Alice Wolfe: murderess, pirate, prostitute- perhaps,
and the only woman recorded in history to escape the of the Tower of London.
This is the extraordinary story of Alice Wolfe.
Alice was a native Londoner.
Wolfe was her married name, although exactly how married she and John Wolfe were, is still a matter of debate.
Her maiden name was Tankerville or Tankerfelde.
She may have been a prostitute, at least, Edward Hall,
who was a member of Parliament, and lawyer of Gray’s Inn,
and acting as counsel in the Wolfe case, certainly believed Alice to be ‘a harlot’, who ‘haunted strangers’ chambers.
Though, Hall may simply have been expressing his moral disapprobation for Wolfe and Alice’s common law marriage,
In any case, Alice clearly knew how to use her charms to her advantage.
- The Hall – Dinner – The Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn Present Day
As for John Wolfe, we can say slightly more.
He was a Merchant of the Steelyard,
an area inside the walls of the City of London , near modern-day Blackfriars.
There, Hanseatic merchants operated and were governed by their own law.
In October 1531, agents of the king and parliament arrived
at the London docks expecting to collect a shipment of 366 gold crowns
which had been shipped from the continent to help replenish King Henry’s perpetually depleted royal treasury.
With a modern equivalent value of over £900,000 it was, quite literally, a king’s ransom.
To the guards’ surprise, despite having been transported in an iron bound chest,
which was securely locked, chained to the floor of the ship
and kept under constant guard while at sea and in port, the gold had vanished..
A massive investigation was launched, to recover the gold
and bring the perpetrators of the theft to justice,
but it took nearly 2 years before the scanty trail of evidence pointed towards a sailor, named John Wolfe.
Wolfe had a reputation as a petty thief, sometime pirateand general thug,
but there was little evidence to connect
him with the theft beyond ,that he had been part of the crew onboard
,while its ship sat at anchor, in the London docks.
Under the circumstances, however; that was enough for the crown to issue a warrant for Wolfe’s arrest.
It is also where John Wolfe, first appears in documents upon his arrival in London in 1531,
suspiciously mentioned alongside the theft of 366 crowns from Cologne.
By 1532 , John Wolfe was already considered a criminal. and imprisoned in the Tower of London, ,
apparently at the instigation of the Hanseatic merchants.
By the early summer of 1533, he had been apprehended and dragged off to the Tower, where he awaited arraignment on charges of conspiracy, theft and treason: not easy charges to face at any time, but especially not under the tyrannical reign of Henry VIII.
He and Alice were already involved at this point, and she regularly visited him in the Tower to provide him with comforts.
During this era, a prisoner had to pay for food out of his own pockets.
‘the prisoner must find his own bed and any other furniture he wants’ otherwise your ‘bed’ would be a pile of straw on the floor.’
Clothes also had to be brought in from outside.
While Wolfe languished in his cell, his common-law wife Alice Tankerville, who, by all accounts, was a charmer, visited him almost daily.
Over the course of her visits, the comely and seductive Alice made friends with two of her husband’s jailers, William Denys and John Bawde.
Denys and Bawde were both young, unmarried, and more than a little taken with Alice’s obvious charms.
They allowed her to bring wine, decent food and treats to her husband, and Bawde and
Denys probably received more than their fair share of the woman’s attention. in appreciation of their leniency.
Nearly six months after his arrest, the case against Wolfe collapsed for lack of evidence and he was released.
Although free, he decided it would probably be a smart move to leave the country until things cooled off.
Ireland, seemed a good choice for an extended holiday, but before he left,
John Wolfe met privately with John Bawde, and asked him if he would look after Alice, while he was gone.
Already desperately smitten, Bawde readily agreed,
Unbeknownst to the Wolfe’s, only weeks after Wolfe’s departure,
new evidence turned up in the case of the King’s missing gold
and it would seem, it not only pointed directly at Wolfe himself, but also implicated Alice Tankerville ,as an accomplice.
Wolfe, was long gone; so to avoid losing any more time over the case both John Wolfe and Alice were tried in absentia by parliament.
Even Alice, who was often seen around the Tower ,where she went to visit John Bawde, was not notified of the charges, or trial, in which she had been named as a co defendant.
Within days the pair were found guilty of theft and treason and sentenced to death.
Only then were formal arrest warrants issued.
Meanwhile , John Wolfe returned a year later , and found Alice had made the acquaintance of two foreign merchants:
Jerome de George and Charles Benche.
The pair were wealthy, and Alice knew enough of the inside of the men’s chambers,
to tell her husband that even more riches were hidden there.
It was then, Alice and John hatched the plan that was to be their undoing:
John Wolfe , registered as a sanctuary man as a debtor , conspired with his wife Alice Wolfe
and a number of co-conspirators to rob and murder two Italian Merchants,
following the murder, it is likely the Wolfe’s ran back to Westminster prescient and took sanctuary .
In medieval England, a criminal could go to a church and claim protection from the law.
The authorities and the processes of criminal justice could not reach him.
This was based on the idea that no force could be used on the consecrated and holy ground of the churches.
This privilege, called sanctuary, could be taken up by any criminals,
ranging from murderers, rapists and thieves to the simple debtor who owed a sum of money.
The common law of the time stated that the privilege of sanctuary could only be used for up to 40 days.
However, there were in existence some large sanctuaries (such as Westminster Abbey)
which could house hundreds of criminals and had the facilities for them to stay indefinitely.
When the criminals attempted to continue their criminal activities from the Abbey,
the practice of these large sanctuaries was heavily frowned upon by the authorities and the public.
A criminal taking sanctuary had to, within the time limit of 40 days, decide on one of two courses of action.
He could either turn up at the court and declare he was ready for a trial
or he could elect to leave the country forever.
He would then be escorted safely to the nearest port and would journey to a new country.
Judges attempted on several occasions to stop the proliferation of sanctuaries,
by stating that no new ones could be made without the King’s consent.
However, many were already in existence and continued their activities.
Feeling that sanctuary would keep them from punishment they decided
, Alice would lure the men onto the river, with two trusted associates in the guise of oarsmen,
and Wolfe himself concealed in the stern of the boat.
When they were far enough from watching eyes, John Wolfe would emerge,
kill the men, then they would strip them both of their goods – and, crucially, of the keys to the chamber where the rest of their wealth was kept.
A ‘Kolener born’ John Wolfe was widely believed to be the chief actor in the crime
– it was not long before both he and his accomplices were in custody.
One of these accomplices, Alice Wolfe , who had enticed the foreigners out onto the river that evening,
Together with her husband, “ a Merchant of the Steelyard” , Alice participated in the murders of Jerome de George and Charles Benche.
Her co-conspirators, besides her husband, were a London gentleman named John Westall, and two yeomen, Robert Garrard and John Litchfield.
In the cool of a summer evening, July 16, 1533, two oars broke the inky surface of the River Thames.
A woman’s laughter echoed across the riverbanks as a small boat approached.
The oarsmen bent to task, while the two passengers – men whose clothes revealed them to be wealthy as well as foreign – did not let their eyes drift from the woman opposite.
As the boat came into view the woman shifted in her seat and suddenly, from beneath a leather covering in the stern a man emerged, clutching a dagger.
Before he could cry out, one of the foreign passengers was dead.
The other pleaded for mercy, but his shouts went unheard.
- The lower jaw showing a cut mark caused by a knife or dagger.
Once both men were dead, the murderer, the oarsmen, and the woman bound the foreigners face to face and threw their bodies in the river.
There, it was hoped, they would remain.
Unfortunately for the killers, it was only a matter of days before the corpses were discovered.
Their bound bodies were proof enough of foul play, even before the coroner gave his verdict of murder.
Garrard and Litchfield took the position of the Watermen, Wolfe, hid in the stern and waited until they were in middle of the Thames.
He jumped out of hiding and stabbed Charles in the back. He died instantly.
Then all four men attacked Jerome de George breaking his neck.
Putting chains on the two bodies, after they had stripped them of clothes and valuables, and threw them overboard.
Alice, Wolfe, Westfall, and another gentleman named Stanley then broke into the house of a Florentine Merchant, John Gerrald, to rob the dead men’s rooms.
Caught in the act they were arrested.
The authorities, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Thomas Cromwell, moved quickly to prevent the killers escaping.
At first, they seemed to have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
The Wolfe s and their accomplices were so voracious in their hunting, that they secured goods to the value of £100.
This sum was considerable.
William Warham, Archdeacon of Canterbury, retired on an annual pension of £80.
But the bodies of the merchants were not lost
And when they were discovered, Wolfe found himself once more a prisoner of the Tower – and this time Alice was there with him.
The authorities were particularly concerned that Alice not escape justice.
The murders became an international incident , and the king tasked Cromwell with making sure John and Alice did not escape condign punishment.
Cromwell could seize them from the sanctuary (and probably did), as they became prisoners in the Tower of London.
In a letter to Cromwell one prosecutor pleaded for his superior to intercede, fearing that
‘if the diabolic woman escape, we shall be in great jeopardy’.
Perhaps this is why Alice ,was so closely confined.
She was imprisoned in Coldharbour Tower, ‘enclosed within two wards’ of the Tower of London.
To reach her, any visitor would have to pass through
the Middle Tower, Byward Tower, Bloody Tower and into the Coldharbour Tower
– the innermost part of the fortress.
And even if they reached her cell, they would find Alice shackled to the walls with iron manacles.
In late January 1534, the Wolfes’ fate was sealed.
They were condemned to death by an act of attainder.
As they had committed their crime on water ,they were pirates in the eyes of the law
and their death would be a particularly unpleasant one, as they were tried in a Court of Admiralty.
They would ‘hang upon Thames at low water mark in chains’, and the rising tide would drown them.
It was a death, Alice tried her best not to meet.
The only light that filtered into her cell came through a tiny, barred window in the heavy oak cell door.
Her hands and feet were shackled, and the shackles were attached to heavy chains looped through iron rings set into the wall.
Here she would wait until John Wolfe was recaptured, the authorities decided to execute her alone.
Even by the standards of the day Alice’s treatment was so unusually harsh,
the daughter of Sir Edmund Walsingham, the Lieutenant of the Tower, interceded with her father on Alice’s behalf.
Reluctantly, Walsingham agreed to remove the heavy irons, so long as she remained in her cell Coldharbour Tower .
Prisoners would often be given the liberty of the Tower,
to take the air either on the leads above their cell (literally the roof of a tower) or even walk around inside the walls.
It is conceivable that during one of these walks Alice met the Lieutenant’s daughter
and pleaded with her ,for her chains to be removed, when she was in her cell.
Or perhaps it was William Denys, the Lieutenant’s servant, who grew so close to Alice ,
he was allegedly plotting a way to help her escape, who conveyed a message to her through the Lieutenant’s daughter.
Distressed and concerned for this lovely woman, who had been so nice to him.
while he had guarded her husband, Denys brought Alice small gifts and visited her, even when he was not on duty.
As his visits increased in regularity and length, gossip filtered back to his boss, Sir John Walsingham.
Either way, by early 1534, although still a prisoner,
Alice’s chains had been removed and she could move freely inside her cell.
By late March 1534, Alice had seduced those charged with keeping her.
William Denys, a servant of the Lord Lieutenant, Sir Edmund Walsingham, was a frequent visitor
and “showed her a secret way how she might be conveyed out of the Tower.”
But Denys’s friendship with Alice, had not gone unnoticed.
The Lieutenant could not allow his servants to aid and abet criminals, and when it was revealed that Denys knew of a secret route out of the Tower he was dismissed, and with him one possible escape route was closed to Alice.
He was dismissed for fraternizing with the prisoner; Alice then charmed another of the Lord Lieutenant’s servants, John Bawde.
When Alice “heard there was no remedy with her but death” she begged Bawde to help her escape “for the honor and passion of Christ”.
They came up with a lengthy plan.
John Bawde had his schedule changed, so he was Alice’s guard on an almost daily basis.
Through the tiny window in her cell door, Bawde and Alice’s relationship developed into a romance, at least on John Bawde’s part, and together they conceived a daring escape plan.
Alice told Bawde , William Denys had once mentioned a possible escape route out of Coldharbour Tower, and urged him to verify its feasibility.
Together they would work out the final details.
At the risk of losing both his job and his head, Bawde agreed.
He had already lost his heart to her, so no risk was thought too great to save his Alice from the grisly death that inevitably awaited her.
Over the next few days, Bawde had a long conversation,
with a trusted friend named Jeffrey Haryson and a much shorter one with an hosteller, who kept a stable not far from the Tower.
He also purchased two lengths of rope, from a dockside merchant named Sampson at a cost of 13 pence.
Next he needed a copy of the key to the outside door of Coldharbour Tower, which had been constantly locked, since Alice’s shackles had been removed.
There was no way his usual key could be used. When the last guard went off duty at ten o’clock at night, all keys had to be returned to the main guard office.
Carefully, Bawde made a duplicate key, filing it away a bit at a time and hiding it in his uniform so he could test it, in the lock, until it worked perfectly.
Finally, he found a smooth, round stick about 18 inches in length.
When this strange collection of tools was complete, John Bawde smuggled them in to work with him.
Through the bars of Alice’s cell door, he passed the key, the rope and the stick.
so she could hide them under the straw on her cell floor where they were far less likely to be noticed than if he put them in his trunk in the warder’s dormitory.
Now, the pair made their final plans and waited impatiently for a moonless night when the near-total darkness was most likely to cover their escape.
Two weeks later it was the new moon.
On Wednesday March 23, 1534, Bawde and Alice put their escape plan into action.
Bawde bought two hair ropes ,made a ladder, and carried it into the Tower concealed beneath his cloak.
That night, as his shift ended, Bawde told Alice to pass the rope back through the cell door.
With the coil of rope over his shoulder, he hurried out of the tower before his replacement showed up for work.
At ten o’clock that night, Alice’s last guard of the day went off duty, dousing the torches on his way out as he always did.
When she heard the ‘clunk’ of the lock in the outside door, Alice went to work.
After tucking the duplicate key safely in her bodice, she took the stick Bawde had smuggled in to her, a
nd reached through the gap under the cell door where food was passed to her.
The inner door of her cell was almost comically ill-secured, with only a bit of old bone acting to pin it shut.
With the end of the stick she began fumbling blindly for the pin that secured the hasp on the door.
Since the Lieutenant’s daughter had arranged for Alice’s shackles to be removed,
she was able to reach under the cell door, and by interchangeably shaking it and poking at the pin with a stick, she knocked it out of the staple.
After locating the pin she began tapping it upwards to drive it out of the hasp, jarring the door with her knee to help work it loose.
After several nerve-racking minutes, the pin fell to the floor and the door swung open.
Feeling her way along the darkened hall and down the steps to the outer door,
Alice took the duplicate key from her bodice, unlocked the door and stepped into the darkness of the tower yard.
- Alice’s escape route, St Thomas Tower
Then disguised in the men’s clothes Bawde had given her,
she made her way from her cell, out of Coldharbour Tower
and up onto the leads of St Thomas’s Tower – above what is now called ‘Traitor’s Gate’.
To make herself as invisible as possible, she pulled the hood of her long, dark cloak over her head.
In the chill March night, Alice hurried away from Coldharbour Tower, f
eeling her way through the narrow alleyways and up the stone stairs leading to the flat roof,
of the tower straddling Traitors’ Gate and the small wharf, where the condemned were brought into the Tower from the Thames.
This was part of the outer walls of the Tower of London, and only the fortress’s moat separated it from the wharf beyond.
On the opposite side of the wharf was the open River Thames, and with it, freedom.
Reaching the roof of St Thomas’s Tower ,as the bells across London tolled ten o’clock, Alice found John Bawde waiting.
He had tied one end of the rope to an old iron hook embedded in the stone parapet wall,
and now waited anxiously for Alice to arrive, before dropping the rope down the outside of the tower, so they could make their escape.
The moat, at this point, was narrow and at low tide, often dry
Bawde had secured an iron hook, to the ropes, and threw it over the moat to the wharf opposite.
Sliding carefully down the rope, first John and then Alice landed silently on the tiny wharf, next to Traitors’ Gate.
Untying the small boat used to ferry prisoners from the shore into the Tower, they glided silently across the moat, and up to Iron Gate Steps ,on the far shore.
As they stepped out, John pushed the boat back into the moat, and towards the wharf; it might look strange if it were spotted tied to the shore, they had to do everything possible to buy time before their escape was discovered.
Together, they slid down to the wharf, where they slipped into a lighter –
a flat-bottomed barge, used to transfer goods along the river – and crept along it until they found a boat at Vaughan’s Stair.
Peering over the parapet, they waited till the night watch,
passed on their regular rounds of the streets on the opposite side of the moat.
Once passed, it would be at least half an hour before they returned.
By then John and Alice would be long gone.
As the couple walked across the grassy verge towards a nearby road lined
with cottages inhabited by Tower guards with families, Bawde told Alice that he had rented a pair of horses and tethered them nearby.
These would carry them to the home of his friend Jeffrey Haryson
,who had agreed to let them hide out for a few days, until the guard had stopped looking for them in the immediate vicinity of the Tower.
This should give them enough time to escape London and find passage to the continent.
Walking slowly towards the horses, the pair held each other close, talking in hushed tones.
Undoubtedly, they were excited to be so close to freedom and at the same time terrified they would be discovered.
Escape was tantalizingly close.
Even in her ill-fitting men’s clothing, Alice must have felt a thrill of triumph as they mounted the hill.
They clung to each other out of excitement, desperation and in the hope , a pair of young lovers would not attract any undue attention
from anyone who might pass them on the road.
Just as they rounded the last corner on their way up Tower Hill to the waiting horses,
they were confronted by a group of men carrying lanterns, coming in the opposite direction down the narrow lane.
The two huddled closer, trying to hide their faces from anyone who might recognize them.
Glancing up, Bawde recognized the night watch.
They were early. They shouldn’t be at this point for at least another ten minutes. Had the escape taken longer than he thought?
Too late.
Coming down Tower Hill, was one of the watchmen, an old friend of Bawde’s called Gore.
He called out a greeting, and despite attempts to allay suspicion, it must have been painfully obvious that all was not as it should be.
Waving and mumbling a reply, Bawde and Alice hurried on, pressing themselves against the cottages to stay beyond the reach of the lantern light.
But Gore was also an occasional guard of Alice ‘s, so when the pair squeezed past the guard, he recognised her.
In a few seconds of panic and confusion, the guard fell on John Bawde and Alice, snatching away all hope of escape and freedom.
The story, of course, does not end there.
There was now no doubt what the future held for either of them.
Alice returned to her cell with death now a certainty.
Alice was hauled back to her cell, where a padlock was put on the door and a 24-hour guard posted outside.
At the same time, John Bawde was taken temporarily to the Counter Gaol for questioning.
Even without torture, he confessed everything.
But for John Bawde, death was not enough – he was placed in ‘Little Ease’,
a small dark cell where you could neither stand up nor sit down -he is the first known occupant this peculiar torture cell used during the reigns of the Tudors and early Stuarts.
Grenville’s writing of the Confession by Bawde ,is a little different.
He says “On Friday about (two) of the clock in the morning one Bawde, the Lord Lieutenant’s servant came with counterfeit keys and opened the prison door, where Wolfe’s wife was, and conveyed her out of the Tower with ropes tied to the embattlements: and after he had conveyed her down, went down himself.”
On the wharf below they hid for an hour.
Then Bawde found a boat, and rowed them to the water-stairs, at the end of the Tower causeway.
They were walking up Tower Hill, toward a Mrs. Jenyn’s house, where Bawde had left two horses, when they encountered the Watch.
By Grenville’s account, Alice was “apparelled like a man” and for that reason
the Watch was suspicious ,and took both Alice and Bawde into custody, and took them to the Lord Lieutenant.”
He continued writing , on Tuesday, “Wolfe and his wife shall hang upon Thames at low water mark in chains.
And Bawde is in Little Ease, and after he hath been in the Rack shall be hanged.”
He was no doubt keen to make Bawde say as much as possible, to throw blame further from his own door.
Once it was clear he would reveal no new information, Bawde was hanged.
If the breakout had been successful, it would almost certainly have cost Sir Edmund his job, and considering the mercurial temperament of the king, it could also have cost him his head.
While, the plotters had been recaptured and a messenger had brought word that John Wolfe had been apprehended attempting to slip back into England.
Evidently, word of his trial and conviction had not reached him in Ireland.
Now, everyone would pay for their crimes.
For Alice and John Wolfe, the end came soon, but not quickly.
On March 31 ,1534 ,the pair were carted from the Tower to the stone retaining walls lining the Thames embankment.
Here they were securely wrapped in chains and lowered into the water at low tide.
Their guards and a crowd of ghoulish fun seekers gathered to watch as the tide turned and began to creep back in.
Inch by inch, the filthy water of the Thames crept up over their legs to their waist
and on to their chest; finally drowning the helpless, terrified couple as they struggled frantically to hold their heads above the relentless rising tide.
According to the official State Papers of Lord Lisle, an entry for Sunday, 28 March of that year states:
‘Wolfe and his wife Alice Tankerville will be hanged in chains at low water mark upon the Thames on Tuesday.
John Bawde , ‘is in Little Ease cell in the Tower and is to be racked and hanged.’
For his part in helping plot, history’s only attempted escape by a woman from the Tower of London, John Bawde
was racked until his muscles tore and his arms and legs were pulled from their sockets, leaving him in excruciating pain and unable to move on his own.
As a final humiliation he was wrapped in chains and suspended over the outer walls of the Tower complex, where he slowly died of exposure and dehydration.
His body was left to hang there for months, picked at by the crows and the Tower ravens,
a festering public display intended to serve as an example to anyone foolish enough to think they could escape the king’s justice.
For all this mayhem, tragedy and treason, and despite the legitimate efforts of the courts and official investigators,
the historical record never mentions that Henry VIII’s, 366 gold crowns were ever recovered,
leaving open the question of whether John Wolfe and Alice were actually guilty of any involvement in the crime.
If they were, their punishment, gruesome as it was, was no more than could be expected by a convicted traitor during the harsh reign of Henry VIII.
If they were innocent, their deaths were not only horrible, but a gross miscarriage of justice
- The Execution Dock on River Thames
Both Alice and John Wolfe met the fate, she had tried to avoid.
Edward Hall records their ends:
‘And at the last she and her husband as they deserved, were apprehended, arraigned and hanged at the foresaid Turnyng Tree, where she hanged still and was not cut down, until such time as it is known that beastly and filthy wretches had most shamefully abused her while being dead.’
By Henry VIII’s reign the office of constable of the Tower had become a dignity and the lieutenant was the resident head of that institution.
After 1539, when a new house was built for the lieutenant, the only exit from the Belfry, where many of the prisoners were kept, was through this house.
Walsingham was responsible for their custody and was their channel of communication with the outside world.
During his 22 years in office Walsingham had charge of a host of prisoners, many of them famous, the majority obscure, and perhaps inevitably he acquired a reputation for rigor.
Bishop Fisher complained of the harsh treatment he received, and the Countess of Salisbury suffered horribly from cold during her winter there; even the Council in London remonstrated that unless the Duchess of Norfolk and others arraigned with her were given some liberty, within the Tower ,they could not long survive.
To an old friend like Sir Thomas More he could offer ‘such poor cheer as he had’, to Cromwell’s ‘gentle chaplain, Curtoyse by name’, he allowed the privilege of saying mass every day, and to John Frith he gave freedom from irons and scope for his ‘pleasant tongue’.
For his own part Walsingham prospered materially. In addition to his salary of £100 he made a handsome profit out of prisoners.
The state made generous allowances for the illustrious among them, but these payments the lieutenant and his officers treated as perquisites, and the offenders were expected to pay their own costs and upon release or execution, to leave their goods behind.
The resulting income fed Walsingham’s steady acquisition of landed property both in Kent and Surrey. In 1531 he had acquired the reversion or remainder of a lease of Gomshall Towerhill, Surrey, from the abbey of St. Mary Graces near the Tower; in the following year he was granted by Newark priory a 40-year lease of the parish church of St. Martha; and in 1534 he negotiated a 40-year lease with the same priory of the parsonage and church of Ewell, the term to run from 1542 at £13 a year.
These three leases, were confirmed by the court of augmentations in 1539.
In 1539 ,the King rewarded his services by granting him Gomshall Towerhill as well as nine houses in London.
Walsingham ,also increased his inheritance in Kent, notably by acquiring from Sir Robert Southwell the manors of Swanton Court, West Peckham and Yokes, all adjacent to the Scadbury estate.
Walsingham’s landed interest in Surrey qualified him for the knighthood of that shire in the Parliament of 1545.
He became a Vice Chamberlain to the Queen Catherine Parr ,within a year of his departure from the Tower in 1543 and died in 1550.
thank you !
Great story. Enjoyed this one.