Ten Facts About Life in Shakespeare’s England

Shakespeare’s England, Life in Elizabethan and Jacobean Times is an excellent book edited by R. E. Pritchard that compiles and discusses primary documents from Shakespeare’s contemporaries in order to describe his world. This book offers us a unique insight into what exactly Shakespeare’s audience would have been thinking about while watching his plays, making connections between the turmoil on stage and that in London’s streets and England’s countryside.

1. The population was on the rise, going from 3 to 4.5 million during Shakespeare’s lifetime. To make matters worse, there was disease, rising prices without rising wages and increased social mobility that made life unstable. It was also the moment that England began to industrialize, expanding industries like cloth manufacture and mining.

2. Although marriages could be consummated at a very young age (12 for girls and 14 for boys), the average Elizabethan did not marry until his mid-twenties. Although women were “entirely under the power of their husbands,” companionship was sought in marriage before family or monetary gains (29). Courtship generally involved the exchange of rings, gloves or other tokens. Women tended to have six to seven children, and since contraception was primitive, premarital sex was not as common as we might think.

3. Under Elizabeth, England experienced an education boom due to the church reforms. By 1600, a third of the population was literate, although the rate was much higher in London, and reading had begun to become a part of daily life, explaining how pamphlets became useful political tools.

4. The Great Chain of Being dominated Elizabethan beliefs in the cosmos. Superstition was also widespread, despite its negative associations with Catholicism under Elizabeth, and astrology was a legitimate science. Witches were put on trial by being restrained and then thrown into water to see if they swam.

5. Elizabeth’s court was described by Sir Walter Raleigh as “[shining] like rotten wood” (129). There were around 1500 attendants overall, and sixty people who had access to the most private chambers. The Queen was never in one place for long, and inhabited different castles at different times of year, saving Whitehall for Parliament.

6. London had a population of 200,000 by 1600, since enclosure laws drove people into the city. Guilds held great power, but the city was run by the Lord Mayor, Aldermen and a Common Council.

7. The first theatres were established in “the Liberties,” or the southern suburbs, where brothels, bars, poorhouses, and asylums were found.

8. The poor were classified as “the impotent,” “the laboring” and “the idle” poor. Vagrants were everywhere as poverty increased, and riots frequently broke out, spreading fear among Elizabethans of crime and disorder.

9. Bastardry and infanticide peaked during Elizabeth’s time, which suggests that audiences of Richard III would have been sensitive to these issues in his plays.

10. There were over a thousand hangings in England and Wales every year, and beheading was reserved for those of higher rank.

Read more about Religion and Punishment in Elizabethan England.

Protestants Versus Catholics: Religion in Elizabethan England

Shakespeare was well acquainted with the religious tensions of his age between the Catholics and the Protestants, and inevitably drew connections between the violent civil Wars of the Roses and the current threat of civil war over religion that many Elizabethans feared. Although it is highly contested, many historians believe that Shakespeare himself was a covert Catholic and would have intimately understood the secrecy, confusion, suspicion and potential punishment that accompanied following the old religion under Elizabeth. Shakespeare sneakily employs religious references and symbolism that his audiences would have been acutely aware of to talk about his tumultuous age and the way the Queen oversaw the nation’s religious affairs.

The young Queen Elizabeth I.

When Elizabeth was made Queen of England after the death of Mary Tudor on November 17, 1558, her people had good reason to be concerned. Within more or less the past decade the nation had gone from Protestant under Edward VI to Catholic under Mary and now back to Protestant. If famine, plague, inflation, and war with France and Scotland were not bad enough, now there was the threat of religious upheaval and the violent persecution that accompanied it.

Bloody Mary Tudor.

Neither Elizabeth nor her government was very enthusiastic at first about religious reform, knowing the problems that would ensure. At first, she simply banned preaching altogether to try and keep the peace, desperately afraid of Catholic revolt. Most Catholics were equally optimistic, assuming that a Catholic husband was all Elizabeth needed. It was the Protestant population, in fact, who wanted revenge for their fellow Englishmen who were exiled, imprisoned and burnt at the stake under Queen Mary. But as the crown began to seem more unstable in light of Elizabeth’s unmarried status and rumblings of a Scottish invasion that would seat Mary, Queen of Scots on the throne, Elizabeth sought to “reduce the realm to conformity” (Jones 19).

In 1559, Parliament passed the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, which made Elizabeth the head of the Church with the help of an Ecclesiastical High Commission, or religious police, and returned the nation to Protestantism as it had been under Edward VI. Furthermore, anyone who denied the Queen’s authority over the church was punishable by death and those in office in the church and state were required to take an oath declaring as much. Protestants primarily objected to Catholic mass given in Latin, as it was “against the word of God to use a tongue unknown to the people of common prayer,” and the superstitious, ostentation of idols, images, altars, rosaries and Catholic rituals in general. The Book of Common Prayer from 1552 was adopted, which in particular allowed for a looser interpretation of the Eucharist. When it came to the destruction of images and altars, windows were replaced, idols destroyed and tables replaced altars. Elizabeth even sent out inspectors to make sure that it was done, unlike Queen Mary when she instated the Catholic ceremonies.

Elizabethans were very confused about religion. They did not know whether their God was a wrathful or a benevolent one, or what the fundamental differences were between the old and the new faiths. Many became “jacks of both sides” in order to escape notice, and at first, it seemed to work (Jones 18). However, devout Protestants wanted the Catholics purged and Elizabeth herself continued her reforms by creating a new calendar, translating the Book of Common Prayer in Latin for the universities and hanging the Ten Commandments where altars once were. Catholics were associated with witchcraft and necromancy, and even William Cecil, Elizabeth’s closest advisor, used this belief as an excuse to make political arrests.

The Tyburn tree in London, where Catholic martyrs were killed.

1563 marked a real turning point in the treatment of Catholics, and it was after Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion were finally accepted in 1566 that Elizabeth no longer looked like a more lenient ruler than her predecessor. The articles were intended to purge the Book of Common Prayer of any vestigial “popery,” clergy were given specific forms of dress, including collars and square caps, grammar schools were to be installed in each cathedral, both clergy members and laity had to be more studious, and the church would reallocate its funds (Jones 51-2). The articles were highly contested on the subject of, what else, uniforms for clergymen, and Elizabeth herself was furious that they had been drafted behind her back.

Edmund Campion and the Tyburn tree.

But after several riots over the articles, debates that widened the gap between Protestantism and Catholicism, more plots related to Mary in Scotland, and a new Act of Treason, Catholics were exiled and imprisoned en masse. At first, Elizabeth did not want to outright execute Catholics, attempting to distinguish her own rule from that of Mary Tudor. But the rebellion led by Edmund Campion and Robert Persons proved to be the limit, and these men became the first Catholic martyrs under Elizabeth. After that, Catholics were persecuted no differently than their Protestant counter parts had been, such as the Northern rebellion led by the Earl of Norfolk in 1559 that sought to put Mary on the throne. Elizabeth destroyed the rebel army and plundered the region in response, hanging 800 men in the first month of 1570. Catholics were no longer just enemies of the church to be reprimanded, but intolerable enemies of the nation.

The execution of Mary Stuart in the 2007 Cate Blanchett film, Elizabeth, the Golden Age.

It was around this time that Elizabeth’s suspicions grew of Mary’s involvement in various plots to make her queen. Almost twenty years of plotting went on until, in 1586 Elizabeth finally put her on trial at Fotheringhay Castle and in early 1587, Mary was executed in order to secure Elizabeth’s place on the throne as well as religious control. In 1588, Elizabeth faced yet another Catholic threat from Philip V of Spain, and it was defeating his Armada that finally ensured her English Protestant power.

Defeat of the Spanish Armada

References:

Jones, Norman. The Birth of the Elizabethan Age: England in the 1560s. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishing Inc. 1995. Print.

“Queen Elizabeth I: Biography, Portraits, Primary Sources.” Tudor Monarchs. Web. Accessed 2-26-10. <http://englishhistory.net/tudor/monarchs/eliz1.html>.

About the Playwright: William Shakespeare

Personal Life and the Lost Years

William Shakespeare was born around St. George’s Day, April 23, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England, which is about one-hundred miles northwest of London. His father was John Shakespeare, a glover, illegal wool dealer and local official, and his mother was Mary Arden. He was the third of eight siblings and the first son. He attended a local grammar school, The King’s New School, where he learned English and Latin, studying Aesop’s fables, Ovid and Virgil. In his early years he would have also been exposed to the Geneva Bible, The Book of Common Prayer, Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, and other Protestant works. He married Anne Hathaway, eight years his elder, in 1482 and became a father in 1583. Their children included the eldest daughter Susana, Hamnet and Judith.

An early drawing of Shakespeare's home.

After 1585, Shakespeare does not appear in any records until 1592, known as the “lost years.” Some believe that he fled Stratford after a poaching incident while others believe that he was studying abroad, practicing law, or teaching school. While equally mysterious is how exactly Shakespeare ended up in London, it is possibly that he joined a theatre troupe that traveled through Stratford and the rest is history.

While Shakespeare was in London, his family remained in Stratford. He probably traveled home on occasion, about four days walking or two days ride. It was in 1596 that his son Hamnet died, and Shakespeare also composed the melancholy lines in King John, “Grief fills the room up of my absent child…” (Gray).

Shakespeare and the Theatre

In London, the “upstart crow” Shakespeare became a very successful, versatile playwright. In March 1592, for example, his Henry VI plays are recorded to have played five times in rotation with thirteen other plays, making Shakespeare’s plays the most performed compared to Kyd, Marlowe or anyone else. At first, Shakespeare was a kind of “freelance dramatist” and worked for The Queen’s Men, Lord Strange’s Men, and Pembroke’s Men, who performed frequently at court (Gray). Despite being hit hard by the closure of the theatres during an outbreak of the Plague in 1593 that killed roughly 11,000 of London’s 200,000 inhabitants, Shakespeare stayed afloat writing verse for patrons like Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, who became a long-term supporter. Shakespeare’s sonnets were most likely composed sometime during this “Southampton period,” between 1592 and 1595, earning him enough money to survive until the theatres reopened and become a sharer in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, organized by the Queen’s Chamberlain, Lord Hudson (Gray). It was with this troupe that Shakespeare worked with Richard Burbage, the great actor, his father James Burbage, and actor William Kempe. They performed publicly at the Theatre, the Swan and the Curtain.

Between 1594 and 1599, Lord Chamberlain’s Men became the most popular theatre troupe in London and Shakespeare’s writing was profuse. In 1597, when the lease ran out on Burbage’s Theatre, the family eventually decided to tear it down and use the timber to build the Globe on the Bankside across the Thames and could accommodate as many as 3,000 audience members beneath its open-air, thatched roof and among its three balconies. Shakespeare was one of the new theatre’s co-owners and made somewhere between £200 and £250 every year. Shakespeare was now able to help his father receive a coat of arms, and he even bought a mansion by Elizabethan standards in Stratford. The next years of explosive creativity and writing were probably connected to the rapid changes going on in society around him. Not only had the Essex Rebellion crumbled in 1601, ending in the execution of Southampton, but in 1603 England suddenly had a new monarch, James VI of Scotland, and Shakespeare was now a member of the King’s Men, the most popular company to perform at court. Shakespeare’s tragedies become increasingly popular, and it is speculated that Shakespeare himself was in a dark place while composing these “higher art forms.” In 1608, the King’s Men began performing at the more expensive, indoor theatre, Blackfriars, and Shakespeare focused on his romances that were in the spirit of the masques that became very popular at court. The Globe burnt down in 1613, but a second Globe was built on top of it, only this time with a tile roof.

In his final years, Shakespeare returned to Stratford to work on three more collaborative plays after The Tempest. It seems he spent his time with his two, now married, daughters, until his death at April 23, 1616.

Folios and Quartos

Shakespeare’s plays first appear in print in 1594 with Titus Andronicus in the form of quartos. These were very small, very inexpensive pamphlets that could be readily made and sold. The quartos remain the only source for Shakespeare’s writings, since he left no manuscripts, and they are often contradictory, reflecting drafts of plays or versions written by the actors from memory (British Library).

In 1623, the First Folio appeared thanks to two of Shakespeare’s colleagues, Heminges and Condell, entitled Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories & Tragedies. The folio included 36 plays, 18 of which had never been published. The collection was probably inspired by the recent folio of Ben Jonson, Workes, who even included a commemorative poem to the Bard.

Catholic Shakespeare

One of the most highly debated aspects of Shakespeare’s biography is his religion. While historians do not have concrete proof that Shakespeare was a Catholic, many pieces of evidence suggest that he was despite the era of Catholic persecution in which he lived and wrote:

1. The Arden Family was a wealthy, powerful, and staunchly Catholic family located in Warwickshire. Mary Arden, Shakespeare’s mother, was a not-so-distant relative of Edward Arden, the head of the family, who actively supported Jesuit rebels, such as Edmund Campion and Robert Southwell. Arden was hung, drawn and quartered for his religion and alleged involvement in treasonous plots in 1583 after his son-in-law, John Somerville, was arrested for claiming the Queen to be a heretic and calling for her death. Shakespeare and his mother would have certainly been affected by this incident, if they were not present at the executions.

2. Coventry, known for its medieval Catholic Mystery plays, was just a day’s ride from Stratford, where Shakespeare would have surely first have been exposed to the theatre.

3. John Shakespeare, William’s father, was certainly raised Catholic, although as a Bailiff and later Chief Alderman of Stratford, he publicly identified as a Protestant during his career. However, it is suggested by historians that John Shakespeare’s financial troubles and retreat from public affaires later in life was due to his difficulty functioning in an increasingly Protestant political climate. Most incriminating of all, in 1757, a testament of faith was found in Shakespeare’s birth home signed by John Shakespeare, and his name is later found on a list of Catholic sympathizers who refused Protestant communion by claiming to be in too much debt.

4. Shakespeare was possibly educated by known Catholics both at grammar school and in his “lost years” it has been speculated that Shakespeare studied abroad in Rome, attended a Catholic college or became a schoolmaster for a prominent Catholic family in Lancashire.

5. As a dramatist and poet, two of Shakespeare’s patrons, Lord Strange and Earl of Southampton, were from very Catholic families.

6. There is also documentation to suggest that Shakespeare purchased the gatehouse at Blackfriars, London where Catholics secretly met, making a very personal contribution to the survival of Catholicism.

Click here for an additional Shakespeare timeline including his life, plays and historical context.

References:

The British Library. “Basic facts about William Shakespeare, his, life, his plays and the quartos.” William Shakespeare in quarto. Web. Accessed 2-22-10. <http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/basics.html>.

“Edward Arden,” “John Shakespeare,” “John Somerville.” In Search of Shakespeare. PBS. 2003 Web. Accessed 2-22-10. <http://www.pbs.org/shakespeare/>.

Gray, Terry. “A Shakespeare Timeline.” 1998. Web. Accessed 2-22-10. <http://shakespeare.palomar.edu/timeline/timeline.htm>.

Hammerschmidt-Hummel, Hildegard. "The most important subject that can possibly be": A Reply to E. A. J. Honigmann." Connotations. 12.2-3, 2003. Web. Accessed 2-22-10. <http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/connotations/ham-hu1223>.

Maps

Maps of England during the 15th and 16th centuries. It's hard to find the perfect one, so here are a few that I like:

Fun Facts about Elizabethan England

With the ever present threat of assassination by supporters of Mary, Queen of Scots and Catholic dissidents, Elizabeth I surrounded herself with a spy network headed by Francis Walsingham. A ruthless spy, Walsingham uncovered the Anthony Babington plot in 1586 to restore Mary to the thrown that secured her execution. Elizabeth was highly concerned with written forms of rebellion, such as subversive plays, and meticulously led an authoritarian counter-revolutionary campaign of propaganda, speeches and statutes.

Elizabeth's "Rainbow Portrait," featuring eyes and ears on her gown to symbolize the power of her spies at court.

“The Virgin Queen” was a problematic figure for Shakespeare and his audience. If a female “King of England” wasn’t troubling enough, Elizabeth had not provided an heir. In 1566 Parliament even tried to deny Elizabeth any funding until she married. By the time Richard III was produced, Elizabeth was an aging monarch and the audience’s anxieties about an “unnatural” ruler with no Tudor male heir were at their height.

Religious persecution was rampant throughout Elizabeth’s lifetime, during which time the English monarchy changed religion from Protestant to Catholic, and then back again. Heretics were burned, monasteries, convents, hospitals and schools dissolved and churches defaced. Theatre played an integral part in this religious conflict during Shakespeare’s time, functioning both as overt Protestant propaganda and as clandestine Catholic code. Although Elizabeth was fully aware of Shakespeare’s many subversive meanings encoded in his plays, he was skilled enough to hide them well and escape censorship and punishment.

Bloody Mary Tudor, the Catholic monarch between Edward VI and Elizabeth I.

Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth's threat to the throne.

Read more about Relgion in Shakespeare's England here.

Timeline of Elizabethan England

Courtesy of my lovely assistant, Mary Margaret Kunze.

What was the first production like?

It is believed that "Richard III" was first written and performed in 1591 following his Henry VI trilogy. The first performance was most likely performed by a mix of the Admiral’s Men and Lord Strange’s Men, possibly for “Essex, Southampton and the growing opposition, Catholic and radical Protestant, that gathered in Essex House to nurse grievances and plot enemies’ downfall” The play became very popular and was performed by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men at the Globe in the 1600s, and even as late as 1633 at court. Richard Burbage, Shakespeare’s leading actor, was performing the role of Richard after the Globe opened in 1599. Like the other early history plays, Richard III was designed to be performed for large audiences in open-air theatres, packing hundreds of Elizabethans hungry for entertainment in to see the show. The first quarto appeared in 1597, printed from a manuscript that was believed to have been written from memory by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and Shakespeare.

References:

Asquith, Clare. Shadowplay: Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare. NY: Public Affairs. 2005.

Hattaway, Michael. Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s History Plays. Cambridge University Press. 2002. p.103

Shakespeare in Quarto. The British Library. 10/25/09. <http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/homepage.html>.

Shakespeare and Prophesy

Astrology, which came to medieval Europe by way of Arabian scholars, was divided into “natural” and “judicial” theories. Natural astrology had to do with the influence of the stars and planets on the physical world, like weather and the development of living things while judicial astrology related to “the influence of heavenly bodies on human destiny” (245). While this second theory of astrology complicated Christian teachings of free will and the possibility of redemption, the church allowed that the stars incline based on the will of God, even if they do not compel. It is unclear whether most people believed in the powers of the stars, sort of like people might believe in the power of hormones without really knowing how they work, or if the population was generally more skeptical. Either way, horoscopes and almanacs were an important part of medieval culture and used to tell everything from how a child’s personality might develop to when the Queen herself should be crowned. Like many elite who employed court-astrologers, Elizabeth I employed John Dee as her “philosopher.” Astrological events, such as “solar and lunar eclipses, comets and meteors were regarded as portents for rulers and nations,” explaining why the appearance of the three suns before Edward IV and his brothers was more than just a “wondrous-strange” phenomenon, but a miraculous and meaningful sign of glory (Henry VI, Part III 2.1.33).

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An astrolabe.

Although other Shakespearean plays and sonnets, like sonnet XV, imply that he shared the contemporary belief in natural astrology and was familiar with its common rules and forms, there is no indication that Shakespeare ever studied astrology or believed in judicial astrology. In Richard III, one might attribute the mistaken astrology that allows Edward to condemn his brother Clarence instead of Richard as an example of Shakespeare’s skeptical cynicism about the value of astrological knowledge. Clarence appears to be no less gullible than Edward, who condemns his own brother to the Tower based on a prophesy. If both Richard and the audience know that the letter G really points to Richard himself, who ultimately does destroy Edward IV, does this suggest that our belief in fate and astrology is futile or that we should simply pay better attention? What does it mean that Richard’s villainy is emerging at the same moment that we see his omniscient rationality and ability to manipulate superstition? This might “modernize” Richard and separate him from his gullible contemporaries, but it also makes him even more frighteningly sly and familiar, since as modern audience such as ourselves can better identify with a skeptic and cynic when it comes to superstition and stars, even if he is a “divell.”

An astrological treatise.

References:

Sondheim, Moriz. “Shakespeare and the Astrology of His Time.” Journal of the Warburg Institute. Vol. 2, No. 3. Jan., 1939. Pp243-259. JSTOR. Accessed 2-13-10.

Crime and Punishment

William Harrison’s Description of England, written in 1587, offers an excellent account of what punishment was like in Elizabethan England. Here are a few highlights:

• The “greatest and most grievous punishment” was reserved for traitors, those who “offended” the state. These men were removed from prison to the place of execution by a “hurdle or sled” where they were hung until half dead, quartered and disemboweled so that their insides were flung onto a fire within their vision.
• High treason was punished with beheading, “trespasses” with the cutting off of their ears, “rogues” were burned through the ears, sheep smugglers lost their hands, heretics were burned alive, vagabonds were whipped or thrown in the stocks, and scolds were made to endure the ducking-stool in water. Criminals could also be pressed to death with weights, and those who used poison to commit murder might be boiled alive.
• Murderers were hung alive in chains near the place their crime was committed, although sometimes they were also strangled with a rope before hand.
• “Felonies” were all punished the same way, and included, robbery, conspiring against the prince, stealing maidens, the killing of a soldier off the field, sodomy, slander, embezzlement, and witchcraft. (In other words, there was little differentiation between the severity of punishment for many “crimes.”)

From Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

We’ve all been told that Shakespeare would have seen the heads of traitors stuck on pikes on his way to work across the Thames. London Online, explains that these heads were typically displayed along the gatehouses of the bridge. Some of the most famous heads include Sir William Wallace, Simon Frisel, Bolingbroke, Jack Cade and other rebels, and Sir Thomas More.

Beheadings were either achieved with a sword or with an axe, the messier of the two methods. Mary, Queen of Scots, for example, received three blows before her head could be completely severed from her shoulders on the block. This meant that executioners had to be really good at their jobs, which was not usually the case since beheadings were a more rare form of execution saved for nobility and people of higher ranks. When beheaded, the person loses consciousness almost immediately, and then dies within a minute, although the brain can still function for as many as seven seconds after the head has been lobbed off.

The Tower of London was an enigmatic symbol of power during the Wars of the Roses. Not only was it a place where tournaments and coronations might be held, but it was also a symbol of punishment and death. In the Tower, where prisoners of high rank and birth were typically imprisoned, executions took place either privately on the Tower Green, such as those of Lord Hastings and Anne Boleyn, or else they were public spectacles held on Tower Hill just outside the walls. The Tower of London also contains replicas of the racks that were used to torture Protestants during the reign of Mary I, and later Guy Fawkes in 1605 after the Gunpowder Plot was uncovered.

Prisoners often entered the Tower through the infamous Traitors Gate, which could be seen from all along the Thames. Elizabeth herself passed through this gate almost twenty years after her mother, Anne Boleyn, was also led this way into the Tower before she was beheaded by sword on the Tower Green.

During Elizabeth’s reign, Catholics who did not conform to the new Protestant “Act of Uniformity and Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacrament” of 1559 and attend church were punished for “recusancy” under “The Recusancy Law.” Not only was Elizabeth concerned about Catholic plots to overthrow her and place Mary, Queen of Scots on the throne, but also everyday religious activity. Under this law, people could be jailed for attending private masses, fined for not attending church and then imprisoned if it was not paid. Elizabeth installed additional Justices of the Peace throughout the country to help collect the names and information of Catholic recusants for the government.

The danger of looking at Elizabethan-era capital punishment is that is allows us to feel better about the way in which we punish criminals today. We justify our own methods of execution by Othering those of the past, identifying beheadings, hangings and torture as too severe to resemble anything like our own lethal injections or electric chairs. This is also the problem with comparing execution methods around the world, such as where beheadings are still used today in Saudi Arabia with a sword. Is this necessarily less humane than execution methods in the US? The question becomes how do we make a contemporary audience frightened by this distant history of English punishment in an immediate, effective way?

References:

“Elizabethan Recusants and Recusancy Laws.” <http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/elizabethan-recusants-recusancy-laws.htm>.

Pritchard, R. E. Shakespeare’s England: Life in Elizabethan & Jacobean Times. London: Sutton Publishing. 1999.

“The History of Beheading and Decapitation.” <http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/behead.html>.

“Welcome to the Tower of London.” Historical Royal Places. <http://www.hrp.org.uk/TowerOfLondon/Default.aspx>.