’Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
Omar Khayyam.

The protoplasm from which the present Tower grew was a rude Celtic fort on the river slope of Tower Hill. Then came the Romans and built their London 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 east of the White Tower. But no part of this Roman work remains in the present Tower, though Shakespeare speaks of Julius C?sar’s Tower in Richard II.

Tower history, as we know it in any detail, begins with the Conquest. The Conqueror set Gundulf, a well-travelled monk of the monastery{22} of Bec, who had seen many beautiful buildings in the course 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. Gundulf was not only a builder but an administrator, and the chronicles tell us that, as Bishop of Rochester, where he rebuilt the Cathedral, he was most earnest in the discharge of his episcopal duties.

When we reach the reign of Henry I. we have tidings of our first prisoner, Ralph Flambard, Bishop of Durham. He was immured for illegally raising funds for the upkeep of this very fortress, but had no desire to remain long an inmate within the walls he had been so 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 arrival on the ground somewhat sudden, he was able to mount on horseback, ride to a seaport, and embark for Normandy. Subsequently he returned to Durham, where he completed the Cathedral and built Norham{23} Castle, in which Scott lays the opening scene of Marmion.

The Tower now became a royal palace and remained the dwelling-place of the Kings of England, or, at times, the stronghold to which they would retire when danger threatened, until the days of Charles II. At this early period of its history, too, it was found that a collection of wild beasts would lend some zest to life within its walls. This royal menagerie was located on the ground where the ticket-office and refreshment-rooms now stand, and was removed in 1834. It is said that the term “going to see the lions” of a place arose from the fashionable habit of visiting the Tower lions, and the lane off Great Tower Street, just beyond Allhallows Barking, was 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 making; but the ruddy tint was really the result of an admixture of pulverised Roman bricks with the lime. When Richard I. went off to the Crusades the Tower was left in the keeping of his Chancellor, Longchamp; and King John, on usurping the throne, laid siege to the fortress, which Longchamp surrendered to him. In 1215 the Tower was again besieged, this time by the barons and the citizens of London, but though the stronghold had but a poor garrison it held out successfully. In 1216 the rebellious nobles handed over the custody of the Tower to the Dauphin, Louis, but he appears to have considered the task too irksome, and “speedily returned to his own land.”

One of the greatest names in Tower history is that of Henry III., who appointed Adam of Lambourne master-mason of the buildings, and began to build and rebuild, to adorn and to beautify, never satisfied until he had made the Tower of London a royal dwelling-place indeed. To the Norman Chapel in the White Tower he gave stained glass and decorated the{25}

Image unavailable: THE PORTCULLIS IN BLOODY TOWER
THE PORTCULLIS IN BLOODY TOWER

walls with frescoes; to St. Peter’s, on Tower Green, he gave a set of bells. He constructed the Wharf, and the massive St. Thomas’s Tower and Traitor’s Gate were set up by him. But he had his difficulties to contend with. These additions to the fortification were unpopular with the citizens without the walls, and when a high tide washed away the Wharf, and, undermining the foundations of the new tower over Traitor’s Gate, brought it twice to the ground, the people rejoiced, hoping the King would own that Fate was against him. But after each disaster his only comment seems to have been “Build it stronger!” and there is Henry’s Wharf and St. Thomas’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 Westminster, she was received, as her barge came into view of London Bridge, with such execrations and shouts of “Drown the witch!” or sounds to that effect, that she returned in terror to the Tower. In 1244 Griffin, son of Llewellyn, was brought as prisoner to the White Tower and detained as a hostage. He attempted to emulate the redoubtable Flambard by making a rope of his bedclothes and dropping from his window, by such means, to the ground. But he had forgotten to take the weight of his body into his calculations; he was a stout man, his hastily constructed rope was insecure, it broke as he hung upon the wall of the Tower, and he was killed by the fall.

Edward I., when he returned from the Holy Land, made the last additions of any consequence that were ever made to the Tower buildings. The Moat was formed in his day and put then into much of its present shape; it has, of course, been cleaned out and deepened from time to time, though there was always more mud than water in its basin, and, at one period, it was considered an offence that lead 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, such as the Earls of Athol, Menteith, and Ross, King Baliol and his son Edward, and, in 1305, the patriot William Wallace, being given habitation in Tower dungeons. The noble Wallace, bravest of Scots, was put to death at Smithfield after some semblance of trial in Westminster Hall. But his name will never be forgotten, for it is enshrined by Burns in one of the noblest of Scottish songs.

Edward II. had no great partiality towards the Tower as a palace, but often retired there when in danger. In 1322 his eldest daughter was born here, and, from the place of her birth, was called Joan of the Tower. She lived to become, by marrying David Bruce, Queen of Scotland in 1327. We hear of the first woman to be imprisoned in Tower walls about this time—Lady Badlesmere—for refusing 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 Berkeley Castle, whither the King had fled from London. The Tower had been left in the care of Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter, but the unfortunate man was seized by a mob of turbulent citizens, dragged into Cheapside, and there put to death. Poor Stapledon was a man of exemplary character and a generous patron of learning. He founded Exeter College, Oxford, and beautified Exeter Cathedral.

The rebel Mortimer and Queen Isabella thought it prudent to keep the young Edward III. within Tower walls in a state of semi-captivity, but the lad’s spirit was such that he soon succeeded in casting off the restraint and threw himself on the goodwill of his people. Mortimer was captured at Nottingham, brought to the Tower, then hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn Elms—where the Marble Arch now stands. The young King’s wars in France and Scotland were begun, and after the capture of Caen, over three hundred of its wealthiest men were brought to the Tower,{29} together with the Constable of France, the Count d’Eu, and the Count of Tankerville. It was while making preparations for this French war that 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 him to the Tower, through narrow City streets crowded with sightseers, past bodies of City Companies drawn up and clad in richest robes, in January 1347. At the Tower gate Bruce was given, with much ceremony, into the custody of Sir John d’Arcy, then Governor. The imprisoned King remained in the Tower eleven years. King John of France, and Philip, his son, were brought captives here in 1358 after{30} Poitiers. Though the Scots King had been liberated and they were so deprived of his society, yet it appears they had no unpleasant time of it in their quarters. There were many French nobles within the gates to make the semblance of a court. Both John and Philip were set free in 1360 by the Treaty of Bretigny.

Richard II. began his reign amid great rejoicings and feastings, and the Tower rang with revelries. On the day of his Coronation the King left his palace-fortress in great state, clad in white robes, and looking, as one account has it, “as beautiful as an archangel.” London seemed to have lost its sense of humour—if the sense had been at all developed at that time—for in Cheapside we are told a castle had been erected “from two sides of which wine ran forth abundantly, and at the top stood a golden angel, holding a crown, so contrived that when the King came near she bowed and presented it to him. In each of the towers was a beautiful virgin ... and each blew in the King’s face leaves of gold and flowers of gold counterfeit,” while the populace yelled blessings on their new monarch, and the conduits ran wine. But scarcely was the wine-stain out of the streets when the Wat Tyler rebellion broke{31} out, and it seemed likely that the cobbles would be soon stained red again, but not with wine. Richard and his mother sought refuge in the Tower while the yells beyond the walls were no longer those of acclamation but of detestation. Froissart likens the mob’s cries to the “hooting of devils.” Richard set out on the Thames to a conference with the leaders of the insurgents at Rotherhithe, but taking alarm before he had gone far down the river returned hurriedly to the Tower steps. With him in his place of security were Treasurer Hales and Archbishop Simon of Sudbury, for whose heads the mob shouted. Mayor Walworth suggested a sally upon the infuriated crowds, but this remedy was considered 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 Richard, on some kind of agreement being reached, left the Tower for Westminster. The King’s greatest friend, Sir{33} Simon Burley, was led to death on Tower Hill and his execution Richard swore to avenge. His opportunity came. Three years later another State procession left the Tower, with the King, as before, the chief personage in the midst of the brave show. Richard had married Isabel, daughter of Charles VI. of France. She had been dwelling in the Tower until the day of her coronation. In the midst of the festivities that celebrated the joyous event Gloucester was seized by the King’s orders, shipped off to Calais, and murdered; the Earl of Arundel was beheaded on Tower Hill. Warwick the King dared not kill, as he had done so much for his country in the wars with France, but after confinement in the Beauchamp Tower, he was sent to the Isle of Man, and there kept in prison for life. But Richard, in planning the fall of these men, brought destruction upon himself. He lost all self-control, and Mr. Gardiner believes that “it is most probable, without being actually insane, his mind had to some extent given way.” Parliament was dissolved—the King would rule without one; he would assume the powers of an autocrat. Events moved swiftly. John of Gaunt’s son, Henry of Lancaster, landed in England in 1399; Richard{34} was taken prisoner, and, on September 2 of that year, was brought to the Tower, a prisoner. In the White Tower—Shakespeare, however, lays the scene in Westminster Hall—he resigned his crown, and, shadowy king that he always was, vanished into the dark shadow that shrouds his end.

Henry IV. began his reign with a revival of Tower festivities. On the eve of his coronation, after much feasting and rejoicing, a solemn ceremonial took place in the Norman chapel of St. John, where forty-six new knights of the Order of the Bath watched their arms all night. With Henry’s reign begins, also, the list of State prisoners in the Tower, which was becoming less of a palace and more of a prison. The first captives were Welshmen—Llewellyn, 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 James became de facto King of Scotland while{35} unjustly immured in Henry’s prison-house. He remained a prisoner for eighteen years, two of which were spent in the Tower; from there he was removed to Nottingham Castle, and his uncle, the Duke of Albany, acted as Regent of the northern kingdom. It is interesting to learn, from some English and Scottish records, that his expenses in the Tower were 6s. 8d. a day for himself and 3s. 4d. for his attendants.

Henry V., on becoming King in 1413, was, according to the Chronicles of London, “brought to the Tower upon the Fryday, and on the morowe he rood through Chepe with a grete rought of lordes and knyghtes, the whiche he hadde newe made in the Tower on the night before.” About this time the Tower was full of persecuted followers of Wycliffe, the most famous being Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham. He had been a trusted servant of Henry IV.; to him was allotted the task of quelling insurrection in Wales at the time of the battle of Shrewsbury, and he then stood in high favour with the King and his son, now Henry V. A severe law had been passed with regard to those who held the principles of Wycliffe, and at the time of Henry V.’s accession, Oldcastle was found to favour the condemned Lollard doctrines. Not{36} long afterwards, by virtue (to quote J. R. Green), of “the first legal enactment of religious bloodshed which defiled our Statute Book,” Sir 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 exclaims, “God willing, I will burn for Him,” and, truly, he suffered a terrible death for his convictions. After Agincourt we have another notable prisoner in the Tower in the person of{37} Charles, Duke of Orleans, who was sent to the White Tower “with a ransom of 300,000 crowns on his head.” This captive, as did James of Scotland before him, passed many of the weary hours of captivity writing poetry. In the British Museum there is preserved a manuscript volume of his poems which is invaluable as containing the oldest picture of the Tower which is known to exist. This picture, beautifully coloured, shows the great keep of William the Conqueror whitewashed—hence its present name—and, in the background, the steep grassy slope of Tower Hill, old London Bridge, and the spires and towers of ancient London. It is a remarkable work of art, and is accessible to all in its many reproductions. Charles was liberated in 1440, in the reign of Henry VI.

The early days of the sixth Henry were not marked in Tower annals by events of great interest, and during the later Wars of the Roses the number of captives sent here was small, for most of them were murdered in cold blood, on the battlefields. Little quarter was given after those fights-to-the-death, and during the weary years of warfare the peerage, as one writer has it, “was almost annihilated.” The Cade 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. He took ship at Dover to cross to Calais, but was captured in the Channel by the captain of a vessel named Nicholas of the Tower. This was a name of ill-omen to Suffolk, to whom it had been told, in prophecy, that could he avoid the “danger of the Tower” he should be safe. As captive he was brought back to Dover, and his last moments are described in King Henry VI., Part II., Act iv., Scene 1, with realism.

In the summer of 1450 Lord Say was sent to the Tower by the King “to propitiate the rebels,” and they had him forth and beheaded him in Cheapside. Cade and his 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, the rebellion gradually subsided. Cade’s capture in a garden in Kent is told by Shakespeare in the tenth scene of the fourth act of the play just mentioned.{39}

Towton Heath was fought and lost by the Lancastrians; the Battle of Hexham crushed the remnant of the King’s army; the valiant Queen Margaret fled, taking her young son with her; and, very soon afterwards, poor Henry himself was led captive, and placed in the Wakefield Tower where, in the room in which the regalia is shown at the present day, he was murdered, we are told, by Richard of Gloucester or, more probably, by his orders, on May 21, 1471. But before 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 was the pull of prosperity against sentiment; the former won, as it usually contrives to do, and along with sentiment down went King Henry. Queen Margaret had meanwhile been brought to the Tower. Though she and her husband were both within Tower gates they did not meet again. The Queen was imprisoned{40} for five years—for part of that time at Windsor—and then was allowed to return to her own country. We meet her once again in Scott’s Anne of Geierstein.

Cannon, that had, as has been said, come into use for the first time at Crecy, were during Henry’s reign used by the Yorkists to “batter down” the walls of the Tower, but unsuccessfully. In 1843, when the moat was dried and cleared out, a large number of stone cannon-balls were discovered, and in all probability were those used at this bombardment.

Edward IV. had given the customary feast at the Tower on the coronation-eve and “made” thirty-two knights within its walls. These Knights of the Bath, “arrayed in blue gowns, with hoods and tokens of white silk upon their 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 Sir William Tyrrell, on Tower Hill. The Tower had come upon its darkest days. Though Edward favoured the fortress a good deal as a place of residence, rebuilt its fortifications and deepened its moat, he also used it{41}

Image unavailable: PORTION OF THE ARMOURY, WHITE TOWER
PORTION OF THE ARMOURY, WHITE TOWER

as a convenient place for ridding himself of all he wished to put out of his way. Victim after victim suffered cruel death within its walls. His brother Clarence 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 to the manner of his death makes it none the less tragic to the imagination; how his last moments were passed the stones of the Bowyer Tower alone could tell us.

Young Edward V. was brought to the Tower by the Dukes of Gloucester and Buckingham, professing great loyalty and arranging that his coronation should take place on the 22nd of June following. But Richard of Gloucester was determined that if craft and strategy could accomplish 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 with a fine show of unwillingness that he accepted the call to kingship, but in July, 1483, he was crowned at Westminster. Edward, and his ten-year-old brother, Richard, disappeared. We shall{42} return to a consideration of their fate when examining the Bloody Tower.

Richard III., following the custom, gave sumptuous entertainments in the Tower to celebrate his first days as King, and the usual elaborate procession issued forth on the coronation day from the Tower gate, climbed the hill, and 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 building near by. The Church of Allhallows Barking, on Tower Hill, as we shall see in Chapter VI., owes much to Richard, who appears to have considered Tower Walls thick enough to hide his evil deeds and keep out his good ones.

During this reign, as we find in the Wyatt Papers, a State prisoner, Sir Henry Wyatt, was thrown into a Tower dungeon for favouring Tudor claims and supporting Henry of Richmond. Richard, it is said, had him tortured, but the brave soldier refused to forsake his “poor and unhappy master” (afterwards Henry VII.) and so “the King, in a rage, had him confined in a low and narrow cell where he had not clothes sufficient to{43} warm him and was an-hungered.” The legend proceeds: “He had starved then, had not God, who sent a crow to feed His prophet, sent this and his country’s martyr a cat both to feed and warm him. It was his own relation 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 dressed each time the pigeon the cat provided, and the prisoner was no longer an-hungered. Sir Henry Wyatt in his days of prosperity, when Henry VII. had come to the throne and made his faithful follower a Privy Councillor, “did ever make much of cats” and, the old writer goes on, “perhaps you will not find his picture anywhere but with a cat beside him.” Wyatt afterwards{44} became rich enough, under kingly favour, to purchase Allington Castle, one of the finest places of its kind in Kent. There are other Tower stories of men, saddened in their captivity, being helped in various ways by dumb animals. Many of them, we may hope, are true.

Our necessarily rapid journey through history has brought us to the illustrious Tudor Kings and Queens. The Tower was never more prominent in England’s records than during Tudor reign, from seventh Henry to the last days of great Elizabeth. The early years of the new King were to be remembered by an imprisonment in Tower walls that had little sense of justice as excuse. When the Duke of Clarence was put to death in Edward IV.’s reign, he left behind him his eldest son, then only three years old, whom Richard, after his own son’s death, had a mind to nominate as his heir. This was Edward, Earl of Warwick, who came to be shut up simply because he was a representative of the fallen house of York and had a better right to claim the Crown than Henry Tudor. That was his only offence, but it was sufficient; 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 England, and after many vicissitudes was captured, and put in the Tower, from whence he planned to escape and involved Edward of Warwick in the plot. This gave Henry his opportunity. Warbeck was hanged at Tyburn, and poor Warwick ended his long captivity at the block on Tower Hill. So was played another act of Tower tragedy. Sir William Stanley, concerned in the Warbeck rising, was also brought to the Tower, tried in the Council Chamber, condemned, and beheaded on Tower Hill on February 16, 1495. Still the plottings against the unpopular Henry went on, and the{46} headsman had ample work to do. To Tower Hill came Sir James Tyrrell, who had taken part in the murder of the Princes, and Sir John Wyndham—both brought there for the aid they had given to the plottings of Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk.

But now comes a break in the tales of bloodshed, and the Tower awoke once more to the sounds of feasting and rejoicing. In celebration of the marriage of Prince Arthur and Katherine of Aragon in St. Paul’s Cathedral, great tournaments and banquetings took place within the Tower and in its immediate vicinity. Tower Hill was gay with the coming and going of festive crowds; 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, however, when the Prince, who was but a lad of fifteen, lay dead, and his mother, Elizabeth of York, who had given birth to a daughter in the Tower in 1503, died nine days after Prince Arthur. When six more years had passed, the King, whose reign had been so{47} troubled, was laid by the side of his wife, in “the glorious shrine in Westminster Abbey which bears his name.”

Henry VIII. was now on the throne, at the age of eighteen, and once again the Tower looms largely in the view, and approaches the height of its notoriety as State prison and antechamber to the place of death. But, as in former times, the record is not one of unrelieved gloom. The two sides of the picture are admirably 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 Knights of the Bath were created, and, with all the ancient pomp and splendour—for Henry had a keen eye for the picturesque—the usual procession from Tower to Westminster duly impressed, by its glitter, a populace ever ready to acclaim a coronation, in the too-human hope that the new will prove better than the old.

The young King appointed Commissioners to make additions and improvements within the Tower. The roomy Lieutenant’s House was built,{48} and had access to the adjoining towers; additional warders’ houses were erected and alterations were made within the 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 though Henry were anxious that his royal prison should be prepared to receive the many new occupants of its rooms and dungeons that he was about to send there, for no sooner were these renovations completed than the chronicle of bloodshed begins afresh.

The Earl of Suffolk, already spoken of in connection with a plot in the preceding reign, came to the axe in 1513; a few years passed and the Tower was filled with men apprehended in City riots, in an attempt 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 the Duke laid some claim to the Crown, and he was beheaded on Tower Green on May 17, 1521. In Brewer’s Introduction to the State Papers of Henry VIII., we read, with reference to this trial and death of{49}

Image unavailable: Panorama of the Tower and Greenwich in 1543. By Anthony van den Wyngaerde. 102. Houndsditch. 103. Crutched Friars. 104. Priory of Holy Trinity. 105. Aldgate. 106. St. Botolph, Aldgate. 107. The Minories. 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. 117. East Smithfield. 118. Stepney. 119. St. Catherine’s Church. 120. St. Catherine’s Dock. 121. St. Catherine’s Hospital. 122. Isle of Dogs. 123. Monastery of Bermondsey. 124. Says Court, Deptford. 125. Palace of Placentia.
Panorama of the Tower and Greenwich in 1543. By Anthony van den Wyngaerde.
102. Houndsditch.
103. Crutched Friars.
104. Priory of Holy Trinity.
105. Aldgate.     106. St. Botolph, Aldgate.
107. The Minories.
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.
117. East Smithfield.     118. Stepney. 119. St. Catherine’s Church.
120. St. Catherine’s Dock.
121. St. Catherine’s Hospital.     122. Isle of Dogs.
123. Monastery of Bermondsey.
124. Says Court, Deptford.
125. Palace of Placentia.

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Buckingham, that the Duke of Norfolk, not without tears, delivered sentence thus: “You are to be led back to prison, laid on a hurdle, and so drawn to the place of execution; you are there to be hanged, cut down alive, your members cut off and cast into the fire, your bowels burnt before your eyes, your head smitten off, your body quartered and divided at the King’s will.” Buckingham heard this terrible form of punishment 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 grace I have offended.” In a few moments his head was off, the block was covered with his blood, and some good friars took up his body, covered it with a cloak, and carried it to the Church of Austin Friars, where it was buried with all solemnity. So fell the once mighty Buckingham, and in his last moments, and after his death, he was not forgotten by “poor religious{50} men, to whom, in his lifetime, he had been kind.”

Again the curtain falls on tragedy and rises on comedy. Twelve years later Tower Green was given over to revelry; and laughter, singing, and mumming were revived under the walls of the White Tower. A writer of the time speaks of the “marvellous cunning pageants,” and the “fountains running with wine” 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. Soon the shadows return, and the “gonnes” and the music cease. Three short years pass and Anne Boleyn comes back to the Tower in sadness and in silence. On the spot where Buckingham suffered, her head, on May 19, 1536, was severed from her body. Three days afterwards Henry had married Jane Seymour.

During the short life of Anne Boleyn as Queen, Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More had come to the scaffold. Their imprisonment and death are dealt with in the 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 the monasteries and the threatened attack on the parish churches, caused many a leader to be confined within the Tower. Its dungeons were filled with prisoners.

The magnificent Abbeys of Rievaulx, Fountains, and Jervaulx, in the Yorkshire dales, were pulled down, and to this day their noble ruins cry shame upon the despoilers. To the Tower came the Abbots of Jervaulx and Fountains, with the 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 and Lady Bulmer, Sir Thomas Percy, Sir Francis Bigod, Sir Stephen Hamilton, Robert Aske, William, son of Lord Lumley, and many a one of Yorkshire birth whose names have not come down to us. All were put to death, without mercy, in 1537.

Two years after the suppression of this rising in the North a smouldering Yorkist insurrection in the West was stamped out by the usual method of securing the leaders, in this case Henry Courtenay,{52} Marquis of Exeter, Sir Edward Nevill and Sir Nicholas Carew, and taking off their heads on Tower Hill. Others were seized about this time, accused of being implicated in certain traitorous correspondence, and were also brought to the Tower. Amongst them were Lord Montague and Sir Geoffrey Pole, with their mother the Countess of Salisbury, Sir Adrian Fortescue, Sir Thomas Dingley, and the Marchioness of Exeter. As regards the aged Countess of Salisbury, in a contemporary document it is said that “she maketh great moan, for that she wanteth necessary apparel, both for change and also to keep her warm.” In a history dealing with the period, by Lord Herbert of Cherbury, we have a description of the Countess’s last moments, which were tragic enough even for Tower records. On May 28, 1541, “the old lady 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 came; on a day of July in that year he, too, came to the Tower............