In the brief speech which he delivered to the people before his death the unfortunate Duke admitted the justice of his sentence, saying, “Masters, I have offended the Queen and her laws, and thereby I am justly condemned to die, and am willing to die, desiring all men to be obedient; and I pray God that this my death may be an example to all men, beseeching you all to bear me witness that I die in the faith of Christ trusting to be saved by his blood only, and by no other trumpery, the which died for me, and for all men that truly repent and steadfastly trust in him. And I do repent, desiring you all to pray to God for me that when you see my head depart from me, you will pray to God that he may receive my soul.”
Of Suffolk, Bishop Burnet writes; “That but for his weakness he would have died more pitied, if his practices had not brought his daughter to her end.”
Although it is probable that Suffolk’s body was buried in St Peter’s Chapel, his head is believed to be in the Church of the Holy Trinity in the Minories, a building which is within the ancient liberties of the Tower. The Duke’s town house was the converted convent of the church of the nuns of the order of Clares, so called after their foundress Santa Clara of Assisi. They were known as the “Sorores Minores,” whence the name of the district—the Minories. This building had been made over to Suffolk by Edward VI., and the present church of the Holy Trinity actually stands upon the site of the old convent chapel. This interesting edifice is now (1899) threatened with destruction, and in a few years it is extremely probable that the ground upon which it stands will be covered with warehouses or buildings connected with the London and North-Western Railway.
The head was found half-a-century ago in a small vault near the altar, and as it had been placed in sawdust made of oakwood, it is quite mummified, owing to the tannin in the oak. There is the mark of the blow of a sharp instrument above the place where the head was severed from the neck, and Sir George Scharf, than whom a better judge of an historical head whether on canvas or in a mummified state, never existed, wrote of it thus: “The arched form of the eyebrows and the aquiline shape of the nose, correspond with the portrait engraved in Lodge’s series from a picture at Hatfield; a duplicate of which is in the National Portrait Gallery.” This grim _memento mori_ may some day find its way to the Tower, where it would be an object of much interest, although, if Suffolk’s ghost be consulted, it would perhaps plead for this melancholy relic of frail mortality to be placed in consecrated ground.