On this day in history, 4th August 1540, Brother William Horne, laybrother of the London Charterhouse was hanged, disembowelled and quartered at Tyburn.
Horne was one of eighteen Carthusian monks to be out to death between May 1535 and August 1540 for denying King Henry VIII’s supremacy. You can read more about Horne in my article 4 August 1540 – Blessed William Horne and you can read more about the Carthusian Martyrs in my article Henry VIII and the Carthusian Monks.
Also, on this day in history, 4th August 1557, Anne of Cleves, fourth wife of Henry VIII, was buried at Westminster Abbey. Click here to read more about her funeral.
Great article!on an unrelated topic how do you get access to primary sources like L &P? Are they in book form? I know it’s silly question but I’ve always wondered about it.
I have Letters & Papers in ebook from from Memso/Tanner Ritchie, but you can read them online at British History Online.
Thanks loads
There was a commemorative plaque/stone at the charterhouse site a number of years ago. Is it still there?
Some of these blessed martyrs I am familiar with as their stories are preserved in an old treasury giving their testimonies that I have from 150 years ago, but I am not sure Blessed William Horne was one that I remember well; but his testimony is in a much later version after the canonization of the Catholic Martyrs of England and Wales in 1935 and the others in the 1980s. What a terrible and horrible way to die; and some of these men knew the King very well, were even his friends; how could he have done such things? And this is before the bang on the head!