The prayer of St. Thomas More...Day 5q

Give me the grace, Good Lord:
To set the world at naught.
To set the mind firmly on You and not to hang upon the words of men’s mouths.

To be content to be solitary.
Not to long for worldly pleasures.

Little by little utterly to cast off the world and rid my mind of all its business.

Not to long to hear of earthly things, but that the hearing of worldly fancies may be displeasing to me.

Gladly to be thinking of God, piteously to call for His help.
To lean into the comfort of God.
Busily to labor to love Him.
To know my own vileness and wretchedness.
To humble myself under the mighty hand of God.
To bewail my sins and, for the purging of them, patiently to suffer adversity.
Gladly to bear my purgatory here.


To be joyful in tribulations.                                                                            
To walk the narrow way that leads to life.
To have the last thing in remembrance.
To have ever before my eyes my death that is ever at hand.
To make death no stranger to me.
To foresee and consider the everlasting fire of Hell.
To pray for pardon before the judge comes.
To have continually in mind the passion that Christ suffered for me.
For His benefits unceasingly to give Him thanks.
To buy the time again that I have lost.
To abstain from vain conversations.



To shun foolish mirth and gladness.
To cut off unnecessary recreations.

Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and all, to set the loss at naught, for the winning of Christ.

To think my worst enemies my best friends, for the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good with their love and favor as they did him with their malice and hatred.




These minds are more to be desired of every man than all the treasures of all the princes and kings, Christian and heathen, were it gathered and laid together all in one heap. Amen.

Prayer of Sir Thomas More

Princess in the Tower: Elizabeth I ...Day 5p

Quick review:    King Henry VIII had three surviving children from his first three wives:  Mary I, Elizabeth I and Edward VI. The girls went in and out of the line of succession with dizzying speed by various acts of Parliament, spurred on by the king's whims and marital status. When the king died, Edward VI, at the age of nine, became king, although he never really ruled. When it became apparent that he was on his deathbed, he named his cousin, Lady Jane Grey to succeed him, rather than either of his sisters. Mary, with powerful supporters, was able to depose Lady Jane Grey and take the crown for herself in less than a month. However, Elizabeth also had powerful supporters and soon Thomas Wyatt led a rebellion in an effort to depose Mary and enthrone Elizabeth. The conspirators were rounded up and imprisoned and it is here we take up the story.

Elizabeth was suspected of being involved in Wyatt's rebellion, a natural assumption I suppose, since she was the one to gain by it's successful conclusion. Well, she and all those Protestants who were being persecuted by her sister. She was subsequently arrested and taken by boat down the Thames River to the Tower of London.

 

 Traitor's Gate as seen approaching from the Thames...                           getting closer...

               View from the outside. The gates would open to admit the boat through the Traitor's Gate.

 

 The boat would have docked here (water from the river covered the gravel here) and the princess climbed up the stairs in a heavy downpour of rain, all the while vehemently protesting she was not a traitor and was indeed loyal to her sister Queen Mary.

"Here stands as true a subject, being prisoner, as ever landed on these stairs."
Princess Elizabeth


She was then led to the tower where she was to be imprisoned. She couldn't have helped but think about the fate of her mother, Anne Boleyn, at the tower many years ago, when Elizabeth was just a toddler. And she probably walked right past the scaffold where Lady Jane Grey had been recently executed.

She was held in the Bell Tower and took her exercise on the battlements between Beauchamp Tower and Bell Tower. Eventually, she was released from the Tower when Thomas Wyatt confessed that Elizabeth had no part in the rebellion. She was then put on house arrest at the manor of Woodstock, for her own safety as much as for quashing any possibility of another rebellion.

Many years later, when it was apparent she would never bear a child, Queen Mary named Elizabeth as her heir. When she did indeed die about a month later, Elizabeth heard the news of her sister's death, knelt down and whispered: "This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes." At the age of twenty-five she became Queen Elizabeth I.

The Bell Tower...Day 5o

The Bell Tower. Although the name is charming and conjures forth happy images, it had much to do with King Henry VIII and his all encompassing efforts to find a wife who could bear him a son.

Located next to the Queen's house, the Bell tower was originally built to serve in the defense of the tower during the reign of King Richard, the Lionheart 1189-1199, making it the second oldest tower in the whole Tower of London.  There is a small wooden turret on top of the tower, which can be barely seen in my one and only picture of the Bell Tower. The curfew bell rang when it was time to return to their cells for those prisoners lucky enough to be given liberty to leave their cells and wander through the grounds.

The Bell Tower is the rounded tower on the left with the bell tower partially obscured by leaves

Locking people up in the Tower was Henry's solution for some of his subjects who weren't cooperating with his efforts to secure an heir. All he wanted to do was to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, which would certainly not earn him any points with his in-laws who just happened to be the reigning monarchs of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella.  Catherine's nephew also happened to be the emperor of Rome, which had its own interests in the Roman Catholic church. And Catherine did not want to lose her husband of almost 24 years or her status as queen of England. So it appeared an annulment was just not going to happen. Henry's response was to break away from the Catholic church and establish the Church of England. And imprison a few of his more prominent opponents.

And the Bell Tower is where they ended up.

Such as Sir Thomas More, secretary and personal advisor to the king, as well as chancellor over much of Northern England. More was steadfast in his refusal to support the king's divorce from Catherine and was duly incarcerated in the Bell Tower where he was treated rather leniently at first, I suspect, in hopes that he would repent and help Henry VIII in his attempts to discard Catherine in favor of Anne Boleyn. However, More remained staunch in his refusal to support the annulment of the marriage and spent a year and a few months there in the Tower before he went to trial and was convicted, then beheaded on the Tower Green.

Imprisoned in the room just above Sir Thomas Moore was John Fisher who was the Bishop of Rochester. He refused to support a marriage between Henry and Anne Boleyn and vehemently opposed the King's efforts to break away from the Roman papacy and become head of his own new denomination. Fisher and More were imprisoned at the same time and sent messages back and forth via their servants. They were imprisoned, tried and executed within days of each other.

Also spending her share of time in the Bell Tower was Princess Elizabeth, Henry's second daughter, who was to become Queen Elizabeth I. But let's save that story for another post.