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Wall, at the angle of which, commanding the Thames seawards, they also constructed a fortress. A portion of this Arx Palatina can still be seen to the

rse of his wanderings, to work on the low ground between the hill and the river, and there, on the camping-ground of the Britons and the Romans, arose the White Tower, completed about 1078. Gundul

anxious, aforetime, to preserve. A rope was conveyed to him in a wine-cask. With the wine he "fuddled his keepers"; with the rope he proceeded to lower himself down the outer wall of the White Tower, and, not at all alarmed at finding the rope too short and his a

as at one time not Beer but Bear Lane, and evidently led down to the pits in which the bears were expected to provide amusement for Court circles. Stephen kept Whitsuntide in the Tower in 1140, and in that year the Tower was in the charge of Geoffrey de Mandeville, who had accompanied the Conqueror to England, but in 1153 it was held for the Crown by Richard de Lucy, Chief Justiciary of England, in trust for Henry of Anjou, and to him it reverted on Stephen's death. It was{24} a popular superstition at this time that the red appearance of the mortar used in binding the Tower walls was caused by the blood of beasts having been mixed with it in the makin

buildings, and began to build and rebuild, to adorn and to beautify, never satisfied until he had made the Tower of Lo

e: THE PORTCULLI

LLIS IN BL

s's Tower (recently restored) to this day. Henry also built the outer wall of the Tower facing the Moat, and in many other ways made the place a stronghold sure. The wisdom of what had been done was soon made manifest, for Henry had many a time to take refuge within Tower walls while rebellious subjects howled on the slopes of Tower Hill. For their unkind treatment of his wife, Queen Eleanor, Henry never forgave the people of London, and so defied them from within what had really become his castle walls. Eleanor was avaricious, proud, arrogant, and became so unpopular{26} that, when on one occasion she had left the Wharf by water, for Westminste

ead to instant death for any man to be discovered bathing therein, probably because he{27} was almost certain to die from the effects of a dip in such fluid as was to be found there! Multitudes of Jews were imprisoned in the dungeons under the White Tower in this reign on the charge of "clipping" the coin of the realm, and the Welsh and Scottish wars were the cause of many notable warriors

efusing hospitality to Queen Isabella, and giving orders that the royal party was to be attacked as it approached her castle of Leeds, in{28} Kent. Lord Mortimer, a Welsh prisoner, contrived to escape from his dungeon by the old expedient of making his jailors drunk. He escaped to France, but soon returned, and with Edward's Queen, Isabella, was party to Edward's death at Berkele

Edward resided in the Tower and came to know its weakness and its strength. He placed a powerful garrison within its battlements when he set off for Normandy, but he was not satisfied in his heart with the state of his royal fortress. Returning secretly from France, and landing one November night at the Wharf, he found, as he had expected, the place but ill guarded. The Governor, the Chancellor, and several other officers were imprisoned for neglect of their duties, and the King set his house in order. The Scottish King, David Bruce, was captured at Neville's Cross in 1346, and Froissart describes how a huge escort of armed men guarded the captive King-who was mounted on a black charger-and brought hi

d too desperate, and abandoned. The mob on Tower Hill demanded Sudbury; Sudbury was to be delivered to them; give them Sudbury. The awful glare of fire shone into the Tower casements, and the King looked out and saw the houses of many of his nobles being burnt to the ground. The Savoy was on fire, Westminster added flames to colour the waters of the Thames, and fire was seen to rise from the northern heights. Richard was but a boy, and so hard a trial found him almost unequal to the strain it imposed. What was to be{32} done? The King being persuaded to meet his rebellious subjects at Mile End, conceded their demands and granted pardons. There was a garrison of 1200 well-armed men in the Tower, but they were panic-stricken when, on the departure of the King, the rebel mob, which had stood beyond the moat, rushed over the drawbridges and into the very heart of the buildings. Archbishop Sudbury was celebrating Mass when the mob caught him, dragged him forth from the altar, and despatched him on Tower Hill. Treasurer Hales was also killed, and both heads were exposed on the gateway of old London Bridge. Yet, two days later, Tyler's head was placed where Sudbury's had been, and the Archbishop was buried with much pomp in Canterbury Cathedral. In 1387 Richard again sought refuge in the Tower. The Duke of Gloucester and other nobles had become exasperated at the weak King's ways, and a commission appointed by Gloucester proceeded to govern the Kingdom; Richard's army offering opposition was defeated. Subsequently, a conference was held in the Council Chamber of the White Tower, and Richa

a relation of Owen Glendower, being brought here in 1402. In the following year the Abbot of Winchelsea and other ecclesiastics were committed for inciting to rebellion, but Henry's most notable prisoner was Prince James of Scotland. This lad of eleven was heir of Robert III., after the death of Rothesay, whose sad end is described in The Fair Maid of Perth. King Robert died, it is said, of a broken heart when he heard of his son's captivity, and Ja

ir John was a captive in the Tower, and the King, forgetting old friendship, allowed matters to take their course. But Oldcastle, who evidently had friends and unknown adherents within the Tower walls, mysteriously escaped, and the Lollards, encouraged, brought their rising to a head. It was said that they had plotted to kill the King and make Oldcastle Regent of the kingdom; but their insurrection was quelled, the more prominent Lollards were either burnt or hanged, and Sir John, after wanderings in Wales, was caught, brought back to the Tower, and in December 1417, some say on Christmas Day, was hung in chains and burnt "over a slow fire" in Smithfield. He is the original of Shakespeare's Falstaff, but had very little in common with that creation of the dramatist's fancy. Shakespeare admits this in an epilogue where he says, "For Oldcastle died a martyr and this is not the man." In Tennyson's poem, Sir John Oldcastle, this brave old man

de rebellion broke out in 1450, in which year William de la Pole,{38} Duke of Suffolk, who had been charged with supporting it, was murdered. He was one of the most distinguished noblemen in England, yet the tragedy that ended his life was a sordid one. Upon a wholly unsubstantiated charge of treason he was shut up in the Tower; as he could not be proven guilty, he was released and banished the country. H

followers were attacking the fortress from Southwark, but at nightfall a sortie was made from the Tower, London Bridge was barricaded, and, a truce being called

efore his death, Warwick-that king-maker slain at Barnet in 1471-had given orders for Henry to be led on horseback through the city streets "while a turncoat populace shouted 'God save King Harry!'" This was a poor and short-lived triumph. The weary-hearted King, "clad in a blue gown," soon returned to the walls he was fated never again to leave alive. The city was flourishing under Yorkist rule and was not minded to seek Lancastrian restoration. It wa

Yorkists to "batter down" the walls of the Tower, but unsuccessfully. In 1843, when the moat was dried and cleared

ir shoulders" rode before the new King on his progress from the Tower to Westminster Abbey on his coronation day. The King began his reign by sending Lancastrians to the Tower and beheading two, Sir Thomas Tudenham and

PORTION OF THE AR

THE ARMOURY

e mysteriously disappeared-tradition has maintained he was drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine, but that has never been proved in any way. However, the secrecy as

complish his ends the next coronation would be his own. Lord Hastings, over loyal to the boy King was brought to the axe on Tower Green, and an attempt was made by the scheming Richard, who was now Protector, to prove that Edward was no true heir to the Crown. It was

d wended its way through the tortuous London streets to the city of Westminster, beyond. Richard seems to have spent much of his time, when in his capital, within his fortress-palace, and to have taken interest in at least one

from whom I had the story. A cat came one day down into the dungeon, and, as it were, offered herself unto him. He was glad of her, laid her on his bosom to warm him, and, by making much of her, won her love. After this she would come every day unto him divers times, and, when she could get one, brought him a pigeon. He complained to his keeper of his cold and short fare. The answer was 'He durst not better it.' 'But,' said Sir Henry, 'if I can provide any, will you promise to dress it for me?' 'I may well enough,' said the keeper, 'you are safe for that matter,' and being urged again, promised him and kept his promise." The jailor d

nt; he lingered in confinement while Lambert Simnel was impersonating him in Ireland in 1487; he was led forth from his cell to parade city streets, for a{45} day of what must have tasted almost like happy freedom, in order that he might be seen of the people; and once again was he brought back to his place of confinement. Henry's position was again in danger, when, in 1492, Perkin Warbeck, a young Fleming, landed in Ireland and proclaimed himself to be Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, son of Edward IV. His tale was that when his "brother" Edward was murdered in the Tower, he had escaped. He was even greeted, some time afterwards, by the Duchess of Burgundy, Edward IV.'s sister, as her nephew, and called the "White Rose of England." With assistance from France and Scotland, Warbeck landed in Eng

owds; the Tower walls echoed what they seldom heard-the sounds of piping and dancing. Records tell us, too, of elaborate pageants which strove to show the descent of the bridegroom from Arthur of the Round Table. This method of impressing the moving scenes of history on the spectator is not unknown to us in the present day. Hardly had five months passed away, howeve

ably exemplified at the beginning of Henry's reign, for, shortly after he had imprisoned his father's "extortioners," Empson and Dudley, and subsequently caused them to be beheaded on Tower Hill, he made great show and ceremony during the Court held at the Tower before the first of his many weddings. Twenty-four K

Bell and St. Thomas's Towers. About this time the White Tower received attention, and from the State Papers of the period we learn that it was "embattled, coped, indented, and cressed with Caen stone to the extent of five hundred feet." It is almost as

tempt to subdue which the Tower guns were actually "fired upon the city"; Edward, Duke of Buckingham, at one time a favourite of Henry's, was traduced by Wolsey, who represented, out of revenge, that th

. 108. The Postern Gate. 109. Great Tower Hill. 110. Place of Execution. 111. Allhallow's Church, Barking. 112. The Custom House. 113. Tower of London. 114. The White Tower. 115. Traitor's Gate. 116. Little Tower Hill. 11

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ishment with calmness, and said that so should traitors be spoken unto, but that he was never one. After the trial, which had lasted nearly a week, the Duke was conveyed on the river from Westminster to the Temple steps and brought through Eastcheap to the Tower. Buckingham's last words as he mounted the scaffold on the Green were that he died a true man to the King, "whom, through my own negligence and lack of gra

ne" as Henry brought hither his new Queen, Anne Boleyn, for whom, on her entry "there was such a pele of gonnes as hath not byn herde lyke a great while before." Once more, also, there was made procession, in state, but with scant applause of the people this time, from Tower Hill to Westminster. S

next chapter. The{51} "Pilgrimage of Grace," a religious rising in the North, mostly within the borders of Yorkshire, to protest against the spoliation of t

Prior of Bridlington, and they were hanged, eventually, at Tyburn Tree. Other prisoners were Lords Hussey and Darcey; the first was beheaded in Lincoln, the other on Tower Hill. With them were brought Sir Robert Constable, Sir John a

ady was brought to the scaffold, set up in the Tower [on Tower Green], and was commanded to lay her head on the block; but she, as a person of great quality assured me, refused, saying, 'I am no traitor'; neither would it serve that the executioner told her it was the fashion, so turning her grey head every way, she bid him, if he would have her head, to get it off as he could; so that he was constrained to fetch it{53} off slovenly." However, Froude discredits this story, and it certainly seems to be almost too fantastic to be true. Still, the fact remains that the Countess was subjected to unnecessarily harsh treatment while in the Tower, for the reason, it is said, that the King hoped she might die under the privations and so save him bringing her to the block. To Thomas Cromwell, the instigator of the terrible punishments that were meted out to those concerned in the risings, fate had already brought retribution. In 1540 he had been created Earl of Essex; a few months afterwards his fall

was granted. Lady Rochford, the Queen's companion, was executed on the Green after her mistress had suffered. An eye-witness of the executions has left it on record that both victims made "the moost godly and chrystian end that ever was heard tell of, I thynke sins the world's creation." Katherine Howard was only twenty-two years old when the Tower claimed her life. Many of her relatives were imprisoned at the same time, among them being her grandmothe

and seizing the wheel himself, strained it with all his force till Knyvett [the Lieutenant], revolting at such cruelty, insisted on her release from the dreadful machine. It was but just in time to save her life, for she had twice swooned, and her limbs had been so stretched and her joints so{56} injured, that she was never again able to walk.... She was shortly afterwards carried to Smithfield and there burnt to ashes, together with three other persons, for the same cause, in

e French High Admiral, the Bishop of Evreux, and others came on embassy to England, and were welcomed, amid much rejoicing, to the feast. For a space the Tower remembered there was laughter

MBER IN THE KING'S HOUSE WHERE GUY

ING'S HOUSE WHERE GUY FAWKES

. "Surrey's instinct for prosody was phenomenal," says Mr. Edmund Gosse, and "he at once transplanted blank verse from a soil in which it could never flourish [it had recently been invented in Italy], to one in which it would take root and spread in full luxuriance." Yet the sweet singer who lit the torch that was handed on t

it he had demolished a church and scattered the human remains found there-an act of desecration that the citizens regarded as a crime. The Earl of Warwick headed the opposition, seized the Tower, and the Protector was lodged in the Beauchamp Tower. Later, however, he was pardoned, and the young King records in his diary that "My Lorde Somerset was delivered of his bondes and came to Court." But the feud soon came to a head again,{59} and in 1551 Somerset was shut up in the Tower once more, and his wife with him, on a charge of high treason. He was taken, by water, to his trial at Westminster Hall, where he was "acquitted of high treason," but condemned "of treason feloniouse and adjudged to be hanged." The King, who appears to have written a full account of events in his diary, notes that "he departed without the axe of the Tower. The people knowing not the matter shrieked half-a-dozen times so loude that from the halle dore it was heard at Charing Crosse plainely, and rumours went that he was quitte of all." But, far from being "quitte of all" he was conveyed back to t

er, the Warder's axe showing, by the direction in which the blade pointed, what their doom was to be. To her father Lady Jane wrote, from her prison-house: "My deare father, if I may, without offence, rejoyce in my own mishaps, herein I may account myselfe blessed that washing my hands{62} with the innocence of my fact, my guiltless bloud may cry before the Lord, Mercy to the innocent!... I have opened unto you the state wherein I presently stand, my death at hand, although to you perhaps it may seem wofull yet to me there is nothing that can bee more welcome than from this vale of misery to aspire, and that having thrown off all joy and pleasure, with Christ my Saviour, in whose steadfast faith (if it may be lawfull for the daughter so to write to her father) the Lord that hath hitherto strengthened you, soe continue to keepe you, that at the last we may meete in heaven with the Father, Sonne, and Holy Ghost.-I am, your most obedient daughter till death, Jane Dudley." It is possible that Queen Mary might have spared the life of this sweet and gentle maid, happier in her books and her devotions than in the intrigues of State, but a rising of the men of Kent, under Wyatt, who demanded the "custody of the Tower and the Queen within it," brought matters to a crisis. Wyatt appeared on the Southwark bank of the Thames and was fired upon from Tower walls. This is the last time in its annals that the fortress was attacked, and that it was called upon to repel an enemy. Wyatt, captured at Temple Bar after a night march from{63} Kingston, where he had crossed the river, was soon in the Tower, and with him was led many a noble prisoner. All hope that Lady Jane would be spared had

re her, which is now known as "Queen Elizabeth's Walk." Towards the middle of May, being set free of the Tower, she is said to have taken a meal in the London Tavern-at the corner of Mark Lane and Fenchurch Street-on her way to Woodstock. The p

orough Castle, was brought to the block on Tower Hill, and a large band of prisoners was put in Tower dungeons. To make room for these, many of the captives already there were

records of Elizabeth's{66} reign almost wholly as a State prison. An attempt was made to smooth out religious difficulties by committing a number of Church dignitaries to its keeping, among them the Archbishop of York, and Feckenham, Abbot of Westminster. Then came Lady Catherine Grey, Lady Jane's sister, who had offended the Queen by marrying Lord Hertford in secret. Her husband, also, was soon afterwards a prisoner. He lay for over nine years in his cell, but was released at the

l again claimed a victim, the Duke of Norfolk suffering there in June 1579. In the following year Roman Catholic prisoners were brought, one might say in droves, to Tower cells. Many of them were subjected to torture either by the rack, the "Scavenger's Daughter," the thumbscrew, or the boot. In 1581 Father Campion, a Jesuit, was hurried to death, and in 1583 we hear of one captive committing suicide in order to escape the awful fate of dismemberment that ma

hat was considered sufficiently dire an offence for Lord Chancellor Hatton to have him brought to the Tower. But Elizabeth refused to sign the warrant for his execution. He died, in his captivity, after six months, of a broken heart. Of the imprisonment of Raleigh, and of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, something will be said when we come to examine those portions of the Tower with which their names are associated. With the d

s. At a more leisurely pace the Elizabethan statesmen were riding in from Richmond, where their mistress lay dead, to Whitehall Gate, where at ten in the morning they proclaimed King James I.... The Lords of the Council showed themselves agreed that there should be no revolution. The decision was silently endorsed by a grateful nation. In city and manor-house men laid aside their arms and breathed again." In Mr. G. M. Trev

nster two years later to open his first Parliament. It is interesting to read in Mr. Sidney Lee's Life of Shakespeare that Shakespeare himself, with eight players of the King's company of actors, walked "from the Tower of London to Westminster in the procession which accompanied the King in his formal entry into London." There is no othe

ise she escaped to Blackwall and took ship at Leigh-on-Sea, there to await her husband, who had succeeded in getting out of the Tower by dressing as a labourer and following out a cart laden with wood. From the wharf, Seymour sailed to Leigh, but found that the French vessel in which his wife had sought shelter had gone down the river some hours before. He managed to cross to Ostend, but Lady Arabella was caught in mid-channel and conveyed back to Tower walls, which she never left again. In her latter years she became insane, and, dying in 1615, was buried at midnight beside Mary Que

Bloody Tower. Felton, the rogue responsible for the assassination of Buckingham, had bought the knife with which he did the deed on Tower Hill at a booth there. He was brought to the Tower on his arrest and confined until the day of his hanging at Tyburn. They were not always, however, political

there on May 12, 1641. It is said that 200,000 people witnessed the event, and that it was celebrated by the lighting of bonfires at night. The Archbishop had been arrested at Lambeth Palace and brought to the Tower by the river. He remained for four years in his room in the Bloody Tower, and in his{74} diary describes the visit paid to him by Prynne, "who seeing me safe in bed, falls first to my pockets to rifle them" in the search for papers, which he found in plenty. "He bound up my papers, left two sentinels at my door, and went his way." On March 10, 1643, Laud was brought to a trial in Westminster Hall which lasted twenty days. Because he had-so the charge was worded-"attempted to subvert religion and the fundamental laws of the realm," he was condemned, and on Tower Hill, on January 10, 1645, when seventy-two years of age, beheaded. He was buried, as we shall see in a later chapter, in the church of Allhallows Barking, near by. Readers of Jo

Hill at the time of his death, engraved by a Dutchman, is one of the first drawings, after those of Strafford and Laud, of an execution on that famous spot. Lucy Barlow, mother of the Duke of Monmouth, who had been imprisoned in the Tower with her young son, was released by Cromwell after a long detention. Cromwell was, during the last years of the Protectorate, in constant fear of assassination. Miles Syndercombe, at one time in his confidence, made an attempt on his life in 1657. Having been sentenced to death, Syndercombe took fate in his own hands, terminated his life in the solitude of his cell, and the body was dragged at a horse's tail from Tower Hill to Tyburn. Dr. John Hewitt, concerned in a rising in Kent in favour of the Restoration, was beheaded on Tower Hill{77} with another plotter, Sir Henry Slingsley. The frequent escapes from Tower walls during the Commonwealth period would lead to the belief that the place was not guarded with the customary rigour when Cromwell was in power, but when he died the Tower became an important centre of attention. Colonel Fitz, then Lieutenant, had, so it is said, arranged to admit three hundred men of the Parliamentary army. This little negotiation was not carried to its desired conclusion, and a fresh garrison was placed in the fortress on dis

ut to Tower{79} Hill, and there, over against the scaffold, made on purpose this day, saw Sir Harry Vane brought. A very great press of people." The people of London at that time went out to see men brought to the block, just as their successors patronise a Lord Mayor's show. Pepys had taken a window in Trinity Square, but was unable to see the actual fall of the axe because "the scaffold was so crowded that we could not see it done." Charles II. was the last of the kings to sleep in the Tower the night before coronation, and he, in keeping with tradition, made a number of Knights of the Bath who would, after the cerem

e high places of the Tower" where he was able to look towards London Bridge and did see "an infinite great fire." George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, began his series of five imprisonments in the Tower in 1658, during the Protectorate, and continued them well into Charles's reign. But though constantly in trouble his offences were as constantly forgiven by the King, and he was never a captive very long.

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nment. That singular invention of Titus Oates, called the Popish Plot, sent about forty men to the block, among them William, Lord Stafford, who was executed on Tower Hill on December 29, 1680. Three years later, the Rye House Plot brought Lord William Russell

people for his handsome face, but unstable in character. He was beheaded in 1685, on Tower Hill, having been led there with difficulty through the dense crowd of citizens gathered to see him die, and to cheer him on the sad way up to the top of the hill and the scaffold. A contemporary engraving shows the excited populace packed closely together in solid ranks. Jack Ketch, the headsman, was almost torn limb from limb by

the Stuarts. Charles, Lord Mohun, was made a prisoner within the walls in this reign, not for{83} "adhering to their Majesties' enemies" but for having killed a celebrated comedian, in a quarrel about a famous actress. In 1695 Si

om February to July was crowded by fashionable visitors whose carriages blocked the gateway at the foot of Tower Hill. We are indeed in modern times when captivity in the old fortress-prison was treated as a society fun

hird victim, for Lord Nithsdale, as we shall see later, managed to escape from the Tower on the evening before. In 1722 the Jacobites plotted to seize the Tower; their plan failed; they were made prisoners there instead, and lay in the dungeons for several months. We have passed through the period of The Black Dwarf and come to the days of Waverley and the romantic "Forty-five." In 1744 three men of a Highland regiment, which had mutinied on being ordered to Flanders after being promised that foreign service should not be required, were shot on Tower Green; others were sent to the plantations. This roused great

the "United Irishmen," in 1798; the imprisonment of Sir Francis Burdett in 1810; and the pl

and the smoke and flames were blown over towards the White Tower. Fortunately, the store alone was destroyed, and it was reported to have been ugly enough to deserve its fate. The Tower's last trial came upon it, unawares,{86} in January 24, 1885, when the "Fenians" laid an infernal machine in the Banq

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