The Monks Starved in the Dark

He didn’t want to make them martyrs, so he engineered a hidden, slow-motion nightmare inside a dark dungeon. In 1537, ten Carthusian monks deeply offended Henry VIII by refusing to acknowledge him as the Supreme Head of the Church. Fearing that a public execution would spark a massive civilian riot, the King ordered a quiet, stomach-turning punishment. The monks were dragged to Newgate Prison, where guards chained them tightly, upright against wooden posts, with their hands bound behind their backs. They were left standing permanently in absolute darkness, completely cut off from food and water. They were forced to stand in their own waste for weeks as their muscles withered and their bodies slowly consumed themselves from the inside out. A brave woman named Margaret Clement disguised herself as a milkmaid, bribing the guards to let her inside. She brought in baskets of food, literally pressing meat into the mouths of the chained, dying men and clearing away their filth. But when the jailer grew suspicious, she was barred from the cells. Left entirely alone, the remaining monks rotted where they stood, dying upright against the posts.

Interesting Fact King Henry VIII kept a private, daily ledger tracking the progress of the monks’ starvation. When his advisors finally informed him that nine of the ten monks had died of neglect, the King expressed absolute fury—not because they had died, but because one resilient monk, Brother William Horne, had managed to survive the starvation for over a year, forcing the King to eventually drag his skeletal body to Tyburn to be hanged.

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