London - Change in Plans

Unfortunately, today we had to change our plans and have a day of rest.  Al’s foot had been bothering him the last two days but he had been marching along anyway.  This morning, though, he awoke with Henry VIII’s revenge (or maybe it was Anne Boleyn’s).  We decided it was best to  take a break.  We’ll come to London again so there will be other opportunities to see more.  Instead we stayed in the hotel and began our Scrabble tournament  for this year.    It’s late afternoon and I think he’s feeling better. 

Since there isn’t much of anything to tell about what we did, I thought I’d write about  a couple of the historic anecdotes our guide told us yesterday.  The first  person of note to be removed from the Tower and taken up to Tower Hill for public execution was one Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1381.  In addition to being the Archbishop he was also the Lord Chancellor of England.  Evidently he was largely responsible for introducing a poll tax and was therefore wildly unpopular.  Rebellious peasants destroyed some of his property and Sudbury sought refuge in the Tower of London.  Apparently the guards weren’t too happy about the tax either because they allowed the rebels through the gates.  The Archbishop was dragged from the castle, up Tower Hill and executed.  Clearly taxes weren’t any more popular in the 14th century than they are today, but we seem to have learned to curb our more violent instincts.

The second story Yeoman Warder Duncan told us is one of true love.  William Maxwell, the 5^th Earl of Nithsdale was a Scottish earl who was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death for his part in an uprising against the king.  On the night before the day he was to be executed (February 24, 1716), his wife Lady Winifred and two of her maids were allowed to make a last visit to him in the Tower.  Unbeknownst to the guards they had hidden a set of woman’s clothing beneath their own clothes.  The Earl dressed as a woman and left with the two maids leaving his wife behind in his cell.  For the next hour the Countess carried on a conversation ostensibly with her husband in case the guard was eavesdropping.  After she thought a sufficient amount of time had passed to insure her husband was out of the Tower she began to loudly wail and cry and asked to leave his cell.  She told the guard her husband wanted to spend the next hour in prayer because of his imminent death and she tearfully beseeched him to allow the Earl to be alone with his God for that time.  Unable to deny the crying woman the guard agreed and the lady left.  She met her husband  outside the Tower and they fled to Rome where they spent the rest of their lives.  We wondered what happened to the hapless guard when the escape was discovered.  Hopefully he didn’t have to take the Earl’s place.

Well, tomorrow we’re off on the next leg of our journey.  Barcelona, here we come!  More later.