On This Day (23 February) in 1554, Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, was executed on Tower Hill, having being convicted of charges of high treason five days previously.

On the morning of 12 February 1554, Jane Grey, then known as 'Jane Dudley', was spending her last hours within the Tower of London, where she had been held prisoner the previous seven months. Just before 10 o'clock, fellow prisoner and her husband of less than a year, Guildford Dudley, was led from the Tower to nearby Tower Hill, where he was beheaded. A short time later, Jane herself was taken to a scaffold that had been erected on Tower Green, where he was also beheaded.

On 08 January 1604, Margaret wrote to Mary Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury, daughter of 'Bess of Hardwick', from North Hall, describing her sister's ongoing illness. Her health having continued to decline, "Anne, Countess of Warwick, widow, late wife of Ambrose late Earle of Warwick deceased" died at Northaw on 09 February 1604, aged 55 years old. At her request, Anne was subsequently buried amongst her ancestors, including her parents, "without pomp", at Cheynes.

In January 1601, Elizabethan courtier Lord William Herbert of Cardiff inherited the Earldom of Pembroke on the death of his father. Only weeks later, the newly-elevated Pembroke was disgraced and imprisoned, when news of his affair with the unmarried and heavily-pregnant Mary Fitton, one of Elizabeth I's Maids of Honour, became public knowledge, and he incurred the wrath of the famed unrelenting and often unforgiving monarch.

On a cold morning on Wednesday 19 January 1547, Tudor courtier, soldier and poet Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, was taken to the scaffold on Tower Hill, where he was beheaded, following his conviction for high treason one week earlier. With his death, Surrey, the eldest son and heir of the recently deposed and co-accused Lord High Treasurer, Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, would be the last man to be executed during the reign of Henry VIII.