[Verse 1] In the low front room at Chelsea, he sets his wife on a stool, Not a throne but a plain board, a lesson for the household school. Daughters lean in, Roper listens, Gough keeps the quill still, Catesby counts the household stores, the servants round the sill. More says every crown comes tumbling, every steeple finds the ground, "The cricket and high throne alike near heaven" — same sky all around. Virtue is the only heirloom that no auction takes away, Write that lesson in your ledger before the mace men find their way. [Chorus] Subscribe to the Tower, subscribe to the Tower, Sign your name where the river bends, where the old stones tower. One word splits in two directions, a pledge and a prison key, Subscribe to the Tower — watch the pun set conscience free. [Verse 2] Surrey and Shrewsbury come riding, Downes behind them with his mace, Not the spice that flavors supper, but the staff that marks his place. They bring the king's own articles, ink already dry with threat, Sign, or follow Bishop Fisher to the cell he hasn't left yet. High treason means a crime against the crown and nothing less, His wife falls weeping to the floorboards, daughters kneel in their distress. More looks soft, looks almost broken, "I will satisfy the king" he sighs, But watch the quiet corner of his mouth, there's a second truth that lies. [Verse 3] "This partner and these subjects to my flesh Prove rebels to my conscience!" — hear him choose, Not armies, not the summoner's cold call to court, But the women he loves most become the hardest news. A king can only threaten, but a daughter's tears can bend, The cruelest siege of conscience comes from kin, not foe or friend. Still he holds the narrow doorway, still he will not turn the key, Greatness falls, he told them Chelsea morning, virtue walks out free. [Chorus] Subscribe to the Tower, subscribe to the Tower, Sign your name and watch it double, pledge and prison tower. One word splits in two directions, a pledge and a prison key, Subscribe to the Tower — watch the pun set conscience free. [Verse 4] "I will subscribe to go unto the Tower," He gives the walls his bones like rent long overdue, And Downes, the man whose neck he saved from the riot's furious hour, Now reads the charge of treason back to the man who saved him too. A summoner once just called a man to answer at the court, Tonight he's armed with mace and warrant, no soft words, just report. Goodbye to orchard, goodbye garden, goodbye to Chelsea's green front door, He steps down to the waiting barge, a king's man on the oar. [Bridge] "By water I to prison, to heaven through air" — The river carries the body, the soul climbs another stair. April, fifteen thirty-four, the real tide pulled him in, History remembers the water, and the silence under his skin.
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