In the treacherous world of the Tudor court, few men were as ruthless or as fortunate as Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk. By late 1546, the aging Duke found himself on the wrong side of a power struggle. His rivals, the Seymours, successfully convinced a dying Henry VIII that Norfolk and his son were plotting to seize the throne. While his son, the Earl of Surrey, was sent to the block on January 19, Norfolk’s own execution was set for the early morning of January 28, 1547.
The Duke’s life was measured in minutes. As the executioner prepared his tools at the Tower of London, King Henry VIII breathed his last at Whitehall Palace just after midnight. Because a death warrant technically required the authority of a living monarch, the King’s passing threw the legal process into a vacuum. The Royal Council, more concerned with securing the transition of power to the young Edward VI than beheading an old man, stayed the execution.
Norfolk remained a prisoner in the Tower for six years, watching from his cell as many of the men who had plotted his downfall were themselves executed. He was eventually liberated when Queen Mary I took the throne in 1553. Despite spending his life on the edge of the axe, the man who was supposed to die in 1547 lived to be 81, outlasting the King who had ordered his death.
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