and in other repairs £12 in the next year; but nothing is recorded
concerning the following and two closing years of the long reign of
Henry III.
With the death of Henry and the earlier years of his son the history
of the Tower, as a specimen of military architecture, may be said
to decline, and its history as a state prison, if not to begin,
to preponderate. Edward at once continued and completed the works
commenced by his father, and probably was thus employed for ten or
twelve years. In 1274, 2 Edward, the treasurer was to pay 200 marcs
towards the work of the ditch, then nearly made, about the bulwark.
This was the loop ditch surrounding the barbican, planned by Henry
III., but no doubt then first excavated. Besides this, in 1287, the
main ditch seems to have been under enlargement, and its encroachment
upon St. Katherine’s land was valued in 1302 at 73s. per annum. The
clay taken out was sold by the constable to the tylers working in East
Smithfield. In 1289, it yielded 20s., but had averaged £7—about £100
in our day. Bayley tells that 600 Jews were at one time imprisoned
here by Edward, 1281–2, as clippers of the coin. On 8th October, 1303,
the king, then at Kinloss, ordered the Abbot of Westminster and his 80
monks to be imprisoned in the Tower, on a charge of stealing £100,000
of the royal treasure. The following mandate, of three years’ later
date, shows the form in which prisoners were committed. It relates to
a Scottish gentleman of rank. “Mons: P: de Graham et vadletz, soient
enveez, par bon conduyt, a Londres, et livrez au Conestable de la
Tour illueques: et q’il les face garder en fers, en bon et sur lieu,
denz meisme la Tour, si sauuement, et si surement, come le Conestable
voudra respondre de eux, corps pour corps; et q’il lor face trouver lor
sustenance meanement.”
In 1307 occurs a curious sanitary order. “Whereas Margaret, Queen of
England, is about to dwell awhile in the Tower, the mayor and sheriffs,
to prevent infection of the air, ‘per accensionem rogorum,’ are to
prohibit and punish any one ‘burning pyres’ or doing anything by which
the air can be corrupted.” Dated, Carlisle, 28th June.
Edward II. was more dependent upon the Tower for personal safety than
as a prison. His eldest daughter, hence called “Jane de la Tour,” was
here born. In 1312, he put the Tower in a state of defence against
his barons; and, in 1324, shut here the two lords, Roger Mortimer of
Wigmore and his namesake of Chirk. Their escape is described in the
“Opus Chronicorum.” They were shut up “in eminentiori et arctiori loco
Turris,” which should mean the White Tower. They drugged the drink of
their keepers, and in a stormy night escaped by breaking the wall, and
thus reached the annexed palace kitchen, from the top of which, by a
rope-ladder, and aided from within the walls, they reached the Thames
and thus fled the country.
Two years later, Mortimer of Wigmore returned with the queen, and took
arms against Edward, who put the Tower in order, sending thither 100
coats of mail (Pell Rolls, 158), and there, 20th June, he received the
city authorities. On the 2nd October he fled, leaving his son, John of
Eltham, in the Tower, and Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter, in charge of the
city. The citizens, as is well known, rose and beheaded the bishop, and
next day, falling in with John de Weston, the constable, they extorted
from him the keys, and entered the fortress. They seem, however, only
to have freed the prisoners, turned out the officials, and appointed
their own men, under the nominal authority of Prince John.
The first years of Edward III.’s reign were spent, perforce, in
the Tower, until he put down Mortimer and assumed the government.
Probably the Beauchamp and Salt Towers, and perhaps the Bowyer, were
his work. In the ninth of his reign, by commission, dated Berwick,
16th October, 1336, he ordered a survey of the defects of the Tower
to be made, and a jury to be empanelled to declare what repairs were
needed. This return was made without delay, and is printed by Bayley.
It mentions the gate towards St. Katherine’s, the steps and passages
upon the wall, a chamber over the Water-gate; “Corande’s” Tower and “Le
Moneye” Tower; the chapel of the Tower; the king and queen’s chapel;
two turrets over the old gate, one called “La Plummerye”; and the quay
opposite the Thames, with the little postern at one end and “Petywales”
at the other. Beauchamp, Bowyer, and most of the other towers are not
named,—probably because some were not then built, and others, the work
of his grandfather, did not need repair. “Le Blanche Tour” seems not
to be the keep, called then “Alta turris.” The other parts named are
numerous, but evidently belonged to the palace ward, now destroyed.
The result of the return was, that the Tower, next year, was put in
order and garrisoned. The Close Roll (10 Edward III.) mentions that,
in 1337, the sheriffs of London were to pay £40 out of the farm of the
city, to be spent on “the great Tower,” then in great need of repair;
and the sheriff of Kent was to bring oak from Havering for the works.
The sheriffs of Surrey and Sussex also had to provide £20 for the same
service.
The Tower was Edward’s chief arsenal. Thither, 1337–8, the sheriffs of
London were to send “5 millia ferri et 200 bordas de Estland [Baltic
planks], ac centum quarter carbonum maritimorum” (sea-coal), for making
anchors for the “Christopher” and “Cogge Edward,” and for certain works
on the Tower. (“Abb. Rot. Orig. II.,” p. 116). Edward was at this
time much engaged in preparing for foreign wars, and it was to the
Tower that he returned suddenly from Tournay, towards midnight, 30th
November, 1340, and punished the constable for negligence. Also between
1340 and 1342 he was much at the Tower, and one of his daughters was
born here. The records also show that the Mint had a considerable share
of the royal attention.
Mr. Hunter has shown (“Arch.,” xxxii., 380) that, as early as 1347,
bills were paid for the manufacture, probably two or three years
earlier, of “pulvis pro ingeniis”; and in 1346, “ad opus ipsius Regis
pro gunnis suis,” 9 cwt. 12 lb. of saltpetre and 886 lb. of quick
sulphur were had; so that gunpowder was then, no doubt, manufactured in
the Tower.
About the same time the Tower received the first of a series of
illustrious foreign prisoners of war. David, King of Scots, taken at
Neville’s Cross, was brought here in January, 1347, and remained here
eleven years; so late as 1357–8, £2. 12s. 9d. being paid for medicines
supplied to him. Later, in the same year with David, came Charles of
Blois, nephew to Philip of France; and still later John de Vienne,
governor of Calais, and the twelve brave burgesses of that town.
Finally, in 1350, here was lodged John, King of France, and the nobles
taken with him, and in the same place of safety the £47,171. 1s. 4d.,
the first instalment of his ransom.
In 24 Edward III., 1350–1, John de Alkeshull had commission to take,
throughout the kingdom, “petram, buscam, carbones, maeremium, plumbum,
vitrum, ferrum, et tegulam”; that is, stone, wood, coal, timber, lead,
glass, iron, and shingle, and all things needful for the king’s works
at Westminster, Windsor, and the Tower. How these materials were
divided is not known. Windsor probably received the chief share of them.
In 1354, the king proposed to alter the constitution of the chapel of
St. Peter ad Vincula at the Tower, and incorporate it as a college,
with a dean and three canons, instead of a rector and chaplains. This,
however, does not seem then to have been effected, as both Richard II.
and Henry IV. nominated a rector to the “Free Chapel of St. Peter.”
The actual incorporation did not come to pass until the last year of
the reign of Edward IV. It was in 1354 proposed that the standards of
weight and measure should be kept at the Tower; and this year the king
ordered the city ditch to be cleansed, and prevented from overflowing
into the Tower ditch. In Stowe’s time the filth was taken off by a
sewer from the City ditch.
Appointments of armourers, bowyers, engineers of the war-slings, &c.,
show that the store of weapons of war continued to be considerable. In
33 Edward III. all the bows, strings, arrows, “hancipes [two-handed
winches] pro balistis tendendis,”[10] in the custody of W. Rotherel, in
the Tower, are ordered to be packed in chests, quivers, butts, pipes,
and barrels, and sent to Sandwich to cross the water with the king. In
1360–2, various sums were spent in repairs of the king’s record-house
in the Tower containing the Chancery Rolls: probably the Wakefield
Tower.
Richard II. fulfilled the usual custom of lodging a short time in
the Tower before his coronation, that he might proceed in state to
that ceremony through the City. Here also he took refuge during Wat
Tyler’s rebellion, after which Arnold Brocas was paid £3. 6s. 8d. for
repairing the door broken open by the common rebels within the Tower.
In 1380–1, a code of regulations was drawn up for the better government
of the place. In 1385–6, cannon were sent hence to Porchester. In 1387,
Richard came here to escape his uncle the Duke of Gloucester, and at
Christmas in that year he was blockaded by the rebel lords, to whom he
gave audience within the fortress.
Two years later, in 1389, it was from the Tower that the king went to
hold a great feast and tournament in London; and here, in 1396, his
new queen, Isabel of France, was lodged before her coronation. Here,
finally, Richard signed his abdication in favour of Henry of Lancaster.
No work at the Tower can positively be attributed to this reign, or the
succeeding one of Henry IV.
It appears from the Issue Roll and the Pell Records of 1 Henry V.,
that breakfast was provided at the Tower at a cost of £2. 16s. 8d. for
Thomas, Earl of Arundel, Henry le Scrop, Lord de Roos, and the Mayor
of London, commissioners for trying traitors. This Lord de Roos was
William, seventh baron, ancestor of a late lieutenant-governor, whose
ancestors on the male side—the Fitzgeralds—also frequently partook of
the hospitality of the Tower, though in the less agreeable capacity of
prisoners.
Henry V. revived the old glories of the prison by sending hither
Charles, Duke of Orleans, taken at Agincourt. An illumination of the
period, given by Lord de Ros, shows the duke to have been lodged in the
state rooms in the White Tower, and shows also the four windows of the
great hall, which adjoined Wakefield Tower on the east.
The strong monarchs employed the Tower as a prison, the weak ones as a
fortress; and under Henry VI. it appears in this latter capacity. In
1460, Lord Scales, the king’s governor, was besieged by the Earl of
Salisbury, Lord Cobham, and Sir John Wenlock. The city men attacked
the west front; Wenlock, from St. Katherine’s; and Cobham, with the
artillery, from the Southwark shore, firing across the river. When
the south ditch was cleared out and levelled in 1842–3, several round
shot of iron and about thirty of Kentish rag stone, from 4½ inches to
10 inches, and in one case 17 inches, diameter, were found, which are
supposed to have fallen there on this occasion.
Edward IV. is reputed to have built a bulwark outside the west
gate by the Lion Tower. In the eleventh of his reign payments were
made for arms and ammunition for the defence and for work upon the
fortifications of the Tower. The workmen were brought from Calais. In
the same year money was allowed for the expenses of Henry VI., then
prisoner in the Tower. Richard III., during his brief reign, pressed
masons and bricklayers to complete certain repairs at the Tower.
Probably the walls and towers were allowed to decay by Henry VII.;
for Henry VIII., in 1532, ordered a survey to be made with a view to
a general repair, which was executed shortly afterwards. The repairs
were very considerable, and the masonry was executed in Caen stone
backed with brick, and, unfortunately, very much of the Tower seems
to have been so faced or cased, and otherwise very seriously altered.
The survey is very minute, and throws light upon much that is now
destroyed. Mention is made of “Burbedge Tower,” on the wall between
Bowyer and Brick Towers, evidently the present Brick Tower, the then
“Brick” being the present Martin Tower. “St. Martin’s” Tower was then
the outer gate, now “Middle” Tower. The present Salt Tower was then
Julius Cæsar’s Tower, and the old Lanthorn Tower was called New Tower.
Wakefield is called “the tower where the king’s records lie,” and
“Bloody” was then Garden Tower. “Byward” was “the Wardyng Gate.” Two
timber bridges, evidently drawbridges, were to be renewed at the west
entrance. The keep was then, as now, the White Tower, distinguished by
its four turrets.
Byward Tower had a narrow escape in 1548. A Frenchman who lodged in
“the round bulwark called the Warden Gate, between the west gate and
the postern, or drawbridge,” blew up the bulwark, and himself, with
gunpowder. It was rebuilt. There was also in the reign of Edward VI.
a drawbridge between Iron and Traitors’ Gate, evidently Cradle Tower.
This was used for the reception of great prisoners, the strong iron
gate (St. Thomas’s) being almost out of use.
The buildings of the palace probably had fallen into decay in the
reign of Elizabeth, by whom, or by James, the Great Hall was removed.
Other buildings followed. Many were destroyed by Cromwell and many by
James II. to make room for a new Ordnance office, and the remains of
the Lanthorn Tower were taken down late in the last century. The White
Tower underwent a final disfigurement at the hands of Sir C. Wren in
1663, who Italianised its openings, cased a part of its exterior,
and rebuilt two of its turrets. Sir Christopher’s work may be traced
throughout the fortress by the Portland stone introduced by him, just
as the work of Henry VIII. is indicated by the use of brickwork and
rough-cast, and the practice of closing the joints of the masonry with
chips and spawls of flint. The ditch was cleansed in 1663, and the quay
refaced.
The Tower, at the commencement of the present century, was an
extraordinary jumble of ancient and later buildings, the towers and
walls being almost completely encrusted by the small official dwellings
by which the area was closely occupied. A great fire in 1841 removed
the unsightly armoury of James II. and William III. on the north of the
inner ward, but the authorities at the time were not ripe for a fire.
The armoury was replaced by a painfully-durable Tudor barrack, and the
repairs and additions were made with little reference to the character
of the fortress. More recently, the general improvement in public taste
has made its way even into the Tower. Mr. Salvin was employed upon it
until his death, and more recently many modern buildings have been
removed, many ancient foundations laid open, and very extensive repairs
and some absolutely necessary restorations have been effected, under
the skilful and very judicious care of Sergeant-Major Andrews.
Thus much of the Tower as an ancient and very curious military
structure, which, throughout the additions, alterations, and
subtractions of eight centuries, still preserves the character of an
early fortress, and very much of original and peculiar work. It may
be that, in some respects, the Tower cannot be compared with others
of the great feudal castles of England. It does not, like Dover and
Bambro’, stand on the edge of a lofty cliff, commanding an equal
expanse of land and water. It has not the solitary grandeur of Corfe,
nor its old associations with the Anglo-Saxon times. It does not, like
Conway, Caernarvon, Beaumaris, and Harlech, bear the impress of one
mind in its design, of one hand in its execution; neither can it boast
the rich surroundings of Ludlow, Warwick, or Kenilworth, nor the proud
pre-eminence of Windsor, the present residence of the sovereign, the
seat of the oldest and most illustrious order of Christian chivalry,
the cynosure of four fair counties, rising amidst a rich mantle of
forest verdure diversified with the silver windings of the Thames, and
the venerable walls and courts of Eton.
The Tower of London can put forth none of these various claims to
our attention, but it is not the less the most interesting fortress
in Britain. It is the work of the great Norman conqueror of England,
founded by the founder of her monarchy. It is the citadel of the
metropolis of Britain, and was long the most secure residence of her
greatest race of kings. Here they deposited the treasure of the empire
and the jewels and regalia of their crown. Here they secured the
persons of their prisoners, and minted and stored up their coin. Here
the courts of law and of exchequer were not unfrequently held; here
the most valuable records were preserved; and here were fabricated
and preserved long-bow and cross-bow, sword, lance, and pike, armour
of proof, balistæ, scorpions, and catapults, then the artillery and
munitions of feudal war. Here, too, as these older machines were laid
aside, was first manufactured that “subtle grain,” that “pulvis ad
faciendum le crak,” and these “gonnys and bombards of war,” which were
to revolutionise the military art, until they themselves should be
superseded by later inventions, of which the ancient keep is still the
grand storehouse and armoury of the country.
But the Tower has memories surpassing even its associations with
the military glories of the state. It has been the prison and the
scaffold of not a few of the best and bravest of English blood. Percy
and Mortimer, Hastings and Clinton, Neville and Beauchamp, Arundel,
Devereux, Stafford, and Howard,—those “old stocks who so long withstood
the waves and weathers of time,”—have here found a grave. Here the
great house of Plantagenet flourished and was cut down. Here England’s
Elizabeth learned the uses of adversity; and here Raleigh solaced his
confinement with the composition of that History which has made his
name great in letters as in naval enterprise.
Here, too, captive within these walls, and through these gates led
to death, were More and Fisher, martyrs for the ancient, and Anne
Askew for the purer, faith; Lady Jane Grey, the most innocent and
accomplished of victims; Strafford and Laud, firm for the old tyranny;
Sir John Elliot, who died broken-hearted in the prison for the new
liberty.
No other fortress, no bastile in France, no bargello in Italy, no
prison-castle in Spain or Germany, is so deeply associated with the
history of its nation, or with the progress of civil and religious
liberty.
LUDLOW CASTLE, SHROPSHIRE.
Ludlow Castle is the glory of the middle marches of Wales, and first
in place among the many military structures by which the great county
of Salop has been adorned and defended. It is a noble specimen of
military, palatial, and even ecclesiastical architecture, of high
antiquity and of historic fame. It is probably without rival in Britain
for the sylvan beauty of its position, in which wood and water, and
meadows of wide expanse and rare fertility, are combined with rugged
and lofty crags, of which the walls and towers seem to form a component
part, so natural are the tints of their lichens, so thick the foliage,
and so close the embrace of their ivy. Nor are its associations with
the past unworthy of so bright a scene. Here, in the age of chivalry,
the Lacys and the Mortimers achieved many of those feats of arms which
filled the border counties with their renown. Here Stephen exercised
his great personal strength on behalf of the heir of the Scottish
throne, who was about to be hauled up into the beleaguered castle
by a somewhat uncouth and unusual engine of war; and against these
formidable walls the wild tribes of Wales flung themselves for two
centuries, only to fall back, like the surge of the sea, broken and
scattered. The Castle of Ludlow was the early residence of Edward
IV., and the cradle of his infant sons; and here died Prince Arthur,
the elder brother of Henry VIII. In rather later times within these
walls sat that celebrated Council of Wales of which Henry Sydney was
long the President, and which the chambers of the building, ruined and
roofless as they are, show to have been lodged so splendidly. Here,
too, towards the close of that brilliant but vicious provincial court,
the attractions of which were felt even by the austere Baxter, Butler
wrote a part of his immortal satire, and the masque of _Comus_ was
first given to the world. The history of Ludlow, however, both castle
and borough, has already been written,—for its early period, with
scrupulous accuracy by Mr. Eyton, and at greater length, and down to a
later period by Mr. Wright; and the object of the present paper is only
to describe the particulars of the castle, or at least of the military
part of it, and thus to supply an admitted deficiency.
The Castle of Ludlow crowns a rocky promontory which projects at a
height of above a hundred feet over the union of the Corve with the
Teme. Eastwards, and in its immediate rear, and rather lower than the
castle, but much above the adjacent plain, stands the grand cruciform
church with its lofty central tower, and about and below it the quaint
old town. To the north, far below the walls, the Corve and the Teme
are seen to wind across the meads which they fertilise, while to the
west opens the deep and narrow ravine down which their combined waters
flow to the distant Severn. Formerly, when the mead was a morass, and
the ravine choked with fallen timber and the irregularities of an
obstructed drainage, the defence on these two most exposed quarters
must have been peculiarly strong, and an addition, by no means
unnecessary, to the security of the march.
The promontory is in plan rather more than a right angle, and its two
sides are protected by nature. At a radius of about two hundred feet
from the angle a broad and deep ditch has been excavated from cliff to
cliff, and thus, as at Norham, encloses an area in plan a quadrant,
though not of extreme regularity. This forms the middle ward of the
castle, and the inner ward is carved out of it in its south-western
corner. The outer ward lies to the east and south, covering the middle
ward on its townward side. To form it, the northern and western sides
were projected along the cliffs about another two hundred feet, and
were connected by a second ditch, now filled up, and which formed the
outer defence of the place upon its weakest but least exposed sides.
This ditch, the line of which may be inferred from its curtain-wall,
was not exactly concentric with the inner ditch, but lay in two
irregular lines nearly at right angles to each other, so that the whole
area of the castle is in form roughly rectangular, and about 130 yards
east and west by 150 yards north and south; including, therefore, about
four acres.
The town also was walled, and its walls abutted upon the castle, which
thus, as usual under such circumstances, though provided with its own
defences, formed a part of the general _enceinte_. The town-wall may
still be traced from the south-western angle of the castle, above
the river, to the south gatehouse, which, though encrusted with late
building, and disfigured in the manner characteristic of the last and
preceding centuries, stills shows a portcullis-groove, and an archway
which seems to be in the early English style, and probably of the time
of Henry III.
The castle is composed of an inner, middle, and outer ward. The inner
ward occupies the south-west angle of the middle ward, and is roughly
rectangular, 32 yards east and west by 16 yards north and south. The
south wall divides it from the outer ward, and its western is part of
the general _enceinte_. Its two other walls divide it from the middle
ward. This ward has three towers, the keep, the bakehouse, and the
postern, at its south-east, south-west, and north-west angles. In it is
the well.