Pod Insights Noble Blood The Maxwell Prison Break from the Tower of London About this episode Winnifred Maxwell's husband was tried and sentenced to death after participating in the 1715 Jacobite uprising against King George I. She refused to let that stand.
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0:32 Dana Schwartz? Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. Listener discretion advised. For the guards at the Tower of London, February 23rd, 1716, was a day like any other. A despondent wife came to visit her husband, who was scheduled for execution. The wife had brought a few family friends with her, and they each took turns visiting with the prisoner. The guards listened at the door as the woman said goodbye to her husband for the last time, giving her a bit of privacy and the couple their alone time.
1:15 Dana Schwartz? The next morning, the guards came to collect the prisoner to bring him to the scaffold. But when they opened his cell, they gasped. It was empty. The prisoner was gone. How could that be? He had been in his cell, talking with his wife, just hours before. What the guards didn't know was that this prisoner's wife was no ordinary woman. She was a woman of indomitable spirit, who wasn't going to take a death sentence lying down. When she had been visiting her husband's cell earlier, she had been talking to herself.
1:54 Dana Schwartz? Her husband was already making his way out of the tower, thanks to one of the most creative and audacious prison breaks in history. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood.
2:12 Dana Schwartz? Winnifred Maxwell was born in 1672, the youngest of six children. Her parents were devoted courtiers of King James II. Once James was ousted in 1688 in what would become known as the Glorious Revolution, Winifred's parents moved to France, where Winifred met her future husband. William Maxwell was a Scottish nobleman who, as you might imagine, was also from a family of longtime Stuart supporters. With their family politics lining up quite conveniently, Winifred and William fell in love and were married in 1699.
2:55 Dana Schwartz? The Maxwell clan were power players in British history for centuries, known mostly for their fighting abilities. The Maxwell men were renowned fighters and we could speculate that Winifred's spirited nature made her a natural match for the man who would eventually become the Fifth Earl of Nithsdale. Shortly after their marriage, Winifred and William settled into a comfortable noble life at their manor house in Scotland. They had five children, two of whom would survive to adulthood. Aside from those losses, which were no doubt significant, life on the manor was quiet
3:37 Dana Schwartz? and largely uneventful for the better part of 15 years. And then King George I was crowned King of England and things got a lot more complicated. For a bit of background here, Queen Anne had died, leaving no successor, and Parliament appointed as her successor George of Hanover, a distant cousin of Queen Anne, who happened to have the qualification of being a Protestant. Electing a Protestant German who spoke no English to the throne was the not-so-subtle nail in the coffin of the Stuart line, since the Stuarts were by and large devout Catholics.
4:22 Dana Schwartz? A group of Scottish lords immediately began planning a rebellion. Calling themselves Jacobites, a derivation of the name James, they formed a plan to overthrow the foreign king and put in his place the son of their beloved James II. The rebels would need all the help they could get, so naturally they came calling for the son of one of Scotland’s most notorious fighting families. William Maxwell wasn’t necessarily excited to leave his peaceful manor home and take up arms against a sea of troubles, but how could he say no?
5:03 Dana Schwartz? His family’s longtime support of the Stuarts was a cornerstone of its legacy. Winifred also came from a family of Jacobites, so she could hardly have discouraged him. Their reputation in Scotland would be forever tainted if they didn’t lend their support to the cause. And so William joined in the fight, leaving Winifred and the children at home. Unfortunately, the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715 was pretty much over as soon as it started. The operation was poorly organized and lacked resources, and the whole thing fell apart
5:44 Dana Schwartz? in a matter of months, and the group was easily defeated by the British Army. William was a part of a group of noblemen and key insurgents that was brought to London and imprisoned in the infamous Tower. Both Parliament and the new king wanted to move on from the rebellion and keep the peace between England and Scotland, but they also knew that they couldn’t just ignore the rebellion that just happened. A few people had to be made an example of. If for no other reason than to discourage future uprisings. It was decided that the seven most powerful leaders would go to trial.
6:29 Dana Schwartz? Unluckily for Winifred, her husband William was powerful enough to qualify. He remained locked in the Tower of London, awaiting his trial. Winifred had been busy getting the manor ready for the holidays just days before Christmas in 1715, when she received word of William's capture. Like the industrious woman she was, she first made sure to safely hide any documents that might have incriminated either William or herself. And after that, she began to make a plan. Winnifred Maxwell wasn't content to sit at home and let her husband sit locked up in
7:10 Dana Schwartz? the Tower of London, waiting for his fate to be decided by Parliament and the King. By all accounts, she and William were devoted to each other, and no doubt she was terrified by the news that the father of her children was facing trial as a traitor to the throne. In addition to this completely normal response, there also may have been part of Winifred that was used to cleaning up her husband's messes. But a little more on that later in the episode. Winifred knew that she had to act quickly, so she and her maid Cecilia Evans set off for London. The journey was long and arduous.
7:52 Dana Schwartz? The winter of 1715 and 1716 was especially brutal, with heavy storms that dumped so much snow onto the roads that Winifred and Mrs. Evans were unable to take the family carriage. Winifred, not the type to ever take no for an answer, changed her plan and the two women set off on horseback. Vicious winds and brutal temperatures accompanied them every step of the way. The journey lasted over two weeks and included switching up their plans multiple times to accommodate the Nightmarish weather. It played out like a twisted version of planes, trains, and automobiles, minus the
8:35 Dana Schwartz? modern conveniences and with the very real possibility of freezing to death. And instead of a family Thanksgiving dinner waiting on the other side, it was a husband being tried for treason, possibly awaiting execution in the Tower of London. There was also the very real possibility that Winifred would arrive to London and be greeted with the news that William had already been executed while she was on the road. But when she and Mrs. Evans did arrive in London, Winifred was greeted with an extreme case of good news, bad news. The good news is, your husband is still alive.
9:19 Dana Schwartz? The bad news is, he's facing trial for his crimes against the Crown, and things aren't looking good. The two women found lodging with a Jacobean sympathizer known as Mrs. Mills, and Winifred began her campaign to emancipate her husband. Employing the same energy she displayed when traveling hundreds of miles through a snowstorm, Winifred got to work. First on her to-do list was reuniting with her husband. Lord Maxwell was being held in the VIP section of the Tower, known then as the Lieutenant's Lodgings, later renamed the Queen's House.
10:02 Dana Schwartz? Notable tenants included one-time Queen Anne Molyne and Guy Fawkes. Neither of them had come out of the Tower alive, incidentally. Winifred's next order of business was to be the squeakiest wheel that Parliament had ever heard. She drew up an appeal on her husband's behalf and became a constant fixture in the House of Lords. Her fervent dedication to Lord Maxwell didn't go unnoticed, and if she'd had more time, she may have been able to free her husband on charm alone. But time was not on her side.
10:43 Dana Schwartz? The trial was swift and merciless, with six of the seven men found guilty and sentenced to death, William included.
10:53 Dana Schwartz? Winifred appealed the decision before the House of Commons, where it failed by only a handful of votes. Thanks to efforts like hers, the country was becoming very invested in the fate of the Scottish rebels, with tensions rising between those who wanted them freed and those who sought what they saw as justice. King George himself got involved and tried to smooth things over by pardoning three of the six men awaiting execution. Those three men received their royal pardon and walked free, but William was not one of them. He, along with two others, was set to meet his maker in just under three weeks.
11:39 Dana Schwartz? William begged for mercy, claiming that he had been dragged kicking and screaming into the rebellion, but the king's decision was final. An example had to be made, and noble William was one of the unlucky few who were chosen to make it. At this point, most women would have visited their priests and gotten their husbands' affairs in order. But Winifred wasn't most women. She took her business straight to the king. Clutching a copy of the petition she'd written on behalf of William, she dressed as a servant and snuck in through the back door of St. James's Palace. Pretending to clean,
12:22 Dana Schwartz? she made her way through the many, many palace rooms until she found King George. She ambushed the unsuspecting monarch and began to plead her case, but George, understandably, wanted nothing to do with the loud woman dressed in servants' clothes, who threw herself quite literally at his feet.
12:46 Dana Schwartz? According to Winifred's own account of these events, written years later, King George tried to get away. She writes, "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 endeavored 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 endeavored to thrust into his pocket, fell to the ground in the scuffle,
13:29 Dana Schwartz? and I almost fainted away, from grief and disappointment." While the admittedly humorous exchange clearly didn't have the desired effect, word of the king's harsh treatment of Winifred spread, and added to the growing public support for this passionate woman, who would go to any lengths to free the man she loved. Sadly, it was too little, too late, and by now, William's fate was sealed. He wrote letters back home to Scotland to try and make sure his possessions would go to his son after his death, and not to the crown. He also prepared the speech he would be allowed to give
14:12 Dana Schwartz? from the scaffold, just before being put to death. His actions all point to a man who had resigned himself to his fate. Fortunately for him, his wife had one more trick up her sleeve, and this one was a doozy. With the help of her maid, Mrs. Evans, their landlady, Mrs. Mills, and another friend, a woman named Mrs. Morgan, Winifred hatched a plan for a jailbreak like no other.
14:42 Dana Schwartz? While a typical jailbreak might have involved force or some kind of aggression, the women had to rely solely on their intelligence and powers of persuasion. Luckily for them, Lady Maxwell had been a frequent visitor to the tower over the previous few weeks. The guards were familiar with her comings and goings, and, more importantly, she was familiar with theirs. The lieutenant’s lodgings were a hub of activity, with many people in and out on any given day. Winifred used that to her advantage, as well as the fact that the guards also had frequent
15:24 Dana Schwartz? visitors, usually in the form of wives and girlfriends. She knew they were often distracted and preoccupied, and also they were no doubt used to “this loud woman and her drama by now,” which was exactly how she wanted it. On a cold day in February 1716, the day before Lord Maxwell was set to be executed, Lady Maxwell showed up at the tower for a visit. She brought along her three friends and a bottle of cognac, which she offered the guards, encouraging them to drink. The guards needed little encouragement, especially when Winifred told them that they were celebrating.
16:09 Dana Schwartz? She’d made up a story about a last-minute appeal, and her high spirits, combined with the spirits of the alcohol, put the guards at ease. Then her plan really kicked into motion. Because of heightened security, only two visitors were allowed into William’s cell at a time, and so began a sequence of misdirection straight out of a French farce, a human shell game that was confusing by design. The women went in and out of the cell in pairs, talking loudly and full of emotion, causing the guards to want to give them their distance. What the guards didn’t know, of course, was that Mrs.
16:53 Dana Schwartz? Morgan, the tallest of the women, was wearing two sets of clothes.
16:59 Dana Schwartz? Winifred and Mrs. Morgan went in first. One can imagine William's surprise at seeing his wife's friend enter the cell and immediately begin to strip. Once her outer gown and cloak were off, Winifred told her husband to put them on. William may have hesitated at this outlandish request, but he more than anyone knew not to interrupt his wife when she was in the middle of a plan. As he dressed, Winifred took the real Mrs. Morgan downstairs and switched her out for Mrs. Mills, who'd been pretending to be in a heightened emotional state since she entered the tower.
17:39 Dana Schwartz? Once the new pair were in the cell, Winifred produced some makeup and a wig that looked very similar to Mrs. Mills' hair. The women were going in and out of the cell at such a rate that the guards gave up trying to keep track of them. Finally, William's transformation was complete. Winifred ordered him to put his head down and pretend to weep, as Mrs. Mills had been doing all day. At one point, with Mrs. Morgan alone in the cell pretending to talk to the prisoner, Lord and Lady Maxwell marched past the guards and exited the tower, with Lord Maxwell giving the performance of a lifetime.
18:21 Dana Schwartz? Winifred handed William off to her maid and went back upstairs to relieve Mrs. Morgan. Then Winifred stayed alone in the cell, loudly having a one-sided conversation that sounded, to the outside observer, that she was just a woman talking to her husband. All the while, her maid and two friends were carrying William away from the tower and to a safe house. Once Winifred had bought them enough time, she left her husband's cell. She told the guards and servants that he was deep in prayer and preferred not to be disturbed. She wished them all a good night and left the tower for good, joining William and the
19:06 Dana Schwartz? others at the safe house. The next morning, when the guards came to bring Lord Maxwell to his execution, they were shocked to find an empty cell. They searched the tower, but he was nowhere to be found. Only two of the three condemned men were executed that day. It's a shame those two men didn't have wives like Winifred. After his jailbreak, William Maxwell made his way out of England and settled in France with an assist from the ambassador of the Venetian Republic. After lying low in London for a bit, Winifred joined him, but not before tying up some key loose ends.
19:49 Dana Schwartz? Always with one eye to the future, she went back to Scotland to gather the family papers she had tucked away. For Lady Maxwell, it was imperative that her son inherit his father's title and lands, and that they not make their way into the hands of the British government. Once the documents were safely installed with trusted allies, Winifred could relax and look to a new life with her now freed husband. Once they were finally reunited, the Maxwells spent a little time in France, at the court of the exiled Stuart monarch, James II, the "king over the water," as he was known to many.
20:31 Dana Schwartz? When James moved his court to Rome, the Maxwells followed him, and both obtained appointments as lord and lady in waiting. Winifred and William would live the rest of their lives in Rome, and though they were clearly glad to have reunited, their lives unfortunately remained fraught with hardship. You see, William was notoriously bad with money, and this threw the family into strife for the rest of their days. He had transferred the vast majority of his estate to his son in 1713, well before the rebellion. This might have been a rare moment of foresight, but it was more likely due to the fact that
21:15 Dana Schwartz? Lord Maxwell was simply incapable of handling his own finances.
21:20 Dana Schwartz? Either way, money woes seemed to be the theme of the Maxwells' time in Rome, detailed in letters that each of them wrote. They were constantly in debt and asking for money right and left, hitting up relatives and friends alike. There was clearly a decrease in lifestyle after going from running her own manor to being someone else's lady-in-waiting at a court in exile. And Winifred wasn't shy about letting people know about the tragedy of their reduced means and her husband's overspending. Still, the couple's devotion to each other and to the Stuart monarchy never wavered.
22:03 Dana Schwartz? About his exceedingly clever wife, William said, "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."
22:21 Dana Schwartz? Everything Winifred did was for her family, from rushing to secure her son's inheritance to cooking up a wild scheme to save her husband's life. In a time when women of her class were encouraged to be quiet, well-dressed baby-makers, Winnifred Maxwell spoke her mind and refused to accept any fate. She single-handedly threw England into an uproar by taking matters into her own hands, and she clearly relished her role as a political pot stirrer. In a letter to her sister about her time in London, she proudly wrote that King George I told her,
23:02 Dana Schwartz? "That I had done him more mischief than any woman in Christendom." She was just doing what she had to do, but I imagine that being the pain in the ass of a king, especially a king that she hated and saw as illegitimate, had to feel pretty good.
23:25 Dana Schwartz? That's the story of Winnifred Maxwell and her daring prison escape with her husband. But keep listening, after a brief sponsor break, to hear a little bit more about what Winnifred Maxwell actually accomplished.
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24:46 Dana Schwartz? For the rest of his life, Lord Maxwell praised his wife for her ingenuity in breaking him out of the Tower of London. But did she actually do him more harm than good? In their book Tales from the Tower of London, Daniel Deal and Mark P. Donnelly lay out the following. Quote, "In an ironic twist of fate, there is some historical evidence that King George may actually have ordered a reprieve for Lord Maxwell on the same afternoon that his wife was busily helping him escape from the tower. Even if the king was happy to see Maxwell free, the jailbreak had made both the Earl and his wife
25:28 Dana Schwartz? fugitives from an entirely new set of charges." End quote. We'll never know for sure whether or not King George actually had given in to Winifred's relentless campaigning and ordered her husband to be free, but I like to imagine the king finally making the concession to let this relentless woman have her way and signing off on a pardon for her husband and then discovering that she had done the impossible and broken her husband out of death row using nothing more than a wig and an extra dress. It had to feel a little like the warden in The Shawshank Redemption ripping that poster
26:10 Dana Schwartz? of Raquel Welch off the wall. Take that, your highness.
26:23 Dana Schwartz? Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. Noble Blood is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Courtney Sender, Amy Height, and Giulia Melani. The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk with supervising producer Reema Ilkayali and executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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