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.

On 13 November 1553, the trial of five prisoners accused of high treason was held at the City of London's Guildhall; Jane Grey, brothers Ambrose, Guildford and Henry ('Harry') Dudley, and Thomas Cranmer, former Archbishop of Canterbury. Their charges related to the failed coup earlier that summer, when, following the death of Edward VI in July 1553, active attempts were made to place the teenage Jane on the English throne.

In mid-June 1519, a baby boy was born to a young unmarried woman who, for the past few months, had been residing at the Prior's House of St Lawrence's Priory in Blackmore, Essex. This baby, whilst illegitimate, would take the name of his acknowledged father, the king of England: Henry Fitzroy.

On This Day (19 May) in 1536, Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII and recently deposed Queen of England, was led from the royal apartments within the Tower of London to a scaffold erected on Tower Green, where she was executed by beheading.

On 30 April 1544, Thomas Audley, 1st Baron Audley of Walden, Lord High Chancellor of England, and father of Margaret Audley, died at his City of London home, 'Christchurch Place', Aldgate, after a year of deteriorating health.

On This Day (18 April) in 1587, clergyman, historian, theologian and martyrologist John Foxe died at his London home on Grub Street, in the parish of St Giles-without-Cripplegate.