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The Tower of London

CHAPTER IV A WALK ROUND THE TOWER

Word Count: 4141    |    Released on: 17/11/2017

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of buildings of various age and colour. At first glance we might imagine we were looking upon a bit of sixteenth-century Nuremberg. We would not be at all surprised to see Hans Sachs, Veit Pogner, or Sixtus Beckmesser look out from the windows above the Ballium Wall. Below l

The lower and older portion of the tower dates back to the time of Richard I.; the upper portions are modern restorations of what had existed previously, but the arrow-slits, which formerly pierced the walls and admitted so little light to the interior of one of the gloomiest towers in the fortress, are now widened to windows. The walls are eleven feet thick, and a smal

. An older tower on this site, known as Little Hell because of its evil reputation as a prison, had fallen partly to ruin in 1796 and was demolished; the present tower was set up in its place, and, though used as a prison for a few years after the rebuilding, has practically no history as it now stands. The Bowyer Tower, next in order eastwards, was the plac

ASTION OF OLD LONDON WALL, WIT

LONDON WALL, WITH CLOCK

ed and followed his trade within this tower, and it is named after that master craftsman, whose workshop was a busy place in the days before the bullet had ousted the arrow. The Brick Tower is chiefly of interest as having been the place to which Raleigh was moved during his first and third imprisonments. When it was found necessary to keep him in closer captivity than had been imposed on him in the Garden House and Blo

at patchy appearance to-day. The tower stands at the north-east corner of the Inner Wall, and beneath it lies Brass Mount battery. It is best seen from the point where we leave the public gardens and go on to the level of the Tower B

impelled her to send a waiting-maid to inspect the company and report as to the appearance of her lover. The maid, having seen whom she took to be the intended bridegroom standing at the door of the Jewel-room, returned to her mistress and analysed the impression of the young man which she had formed, with womanly intuition, by a single glance. Meanwhile, it was not love but war below. Old Talbot Edwards had been gagged and nearly strangled by Blood and his men, but not before he had made as much noise as possible in order to raise an alarm. The young women upstairs were much too interested in Cupid's affairs to hear the cries from the Jewel chamber. Edwards received several blows on the head with a mallet in order that his shouts might be silenced. He fell to the ground and was left there as dead, while the ruffians were busily despoiling the jewel case of its more precious contents. Blood, as chief conspirator, secured the crown and hid it under his cloak; his trusty Parrot secreted the orb; and the third villain proceeded to file the{141} sceptre in order to get it into a small bag. At that moment a dramatic event upset their calculations. One can almost hear the chord in the orchestra and imagine that a transpontine melodrama was being witnessed, when told that there stepped upon the scene, at this juncture, a son of Talbot Edwards who had just returned from Flanders. Young Edwards, on entering his own house, was surprised by the sentinel at the door asking him what his business might be. He ran upstairs, in some amazement, to see his father, mother, and sister, and ask the meaning of this demand. Blood and his precious suite of booty-snatchers received the alarm from the doorkeeper, and the interesting party made off as quickly as they could with cloaks, bags, pockets, and hands full of Crow

d crying, 'God bless the Bishops!' When they reached the Traitor's Gate and passed into the Tower, the soldiers on guard, officers as well as men, fell on their knees and begged for a blessing. It was evening when they arrived, and they asked for permission to attend the service in the chapel [of St. Peter]; and the{144} Lesson for the day, by a happy coincidence, was one well calculated to inspire them with courage: 'In all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in strifes, in imprisonments.' ... The enthusiasm was continued long after the ponderous gates of the Tower had closed upon them. The soldiers of the garrison drank to

left by captives; these writings on the stone have been so repeatedly covered with whitewash that they are now somewhat difficult to decipher. In 1830 a list of the inscriptions was made, and we find in it the following names and dates: "John Daniell, 1556," a prisoner concerned in a plot to rob the Exchequer in Mary's reign, and hanged on Tower Hill; "Thomas Forde, 1582," a priest executed "for refusing to assent to the supremacy of Queen Elizabeth in the Church"; "John Stoughton, 1586," and "J. Gage, 1591," bo

of William Rufus. It possesses a spacious dungeon, with vaulted ceiling, a finely carved chimney-piece in one of the upper rooms, and in a prison chamber the inscription of "Hew: Draper, 15

ch sat in the room in the King's House where Guy Fawkes was afterwards convicted, he refused to give any information that might involve brother p

ST. JOHN'S CHAPEL IN THE WHIT

HAPEL IN THE WHITE TOWER

d allowed to remain hanging in agony for five hours longer, during which he fainted eight or nine times. For three days he was put to this torture on the pillar, and Sir William Waad, then Lieutenant of the Tower, exasperated at the victim's fortitude, exclaimed at last, "Hang there till you rot!" and he was left hanging till his arms were paralysed. Each evening the victim, "half dead with pain, and scarce able to crawl," was taken back to his cell in the Salt Tower. A few days later Gerard was again brought before the Council, and again refused to compromise others. Waad thereupon delivered him to the charge of the chief of the torturers-a dread official indeed-with the injunction, "You are to rack him twice a day until such time as he chooses to confess." Once more he was led down into the dungeon beneath the White Tower and strapped up to the pillar as before, his swollen arms and wrists being forced into the iron bands which could now scarce go round them. Still he{149} refused to give the name of a single friend, and Waad saw the futility of torturing him to death. Gerard was locked up in the Salt Tower again and lay on the floor of his chamber with maimed arms, wrists, and hands, terrible to look upon. Yet he remained firm, and the pains of the body could not, it seemed, affect his spirit. It happened that in the Cradle Tower, standing to the south-west of the Salt Tower, on the outer wall and close by the Wharf, another Roman Catholic prisoner, John Arden, was kept in confinement. Gerard, when suff

hed from the level of the Tower Bridge approach by descending a flight of steps on the eastern side of the roadway and passing under the bridge

E TOWER FROM THE TOWE

THE TOWER BRIDG

Garden, one of the most peaceful and secluded nooks in the fortress-a place of old-world flowers and southern sunshine. The Cradle Tower is so named from the existence there in former times of a "cradle," or movable bed by means of which boats could be hoisted from the moat, and, within the grated doorway in the tower wall, raised on to a dry platform there. The principal entrance to the Outer Ward lay, in early days, through this gateway in the Cradle Tower, and prisoners were landed here as well as through Traitor's Gate. In 1641 it was described as "Cradle Tower-a prison{152} lodging." The round Lanthorn Tower rising above and dwarfing the Cradle Tower was in

de of the Traitor's Gate is open to view. The guns on the Wharf, near the Byward Tower, are

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