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A Tudor Execution So Chaotic It Looked Like Ritual Murder

The axe hits her shoulder with a crack that splits the quiet air. She cries out and twists in pain. Blood spills down her gown in a sudden, shocking rush.

The Brutal Execution Begins

At dawn, the Tower Green was cold and damp. The scaffold stood ready, its wooden boards dark with moisture, and the quiet had the uneasy stillness that always settled before an execution.

Ravens perched along the chapel roof, shifting from foot to foot, impatient for the show to begin. A few guards stood in silence, their breath misting the air. Even they looked uneasy. Something was wrong.

Very wrong.

So wrong it haunts everyone even to this very day.

Margaret Pole is brought out of the Tower. A thin elderly woman in a worn gown, her silver hair loose around her shoulders. She clutches her rosary as if her fingers will break from the cold.

She looks bewildered; she has every right to. She has had almost no warning. She has received no trial, no priest, no confession. Her steps are slow, her joints stiff from damp stone and age. She asks again what crime she has committed.

Nobody answers.

‘What Have I Done?’ Margaret Pole Asks

She reaches the scaffold and stops. The raised platform looks unnatural in the morning light. The boards are darkened by dew and smell faintly of wet timber. She stares at the block in confusion, as if she has been brought to the wrong place entirely.

‘What have I done?‘ she asks again.

She has spent her life as a devout Catholic and has begged for confession, but here there is nothing except a handful of guards who avoid her eyes and a very young executioner gripping an axe in both hands.

He looks terrified. His boots slip slightly on the wet boards. He rights himself and stares at Margaret, feeling embarrassed. His knuckles are white on the handle. He tries to guide her to the block, but she recoils instinctively, confused and frightened, insisting that she has committed no treason. Her voice trembles.

Still, nobody speaks.

He lifts the axe. It wavers in his hands. He tries again, but the blade shakes under its own weight. Margaret remains standing because she cannot understand why she is being killed. No one told her.

He swings.

The axe hits her shoulder with a crack that splits the quiet air. She cries out and twists in pain. Blood spills down her gown in a sudden, shocking rush. She stumbles away, hands rising to protect her head.

Margaret becomes defiant. Moving her neck back and forth to fool the executioner. Knowing he wants her neck. She was not going to give it to him. The scene, covered in early-morning spring mist, had become bizarre.

The Executioner Panics

In his panic, the executioner rushes after her. She moves blindly across the platform in agony, but it is too small to escape. He strikes again and misses her neck. She continues to move her head to avoid his blade. He swings again, and the blade cuts into her back. He strikes again and hits her upper arm. Each blow is wild, frantic and misplaced. Gouging into her flesh in a disgusting display of murder for all to see. She is losing the battle.

She prays aloud as she tries to shield herself. Still trying to move her neck, but weaker now. Her rosary slips from her fingers and skitters across the boards.

She is hit eleven times. Eleven deep slices to her body. Eleven ghastly gashes spilling blood onto the raised platform. Her face twisted into pain and horror. She tries to hold some of the wounds closed. She fails. Finally, she falls, slipping on her own blood, like a pig to slaughter.

Her ploy to hide her neck failed; he ended up beheading her.

Witnesses later wrote that she seemed to be being chased.

They say she was hacked as she moved, her cries echoing across the Green. It does not resemble an execution. It is a hunt. A terrified youth with an axe swings repeatedly until she collapses at his feet, her blood soaking into the boards while the ravens creep closer along the roof.

This is how the Countess of Salisbury dies. Not with dignity. Not with ceremony. But with fear, confusion and a child’s panicked hands striking until she lies still.

Tudor Terror and the Destruction of a Bloodline

Margaret Pole was the last surviving daughter of the Plantagenets. Her father was George, Duke of Clarence. Her uncles were Edward IV and Richard III. Her bloodline made Henry VIII uneasy from the start, but her devout Catholic faith made her dangerous in his eyes.

Her son, Cardinal Reginald Pole, openly opposed the King’s break with Rome. Henry responded with fury. The Pole family was targeted one by one. Many were executed. Margaret herself was condemned by an Act of Attainder, meaning she was declared guilty by Parliament without evidence, trial or defence.

She spent more than a year in the Tower. Her health declined. She was elderly, frail and confused. When the order for her execution arrived, she was astonished. She had not been prepared for death. Nothing in her behaviour suggests she understood what was happening until she was driven onto the scaffold.

The Psychological Horror

Tudor executions were meant to be brutal but orderly. A single stroke. A speech. An ending shaped by ritual. Margaret received none of this.

Her death was chaos. The executioner was untrained. The ritual collapsed.

The horror lies in the loss of structure. A grandmother staggering across a wet scaffold while a boy chases her with an axe. Her cries filled the dawn air. Blood-soaking boards meant to host a neat, controlled death. The violence looks wild and personal, even though it came from the Crown itself.

Her execution did not display royal power. It exposed royal fear.

The Aftermath of Margaret Pole

Her body was buried in St Peter ad Vincula within the Tower grounds. No rites were permitted. No ceremony allowed. No marker placed. She was meant to disappear.

Instead, she became remembered as a Catholic martyr and as one of the most disturbing victims of Tudor brutality. Her death, witnessed by ambassadors and recorded in letters across Europe, became a stain on Henry VIII’s legacy.

Sources

Eustace Chapuys, Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII

St Peter ad Vincula burial records

Acts of the Privy Council of England

John Guy, Tudor England

Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII

Linda Porter, The First Queen of England

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