What happens when a jury doesn’t find an alleged traitor guilty and, instead, acquits him? Well, the jurors get arrested and thrown into prison, of course!
I explain exactly what happened on this day in Tudor history, 17th April 1554, in the case of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton. I also give details on how the jurors finally got released and what happened to Throckmorton.
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On this day in Tudor history, 17 April 1554, in the reign of Queen Mary I, celebrations for the acquittal of a Tudor courtier led to the head of his fellow rebel being stolen. It was the head of Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger.
Find out what happened
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On this day in Tudor history, 10th July 1584, Catholic conspirator, Francis Throckmorton, was executed at Tyburn for high treason after the Throckmorton Plot had been discovered.
The Throckmorton Plot was a plot to depose Elizabeth I and to replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots, but why did Francis Throckmorton plot against his queen? Who did he plot with and how was the plot discovered?
Find out more about Francis Throckmorton and his plot in today’s talk.
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What happens when a jury doesn’t find an alleged traitor guilty and, instead, acquits him? Well, the jurors get arrested and thrown into prison, of course!
I explain exactly what happened on this day in Tudor history, 17th April 1554, in the case of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton. I also give details on how the jurors finally got released and what happened to Throckmorton. Don’t you just love Tudor justice?!
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On this day in history, 17th April 1554, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton was tried for treason for his alleged involvement in Wyatt’s Rebellion, the rebellion led against Mary I by Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger in early 1554. The indictment against him accused him of being “a principal, deviser, procurer and contriver of the late Rebellion” and said that “Wyatt was but his minister”, but he was acquitted. According to Stanford Lehmberg, his Oxford Dictionary of National Biography biographer, “Throckmorton gave a bravura display of eloquence and learning to run rings round his accusers” and “poured ridicule on the prosecutors’ attempts to find him guilty by association, and repeatedly caught them out on points of law”. The jury acquitted him but the jurors were arrested straight after the trial and Throckmorton remained in prison until January 1555.
The chronicle of Queen Jane, and of two years of Queen Mary, and especially of the rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyat gives the following account of what happened on that day:
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