On reaching the scaffold he found it in a very shaky condition, and turning to the Lieutenant, he said, laughing, “I pray you, Mr Lieutenant, see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself.” When on the platform he turned to the people, and, like Fisher, told them he had come there to die for the Holy Church and begged their prayers; then, kneeling down, he repeated the Misere to the end. When the executioner asked his forgiveness Sir Thomas, who meanwhile had risen from his knees, embraced him, saying, “Pluck up thy spirits, man, and be not afraid to do thy office. I am sorry my neck is short, therefore strike not awry.” He then bound a cloth which he had brought with him over his eyes, and placed his head upon the block. An instant before the axe fell he turned his head towards the executioner while he moved his beard, “Pity that should be cut,” he said, “that has not committed treason.”
The head was placed on London Bridge, but Margaret Roper obtained that sacred relic, and it was buried with her when she followed her beloved father in 1544, “to where beyond these voices there is peace.” Both the bodies of Bishop Fisher and of Sir Thomas More were buried in St Peter’s Chapel in the Tower, where they rest side by side.
One of the earliest inscriptions to be found on the walls of the Beauchamp Tower is that of Thomas Fitzgerald, who was known as “Silken Thomas,” from the costliness of his attire. He was the eldest son of Gerald Fitzgerald, ninth Earl of Kildare, Lord-Deputy of Ireland. Earl Gerald had been summoned to London, leaving Thomas in Ireland as Deputy in his place during his absence. On arriving in London, the father was arrested and thrown into the Tower. When the news reached Thomas Fitzgerald he broke into open rebellion, and together with five of his uncles laid siege to Dublin Castle, and having captured Archbishop Allen, put him to death. Dublin Castle was defended by Sir J. White, and would probably have fallen into the hands of the rebels had not the Earl of Ormonde raised the siege with a powerful force. In retaliation, the Castle of Maynooth, one of the Geraldine strongholds, was taken, and the garrison incontinently hanged by Lord Leonard Grey; when the news of this disaster reached Earl Gerald in the Tower, he died, it is believed, of a broken heart, on the 12th December 1534, and was buried in St Peter’s Chapel. “Silken Thomas” surrendered with his five uncles, on the promise of a pardon, to Leonard Grey, who, oddly enough, was another of his many uncles, Lord Leonard’s sister having married Earl Gerald. These Geraldines were imprisoned in the Beauchamp Tower, where, as we have seen, a fragmentary inscription cut by “Silken Thomas” is still visible in the principal dungeon. Despite the promise of pardon, Thomas and his uncles were all hanged at Tyburn, only one member of the Fitzgeralds, a youth, escaping the King’s fury; and so great was Henry’s anger, that he ordered Grey to be condemned to death for allowing the youth in question to save himself: Henry had determined to utterly extirpate the whole Geraldine race. The unfortunate Grey was beheaded, six years after these events occurred, on Tower Hill. “The fair Geraldine,” sung by Surrey, was the sister of “Silken Thomas.”