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likely that Anne Boleyn was innocent of the charges levelled against her, there is little doubt that 22-year-old Catherine Howard committed adultery, an indiscretion that constituted treason for the wife of a monarch. She admitted to an affair with Thomas Culpepper, amongst other lovers. Unlike Anne, Catherine was not given the option of being decapitated by sword but faced the axe instead. Unsure that she could keep her composure in the face of this punishment, she asked that the block and the executioner be brought to her room the night before her death. She knelt down in his presence and 'laid her head in that horrible hollow'. As she rose to her feet, she declared herself prepared to go through the ordeal with grace and propriety – which she did. Once on the scaffold, Catherine told the onlookers, 'I die a queen but would rather die the wife of Culpepper'. Despatched by one stroke of the axe, she had been married to the king for just one year, six months, and four days. Culpepper was already dead. At his trial in Guildhall on 1 December 1541, he said: 'Gentlemen, do not seek to know more than that the king deprived me of the thing I love best in the world and, though you may hang me for it, she loves me as well as I love her.' Having condemned himself with his own words, he was found guilty of treason along with Francis Dereham, who had had an earlier affair with Catherine. However, the statutory sentence of hanging, drawing, and quartering was commuted to beheading. Both were executed at Tyburn on 10 December 1541.
    The elderly Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, had been caught up in the machinations surrounding Henry VIII and faced execution in the Tower. After being imprisoned for two years without trial, she was finally led on to the scaffold. When ordered to put her head on the block, she refused and said, 'So should traitors do, and I am none'. The executioner insisted but the redoubtable countess shook her head and, according to an eyewitness, told him, 'if he would have her head, to get it off best he could; so that he was constrained to fetch it off slovenly'. He chased her around the block, lunging at her with his axe until she fell, mutilated and dead. Margaret's body was buried at the Chapel Royal of Saint Peter and Vincula within the precincts of the Tower.
    Lady Jane Grey insisted on blindfolding herself but then could not find the block. 'What shall I do? Where is it?' she said. A bystander guided her to it. She laid her head on the block and announced: 'Lord into thy hands I commend my spirit.' The axe came down.
    Sir Thomas More had fallen foul of Henry VIII nearly twenty years earlier and was beheaded on 6 July 1535. Having put on his finest silk gown for the occasion, he was advised by the Lieutenant of the Tower to wear something less magnificent as the executioner always kept the dead man's clothes and his expensive apparel should rightfully remain in his family. More carried a painted red cross up to Tower Hill and, when he mounted the scaffold, the executioner knelt down and begged his forgiveness. More kissed the man and said: 'I forgive thee. Pluck up thy spirits, man, and be not afraid to do thy office. I am sorry my neck is short, therefore strike not awry.' He put his head on the block and the executioner was just about to swing the axe when More signalled for a moment's delay. 'I pray you let me lay my beard over the block lest ye should cut it,' he said. 'Pity that should be cut that has not committed treason.' Once his beard was moved, the axe fell and he was despatched with a single stroke. Some were not so lucky. Sir Thomas More was canonized in 1935.

How a Queen Dies
    Mary Queen of Scots was held prisoner by Elizabeth I, Henry VIII's daughter, for eighteen years before being sent to the block on 8 February 1587. A scaffold was built in the Great Hall at Fotheringhay Castle, her place of captivity near Peterborough in Northamptonshire. When the executioner asked for her forgiveness,