{"id":5573,"date":"2022-07-25T23:25:23","date_gmt":"2022-07-25T21:25:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=5573"},"modified":"2022-10-03T13:22:22","modified_gmt":"2022-10-03T11:22:22","slug":"july-28-1540-thomas-cromwell-is-beheaded-most-ungoodly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=5573","title":{"rendered":"July 28, 1540 Thomas Cromwell is beheaded most ungoodly"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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As Thomas Cromwell was walked to the executioner\u2019s table that day in front of a crowd of jeering Brits, he was probably wondering exactly how he\u2019d ended up there. Well, he was officially charged with high treason \u2013 a crime against authority \u2013 but he maybe wondered how it had all gone wrong. He\u2019d started out King Henry VIII\u2019s most trusted confidante. And now he was about to be beheaded in the Tower of London. Life is strange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the crimes listed under \u2018high treason\u2019 were speaking badly of the king, counterfeiting, and being born in 16th<\/sup> century England. In Cromwell\u2019s case, high treason was for mentioning that Henry had been unable to get the royal pecker up to consummate his marriage to Anne of Cleves and then failing to annul the marriage. If King Henry VIII enjoyed one activity, it was executing people and nobody was safe from his phlegmatic fury \u2013 friends, wives, trusted advisors, babies. For Cromwell\u2019s unforgivable infractions, he came up with some faux charges and had Cromwell executed. If Cromwell had something to be thankful for, it\u2019s that the king changed the execution from being drawn and quartered to being beheaded. Well, thankful until he got there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a probably apocryphal story that Cromwell\u2019s enemies got the executioner drunk so that he would botch the execution. He did botch it, but whether he needed booze to help him is forever to be speculated upon. It took three whacks to get the job done. And when it was done and the crowd had taken it in, Cromwell was the only sober person there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As it turns out, getting in trouble was remarkably easy in Tudor England. You could be punished for things like gossiping and drunkenness and you could executed for things like poisoning (but not killing anyone), adultery, or treason (a crime against authority). And the executions took extraordinary forms too. If you poisoned a person, by for example, adding a laxative to a pie, you were boiled to death. This dainty form of execution saw the offender hovering above a pot of boiling liquid (wine, water, tar, oil, dealer\u2019s choice really) while a sadistic executioner dragged out the inevitable by dropping them in and taking them out. Fun. Less fun was being drawn and quartered for high treason. During these wonderful last moments of one\u2019s life, they were dragged by cart to a gallows where they were hanged and, you guessed it, not killed. Once they were in bad shape, they were taken down and their penis and testicles were cut off. Then their stomach was split open and their intestines and organs were removed. Then their head was cut off, parboiled, and left at the city gate for warning to all not to do whatever it was they had done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting executed was one of the most common ways to die in Tudor England. It ranks up there among drowning, playing sports, having bad teeth, disease, and being burned to death in your house. Life usually ended around or before the age of 35 and was almost always unpleasant, violent, or involved awful rashes. Women often died during or after childbirth by fever, infection, or being twelve years old. So, with the probability of dying badly at around 87%, what was there to do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which is what they did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tudor period has been called the golden age of the alehouse. There were an estimated 12,000 alehouses in England between 1550-1700, which means about 1 per 200 people. Ales were different and composed of different ingredients in each one. One such used hen poop in its ales. But not only for their wares\u2019 hidden ingredients, alehouses were not for the faint of heart. They were indeed a place to go if you wanted to get drunk, smoke (new-fangled) tobacco, and forget your problems (see above: list of ways to die in Tudor England). It was also the place to be if your wanted to play games like skittles, shove-groat, or have an illicit affair (which you could be punished for). It was also the place to be robbed, cheated, and murdered. So, think Hell Angels\u2019 afterparty at Altamont.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, people loved them and they loved drinking, a thing which they did all day every day. Drinking ale, beer (also called mad dog because of its enhanced strength), and wine was to distinct your class. Ale was for commoners, beer was for nobility (and royalty), and wine was for the rich. No matter who you were, you drank. This was partially due to the sound reason that drinking water could kill you with typhoid or cholera. But people made do with a tough situation and since life was probably going to end before 35, why the hell not?     <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

With drinking adored by the masses, it\u2019s probably not surprising that it was considered a problem by the Crown. Limitations were put on drinking (to little effect) and punishments were set for drunkenness. People caught being publicly intoxicated were made to wear in public the \u2018drunkard\u2019s cloak\u2019 which was a hollowed out beer barrel. This of course didn\u2019t stop the Tudors themselves from drinking. Henry VIII spent 6 million British pounds in one year, which washed down 3.5 million pounds of meat. Elizabeth\u2019s court drank 600,000 gallons of beer a year, which comes out to about 12 pints per person a day in her 1200 person court. The royalty was drunk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When held up against drinking habits at the time, Henry was probably not an alcoholic. He drank and ate consistently with his contemporaries. But one wonders if his drinking habits lent to the vigor with which he employed the nation\u2019s executioners. One wonders if Cromwell went to the butcher block wishing Henry hadn\u2019t had so much wine the day he\u2019d crossed him. Who knows? One thing is for sure, he would bitterly regret executing Cromwell. Maybe even sober, too.   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Thomas Cromwell was walked to the executioner\u2019s table that day in front of a crowd of jeering Brits, he was probably wondering exactly how he\u2019d ended up there. Well, he was officially charged with high treason \u2013 a crime against authority \u2013 but he maybe wondered how it had all gone wrong. He\u2019d started […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5574,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/damiengaleone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Anne_of_Cleves_by_Hans_Holbein_the_Younger.jpg?fit=1506%2C2016&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1rT","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5575,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5573\/revisions\/5575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}