December 9
Alice Tankerville
Thank you to Anne Boleyn Files follower and Tudor Society member Lorna Wanstall for writing this article on Alice Tankerville for us.
In 1534, John Bawd a Tower of London guard, and a loyal and faithful man to King Henry VIII, was in love. However, this love would cost him his life, for the Tower metes out cruel justice to all traitors.
Alice Tankerville was said to be a woman of loose morals and was the common-law wife of John Wolfe, a man known for his criminal activities in London. He and Alice were caught with a great deal of money believed to have been stolen from the royal coffers. They were both imprisoned and during their time of imprisonment both would have got to known John Bawd very well. John Wolfe realised that John was more than a little fond of Alice and both of them were able to persuade John to smuggle things in to make their life in prison a little more bearable than that of their fellow prisoners. Finally, John Wolfe was released and getting a promise from John that he would take care of Alice, he left the tower and went to Ireland.
Alice was left alone, and she was frightened of what would happen to her. The only bright spot in these horror-filled days, where the screams of those being tortured would echo all around the tower, was her visits from John.
Slowly, their friendship blossomed into love, and Alice and John started to make plans for a new life together. During one of his rounds, he managed to smuggle to Alice a wooden stick and oiled the hinges of the cell door. He also slipped her a copy of the key to the lock of the Cold Harbour Gate.
One moonless night, after the guard had made his final rounds, Alice took the wooden stick that John had given her and carefully slid it under the door. She quickly knocked the wooden pin that held the cell door shut out of the latch. Slowly, she opened the door, afraid that for all John’s diligent care the door would creak and betray her. But luck was with her; she made her way through the maze of passages within the Tower. As she passed some cells, prisoners called out to her asking her to free them. She managed to avoid any guards by darting into dark recesses in the walls as they passed. Finally, she got to the Cold Harbour Gate. Looking around to make sure there was no one near, she unlocked the gate and rushed through. Breathing the sweet smell of freedom, she quickly locked the gate and threw the key into the moat. She hid in the shadows waiting for John to come.
Finally, she heard John whistle and his voice bidding a guard goodnight. The sound of the gate being unlocked was music to her ears. She waited until she heard the gate slam shut and stepped out of the shadows and into the arms of her beloved. They walked hand-in-hand down the well-known muddy path and over the wooden drawbridge over the river, along the riverbank towards the city of London and John’s modest home, where they would start their new life together.
In time, she thought, they would marry, and she would be the dutiful wife of a man who was both a loyal and respected warder of the Tower of London and a loyal and faithful servant of his majesty King Henry VIII.
Not wanting to be subjected to the bawdy comments of his fellow warders, John hoped that he wouldn’t meet anyone but, as they walked closer towards London, John saw a few of his fellow warders coming towards them. He quickly removed his cape and threw it across the shoulders of his loving Alice and pulled down the hood so that her face was hidden from view. He put his arm around the nervous and trembling Alice and led her past the men with just the briefest of greetings. They both breathed a sigh of relief, John, because he had been spared the bawdy comments he had heard many times before, and Alice, glad to be free of the terrifying blood-soaked Tower.
But their freedom was short-lived. One of the men recognised Alice, and poor Alice was dragged screaming back to the Tower with a subdued and love-struck John. Alice was thrown into a cell which was fastened with a large iron lock and as she cried as she heard the bolt of cell door slide across. There was no hope now of escape, and in the darkness, she cried out to John.
The guards laughed as they heard her cries. John looked up pitifully at his one-time friends and begged for mercy, but found they had none. They dragged him to a cell which they had named “little ease” and threw him into it, shutting and bolting the door. They left him there while they decided his and Alice’s fate.
The guards could hear the agonised screams of poor John, for “little ease” was a space that was neither big enough to stand up in or lay down in, so the prisoner was forced to stay on their knees in this cramped position, often for days.
During John’s time in “little ease”, word reached the guards that John Wolfe, the sometime husband of Alice, had also been arrested and was being brought to the tower. The guards took great delight in reuniting Alice with her sometime husband and decided that they would share the same fate.
Taking them down to the bottom of the tower at low tide, they shackled them to the wall and jeered at them as they twisted and turned and tried to climb the slippery wall to avoid the incoming tide. Higher and higher the tide rose, and it slowly drowned them.
So what happened to John Bawd?
The guards tortured John, cruelly letting him suffer in ways no prisoner had ever suffered. Finally, they hung him by his arms naked from the walls of the tower where he died of exposure. The guards left him there to rot as an example of what happened to anyone who turns traitor to the Tower.
Where is “little ease” within the tower? Well, no one really knows. It was believed that it was perhaps somewhere near the torture chamber, and this would certainly seem an ideal location. There is a place within the Tower which has been named as “little ease”, but it’s debatable in my opinion if it really is where John Bawd was imprisoned. I rather think that John Bawd may well have been tortured by being forced into something called “the Scavenger’s daughter” or “Skevington’s daughter” (after the man who created it), but I will point out that it was rarely used. But in John Bawd’s case, anything is possible, for he was subjected to some horrible indignities before he was allowed to die. He may have even had a date with the Duke of Exeter’s Daughter, i.e. the rack, but no one will ever know for sure.
Poor John.
Alice Tankerville is the only woman to escape from the Tower, even if her freedom was all too brief.
Here is a video that Historic Royal Palaces made about Alice’s story for children of 7-14 years:
Lorna Wanstall is currently working on a historical novel about Mary, Queen of Scots.