The raised portcullis’ arch they pass,
The wicket with its bars of brass,
The entrance long and low,
Flanked at each turn by loopholes strait
Where bowmen might in ambush wait
(If force or fraud should burst the gate),
To gall an entering foe.
Scott.

The Gascoyne plan of 1597, reproduced at the end of this book, will show a straggling line of buildings running partly up the slope of Tower Hill and terminating in what was known as the Bulwark Gate. It was there that prisoners, with the exception, of course, of those who came by water to Traitor’s Gate, were, in Tudor times, delivered to the custodians of the Tower; and it was there, also, that all who were to be executed on Tower Hill were given by the Tower authorities into the charge of the City officials. Grass grew on the{88} hill and its river slope in those days, and, leaving the Tower Gateway behind, one would, as it were, step into an open meadow, the declivity towards the Moat on one side and the cottages of Petty Wales on the other. The aspect of this main entrance to the Tower has been so altered that it is a little difficult nowadays to reconstruct it in imagination. The Moat made a semicircular bend where the present wooden stockade stands, and it had to be crossed at least twice—some accounts say three times—before the Byward Tower could be reached. The first drawbridge was protected by the Lion Gate; the Lion Tower stood near by to command that gate, and was surrounded by the waters of the Moat. All trace of these outer barbicans and waterways has disappeared; the Towers have been pulled down, the ditch filled up, to make the modern approach to the Wharf.

On the right, within the present wooden gateway, the unattractive erection known as the “ticket-office” occupies the site of the royal menagerie, which existed here from the days of our Norman kings to the year 1834, when it was removed to Regent’s Park, and from which the present Zoo has developed. In the time of Henry III. (1252) the Sheriffs of London were{89} “ordered to pay fourpence a day for the maintenance of a white bear, and to provide a muzzle and chain to hold him while fishing in the Thames.” In Henry’s reign the first elephant seen in England since the time of the Romans came to the Tower menagerie, and lions and leopards followed. James I. and his friends came here frequently “to see lions and bears baited by dogs,” and in 1708 Strype, the historian, mentions “eagles, owls, and two cats of the mountain,” as occupants of the cages. In 1829, and during the last five years of its existence here, the collection consisted of lions, tigers, leopards, a jaguar, puma, ocelot, caracal, chetah, striped hy?na, hy?na dog, wolves, civet cats, grey ichneumon, paradoxurus, brown coati, racoon, and a pit of bears. The “Master of the King’s bears and apes” was an official of some importance, and received the princely salary of three halfpence a day; but this was in Plantagenet times.

Middle Tower.—The first “Tower” that the visitor of to-day passes under is called, by reason of its position at one time in the centre of the old ditch, the Middle Tower. Its great circular bastions commanded the outer drawbridge, and its gateway was defended by a double portcullis. The{90} sharp turn in the approach—formerly a bridge, now a paved roadway—to this Tower would make it impossible to “rush” this gateway with any success. When Elizabeth returned as Queen to the Tower, which she had left, five years before, as prisoner, it was in front of this Middle Tower that she alighted from her horse and fell on her knees “to return thanks to God,” as Bishop Burnet writes, “who had delivered her from a danger so imminent, and from an escape as miraculous as that of David.”

The Moat and Byward Tower.—The bridge and causeway connecting the Middle and Byward Towers has altered little in appearance, and looks, to-day, very much as it does in Gascoyne’s plan. But the broad Moat has been drained; the water was pumped out in 1843, and the bed filled up with gravel and soil to form a drill ground. It was across that portion of the Moat lying to the north, under Tower Hill, that two attempts at escape were made in the last years of Charles I.’s reign. Monk, the future Duke of Albermarle, had been taken captive at the siege of Nantwich by Fairfax, and was a prisoner in the Tower for three years. With him were brought two fellow-prisoners, Lord Macguire and Colonel MacMahon.{91}

Image unavailable: MIDDLE TOWER (WEST FRONT), NOW THE ENTRANCE TO THE TOWER BUILDINGS, BUT FORMERLY SURROUNDED BY THE MOAT
MIDDLE TOWER (WEST FRONT), NOW THE ENTRANCE TO THE TOWER BUILDINGS, BUT FORMERLY SURROUNDED BY THE MOAT

They managed to escape from their cell by sawing through the door, at night, and lowered themselves from the Tower walls to the ditch by means of a rope which they had found, according to directions conveyed to them from without, inside a loaf of bread. They succeeded in swimming the Moat, but were unlucky enough to surprise a sentry, stationed near the Middle Tower, who had heard the splash they made when leaving the rope and jumping into the water. On their coming to the opposite bank they were re-taken, cast back into the prison, and shortly afterwards hanged at Tyburn. The Lieutenant of the Tower was heavily fined for “allowing the escape,” poor man! A few years afterwards, Lord Capel, made captive at the surrender of Colchester Castle, broke prison by having had tools and a rope secretly conveyed to him with instructions as to which part of the Moat he should find most shallow. With deliberation he performed all that was necessary to get himself outside the walls, but he found the depth of the ditch exceed his expectations. Attempting to wade across, he was nearly dragged under water by the weight of mud that clogged his feet, and was, at one point in his perilous progress through the water, about to call loudly for help{92} lest he should be unable to continue the exertion necessary and so be drowned. However, cheered by friends waiting under cover of bushes on the Tower Hill bank, he came at last to firm ground. He was carried to rooms in the Temple, and from thence conveyed, some days later, to Lambeth. But the boatman who had carried the fugitive and his friends from the Temple Stairs, guessing who his passenger was, raised an alarm. Capel was discovered, put again in the Tower, and beheaded in March, 1649, beside Westminster Hall. The grim-looking Byward Tower is said to have been so named from the fact that the by-word, or password, had to be given at its gateway before admittance could be gained even to the outer ward of the fortress. On that side of it nearest the river, a postern gateway leads to a small drawbridge across the ditch. This gave access to the royal landing-place on the wharf, immediately opposite, and in this way privileged persons were able to enter the Tower without attention to those formalities necessary to gain entry to the buildings in the ordinary way. In the Byward Tower, to the right, under the archway, is the Warders’ Parlour, a finely-vaulted room, and outside its doorway we meet one or two{93} of those Yeomen Warders, whose picturesque uniform, so closely associated with the Tower, was designed by Holbein the painter, and dates from Tudor days. These Yeomen Warders are sworn in as special constables, whose duties lie within the jurisdiction of the Tower, and they take rank with sergeant-majors in the army. When State trials were held in Westminster Hall the Yeoman Gaoler escorted the prisoner to and from the Tower, carrying the processional axe, still preserved in the King’s House here. The edge of the axe was turned towards the captive after his trial, during the sad return to the prison-house, if he had—as was nearly always the case—been condemned to die. This Yeoman still carries the historic axe in State processions, but it is now merely an emblem of a vanished power to destroy. Allied to the Warders are a body of men known as the Yeomen of the Guard, or Beefeaters, who attend on the King’s person at all his State functions, whether it be in procession or at levée. The Yeomen were first seen beyond Tower walls in the coronation procession of Henry VII. The eastern front of the Byward Tower has a quaint, old-world appearance, and has altered little since Elizabethan days.{94}

Bell Tower.—This old Tower, at the angle of the Ballium Wall, contained at one time, within the turret still to be seen above its roof, the Tower bell, which in former days was used as an alarm signal. In the regulations of 1607 we find that “when the Tower bell doth ring at nights for the shutting in of the gates, all the prisoners, with their servants, are to withdraw themselves into their chambers, and not to goe forth that night.” The walls, built by Henry III., are of immense strength, the masonry being solid for fully ten feet above the ground. The Tower contains an upper and a lower dungeon, the former lit by comparatively modern windows, the latter still possessing narrow openings or arrow-slits. In the upper cell, the walls of which are eight feet thick, four notable prisoners were confined—Bishop Fisher and Anne Boleyn in Henry VIII.’s time, Princess Elizabeth in Mary’s reign, and Lady Arabella Stuart in the days of James I. Fisher was eighty years old when brought to linger here “in cold, in rags, and in misery.” The aged Bishop had refused to comply with the Act of Succession and acknowledge Henry supreme head of the Church of England. From this prison he wrote to Cromwell, “My dyett, also, God knoweth how slender it is{95} at any tymes, and now in myn age my stomak may nott awaye but with a few kynd of meats, which if I want, I decay forthwith, and fall into crafs and diseases of my bodye, and kan not keep myself in health.” But no alleviation of his sufferings did he obtain, and early in the morning, when winter and spring had passed away, and slender rays of June sunshine had found entrance to his dismal dwelling-place, the Lieutenant of the Tower came to him to announce that a message from the King had arrived, and that Fisher was to suffer death that day. The Bishop took this as happy tidings, granting release from intolerable conditions of life. At nine o’clock he was carried to Little Tower Hill (towards the present Royal Mint buildings), praying as he went. On the scaffold he exclaimed, “Accedite ad eum et illuminamini, et facies vestr? non confundentur,” with hands uplifted, and, having spoken some few words to the crowd around, was repeating the words of the Thirty-first Psalm, “In thee, O Lord, have I put my trust,” when the axe fell. Into the lower dungeon Sir Thomas More was taken in the same month as Fisher (April 1534). More had been friend and companion to King Henry, and had held the office of Lord Chancellor after Wolsey. But past friendship and high services were forgotten{96} when, with Fisher, he refused to accept the Oath in the Act of Succession, and he was committed to the Tower. For fifteen months he lay confined in this “close, filthy prison, shut up among mice and rats,” and was so weakened as to be “scarce able to stand,” when taken to the scaffold, on Tower Hill, on July 6, 1535. In Mr. Prothero’s Psalms in Human Life his last moments are thus described:—“The scaffold was unsteady, and, as he put his foot on the ladder, he said to the Lieutenant, ‘I pray thee see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself.’ After kneeling down on the scaffold and repeating the Psalm ‘Have mercy upon me, O God’ (Ps. li), which had always been his favourite prayer, he placed his head on the low log that served as a block, and received the fatal stroke.” His head was placed on London Bridge, but soon afterwards it was claimed by his devoted daughter and was buried with her at Canterbury when she died, in 1544. The bodies of Fisher and More are buried side by side, in St. Peter’s, on Tower Green, but Fisher’s remains had rested for some years in Allhallows Barking, on Tower Hill, before removal to the Tower chapel. At the entrance to the upper chamber of the Bell Tower from the passage on{97} the wall, known as Queen Elizabeth’s Walk, there is the following inscription on the stone:—

BI·TORTVRE·STRAVNGE·MY·TROVTH·WAS·TRIED·YET OF·MY·LIBERTY·DENIED: THER·FOR·RESON·HATH·ME PERSWADED THAT PASYENS MVST BE YMBRASYD: THOGH HARD·FORTVNE·CHASYTH·ME·WYTH·SMART·YET·PASYENS SHALL·PREVAYL.

Beyond the Bell Tower a broad window, with balcony, will be noticed in the adjacent King’s House. This gives light to a room known as the Council Chamber, in which Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators were tried and condemned to the rack. Above the fireplace in this room an elaborate carving preserves the features of the first Stuart who sat on the English throne, and, near by, the many virtues—lest their existence should be doubted by unbelievers—of that amiable monarch are set forth for all to read who may. In this room Pepys “did go to dine” (February 1663-4) with Sir J. Robinson, then Lieutenant of the Tower, “his ordinary table being very good.” James, Duke of Monmouth, taken as a fugitive after Sedgemoor, was imprisoned in this house (1685) till his execution, and here he parted from his wife and children during the last sad hours.

Traitor’s Gate and St. Thomas’s Tower.—{98}If any were asked what impressed them most during their visit to the Tower, or what they desired to see when planning that visit, I think that they would name the Traitor’s Gate. It is certainly the best preserved of the Tudor portions, has been least spoiled by intrusion of irrelevant things, and is left in its quietness to the doves that incessantly flit in and out of the crevices of its stones and rest upon the bars of its massive gateway. Above it rises the great arch, sixty-two feet span, supporting St. Thomas’s Tower, built, as has already been stated, by Henry III., and named after St. Thomas of Canterbury. This “Watergate,” as it was at one time called, was the only direct way of entering the Tower from the river, and, before the draining of the moat, the gate here was always partly covered by water, and boats were brought right up to the steps in front of the Bloody Tower. They were moored to the heavy iron ring that is still to be seen at the left of the archway of the tower just mentioned. The older steps will be noticed beneath the more modern stone-facings laid upon them, and those steps have been trodden by some of the most famous men and women in our history. It will be remembered that between these steps and the{99}

Image unavailable: THE TRAITOR’S GATE, FROM WITHIN
THE TRAITOR’S GATE, FROM WITHIN

gloomy archway leading up to Tower Green, the condemned Sir Thomas More met, on his way to the Bell Tower, his daughter, who, in a frenzy of grief, thrust her way through the guards and flung herself on her father’s neck, crying, in despair, “O my father, my father!” Those who record the scene say that even the stern warders were moved to tears when the father gave his child his last blessing and she was led away from him. To these steps came Anne Boleyn; Cromwell, Earl of Essex; Queen Katherine Howard; Seymour, Duke of Somerset; Lady Jane Grey, Princess Elizabeth, Devereux, Earl of Essex; the Duke of Monmouth, and the Seven Bishops. In the room above the Gate, Lord Grey de Wilton died (1614), after eleven years of imprisonment on the mere accusation of wishing to marry Arabella Stuart, “without permission of King James I.” St. Thomas’s Tower at one time, as is evident from the old piscina discovered there, contained a chapel; the tower has been carefully restored, without and within, and is now the residence of the Keeper of the Crown Jewels.

The Bloody Tower.—In Henry VIII.’s reign this was known as the Garden Tower, and took its name from the Constable’s garden, now the Parade{100} in front of the King’s House; but since Elizabeth’s time it has been called the Bloody Tower, owing, it is surmised, to the suicide therein of Henry Percy, eighth Earl of Northumberland, in 1585. But that is the least of its mysteries. It was within this tower that the young Princes disappeared in July, 1483. They had been removed from the royal palace near this tower when Richard assumed kingship, and placed within these grim chambers. They were closely watched; all help from without would be offered in vain; their spirits drooped, and the feeling crept upon them that they would never leave their prison-house alive. Sir Robert Brackenbury had become Lieutenant of the Tower: to him Richard, who was riding towards Gloucester, sent a messenger with letters asking him if he would be willing to rid the King of the Princes. This messenger had delivered his papers to the Lieutenant as he knelt at prayer in the Chapel of St. John in the White Tower. Brackenbury refused the King’s request, and said he would be no party to such an act even if his refusal cost him his life. The messenger returned in haste, spurring his horse westward, and overtook Richard at Warwick. The King finding Brackenbury obdurate, sent off{101} Sir James Tyrrell with a warrant to obtain possession of the keys of the Tower for one night. The keys were given to him, and he assumed command of the place for the time. Two ruffians, John Dighton and Miles Forrest—some say a third was there, reminding one of the mysterious third murderer in Macbeth—crept into the bedroom of the sleeping boys and smothered them with the bedclothes. Shakespeare has painted the scene so vividly that, though the actual manner of death is unknown, this one is accepted as probably nearest the truth. Tyrrell saw the dead bodies, gave orders that they should be buried secretly “at the foot of the stairs,” then, resigning the keys, rode off to give the news to Richard. Tyrrell came himself to death on Tower Hill in later years, and his accomplices died in misery. In Charles II.’s days two skeletons were found “under the steps,” not of this tower but of the White Tower, and were laid in Westminster Abbey.

Sir Walter Raleigh was a captive in the Bloody Tower from 1604-1616, and in its chambers he wrote the portion of his History of the World that he was able to finish before his later troubles and death put an end to his labours. It is pleasant to{102} hear of Raleigh spending his days, with his great work to cheer him, at one time sitting in the Constable’s garden, at another conversing from the walls with those who passed to and fro below. But his writings were not sufficient to satisfy the energies of this son of an energetic age. He set up a laboratory, with retorts and furnaces, and made chemical experiments; and so it happened that at this time, to quote the elder Disraeli, “Raleigh was surrounded, in the Tower, by the highest literary and scientific circle in the nation.” These men of mark in the earlier years of the first Stuart King came as guests to the Tower, or had the misfortune to be detained there “during the King’s pleasure.” Raleigh’s wife and son lived with him, and they had their own servants to wait on them. But the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir George Harvey, with whom Raleigh had spent long evenings and with whom he had made warm friendship, was succeeded by Sir William Waad, who seems to have taken a personal dislike to Sir Walter, and contrived to make his life as miserable as possible. In 1610 Raleigh was kept a close prisoner for three months, and his wife and child, no longer allowed to share his captivity, were “banished the Tower”—a decree that would prove{103} only too welcome to many—and lived for some time in a house on Tower Hill. In 1615 the King consented to release Raleigh, and allow him to command an expedition to El Dorado, which set off in 1617. What the result of that unfortunate voyage was all know: mutiny and despair may best describe its end. The King was furious; his greed for Spanish gold was unsatisfied; Spain demanded the head of “one who had been her mortal enemy.” A decision had to be made whether Raleigh should be delivered to the Spaniard or put back in the Tower. His wife planned escape for the husband she had sacrificed every comfort to aid. On a Sunday night, when Sir Walter was detained in the City—in his wife’s house in Broad Street—he put on disguise, crept through the narrow lanes to Tower Hill, went down by Allhallows Church to Tower Dock, where a boat was waiting to receive him and take him to a ship at Tilbury. But when the watermen put out into the river they saw a second boat following them closely; Sir Walter was betrayed by a man he had trusted, and found himself a prisoner in the Tower once again. He was shut up in the Brick Tower, where he awaited his trial, then removed to the Gate House, by Westminster Hall. When his sentence was passed{104} and he had but a few days to live, his wife remained with him, and they parted at the midnight before execution. In the morning the Dean of Westminster gave him his last Communion, and at eight o’clock he went out to Old Palace Yard, cheerfully prepared for what was to follow.

In the Bloody Tower Sir Thomas Overbury was poisoned in 1613. This is one of the blackest crimes that stain Tower history. Overbury had been a friend of Raleigh’s, and had often visited him in his confinement; now Sir Thomas himself, because he had condemned the marriage between the Earl of Somerset and Lady Frances Howard, was brought to the same tower. Lady Frances determined to have Overbury put out of the way, and a notorious quack and procuress of the period, Mrs. Turner, had been hired to administer the drug. But this slow-poisoning proving too lengthy a process, two hired assassins ended Overbury’s sufferings by smothering him, at night, with the pillows of his bed. Some time afterwards, by the confession of a boy who had been at the time in the employment of the apothecary from whom the drugs were bought, the crime was disclosed. Horror and indignation caused a public outcry for vengeance: the Lieutenant of{105}

Image unavailable: THE BLOODY TOWER AND JEWEL HOUSE (WAKEFIELD TOWER), LOOKING EAST
THE BLOODY TOWER AND JEWEL HOUSE (WAKEFIELD TOWER), LOOKING EAST

the Tower, Elwes, with Mrs. Turner and the two murderers, were all put to death. Somerset and his Countess were imprisoned in the room in the Bloody Tower, where Overbury had died; they were eventually pardoned and “lived in seclusion and disgrace.”

Another victim, who died in this tower during Charles I.’s reign, was Sir John Eliot, a man of great abilities and at one time Vice-Admiral of Devon. He had already been imprisoned, and released, before his entry to the Tower in 1629, and he passed away, in his cell, in 1632. Mr. Trevelyan has said of him, “His letters, speeches, and actions in the Tower reveal a spirit of cheerfulness and even of humour, admirable in one who knows that he has chosen to die in prison in the hands of victorious enemies.” During his last months he contracted consumption in his unhealthy quarters and suffered harsh treatment. Even when Sir John had died the hard-hearted King refused to allow his body to be given to his relatives for burial, and commanded him “to be buried in the parish in which he died.” He was laid to rest in the Chapel on Tower Green, which may be called the parish church of the Tower.

Felton, the murderer of Buckingham, was{106} thrown into this tower in 1628 and Archbishop Laud was prisoner here from December 16, 1640, to January 10, 1644. Here, also, in July, 1683, Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex “cutt his own throat,” as the Register of St. Peter ad Vincula shows. The infamous Judge Jeffreys came here as prisoner in 1688, having been “taken” in a low ale-house in Wapping, and is reported to have spent his days in Bloody Tower “imbibing strong drink,” from the effects of which employment he died in 1689. This old tower has tragedy and misery enough in its records to deserve its name, and it is a mistake on the part of Tower authorities to allow so interesting a building to be closed altogether to the public. The narrow chamber above the archway on the south side still contains all the machinery for raising and lowering the portcullis which, when down, would at one time have prevented all access to the Inner Ward. This is believed to be the only ancient portcullis in England that is still in working order.

The Wakefield Tower.—The lower portion of this tower is, with the White Tower, one of the oldest portions of all the buildings, and was laid down in Norman times. Henry III. rebuilt the upper part, and it served as the entrance to{107} his palace, which lay to the east. During the Commonwealth the great hall in which Anne Boleyn was tried, and which was attached to this tower, was demolished. The name “Wakefield” was given to the tower after the battle of Wakefield in 1460, when the captive Yorkists were lodged here. In former times the tower had been called the Record Tower and the Hall Tower. In the octagonal chamber where the Crown Jewels are now kept, the recess to the south-east was at one time an oratory. In Tower records of the thirteenth century it is so spoken of. Here tradition asserts that Henry VI. was murdered by Duke Richard of Gloucester, who, entering the chamber from the palace, found Henry at prayer and treacherously stabbed him to death. To the dungeon beneath this tower the men who were “out in the Forty-Five,” and who were taken captive after that rebellion which was crushed at Culloden, were brought and huddled together with so little regard for the necessity of fresh air that many of them died on the damp earthen floor of the cell. The walls of this dungeon are thirteen feet thick; from floor to vaulted roof, within, there is only ten feet space. Those men who survived even the terrors of this place, and whose{108} hearts remained true to the royal house of Stuart, were shipped off to the West Indies, and so ended “an auld sang.” The wonder, the bravery, the sacrifice and sadness of it all is set down for after ages to marvel at in Waverley. Happy those who fell at Culloden, for they, at least, rest under the heather; they escaped the miserable English dungeons and the wickednesses of the plantations.

As we leave the Wakefield Tower we pass down under the archway of the Bloody Tower, and, in going eastwards and turning to the left a few yards farther on, come to the foot of the grassy slope at the top of which stands the great White Tower, tinkered at by Wren, but otherwise, to-day, much as the Conqueror left it. In this now open ground, where has been placed the gun-carriage on which the body of Queen Victoria was carried from Windsor railway station to St. George’s Chapel on that memorable 2nd of February, 1901, rose, in Plantagenet and Tudor days, the Royal Palace in the Tower, and the Hall in which the Courts of Justice sat. The Court of Common Pleas was held in this great hall by the river, a Gothic building, dating, probably, from the reign of Henry III.; the Court of King’s Bench being held in the Lesser Hall “under the east turret of{109} the Keep”—or White Tower. At certain times “the right of public entry” of all citizens to the Tower was insisted on. But a certain ceremonial had to be observed beforehand. The “aldermen and commoners met in Allhallows Barking Church, on Tower Hill, and chose six sage persons to go as a deputation to the Tower, and ask leave to see the King, and demand free access for all people to the courts of law held within the Tower.” It was also “to be granted that no guard should keep watch over them, or close the gates”—a most necessary precaution. Their request being granted by the King “the six messengers returned to Barking Church ... and the Commons then elected three men of standing to act as spokesmen. Great care was taken that no person should go into the royal presence who was in rags or shoeless. Every one was to have his hair cut close and his face newly shaved. Mayor, aldermen, sheriff, cryer, beadles, were all to be clean and neat, and every one was to lay aside his cape and cloak, and put on his coat and surcoat.”

The White Tower or Keep.—This is the very heart and centre of the Tower buildings, and all the lesser towers and connecting walls, making the Inner and Outer Wards, and the broad moat{110} encircling all, are but the means of protection and inviolable security of this ancient keep. Within its rock-like walls a threatened king could live in security. Here were provided the elementary necessaries of life—a storehouse for food, a well to supply fresh water, a great fireplace (in the thickness of the wall), and a place of devotion, all within the walls of this one tower. The doorway by which we enter, after passing the ridiculous ticket-box and unnecessary policeman, was cut through the solid wall in Henry VIII.’s time. At the foot of the stairs giving access, the bones of the murdered Princes were found in a small chest, some ten feet below the ground, during Charles II.’s reign.

The winding stairway within the wall leads us to the western end of the Chapel of St. John, which is, with the possible exception of the Lady Chapel at Durham, the finest Norman chapel in England. It has a beautiful arcading, with heavy circular pillars, square capitals and bases, and a wide triforium over the aisles. Here is a perfect Norman church in miniature. The south ai............