There were three events on this day in 1536, in the plot against Anne Boleyn:-
- The arrest of Sir William Brereton
- The arrest of Sir Francis Weston
- A letter sent from Lady Jane Rochford to her husband, George Boleyn, in the Tower
You can find out more about these events over at The Fall of Anne Boleyn website – click here
Also on this day in history
- 1535 – The executions of three Carthusian monks – John Houghton, Robert Lawrence and Augustine Webster, respectively priors of the London Charterhouse, Beauvale and Axholme – and a Bridgettine monk, Richard Reynolds of Syon Abbey, at Tyburn. They were hanged and disembowelled, while they were still alive, for rejecting royal supremacy. Between 1535 and 1536, eighteen Carthusan monks were executed and you can read more about them in my article 19 June 1535 – 3 Carthusian Monks Hanged, Drawn and Quartered.
Augustine Webster was my ‘local’ Carthusian prior. The priory was a few miles from Epworth, famous later for another clergyman, John Wesley.
The site is now a farm, and local Roman Catholics have a service in one of the barns each May to remember Webster and the others. It is a beautiful and peaceful area in North Lincolnshire.
That method of execution was so hideous, it makes you wonder what kind of ‘human- being’ could have devised it, let alone another human-being passing the sentence on to others…those poor men.