THE TOWER OF LONDON--_continued_
Nearly all the people condemned to be beheaded at the Tower were
executed on Tower Hill, which lies outside the walls; only a few who
were of royal birth or especially favoured were beheaded inside the
walls, where they could not be seen by the great multitude. And the plot
of ground outside the chapel is the place where these favoured few were
killed. We can stand now on the spot where gentle Lady Jane Grey laid
her little head on the block. She was not the first near the throne to
have been executed here. Two of the Queens of the bloodthirsty Henry
VIII. had died at the same place--Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard. Both
these Queens had been received here by Henry in great state before their
marriages, and little had they thought when they arrived and were
greeted with guns firing and flags flying that very soon the bell would
be tolling for their death. It is difficult to believe in the
cold-heartedness of a man like Henry. Anne Boleyn was a bright, gay
little woman; she was the mother of Queen Elizabeth, and she had done
nothing whatever to merit death. But Henry had seen someone else he
wanted to marry, so he ordered his wife to be beheaded. It is said that
he waited under a great tree on a height in Richmond Park, some miles
away, to see a rocket fired up from the Tower, which was to announce the
death of Anne, and to let him know he could marry Jane Seymour. Anne had
only been his wife three years when he tired of her, and she was
twenty-nine when she was executed. Four years later the King married
Katherine Howard, having had two wives--Jane Seymour and Anne of
Cleves--in between. Poor Katherine was Queen only for two years, when
she followed Anne to the block.
The handsome and gallant Earl of Essex, who had been a favourite of
Queen Elizabeth's, also suffered here. He had lost the Queen's favour,
and, after having been one of the principal men at the Court, was
treated with coldness and disdain. Essex's proud temper could not endure
this, and he made plots against the Queen, one of which was to kidnap
her and carry her off as his prisoner. Elizabeth heard of this, and sent
her soldiers to seize him. Essex had then a house in the Strand, near
St. Clement's Church, and he barricaded his house and defied the Queen's
soldiers. Nothing could have been more mad. Elizabeth was furious when
she heard it. Cannon were placed on the tower of St. Clement's Church,
and from there they were fired at the house of the reckless Earl, who
was at last forced to submit. He was tried, found guilty of high
treason, and condemned to death. But all the time Elizabeth, who must
still have cared for the high-spirited Essex, felt sure that he would
not really be killed; for long years before she had given him a ring,
and told him that whenever he was in great need he had only to send that
ring to her, and she would help him. So she expected to receive the ring
from him, and was very slow in signing his death-warrant; but the ring
never came, so she signed the warrant, and then she recalled it. Yet
still there was no sign from Essex. Elizabeth began to grow uneasy, and
thought perhaps that the Earl was too proud to ask help from her when he
had defied her. Well, if that were so, she could do nothing to save him,
for she was a queen, and was too proud to give help where it was not
asked for; so she signed the death-warrant a second time. Meantime,
Essex was in the Tower, and he had remembered the ring and the Queen's
promise; he had been rebellious and he was very proud, but now that he
was going to die in the full strength of his manhood it did not seem too
hard a thing to do to ask a favour from Elizabeth, who had been so kind
to him and was his Queen. After all, he had behaved very badly, and he
knew it, and it was right to ask pardon. Perhaps this was what he
thought, and he gave the ring to the Countess of Nottingham to take to
the Queen. But the Countess of Nottingham did not want the Earl to live;
she was jealous of his influence over Elizabeth, and she thought that if
she kept back the token Essex would surely die.
So the time slipped away, and Elizabeth in her palace and Essex in his
prison both thought bitterly of each other. The execution drew very
near, and at last one day in February Essex was brought out to die.
Perhaps he thought up to the last minute that a messenger would ride up
carrying a pardon from the Queen; but no, no one came, and at last he
laid his head on the block, and perished thinking hard things of his
Queen. Not long after the Countess of Nottingham herself fell ill, and
on her deathbed confessed to Elizabeth the wicked thing she had done.
The knowledge that Essex had died believing her to have been faithless
to her word so enraged the Queen that she said to the dying Countess:
'May God forgive you, for I never can!'
Many people spent most of their lives in the Tower. We have heard of Sir
Walter Raleigh, who was here for fourteen years; but there were others
imprisoned much longer. One man, a Duke of Orleans, afterwards King of
France, was here for twenty-five years; and Lord Courtenay, son of the
Earl of Exeter, who was of the Royal Family and descended from Edward
IV., was kept in the Tower almost his whole life for fear that he might
lay claim to the crown.
When the King or Queen of England used the Tower as a palace, the part
they occupied was quite distinct from the prison. This part is now the
Governor's house, and the Governor, who is called the Lieutenant of the
Tower, lives in it. Here there are many splendid rooms, including a
great council-room, where the King and his nobles used to meet for
consultation. Underneath the house is a room where Lord Nithsdale was
imprisoned, and the story of his escape from the Tower is one of the
most exciting in all history.
In the reign of George I. a nobleman called the Earl of Nithsdale had
joined in a plot to restore the Stuarts to the throne. You will remember
that after the reign of James II. people said that Prince James was not
his son at all, but a baby which had been adopted by the King, who had
no son of his own; and as this was generally believed, after the King
had been driven into exile, his daughters, the Princesses Mary and Anne,
came to the throne and reigned one after the other. When they died the
English crown was offered to a distant cousin, who was George I. But
many English noblemen and gentlemen said that this was unfair, and that
the son of James II. and his son after him should have been King. We can
never tell now which was right; but all this caused a great deal of
unhappiness and much fighting. Those who took up the cause of the
Stuarts were called Jacobites, and among this number was the Earl of
Nithsdale. He was taken prisoner, and condemned by King George to die
with several others, and he was sent to the Tower, there to wait his
fate.
But he had a beautiful and determined wife, who was resolved to save his
life. It was in the winter time, and, of course, there were then no
trains to carry people swiftly and comfortably through the frosty air.
So she started on her journey from Scotland on horseback, and rode as
far as Newcastle; but she was not a great horse-woman, and being wearied
with her exertions, she there took a coach and proceeded to York, taking
with her her faithful maid Evans. But when they got to York they found
that so much snow had fallen that the coach could not go on to London at
all. Now, all this time the days were passing, and every day that passed
made Lord Nithsdale's execution nearer. His poor wife was in a terrible
state of suspense; but she did not sit down and despair. She said that
if there were no coach then must she ride to London. And so she
did--rode about one hundred and eighty miles through all the snow, which
was often up to her horse's girths, and at times she thought she would
not be able to get through after all. But at last she did, and when she
arrived in London her husband was still alive. Never thinking of herself
or of her own weariness, Lady Nithsdale went to the Court, and used all
the influence she possessed to get King George I. to pardon her husband.
But he was an obstinate, cruel little man, and he refused even to hear
her, though she flung herself before him and caught at his coat.
Then she saw that there was nothing for it but to help her husband to
escape out of that gloomy Tower. She therefore begged permission to go
to see him. At first even this was refused her, but she gave the guards
money, and at last they let her into the Tower. What a meeting that must
have been, and how cheered the husband must have been to think of the
strong love that had made his wife do so much for his sake!
But they had little time to talk about what was past, for they had to
arrange for the future. Brave Lady Nithsdale formed a plan, but to carry
it out it was necessary to get the help of two other women. She found
one in a Mrs. Mills, in whose house she was lodging, and after some
difficulty she found another, a friend of Mrs. Mills, called Mrs.
Morgan. Now, by this time it was the day before that fixed for Lord
Nithsdale's execution, and everything depended on getting him out of the
Tower at once. Lady Nithsdale told her companions of her plan, which was
to make her husband walk out boldly through the guards dressed like a
woman; and for this end she made Mrs. Morgan, who was a little fair,
slim woman, wear two sets of clothes one over the other, and one set she
meant that Lord Nithsdale should wear. Mrs. Mills was a big, stout
woman, with fair eyebrows and fair hair, and Lady Nithsdale hoped that
when her husband came through dressed in woman's clothes the guards
would think he was Mrs. Mills. When they arrived at the Tower, the poor
wife got out and asked to be allowed to take a friend in to say farewell
to her husband, and she was told she might take one lady in at a time.
Accordingly, she and the thin Mrs. Morgan went in, and while they were
in the cell where Lord Nithsdale was, Mrs. Morgan took off the extra
clothes she had brought and left them for him to put on. Then she
hurried back and told Mrs. Mills to come in. Lady Nithsdale ran to meet
Mrs. Mills, who pretended to cry very much, and kept her handkerchief up
to her face; and when she got into the cell they waited a little while
and talked, for they hoped the gaolers, having seen some ladies passing
backwards and forwards, would now forget how many had gone into the
cell. After a time Mrs. Mills went out again, and Lady Nithsdale kept
calling after her to tell her that she wanted her maid, and that the
maid must come quickly, and then she went back again to her husband. She
had painted his dark eyebrows fair, and she had put rouge on his cheeks
and dressed him up in her own petticoats and the clothes Mrs. Morgan
had left; and she had told him not to stride like a man, but to take
little mincing steps, so that the guards should not notice any
difference. But there was one thing she could not hide, and that was his
beard, and she had no time to cut it off; so she tucked it into his
cloak in front, and told him to keep his head down and hold his
handkerchief to his face and pretend to be crying bitterly. It was now
getting dusky, and she was afraid that if they waited any longer the
gaolers would bring candles and see what was being done. How the hearts
of both husband and wife must have been beating when they opened the
door and stepped forth into the anteroom where the guards were! Lady
Nithsdale talked a good deal rather loudly, and said she could not
understand why her maid had not come, and that she must come at once;
and she begged her husband, whom she called 'Mrs. Betty,' to run down to
her lodgings to see if the maid were there and send her to the prison.
And when they got to the outer door she let him go, and ran back to the
cell herself. Then she talked again as if she were talking to her
husband, so that the gaolers should hear, and made answers for him in a
deep man's voice. Brave heart! she must have been well-nigh fainting
with terror, and expecting to hear every minute a noise which would
tell her she had been discovered. But after a time, when all seemed
right, and when she could talk no more, she left the cell very slowly,
and, shutting the door behind her, said to the gaolers that they need
not take in lights until Lord Nithsdale asked for them, for he was
praying, and did not wish to be disturbed. Then she went down to her
coach.
And he really did get safely away; and the King was furious, and said
Lady Nithsdale had given him more trouble than any woman in Europe. But
Lady Nithsdale went and waited at a friend's house until she heard where
her husband was in hiding in a little poor house, and then she joined
him, and they stayed there together until things could be arranged for
him to get over to France. A friend brought them a bottle of wine and
some bread, and on this they lived from Thursday to Saturday. But I do
not expect they cared much what they ate, they must have been so happy
to be together again.
It was very seldom indeed anyone had escaped from the Tower. Once a man
tried to, and let himself down by a rope from his window; but the rope
broke, and he fell headlong and was killed. The countess's plan was much
better. Luckily, she and her husband had good friends, and one of them
lent Lord Nithsdale the livery of his servant, and, pretending he was a
footman, took him to Dover, where he got a boat and managed to cross
over to France in safety. His estates were all taken from him, but that
was a little thing when he had saved his life. His devoted wife joined
him in Rome, and they lived abroad for the rest of their days.
Guy Fawkes, of whom we heard before, was examined in the King's house in
the Tower, and the judges tried to make him give up the names of his
companions; but villain as he was, Guy Fawkes was no coward, and he
refused to turn traitor. Finding that he was obdurate, the judges
decreed that he should suffer the torture of the rack, and accordingly
he was racked again and again. At last in his agony he cried out that he
would tell the history of the conspiracy, but not reveal the names of
his fellow-conspirators. This was not enough. Once again he was brought
to suffer the awful torture, and this time his gaolers told him that
some of his comrades had been already taken, and were in the hands of
the police. So Fawkes gave way and made a full confession, which was
signed 'Guido Fawkes,' and is still kept. This was in November, and on
the last day of the following January he and three of his associates
were executed at Westminster.
They were brought from the Tower to be executed, and Guy Fawkes was so
weak and ill from the terrible tortures he had suffered that he could
scarcely climb up the scaffold.
In other parts of the Tower numbers of men and women were imprisoned,
but we might as well write a history of England as tell all their
stories here. In one tower there is the word 'Jane,' cut in the wall by
Lady Jane Grey's husband, the young Lord Dudley, and on many of the
walls are names and records cut by sorrowful men and women almost
without hope.
It is all changed now. No longer sobs and cries and executions are here,
but only the voices of soldiers drilling or calling out to one another,
the voices of little children at play on the wharf by the river, or of
visitors who come to see the place. The soldiers are in barracks in the
Tower, and they drill in the bottom of the deep moat, which is now quite
dry.
If we pass from the Tower we shall find outside Tower Hill, where by far
the greater number of executions took place. It is just a wide, open
space, paved like a street or market-place, and many people walk over it
every day without giving a thought to all that has happened there in
bygone times.