Tales From the Tower of London (26 page)
The rebellion of 1715, or ‘The 15’ as the Scots called it, never really got off the ground. The rebels fought a few half-hearted engagements but by the time James Stuart arrived in December the entire enterprise had collapsed. Among the hundreds of prisoners rounded up by the English was William Maxwell. He had been captured at the Battle of Preston and, along with other noblemen and high-ranking officers, taken to London and thrown into the Tower.
Neither King George nor parliament wanted to instigate a pogrom against the Scots. Parliament wanted to keep relations with England’s northern neighbours on an even keel and King George was anxious not to get off on the wrong foot with his new subjects. The vast majority of the captured Scottish prisoners received a blanket reprieve and were released to return home. But to satisfy the law, someone had to be held accountable for the rebellion. In the end, only the seven most powerful leaders of the uprising were held for trial. Among these seven was William Maxwell. It was only a few days before Christmas, 1715, when Winifred Maxwell received news that her husband had been captured at Preston and taken to London as a prisoner of the crown. She was understandably frantic, and could hardly bear to sit placidly for word of what would become of Lord Maxwell. It was important that whatever she did, Winifred secured the family titles and estates for her son. William Maxwell had already made arrangements for their son to inherit the family lands and titles three years earlier and it was now Winifred’s job to ensure that inheritance. After telling her maid to pack the absolute minimum necessary travelling clothes for both of them, Winifred hid the family papers in the walls of her house.
The winter of 1715–16 was one of the worst in living memory. Heavy snows had left the roads in and around Dumfriesshire impassable and it was impossible to travel in the family carriage. Undaunted, Winifred and her maid saddled two of their best horses and set off through howling winds and deep snow towards Newcastle on the English side of the border. Once there, it might be possible to take the stagecoach to London, but London was more than 400 miles away. On Christmas Day, Lady Maxwell and her maid took rooms at an inn just north of Newcastle. There, she wrote a letter to her sister describing the first leg of their desperate journey. ‘Such a journey, I believe was scarce ever made, considering the weather, but with God’s help, an earnest desire achieves a great deal.’
From Newcastle, the women boarded the stagecoach for York nearly 100 miles to the south-east. From there, they should have been able to catch the mail coach that would take them all the way south to London. But again, howling winds and heavy snow had closed in, blocking the roads south of York. Terrified that she would be too late to intercede with parliament on her husband’s behalf, Winifred Maxwell purchased two horses and again set off with her maid through bone-chilling weather on a frantic 250-mile ride. In total, it took the women fifteen arduous days to make their way from Scotland to London.
Once in London, Lady Maxwell took rooms with a Mrs Mills, a woman known to be among the many Londoners who were sympathetic to the Scottish rebels. Having settled in and visited her husband in his cell at the Lieutenant’s Lodgings at the Tower, she began preparing an appeal to the House of Lords on Lord Maxwell’s behalf. Tragically, her plea came too late. The rebels were scheduled to go to trial within days and the machinery of justice, once set in motion, could not be stopped. Increasingly anxious and distraught, Winifred visited her husband in the Tower almost continually and waited nervously for the verdict. When it came, it was what everyone had feared. Although one of the seven defendants was found innocent and released, the remaining six, including Lord Maxwell, were found guilty of inciting rebellion and condemned to the block.
Thanks to the pleas of Lady Maxwell and others like her, the House of Commons nearly granted a pardon to the condemned men, but the bill failed to pass by seven votes. In an attempt to calm both sides in the now all-too-public debate over the fate of the Scottish rebels, King George granted a royal pardon to three of the men but the remaining three were left to satisfy the demands of the law. Tragically for the Maxwells, William’s name was not on the list of those being pardoned. He, along with the Earl of Derwentwater and Viscount Kenmore, was to go to the block on 24 February – now less than three weeks away. Refusing to believe that nothing could be done to save her husband, Lady Maxwell decided to go to the king personally, present her case and give him a copy of the written petition she had previously submitted to parliament. The king had already freed three of the six condemned men; surely he would release her husband.
Dressing in servant’s clothes, Winifred Maxwell managed to inveigle her way through the back door of St James’s Palace. Then, pretending to be dusting the furniture, she moved from one room to another until she found the king. He was alone in a small anteroom just off one of the palace’s main drawing rooms. According to her own account of the event, written some years later, ‘I threw myself at his feet and told him in French [since King George spoke no English] that I was the unfortunate Countess of Nithsdale . . . but seeing that he wanted to go off without taking my petition, I caught hold of the skirt of his coat, that he might stop and hear me. He endeavoured to escape out of my hands, but I kept such a strong hold, that he dragged me on my knees, from the middle of the room to the very door of the drawing room. At last one of the [servants] who attended his Majesty took me round the waist, while another wrestled the coat from my hands. The petition which I had endeavoured to thrust into his pocket fell to the ground in the scuffle, and I almost fainted away from grief and disappointment.’
Having exhausted every conceivable tactic to free her husband, Winifred Maxwell was devastated; worse, she had to tell her husband that all her efforts had failed. Stoically, Lord Maxwell prepared himself for death. As all condemned men were entitled to address the crowds which inevitably gathered to gawk at the grisly spectacle of public executions, Maxwell spent his last days preparing his ‘Dying Speech’ and wrote letters to his relatives in Scotland pleading with them to ensure that his money, land and titles were not revoked by the crown, but were duly passed on to his son. He also asked them to take care of his beloved Winifred who had tried so hard to free him. He wrote ‘There cannot be enough said in her praise. Everyone admires her, everyone applauds her and extols her for the proofs she has given me of her love.’
If Lord William Maxwell, 5th Earl of Nithsdale, had come to accept his fate, his wife had done no such thing. With a courage born of desperation, Winifred Maxwell became more determined than ever to save her husband; this time, however, she would simply have to take a more direct approach. As the days and hours ticked away a plan began to take shape in her mind. It would require at least two accomplices, some rather unfashionable clothes, her cosmetics and a bottle of the best French cognac.
After taking her maid into her confidence, Lady Maxwell sent her out to purchase five nearly identical and completely nondescript hooded cloaks. She then arranged to dine with her landlady, Mrs Mills, and a mutual friend, Mrs Morgan. Over dinner, she laid out her plan. It sounded so impossible to the women that they must have thought she was either joking or had completely lost her wits with grief; but Winifred insisted she was completely serious. There was no doubt it would be dangerous and if they were discovered they would surely go to prison. Now, would they help her save her husband’s life? Finally after much cajoling and pleading, they both agreed.
On 23 February, the afternoon before the scheduled executions, Lady Maxwell ordered a coach to carry her and her three accomplices to the Tower. As they dressed for their visit, Mrs Morgan, the tallest and slimmest of the women, put on two gowns, one over the top of the other, and then donned two identical brown cloaks. Mrs Mills, Lady Maxwell and her maid each dressed and put on their own cloaks. Lady Maxwell also carried her cosmetics bag and the bottle of cognac. When they arrived at the Tower it was already late in the afternoon and dusk was settling over London. In only a few hours the gates of the Tower would be locked.
Fortunately, the condemned men were being held in the Lieutenant’s Lodgings, which were situated near the main gate and the massive drawbridge that would be closed after all the visitors had left. Together, the four women left the carriage outside the gate and walked to the Lieutenant’s Lodgings. When Mrs Mills, Mrs Morgan and Lady Maxwell went inside, her maid waited in the cold, snowy yard.
In the wake of the rebellion, regular soldiers specifically assigned to keep a close watch on the condemned men had augmented the normal complement of Tower warders. The troops were garrisoned inside the Lieutenant’s Lodgings so they were never far from the prisoners. But, as Lady Maxwell had observed on her many previous visits, the guards spent most of their time in the wardroom with their wives and girlfriends, leaving the prisoners’ day-to-day needs to the servants. There was also an almost continual coming and going of grieving friends and relatives. The guards’ constant preoccupation with their ladies and the visitors would be Winifred Maxwell’s greatest ally.
When the women reported to the wardroom, Lady Maxwell swept in as though she was entering a grand ball, and happily – nearly hysterically – announced that parliament had agreed to hear a last-minute appeal on behalf of her husband. With that, she produced the bottle of cognac and invited the guards to toast her good fortune and the benevolence of parliament and the king. With half of the condemned men already having been pardoned, it was a plausible enough lie. The guards were happy to share in a drink, but they told the countess that because of the heightened security only two visitors would be allowed into a prisoner’s cell at a time. The women would have to take turns visiting the earl. Lady Maxwell insisted it would be no problem since in the morning her husband would be a free man and they could spend all the time together that they wanted. The guards undoubtedly noticed how nervous and flustered Lady Maxwell’s friends were. The one introduced to them as Mrs Mills seemed to spend most of her time with her face buried in her handkerchief weeping. But under the strained circumstances, it would hardly have seemed unusual.
The first to be shown upstairs to Lord Maxwell’s cell were Lady Maxwell and Mrs Morgan. Once they were ushered inside, the guard quickly returned to the wardroom and the rapidly diminishing bottle of cognac. As Winifred Maxwell hurriedly explained her plan to her incredulous husband, Mrs Morgan began removing her clothing. First one cloak, then another and finally the outermost of her two gowns. If the Earl of Nithsdale baulked at the flurry of instructions and strange goings-on, his wife insisted there was no time for explanations and this was not nearly as undignified as kneeling in front of a jeering crowd who were waiting to see his head roll across a scaffold. She would explain everything later. Right now, he had to take off his clothes and put on Mrs Morgan’s extra dress.
As Maxwell numbly did as he was told, his wife led Mrs Morgan back down to the wardroom, where she loudly instructed her to run as quickly as she could and tell her maid to come and help her dress for her meeting with parliament. As Mrs Morgan left, Lady Maxwell escorted the still weeping Mrs Mills up to her husband’s cell, constantly reassuring her that everything would be all right, that Lord Maxwell was sure to be released. They arrived just in time to help the now thoroughly flustered man lace up his gown. With the dress in place, Lady Maxwell began applying enough heavy make-up to conceal his thick eyebrows and week-old growth of beard. Finally, she replaced his white periwig with another wig that matched Mrs Mills’ bright red hair.
She now escorted Mrs Mills back downstairs, through the wardroom and towards the door, telling her to ‘Send my maid with all haste, for if I can not press my petition tonight, I am undone; tomorrow will be too late. Hasten her as much as possible, for I shall be on thorns till she comes.’ Only minutes after Mrs Mills left, Mrs Morgan re-entered the building, ran through the wardroom and up to Lord Maxwell’s cell. By this time, so many hysterical women had run back and forth between the wardroom and the cell that the guards had completely lost track of who had come in and who had gone out. Liberal doses of cognac had no doubt helped take the edge off their senses.
When Mrs Morgan arrived at Maxwell’s cell, the transformation was complete. Dressed in women’s clothes and with his head covered with the hooded cloak, Lord Maxwell may have looked embarrassed, but at least he looked completely unlike himself. Lady Maxwell now handed her husband her handkerchief and told him to hold it to his face and weep as loudly as he could. Leaving Mrs Morgan alone in the cell to talk loudly to herself, Lady Maxwell led her weeping husband out of his cell where, by her own account, ‘The guards opened the door and I went downstairs with him still conjuring him to make all possible dispatch [to fetch my maid]. As soon as he had cleared the door, I made him walk before me, for fear the sentinel should take notice of his walk. . . . Everybody in the [ward]room, who were chiefly the guards’ wives and daughters, seemed to compassionate me exceedingly.’
As Lady Maxwell led her husband through the outside door, she turned him over to her maid who had been waiting there the entire time. As the maid hustled the ‘weeping’ Lord Maxwell through the main gate and into the waiting carriage, Lady Maxwell returned to the cell where Mrs Morgan had been keeping up a one-sided conversation. Now it was Mrs Morgan’s turn to make a hurried exit from the Tower. This left Lady Winifred Maxwell alone to keep up a steady stream of nervous chatter with her now absent husband.
A few minutes later, Lady Maxwell opened the cell door just enough to allow her to slip through, saying her goodbyes to the empty room, insisting that she had to go and find her maid. If she was detained too long at parliament to come back that evening, she would return first thing in the morning with news of his pardon. As she slipped out of the room, Winifred reached down and jerked the latch cord on the door handle so hard that the knot snapped and the cord dangled uselessly on the inside. When she slammed the door, it became impossible to enter the room without breaking it down. Walking towards the stairs, she saw one of the servants heading for her husband’s room with a handful of candles. According to her account of the affair, she never hesitated but, ‘I said to the servant as I passed by, that he need not carry in candles yet as my Lord wanted to finish his prayers first.’