Picturesque Sketches of London, Past and Present

ought to be removed and affixed to this figure of the Crusader. The next in date that claims our attention, is the resemblance of a grim warrior, armed from head to heel, after the fashion of the heroes who fought in the days of Edward I. Here we have the long surcoat and rich emblazonry, which is so often mentioned in the wars of Palestine: the prick-spears are of a very primitive form, and worth examining, as is every portion of the armour on this figure; for even what is modern is a strict imitation of what was worn at this period.

The next is a gorgeous specimen of the time of Henry VI., both as regards the armour and the trappings of the figured steed; the skirts and sleeves are splendid specimens of chain-mail, and the fluted gauntlets, "beautiful exceedingly." The breasts and back are made of flexible plates, that is, loose, and put on in pieces; and the helmet, which is a salade, with a vizor or pontlet, has a grand appearance, surmounted as it is with a crest. All these it would require the skill of a Meyrick to describe accurately; for he tells us of sollerets, and tuilettes, vambraces, and rere-braces, camails, cuisses, and greaves, which are difficult to explain, and still more difficult to comprehend, without the aid of engravings. We then come to the reign of Edward IV., and here we find a rich but very singular-looking suit of armour. The angular-shaped helmet strikes the eye as being well adapted to throw off the point of a spear, if struck on the volant piece, which stands out sharp and ridgy as the point of a plough. The vambrace of the lance is very old, and shews how the hand was protected; there is also an addition to the safety of the wearer in the steel guard on the left side of the breast-plate, and also on the elbow, compared to that worn in the preceding reign. Armour of the time of Richard III. is placed on the next figure, very beautiful, being ribbed or plated; and here we have rosettes on the shoulders, which look like little wings or epaulets that have blown loose, and stand erect. This suit was worn by the Marquis of Waterford, when several gentlemen met to play at tournament at Eglintoun. Period of Henry VII.: a warrior dismounted, the armour of German workmanship; the figure remarkable for the change made in the helmet. Next to this another suit of the same age, and the horse majestically armed, especially about the head, neck, and upper parts of the chest. We now come to a suit of what is called Damask armour, and this the great wife-killer, Henry VIII., really wore-better for his fame if he had been killed in it the first day he rode armed; but we have "said our say" in a novel called Lady Jane Grey, and will pass on to mention that there is another suit, said to have been presented to him by Ferdinand, on his marriage with his daughter, Katherine of Arragon; of this suit, Mr. Howitt, in his Tower Armoury, says, "The badges of this king and queen, the rose and pomegranate, are engraved on various parts of the armour. On the pins of the genouillères sheaf of arrows, the device adopted by Ferdinand, the father of Katherine, on his conquest of Granada; Henry's badges, the portcullis, the fleur-de-lis, and the red dragon, also appear; and on the edge of the lamboys or skirts are the initials of the royal pair, 'H. K.' united by a true-lover's knot." The red dragon was the figure the ancient Britons bore on their standards in their wars against the Saxons. It is frequently mentioned by the Welsh bards who lived at that period, and also fought in these battles; but we do not think they bore standards before the invasion of the Romans, emblazoned with any devices. Passing by the armour of Edward VI., and that said to have been used by Hastings Earl of Huntingdon, we come to a suit that once covered the stately form of Dudley Earl of Leicester, "the gipsy," as Essex called him, on account of those dark features that Queen Elizabeth loved to look on. A suit, said to have been worn by his once powerful rival, the Earl of Essex, is only divided from Dudley by the armed figure that wears the mail assigned to Sir Henry Lea. Passing by the figures of James I., Sir Maurice de Vere, and the Earl of Arundel, we come to a beautiful suit of armour, made for Henry Prince of Wales, who died young; it is gilt, and enriched with quaint designs of ancient battles and stormy sieges, and other emblems of "grim-visaged war." Then follow suits said to have been worn by the Duke of Buckingham, James's favourite; Charles I., when Prince of Wales; and the unfortunate Earl of Strafford, who was, like his royal master, beheaded. The suit said to have belonged to James II., a curious head-piece, believed to have been worn by Henry the Seventh's jester, and several other curiosities, such as an ancient warder's horn, swords, &c., that were formerly in the possession of Tippoo Saib, together with an old suit of unpolished armour, are things which will be shewn, if the stranger make himself agreeable to the warder.

Quitting this gallery, we enter Queen Elizabeth's Armoury by a staircase, passing by two carved figures called "Gin and Beer," which were brought from the old palace of Greenwich, probably at the time of its destruction. We are again in the White Tower, and tread the very rooms in which Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned, for no doubt he had the privilege of stepping beyond what is called his sleeping-room. In the recessed arch at the end of this groined and vaulted apartment, stands the equestrian figure of Queen Elizabeth, in a similar costume to what she wore when she rode to St. Paul's to return thanks for the destruction of the Spanish Armada. It would but make a dry catalogue were we to enumerate the whole of the miscellaneous articles in this Armoury, which consist of shields, swords, bows, blocks, instruments of torture, partisans, poles, match-locks, &c. &c., all hanging on the walls, or standing upright, or huddled together like old iron in a marine-store. There, however, is the axe with which Lady Jane Grey is supposed to have been beheaded, nor can we in a more fitting place, while the mind is filled with horror, which this "heading-axe" and block (the latter comparatively new) call up, describe her execution, which we copy from a work edited by J. G. Nichols, Esq., F.R.S., entitled the Chronicle of Queen Jane, and another scarce pamphlet, called The Ende of Lady Jane Dudley. The heroic spirit she displayed at her execution was long the talk in the streets of old London, when Queen Mary ascended her sanguinary throne.

"By this tyme was ther a scaffolde made apon the grene over agaynst the White Tower, for the saide lady Jane to die apon. Who, with hir husband, was appoynted to have ben put to deathe the fryday before, but was staied tyll then, for what cause is not knowen, unlesse yt were because hir father was not then come into the Tower. The saide ladye being nothing at all abashed, (neither with feare of her owne deathe, which then approached, neither with the sight of the ded carcase of hir husbande, when he was brought in to the chappell,) came forthe, the levetenaunt leding hir, in the same gown wherin she was arrayned, hir countenance nothing abashed, neither hir eyes enything moysted with teares, although her ij. gentylwomen, mistress Elizabeth Tylney and mistress Eleyn, wonderfully wept, with her booke in hir hand, wheron she praied all the way till she cam to the saide scaffolde, wheron when she was mounted, &c."

From the last-named pamphlet the narrative is continued as follows:

"She sayd to the people standing thereabout: 'Good people, I am come hether to die, and by a lawe I am condemned to the same. The facte, indede, against the quenes highnesse was unlawful, and the consenting thereunto by me; but touching the procurement and desyre therof by me or on my halfe, I doo wash my handes thereof in innocencie, before God and the face of you, good Christian people, this day,' and therewith she wrong hir handes, in which she had hir booke. Then she sayd, 'I pray you all, good Christian people, to bear me witness that I dye a true Christian woman, and that I looke to be saved by none other meane but only by the mercy of God in the merites of the blood of his only sonne Jesus Christ: and I confesse, when I dyd know the word of God I neglected the same, loved my selfe and the world, and therefore this plague or punyshment is happely and worthely happened unto me for my sins; and yet I thank God of his goodnesse that he hath thus geven me a tyme and respet to repent. And now, good people, while I am alyve, I pray you to assyst me with your prayers.' And then, knelyng downe, she turned to Fecknam, saying, 'Shall I say this psalme?' And he said 'Yea.' Then she said the psalme of Miserere mei, Deus, in English, in most devout manner, to the end. Then she stode up, and gave her maiden, mistress Tylney, her gloves and handkercher, and her booke to maister Bruges, the levetenantes brother; forthwith she untyed her gown. The hangman went to her to help her of therewith; then she desyred him to let her alone, turning towardes her two gentylwomen, who helped her off therwith, and also with her frose past and neckercher, geving to her a fayre handkercher to knytte about her eyes. Then the hangman kneeled downe and asked her forgevenesse, whome she forgave most willingly. Then he willed her to stand upon the strawe; which doing, she sawe the blocke. Then she sayd, 'I pray you dispatch me quickly.' Then she kneeled down, saying, 'Wil you take it (her head) off before I lay me downe?' and the hangman answered her, 'No, madame.' She tyed the kercher about her eys; then feeling for the blocke, saide, 'What shall I do? Where is it?' One of the standers-by guyding her therunto, she layde her heade down upon the blocke, and stretched forth her body, and said, 'Lorde, into thy hands I commende my spirite!' And so she ended."

With a few of the names of the most celebrated persons who have been imprisoned, and some of them beheaded in the Tower and on Tower-hill, together with a slight notice of the chapel in which several of them lie buried, we shall close our description of this ancient fortress. Early in the fourteenth century, Wallace, the hero of Scotland, was prisoner within these walls, from whence he was dragged to Smithfield, fastened to the tails of horses, and there put to death, after enduring the most cruel and horrible tortures. Hither Mortimer was brought from Nottingham, laden with chains, having, we believe, been a prisoner in the Tower before that time, and escaped through making his keepers drunk. Here the brave Earl of Moray was confined for many weary years, unable to raise the extortionate ransom King Edward demanded. The Duke of Orleans was brought prisoner from the field of Agincourt, and long detained in the Tower. The victims of Henry VIII, we pass over, as they have a blood-stained page to themselves in English history. The Earl of Essex, whose death embittered the last moments of Elizabeth, and an account of which we extract verbatim from the scarce work we have so often mentioned, entitled The Life and Reign of Queene Elizabeth; it is as follows: "Wherefore on the same day was the Earle brought out between two diuines, apon the scaffold in the Tower-yard; where sate the Earls of Cumberland and Hartford, Viscount Howard of Bindon, the Lords Howard of Walden, Darcy of Chile, and Compton. There were also present some of the aldermen of London, and some knights, and Sir Walter Rawleigh, to no other end (if we may beleeve him) then to answere him, if at his death he should chance to object any thing to him; although many intrepreted his being there to a worser sence, as though he had done it oneley to feed his eyes with his torments, and to glut his hate with the Earles bloud: wherefore being admonished that hee should not presse on him now he was dying, which was the property of base wilde beasts, he withdrew himselfe, and looked out upon him at the Armoury.

"The Earle as soone as he had mounted the scaffold uncovereth his head, and lifting up his eyes to Heaven, confesseth, that many and greivous were the sins of his youth, for which he earnestly begged pardon of the eternall Majesty of God, through the mediation of Christ, but especeialy for this his sinne, which hee said was a bloudy, crying, and contagious sinne, whereby so many men being seduced, sinned both against God and their Prince. Then he entreated the Queene to pardon him, wishing her a long life, and all prosperity, protesting he never meant ill towards her. He gave God hearty thanks that he never was an Atheist or Papist, but that always he put his trust in Christ's merits. He beseeched God to strengthen him against the terrors of death, And he entreated the standers by to accompany him in a little short prayer, which with a fervent ejacculation and hearty devotion he made to God. Then he forgave his executioner and repeated his Creed, and fitting his neck to the blocke, having repeated the first five verses of the 51 Psalme, he said: 'Lord, I cast my selfe downe humbly and obedeintly to my deserved punishment: Thou, O Lord, have mercy upon thy servant that is cast downe: Into thy hands, O Lord, I commit my spirit.' His head after that was stricken off at the third blow, but the first tooke away both sence and motion."

Against this charge Sir Walter Raleigh defended himself, in his last speech, in the following words: "It is said I was a prosecutor of the death of the Earl of Essex, and stood in a window over against him when he suffered, and puffed out tobacco in disdain of him; but I take God to witness I had no hand in his blood; and was none of those that procured his death. My Lord of Essex did not see my face at the time of his death, for I had retired far off into the Armoury, where I indeed saw him, and shed tears for him."

Sir Walter Raleigh's execution is too closely interwoven with history to dwell upon any of the events of his imprisonment. Of him it may be truly said-

"A little rule, a little sway-

A sunbeam on a winter's day-

Is all the power the mighty have

Between the cradle and the grave."-Dyer.

The night before his execution he wrote the following lines in a leaf of the Bible:

"Even such is time, that takes on trust

Our youth, our joys, our all we have,

And pays us but with age and dust;

Who in the dark and silent grave,

When we have wander'd all our ways,

Shuts up the story of our days."

Russel, Sydney, Shaftesbury, Buckingham, Laud, Davenant, and a score or more of others, whose names are mixed up with the stormy events of the period in which they lived, were prisoners in the Tower. These past away. Then came those who took part with the Pretender; some of whom were executed, a few pardoned; while others, like the Earl of Nithsdale, escaped. Then the names of Gordon, Burdett, and such like, of but little note in the present century, and they end

"This strange eventful history."

The chapel of St. Peter's ad Vincula stands at the north-west corner of the Tower, and must formerly have been very beautiful, though now sadly disfigured by modern innovators, who are cursed with such a taste as ought to be left only to its free indulgence in the walls of Bethlehem or St. Luke's.

Here were interred the headless bodies of Queen Catherine Howard, Anne Boleyn, Margaret Countess of Shrewsbury, Lady Jane Grey: beauty, virtue, and talent, each bared her fair neck-the blow was struck, and now,

"After life's fitful fever, they sleep well."

Here also repose Sir Thomas More, Cromwell, Earl of Essex, Seymour the Lord Admiral, and (strange retribution) his brother, the Protector Somerset; Dudley, the husband of Lady Jane Grey; Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex-all beheaded. The catalogue may be dismissed in the words of Shakspeare, where he

"Tells sad stories of the death of kings:

How some have been deposed; some slain in war;

Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;

Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd:

All murdered!"

Macaulay, in his History of England, speaking of this chapel, says: "There is no sadder spot on earth than this little cemetery. Death is there associated, not, as in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's, with genius and virtue, with public veneration, and with imperishable renown; not, as in our humblest churches and churchyards, with every thing that is most endearing in social and domestic charities, but with whatever is darkest in human nature and in human destiny, with the savage triumph of implacable enemies, with the inconstancy, the ingratitude, the cowardice of friends, with all the miseries of fallen greatness and of blighted fame."

We conclude with the following extract from the Illustrated London News of January 1843:

"The extent of the Tower within the walls is twelve acres and five roods. The exterior circuit of the ditch-now a garden-surrounding it is 3156 feet. On the river-side is a broad and handsome wharf, or gravelled terrace, separated by the ditch from the fortress, and mounted with sixty pieces of ordnance, which are fired on the royal birthdays, or in celebration of any remarkable event. From the wharf into the Tower is an entrance by a drawbridge. Near it is a cut connecting the river with the ditch, having a water-gate, called Traitors' Gate, state prisoners having been formerly conveyed by this passage from the Tower to Westminster for trial. Over Traitors' Gate is a building containing the water-works that supply the interior with water.

"Within the walls of this fortress are several streets. The principal buildings which it contains are, the White Tower, the ancient chapel, the Ordnance-office, the Record-office, the Jewel-office, the Horse Armoury, the grand Storehouse, and the Small Armoury, besides the houses belonging to the constables and to other officers, the barracks for the garrison, and two suttling-houses, commonly used by the soldiers.

"The principal entrance to the Tower is toward the west. It consists of two gates on the outside of the ditch, a stone bridge built over the ditch, and a gate in the inside. These gates are opened every morning with the following ceremony: the yeoman-porter, with a sergeant and six men, goes to the governor's house for the keys. Having received them, he proceeds to the innermost gate, and passing that, it is again shut. He then opens the three outermost gates, at each of which the guards rest their firelocks while the keys pass and repass. On his return to the innermost gate he calls to the warders on duty to take the Queen's keys, when they open the gate, and the keys are placed in the warders' hall. At night the same formality is used in shutting the gates; and as the yeoman-porter with his guard is returning with the keys to the governor's house, the main-guard, which, with its officers, is under arms, challenges him with 'Who comes there?' he answers, 'The keys,' and the challenger replies, 'Pass, keys.' The guards, by order, rest their firelocks, and the yeoman-porter says 'God save the Queen,' the soldiers all answering, 'Amen.' The bearer of the keys then proceeds to the governor's house, and there leaves them. After they are deposited with the governor, no person can enter or leave the Tower without the watchword for the night. If any person obtains permission to pass, the yeoman-porter attends, and the same ceremony is repeated.

"The Tower is governed by its Constable, at present the Duke of Wellington; at coronations and other state ceremonies this officer has the custody of the crown and other regalia. Under him is a lieutenant, deputy-lieutenant, commonly called governor, fort-major, gentleman-porter, yeoman-porter, gentleman-gaoler, four quarter gunners, and forty warders. The warders' uniform is the same as that of the yeomen of the Queen's guards.

"The Tower is still used as a state prison, and, in general, the prisoners are confined in the warders' houses; but, by application to the Privy Council, they are usually permitted to walk on the inner platform during part of the day, accompanied by a warder.

"The fire which took place towards the winter of 1841 destroyed a great portion of the property in the grand Armoury, and materially altered the exhibitorial features of the edifices. The Armoury, said to have been the largest in Europe, was 345 feet in length, and was formerly used as a storehouse for the artillery train, until the stores were removed to Woolwich. A considerable number of chests filled with arms ready for any emergency were in a portion of the room which was portioned off; and in the other part a variety of arms were arranged in fanciful and elegant devices.

"A fearful destruction of property, at once curious and valuable, took place in this department; but one beautiful piece of workmanship was happily preserved. It consisted of the celebrated brass gun taken from Malta by the French, in 1798, and sent, with eight banners, which hung over the same, to the French Directory by General Buonaparte, in La Sensible, from which it was recaptured by the Seahorse, Captain Foote. The sword and sash which belonged to the late Duke of York were also saved, through the intrepidity of Captain Davies; who, however, severely cut his hands by dashing them through the plate-glass frame in which the sword and sash were enclosed."