
My trouth was tried
Yet of my liberty ye denied
There for reson, hath
Me perswaded did that
Pasyens must be ymb
rasyd. Thogh hard
Or unchasyth
Me with smart[…?]
Yet pasyens shall prevail

The gist of its meaning seems to be that the writer’s integrity was attacked and tried through the inexplicable circumstances of fortune and imprisonment. Though imprisoned, however, they decided that patience must be ‘ymbrasyd’ and that it would prevail in the end.

A view of London from the Bell Tower, Tower of London

We leave the Bell Tower, and in the courtyard near Tower Green, we thank Simon profusely and we all say our goodbyes. Then, accompanied by Laurence, I continue my Tower quest in the places that are accessible to us without official accompaniment. There are so many more fascinating aspects of these stories to be explored, and we press on. To be continued….

*Patron of this Tower of London journey: Laurence Murphy ~ With warmest gratitude, thank you!*

*Listen to the podcast version here or on Google Play, or subscribe on iTunes

~ Ordinary Philosophy is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Any support you can offer will be deeply appreciated!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sources and inspiration:

Ackroyd, Peter. The Life of Thomas More. London: Chatto & Windus, 1998

‘Annual Survey of Visits to Visitor Attractions: Latest Results.‘ VisitBritain.org

‘The Bell Tower.’ English Monarchs website.

Borman, Tracy. The Story of the Tower of London. London: Merrell Publishers Limited, 2015

Borman, Tracy. ‘The Tudors and the Tower.‘ Tudor Times website, 3 Aug 2015

Camden, William Norton, Robert; Hans and Hanni Kraus. The historie of the most renowned and victorious Princesse Elizabeth, late queen of England. Contayning all the important and remarkeable passages of state both at home and abroad, during her long and prosperous raigne. Composed by way of annals. Neuer heretofore so faithfully and fully published in English. Sir Francis Drake Collection Library of Congress. London: Printed by N. Okes for B. Fisher; 1630

‘Chelsea Old Church: Thomas More.’ Chelsea Old Church website

Collinson, Patrick. ‘Elizabeth I (1533–1603), Queen of England and Ireland.‘ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

English Monarchs website: ‘The Bell Tower’ and ‘The Queen’s House‘

Freeman, Thomas S. (2002). ‘`As true a subiect being prysoner’: John Foxe’s notes on the imprisonment of Princess Elizabeth, 1554-5.‘ (Notes And Documents). The English Historical Review, 117(470), 104-116

Furness, Hannah. ‘Wolf Hall is ‘Deliberate Perversion’ of History, says David Starkey.‘ The Telegraph, 26 Jan 2015

Guy, John. A Daughter’s Love: Thomas and Margaret More. London: Fourth Estate, 2008

Guy, John. ‘For What Did Thomas More So Silently Die?’ Lecture published at Tudors.org

House, Seymour Baker. ‘More, Sir Thomas [St Thomas More] (1478–1535), Lord Chancellor, Humanist, and Martyr.‘ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Ives, Eric William. ‘Henry VIII (1491–1547), King of England and Ireland.’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Jones, Jonathan. ‘Wolf Hall is Wrong: Thomas More was a Funny, Feminist Renaissance Man.‘ The Guardian, 29 Jan 2015

Kennedy, Maev. ‘Historians Scorn Claims over Thomas More’s Cell.’ The Guardian, 10 Jan 2000

Marc’hadour, Germain P. ‘Thomas More.’ Encyclopædia Britannica

More, Thomas. The Apology of Sir Thomas More, Knight. from The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, Vol. 9. Yale University Press, published online by The Center for Thomas More Studies

More, Thomas. Conscience Decides: Letters and Prayers from Prison Written Between April 1534 and July 1535. Selected and arranged by Dame Bede Foord; preface by Trevor Huddleston; introduction by Germain Marc’hadour. London: Geoffrey Chapman Ltd, 1971

More, Thomas. The English Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, 1947 Rogers edition, Princeton University Press, published online by The Center for Thomas More Studies

Moynahan. God’s Bestseller: William Tyndale, Thomas More, and the Writing of the English Bible – A Story of Martyrdom and Betrayal. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003

Plowden, A. ‘Grey [married name Dudley], Lady Jane (1537–1554), Noblewoman and Claimant to the English Throne.‘ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Roper, William. The Life of Sir Thomas More. 1556. Ed. Gerard B. Wegemer and Stephen W. Smith. Center for Thomas More Studies, 2003

Stanford, Peter. ‘Sir Thomas More: Saint or Sinner?’ The Telegraph, 20 Jan 2015

Teysko, Heather and Melita Thomas. ‘Tudor Times on Thomas More.’ Renaissance English History Podcast: A Show About the Tudors, episode 55, Sep 16, 2016

Weikel, Ann. ‘Mary I (1516–1558), Queen of England and Ireland.’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

New Podcast Episode: The Bell Tower, Tower of London: Thomas More, Elizabeth I, and Other Histories, Part 1

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Bell Tower, Tower of London, England

Listen to this podcast episode here or on Google Play, or subscribe on iTunes

Saturday, May 4th, 2018

I first visited the Tower of London in January of this year with my friend Steven, a fellow student of history; I at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, he at King’s College, London. We had great fun, two history nerds running around London for a couple of days! While we were at the Tower, I looked for the cell where Sir Thomas More was imprisoned for over a year before he was executed for treason on July 6th, 1535. Like many brought up in Catholic families after the film was made, I grew up watching the adaptation of Robert Bolt’s Man for All Seasons starring Paul Scofield, seeing it so many times I believe I could have parroted the dialogue from entire scenes from memory with little effort. Going back and watching clips, I still remember just about everything that every character will say and do ahead of time. The tragic story of and Scofield’s compelling characterization of the clever lawyer and saint captured my imagination. Since then, I’ve read more about him over the years and broadened my understanding of this man, who was much more complex than the stellar but somewhat two-dimensional martyr of integrity and righteousness portrayed in the film… Read the written version here

~ Ordinary Philosophy is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Any support you can offer will be deeply appreciated!

The Bell Tower, Tower of London: Thomas More, Elizabeth I, and Other Histories, Part 1

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Bell Tower, Tower of London, England

Saturday, May 4th, 2018

I first visited the Tower of London in January of this year with my friend Steven, a fellow student of history; I at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, he at King’s College, London. We had great fun, two history nerds running around London for a couple of days! While we were at the Tower, I looked for the cell where Sir Thomas More was imprisoned for over a year before he was executed for treason on July 6th, 1535. Like many brought up in Catholic families after the film was made, I grew up watching the adaptation of Robert Bolt’s Man for All Seasons starring Paul Scofield, seeing it so many times I believe I could have parroted the dialogue from entire scenes from memory with little effort. Going back and watching clips, I still remember just about everything that every character will say and do ahead of time. The tragic story of and Scofield’s compelling characterization of the clever lawyer and saint captured my imagination. Since then, I’ve read more about him over the years and broadened my understanding of this man, who was much more complex than the stellar but somewhat two-dimensional martyr of integrity and righteousness portrayed in the film.

Bell Tower placard, Tower of London, England

Early on in our Tower visit, I spotted a sign near the base of the Bell Tower, just across and to the left of the place where visitors enter the Tower, which identified the Bell Tower as More’s place of imprisonment. Upon further inquiry, I discovered that it’s not open to the public. It had been for a short while many years back, but wear and tear caused by visitors there and in other especially historically significant places within the Tower caused them to be closed off again. The damage was minor but happened more quickly than expected, even given the very large number of people that pass through every year: almost three million in 2017 alone! I persisted in my inquiries, as my historically nosy self is wont to do, and discovered that historians can and do seek and gain permission to visit. And so I did!

Simon Dodd, Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London

So on the morning of May 4th, 2018, I arrive at the Tower of London’s raven cages, this time with Laurence as my companion (unfortunately, Steven had a prior engagement and couldn’t make it.) We’re a little early for our assigned meeting time of 11 am with a Yeoman Warder of the Tower, one of the ceremonial guardians also commonly known as ‘beefeaters.’ We’re bleary-eyed since we had pulled an all-nighter: I was unable to get the night before off of work so I went straight to the airport after my shift in the very wee hours of the morning. Laurence very kindly met me there to keep me company. Fortunately, his sense of adventure is also strong and his knowledge of efficient travel to London excellent, so here we are, ahead of time. It’s a very sunny day, almost hot, much different than my first visit to the Tower which had been, appropriately, moodily gray and drizzly. As we wait, we watch the ravens. It’s long been a tradition to keep a certain number of these clever birds at the Tower, where they’re fed, groomed, and trained, their wings clipped just enough to keep them from going over the Tower walls but not enough to keep them from their perches. Some of them are roaming freely. Two of the ravens are nuzzling one another on a perch within one of the cages, one ducking regularly and enthusiastically to groom the other’s neck feathers.

Yeoman Warder Simon Dodd arrives and greets us. He proves throughout our time together to be an extremely friendly, knowledgeable, witty, and all-around delightful man, and very generous with his time. I couldn’t have asked for a better host or conversational partner. Laurence is particularly interested and well-read in military history and Simon has had a long and distinguished military career, so, we all have a lot to talk about. I only hope, as we tour and talk, that my sleep-deprived brain can form intelligent questions and process his answers. I take no chances with its ability to successfully retain information: I take plentiful notes as we go. After introductions and a brief chat, we start right in on our tour.

Sir Thomas More by Hans Holbein the Younger, ca. 1527, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Before I get into the details of the day’s explorations, let me offer a few more details about Thomas More just in case this is your introduction to him, or, just in case it’s been awhile since you read or heard anything about him and your memory is rusty on the subject. Born on February 6th, 1478, he was a lawyer, scholar, writer, statesman, and Lord Chancellor of England from 1529 until he asked King Henry VIII to release him from the post in 1532 when More found himself no longer able to support the King in his power struggle with the Pope. Henry VIII’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon, was the widow of his older brother prior to Henry’s marriage to her. When the marriage failed to produce any living male heirs, Henry VIII sought to have his marriage to her annulled, freeing him to marry his paramour Anne Boleyn. Trouble was, Henry VIII had already sought and won a special dispensation to marry Catherine in the first place from the previous Pope; the new Pope was a virtual prisoner of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V; and Catherine was the Emperor’s aunt. So, as you can imagine, this whole annulment business was a sticky, tangled religious and political mess. Henry solved the problem in a typically aggressive and self-aggrandizing way: he tore the Church of England away from the Catholic Church and placed himself at the head of it, ruining careers, taking away titles, confiscating lands and property, and chopping off heads along the way.

More and Henry went way back. More first met Henry when the latter was a young prince. In 1499, More’s friend Erasmus brought him along to the palace where the royal family was staying. The bright, athletic, and precocious eight-year-old Henry was second in line to the throne behind his elder brother Arthur. More would become a huge influence on and trusted counselor of King Henry VIII until the King turned against him when More refused to formally acknowledge Henry as supreme head of the Church in England. Erasmus was another central figure in More’s life. He was twelve years older than More, yet the two became very intimate friends very quickly. Erasmus called More ‘sweetest Thomas’ and More called Erasmus ‘my derlynge’ (my darling). These two humanist scholars bonded deeply over books and writing; Erasmus and More were inspirations for one another’s most enduring works, Erasmus’ In Praise of Folly (in fact, the book’s original Latin title Moriae Encomium is a pun on More’s name) and More’s Utopia. When More decided to turn his energies to a life of public service instead of scholarship, Erasmus was disappointed, but they remained friends. Sadly, according to More’s biographer John Guy, Erasmus effectively abandoned him in his troubles with the King, yet More continued to write to him as to a trusted friend up to the end of his life.

A view of the Thomas More cell in the Bell Tower, Tower of London

The bonds of trust and friendship between More and Henry VIII only went so far, however, at least on Henry’s part. From the beginning, More made it clear to Henry that his beliefs regarding the annulment and the nature and extent of papal authority did not accord with Henry’s actions or with what was included in the final version of the Act of Succession. Henry promised to allow More the freedom to act in accordance with his conscience, but like so many of Henry’s promises, this one turned out not to be worth much. Eventually, Henry (perhaps prodded by Anne Boleyn) demanded that More swear to the Act. More found he could not since the preamble of the Act specified that the monarch was the supreme head of the church in England rather than the Pope; as he told the King’s ministers charged with administering the Oath of Supremacy to him, ‘…it were a very hard thing to compel me to say either precisely with [the Act of Supremacy] against my conscience to the loss of my soul, or precisely against it to the destruction of my body.’

To return to the story of the day… Simon leads us first to the place I first sought: the cell where Sir Thomas More was held. Well, maybe he was held here. There’s plenty of dispute about this: there’s no contemporary written record of where exactly More was held. Historians disagree and their dispute continues in books, newspapers, and elsewhere. The Tower of London’s signage indicates that he was most likely kept in this Bell Tower cell, but Simon responds to my questions regarding this dispute that the chances may even be ‘fifty-fifty’ that he was held here or in the Salt Tower, another very secure cell where politically dangerous but distinguished and influential people like More were held. He goes on to explain that the southwest or southeast tower, the Bell Tower or Salt Tower respectively, were the only two likely candidates for More’s cell. Outside of rooms in the central White Tower, which was not a place of imprisonment at the time, the Bell Tower cell is the most secure, with 11 foot thick stone walls and 30 foot deep stone foundations. The Salt Tower was also pretty secure, though not quite to this degree.

A wider view of Thomas More’s cell, Bell Tower, Tower of London

Another More historian, Peter Ackroyd, believes More might have been held at least for a time in the Beauchamp Tower, where many other religious and political prisoners were held. But those cells were not so secure nor isolated as the Bell or Salt Tower cells. According to the notes for Ackroyd’s biography, Sonja Johnson of the Tower of London described More’s cell as ‘one of those apartments which were reserved for the more influential or privileged “guests” of the lieutenant. His was a pentagonal stone chamber, with a vaulted ceiling; it was some nineteen feet in height, with a floor space of approximately eighteen feet by twenty feet. The walls themselves were between nine and thirteen feet thick, the floor flagged through with rough and uneven stone, the windows merely arrow-slits or “loops”‘. And, it was cold: cold enough that, Simon says, it was used as a larder for a time. In fact, the very cool temperature helped preserve the room, despite the damp. Johnson’s description fits perfectly with this high-ceilinged, chilly stone room we’re in.

John Fisher and Thomas More portraits in chamber below St Peter ad Vincula, Tower of London

There are other reasons to think More may not have been held in this cell, at least not during the entire time of his imprisonment in the Tower. Historical researcher Stephen Priestley told the Guardian’s Maev Kennedy that Tower authorities tried to break up communication between More and fellow prisoner Bishop John Fisher, who was also opposed to the Act of Succession, much more openly so than More, and also thrown into the Tower for it. The cell above this one in the Bell Tower, which at the time could be reached by a narrow staircase from this one, was the one that held Fisher, or at least, probably did. This leads Priestly to surmise that Fisher and Thomas would have been eventually placed where they could not communicate so easily with one another. I also consider the stories that Simon and others tell of More rapping on the ceiling to get Fisher’s attention in the room above. But, as you can see yourself from the photos and as Simon points out today, this hardly seems possible in the Bell Tower cell, no matter how hard you might pound on the ceiling if you found a way to reach it at all. Perhaps, then, More and Fisher were held, at least for awhile, in neighboring cells where such communication was possible. Or perhaps, the ceiling-rapping stories are apocryphal and More and Fisher communicated only through smuggled notes and letters, as we know for certain they did.

On the way from the Bell Tower’s lower cell to our next destination, we spot Merlin the Raven. Simon Dodd tells us that she was named prior to knowing her sex, which was later determined by DNA. That’s the only way you can tell, he says – other than by such behavior as egg-laying, of course.

Overall, given what I’ve read and heard, I think, like Ackroyd does, that More’s place of imprisonment changed at least once. In one of his letters written in 1534 from his prison cell to his eldest daughter and confidante Margaret Roper, who he called ‘Meg,’ More reports that he was returned to ‘close keeping’ and ‘shut up again.’ Does this mean he was imprisoned more securely, perhaps in a different room, or just not allowed to leave his cell? Ackroyd interprets More’s comments to mean he was held in solitary confinement, but perhaps they could also refer to his being moved to a more isolated, stronger cell away from others where escape or rescue was far less likely.

After spending some time looking closely at the Bell Tower cell, talking over its history, and discussing the likelihood and duration of More’s imprisonment here, Simon, Laurence, and I re-emerge from the dim cell blinking against the bright sun’s light.

Next, we make a short visit to the Queen’s House. Simon tells us a bit about the history and historians of the Tower and that there have been 160 Constables of the Tower since 1066, the portraits of many of which are hanging here on the Queen’s House wall. He tells us about the early-to-mid 19th century Constable Duke Wellington who worked to make the Tower function better; made it look more like it did in the medieval era; increased its military management; and who was dismayed when tourism to the Tower drastically increased during his tenure there. Simon recommends us to read and watch David Starkey’s, Lucy Worsley’s, and Anna Keay’s books and audiovisual productions to learn more about Tudor history in general. In researching this piece, I recently read a Telegraph article about Starkey’s sharp criticism of the BBC’s historical miniseries Wolf Hall‘s negative portrayal of Thomas More.

A room in the Queen’s House, Tower of London

Simon Dodd telling us history in the Queen’s House, Tower of London

Simon also describes changing features of the Tower over the centuries with reference to a lovely old painting of the Tower hanging on the wall, and indicates the route by which More would have been taken from the gate through which he entered the Tower to his cell in *the Bell Tower.

We will see and talk about many, many more things during our day’s tour of the Tower so I’ve decided to break up this story into multiple parts. Stay tuned for more about our Tower adventure…

*Patron of this Tower of London journey: Laurence Murphy ~ With warmest gratitude, thank you!

Listen to the podcast version here or on Google Play, or subscribe on iTunes

~ Ordinary Philosophy is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Any support you can offer will be deeply appreciated!

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Sources and inspiration:

Ackroyd, Peter. The Life of Thomas More. London: Chatto & Windus, 1998

‘Annual Survey of Visits to Visitor Attractions: Latest Results.‘ VisitBritain.org

Borman, Tracy. The Story of the Tower of London. London: Merrell Publishers Limited, 2015

Borman, Tracy. ‘The Tudors and the Tower.‘ Tudor Times website, 3 Aug 2015

Camden, William Norton, Robert; Hans and Hanni Kraus. The historie of the most renowned and victorious Princesse Elizabeth, late queen of England. Contayning all the important and remarkeable passages of state both at home and abroad, during her long and prosperous raigne. Composed by way of annals. Neuer heretofore so faithfully and fully published in English.
Sir Francis Drake Collection Library of Congress. London: Printed by N. Okes for B. Fisher; 1630

Collinson, Patrick. ‘Elizabeth I (1533–1603), Queen of England and Ireland.‘ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Davies, C. S. L., and John Edwards. ‘Katherine [Catalina, Catherine, Katherine of Aragon] (1485–1536), Queen of England, First Consort of Henry VIII.’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

English Monarchs website: ‘The Bell Tower’ and ‘The Queen’s House‘

Freeman, Thomas S. (2002). ‘`As true a subiect being prysoner’: John Foxe’s notes on the imprisonment of Princess Elizabeth, 1554-5.‘ (Notes And Documents). The English Historical Review, 117(470), 104-116

Furness, Hannah. ‘Wolf Hall is ‘Deliberate Perversion’ of History, says David Starkey.‘ The Telegraph, 26 Jan 2015

Guy, John. A Daughter’s Love: Thomas and Margaret More. London: Fourth Estate, 2008

Guy, John. ‘For What Did Thomas More So Silently Die?’ Lecture published at Tudors.org

House, Seymour Baker. ‘More, Sir Thomas [St Thomas More] (1478–1535), Lord Chancellor, Humanist, and Martyr.‘ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Ives, Eric William. ‘Henry VIII (1491–1547), King of England and Ireland.’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Jones, Jonathan. ‘Wolf Hall is Wrong: Thomas More was a Funny, Feminist Renaissance Man.‘ The Guardian, 29 Jan 2015

Kennedy, Maev. ‘Historians Scorn Claims over Thomas More’s Cell.’ The Guardian, 10 Jan 2000

Marc’hadour, Germain P. ‘Thomas More.’ Encyclopædia Britannica

More, Thomas. The Apology of Sir Thomas More, Knight. from The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, Vol. 9. Yale University Press, published online by The Center for Thomas More Studies

More, Thomas. Conscience Decides: Letters and Prayers from Prison Written Between April 1534 and July 1535. Selected and arranged by Dame Bede Foord; preface by Trevor Huddleston; introduction by Germain Marc’hadour. London: Geoffrey Chapman Ltd, 1971

More, Thomas. The English Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, 1947 Rogers edition, Princeton University Press, published online by The Center for Thomas More Studies

Moynahan. God’s Bestseller: William Tyndale, Thomas More, and the Writing of the English Bible – A Story of Martyrdom and Betrayal. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003

Plowden, A. ‘Grey [married name Dudley], Lady Jane (1537–1554), Noblewoman and Claimant to the English Throne.‘ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Roper, William. The Life of Sir Thomas More. 1556. Ed. Gerard B. Wegemer and Stephen W. Smith. Center for Thomas More Studies, 2003

Stanford, Peter. ‘Sir Thomas More: Saint or Sinner?’ The Telegraph, 20 Jan 2015

Teysko, Heather and Melita Thomas. ‘Tudor Times on Thomas More.’ Renaissance English History Podcast: A Show About the Tudors, episode 55, Sep 16, 2016

 

Photobook: Thomas Paine Artifacts at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, England

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Thomas Paine display at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, England, 2018 Amy Cools

Thomas Paine display at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, England.

Paine’s death mask at the People’s History Museum. As you can see, this great thinker and writer was also a rather homely man.

Thomas Paine’s writing table. As the People’s History Museum website explains, ‘The table actually belonged to Thomas Clio Rickman who lived at number 7 Upper Marylebone Street, London and whom Paine stayed with in 1792 before fleeing to France following the publication of The Rights of Man. Rickman would proudly show his visitors the table, now sanctified by his plaque…’

Plaque on the Paine writing table at the People’s History Museum

Lock of Thomas Paine’s hair in a snuffbox

Placard for the Thomas Paine display at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, England

Thomas Paine display placard at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, England, 2018 Amy Cools

Another Paine display placard at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, England

~ Ordinary Philosophy is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Any support you can offer will be deeply appreciated!