Yorke was Constable, in the year 1876. Sir John Taylor, the head of the
Office of Works, drew up the plans of this restoration, and, aided by
Mr Salvin, the work of renovation commenced. There was much to be done,
and it was certainly done well. The pews were the first excrescence to
be removed, and the pavement, which was as uneven as that of St Mark’s
at Venice, was taken up and a new one laid down. During this operation
it was discovered that the ground had been used as a general place of
burial, for besides those whose mutilated bodies had been placed under
the pavement after execution, large numbers of other individuals had
been interred here, and at a very shallow depth below the pavement.
It was deemed necessary to remove these remains to the crypt before
the new floor could be placed. Great care was taken to identify any
remains of the illustrious dead, but in most cases it was impossible to
do so owing to the ground having been so much disturbed and the bones
scattered. Even greater care was taken when the floor of the chancel
was reached, for it was known that the bodies of Anne Boleyn and
Catherine Howard, and of the Dukes of Northumberland and Somerset had
been buried there. In 1877 the restoration of the Chapel was completed.
Many interesting discoveries had been made, and needless to say, but
for its state of decay, none of the poor fragments of mortality of the
victims of their own ambition or the tyranny of monarchs, would have
been disturbed. It was necessary to identify what remained of poor
Anne Boleyn in order that above her bones the tombstone should bear
its record of what lay below. “The forehead,” writes Mr Doyne Bell,
“and lower jaw were small and especially well formed. The vertebrae
were particularly small, especially one joint (the axlas), which was
that next to the skull, and they bore witness to the queen’s ‘lyttel
neck.’” The remains of another of Henry’s victims were found lying in
the chancel, and belonged to the old Countess of Salisbury, Margaret
Clarence. Near these some bones were found which were believed to have
been those of Queen Catherine Howard, but her body, having been placed
in quicklime, few traces of it remained. In this “dread abode” were
also laid bare the bones of the Duke of Northumberland, and a portion
of the Duke of Monmouth’s skeleton.
Near the entrance door is a memorial tablet on which a list of the
most notable persons buried within the chapel is engraved—a list
of thirty-four persons, commencing with Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of
Kildare, buried here in 1534, and ending with Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat,
in 1747. The old antiquarian, John Stowe, thus sums up with brief
simplicity the illustrious dead that lie under the pavement of the
chapel. “Here lieth before the high altar in St Peter’s Church, two
Dukes between two Queens, to wit, the Duke of Somerset and the Duke
of Northumberland, between Queen Anne and Queen Katherine, all four
beheaded.” No record that Lady Jane Grey and her husband were interred
in St Peter’s exists. It would not be easy to find a place in which
so many remarkable dead are grouped together as in this little spot
of English ground. Beneath our feet lies all that was mortal of what
was once Northumberland and Somerset, Arundel and Norfolk; gentle
Anne Boleyn and saint-like Jane Grey’s calm presence seem to linger
near their graves: here, too, the once brilliant Monmouth moulders
before the high altar; and hard by rest the faithful little band of
Jacobites—Kilmarnock and brave Balmerino, and the wily old fox, Simon
Fraser of Lovat.
One of the earliest and handsomest monuments in St Peter’s is that to
Sir Richard Cholmondeley and his wife Elizabeth. The knight and his
lady are lying side by side, sculptured in alabaster. Sir Richard,
who was Lieutenant of the Tower in the reign of Henry VII., wears
plate armour, his hand rests on his helmet, his feet on a lion; round
his neck he wears the collar of SS. As was then the custom, this
monument has been painted and gilded, traces of its decoration still
remaining. This tomb was opened in 1876, but was found to contain only
some fragments of the stone font of the chapel of Edward the Third’s
time. Sir Richard had been knighted for his conduct on the field of
Flodden. During his Lieutenancy of the Tower a riot broke out between
the Londoners and some of the Lombard merchants, and Sir Richard, who
seems to have been cursed with a bad temper, by way of quietening
the brawlers, discharged the guns of the fortress against the city.
Hall, in his chronicle, quaintly notices this act of the Lieutenant as
follows:—
“Whilst this ruffling continued, Syr Richard Cholmly Knight,
Lieutenant of the Tower, no great friende of the citie, in a frantyke
fury losed certayn pieces of ordinance, and shot into the citie; whiche
did little harme, howbeit his good will apeered.” This choleric knight
died in 1544.
[Illustration: _Monument of Sir Richard Cholmondeley and his Wife in
Sᵗ. Peter’s Chapel._]
On the north side of the chancel is a handsome double monument to the
memory of Sir Richard Blount and to his son Sir Michael; both these
Blounts were Lieutenants of the Tower. Sir Richard, clothed in armour,
is represented as praying; behind him kneel his two sons, whilst facing
him, upon their knees, are Lady Blount and two daughters. Sir Richard
died in 1564. Sir Michael, whose effigy, also clad in armour, was
placed near that of his father thirty-two years later, and his family,
consisting of his wife, three sons and one daughter, are also devoutly
kneeling. Below the Blount monument is a little inscription to the
memory of Lyster Blount, a child of two years old: it ends with these
hopeful words, “Here they all lye to expect ye coming of our sweet
Saviour Jesu. Amen, Amen.”
Against the south wall is a black marble tablet inscribed to the memory
of Sir Allen Apsley,[5] who was Lieutenant of the Tower in the time
of James and Charles the First. His daughter was that Mrs Hutchinson
whose name will be remembered by her admirable memoirs of her husband
Colonel Hutchinson, who was imprisoned in the Bloody Tower, where
she shared his imprisonment. Sir Allen died in 1630. The first Earl
Bathurst (Lord Chancellor) was descended from him, and it was he who
built Apsley House. On the same wall are mural tablets to the memory
of Sir John Burgoyne, Field Marshal and Constable of the Tower, who
died in 1871, and is buried in the crypt of the chapel; also to Lord
De Ros, the last Deputy-Lieutenant of the Tower, who died in 1874, and
to whose book on the fortress allusion has often been made in these
pages. Among other good work done by Lord de Ros was to replace the
tombstone of brave old Talbot Edwards, who so nearly lost his life in
defending the Crown jewels when they were seized by Blood. This stone,
which had been cast aside and lay among a heap of rubbish in front of
the Beauchamp Tower, after being used as a paving-stone up to the year
1852 in front of the houses which up to that time had almost hidden
that tower from the Green, was replaced in the chapel. It bears the
following inscription: “Here lieth ye body of Talbot Edwards, Gent.:
late Keeper of his Ma’ᵗˢ Regalia who dyed ye 30 of September 1674, aged
80 years and 9 moneths.” Neither in life nor in death was this brave
old Keeper of the Crown well treated. Charles the Second settled a
handsome pension on the scoundrel Blood—hush-money probably, for it is
within the bounds of possibility that Charles was a party to Blood’s
attempt—whilst the sole reward of honest old Talbot Edwards, who was
half-killed in guarding the treasures of which he had charge, was
the consciousness of having done his duty. The Communion plate dates
from the reign of Charles the First and Charles the Second, and it is
singular to find that instead of the sacred initials being engraved
on these vessels only the Royal monogram of C. R. with a crown appear
upon them. Severely simple in shape and devoid of any ornament,
this Sacramental plate is historically interesting, for these cups and
plates have been used at the solemn hour when the Blessed Sacrament
was administered to more than one illustrious prisoner on the eve of
his execution. There is good reason for believing that Monmouth and
William, Lord Russell used these sacred vessels shortly before mounting
the scaffold.
[Illustration: _Tomb of the Blount Family in Sᵗ. Peter’s Chapel._]
At the back of the chapel of St Peter, and at the north-western angle
of the Inner Ward, stands the Devereux Tower, which contains two
storeys, the lower one being of massive masonry. This tower dates
from the reign of Richard the First. In the Elizabethan survey of the
fortress it is named Robyn the Devylls Tower, and in later times it
was known as the Develin Tower, and as such it appears in Haiward’s
plan. No record has come down as to the meaning of these names, but
the present appellation dates from the reign of Elizabeth, when Robert
Devereux, Earl of Essex, was a prisoner there. The upper part of the
tower is modern, and modern windows have taken the place of the old
loopholes in the 11 feet thick walls, a change which has destroyed the
character of the building; formerly it was most gloomy and forbidding.
A small winding staircase within the tower leads to a couple of prisons
constructed in the thickness of the Ballium wall. A secret passage
is supposed to have led thence, to the Flint Tower which stands to
the east of the Devereux Tower, communicating also with the vaults
under St Peter’s Chapel. Nothing remains, however, in the present
modernised state of these passages and prisons to indicate their former
appearance. Early in the nineteenth century the lower floor of the
Devereux Tower was used as a kitchen and other offices connected with
the ordnance; the upper portion was occupied by the Master Furbisher of
the Small Arms. The old kitchen, beneath which is a dungeon, has a fine
vaulted ceiling.
The Flint Tower lies due east, at a distance of 90 feet from the
Devereux Tower, but as it was found to be in an entirely ruinous
state in 1796, the old fabric was pulled down and the present ugly
brick tower rose in its place. The old tower had been known by the
unflattering name of “Little Hell,” probably from the noisomeness
of its dungeons, and it had the evil reputation of having the worst
prisons in the fortress. Another 90 feet from the Flint Tower stands
the Bowyer Tower, of which only the base is ancient, the remainder of
the building being modern; this tower dates from the reign of Edward
the Third, and it was here that the Duke of Clarence is traditionally
said to have been drowned in a butt of Malmsey (Malvoisie) wine.
According to those learned historians of the Tower, Britton and
Brayley, who wrote in the early part of the nineteenth century, there
was a vault in a dungeon in this tower closed by a trap door, which
opened on a flight of steps; from these steps a narrow cell led into
a secret passage made in the thickness of the Ballium wall. This was
one of the many secret passages which ran below ground, and of which,
as has already been noticed, an important one was discovered when the
Main Guard building was demolished in 1899. Mr G. J. Clark, a great
authority in these matters, has stated his belief that there were
several of these secret passages in the fortress. One of these, he
thinks, ran between the White Tower and the King’s House, and Father
Gerard’s account of the way he was led to and from the White Tower and
the Governor’s or King’s House points to an underground passage between
those buildings. It has been surmised that a subterranean passage led
from out the Tower below the Thames to the Southwark side of London; in
the Beauchamp Tower a secret passage was discovered in the thickness
of the Ballium wall, where persons might have been placed to watch and
overhear all that went on within the tower.[6]
The Bowyer Tower was so named because it was the dwelling of the royal
maker of bows, and the place where he turned out the Long Bow, as well
as the Cross Bow, and many other mediæval weapons of destruction,
such as the Balistar, the Scorpion, and the Catapult. In 1223 one
Grillot made here the “balistar corneas,” as that mysterious weapon is
described in an old record, and for his labour he was rewarded by the
gift of a new gown for his wife.
Next to the Bowyer Tower stands the Brick Tower, but it has been
modernised. In shape this tower resembles a horse shoe; it is 40 feet
in diameter. Between this tower and the Martin Tower the curtain wall
extends some 60 feet, the sally-port stairs being passed between the
two towers. As has been the general fate of most of the towers, the
Martin Tower is externally entirely modern, whilst the interior has
been casemated. At one time the Regalia was kept here, having been
brought in 1644 from their former resting-place in a small building on
the south side, and close to, the White Tower, called the Jewel House,
where they had been kept, when not in pawn, from the time of Henry III.
In the reign of Edward III. these jewels are referred to as being in
“la Tour Blanche,” and in the same reign there is also a reference to
the “Tresorie deinz la haute Toure de Londres.” It was from the Martin
Tower that Blood attempted to steal the Regalia.
The Martin Tower forms the north-east angle of the Inner Ward, and its
basement floor, where the Crown jewels were formerly kept, now serves
as a kitchen for the warder and his family, who occupy the tower. The
most ancient part of the Martin Tower dates from the reign of Henry
III., but Sir Christopher Wren, who spoilt the ancient appearance of
many parts of the Tower, played especial havoc here. The old windows
were removed and replaced by ugly stone-faced ones, which was also done
in the White Tower, where, with scarcely one exception, the original
Norman windows have been destroyed and Wren’s incongruities substituted
for them.
Placed on the ground at the base of the Martin Tower is a handsome
architrave of stone, in alto-relievo, representing the Royal
coat-of-arms in the time of William III., blended with military
trophies such as helmets, kettledrums, and cannon—
“The shrill trump, the spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war.”
This is one of Grinling Gibbons’s most spirited designs, graceful in
its lines, sharp and refined in its moulding. This sculpture is all
that remains of the great Store House, built in the reign of William
III. and destroyed by fire in 1841.
Beyond the Martin Tower, the Ballium wall takes a slanting course to
the south and river side of the fortress, to where, about 100 feet
south of the Martin Tower, stands the Constable Tower, modern from
roof to base. It was so named in the reign of Henry VIII. because
it was occupied by the Constable of the Tower. During the reign of
Charles I. it was used as a prison. “In form,” writes Brayley, “it
closely corresponds with the Beauchamp Tower, but it is of rather
smaller dimensions; the interior has been modernised, and the windows
greatly enlarged.” South of the Constable Tower, and next to it, is
the Broad Arrow Tower, which in Tudor times was known as “the tower
at the east end of the Wardrobe.” Until some thirty years ago this
tower was entirely hidden by an ugly row of barracks. It was used as a
prison throughout the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth, and there are a few
signatures still to be seen on the walls of a room on the first floor.
Unfortunately, repeated coats of whitewash have almost obliterated all
the inscriptions. A list, however, of these as they appeared in 1830
is given by Britton and Brayley. Amongst them are the names of “John
Daniell, 1556”; “Giovani Battista, 1556”; “Thomas Forde, 1582”; “John
Stoughton, 1586”; and “J. Gage, January 1591.” Little is known of any
of the above men except that Daniell was mixed up in a plot against
the Queen, and to rob the Exchequer, in the reign of Mary, and was
hanged on Tower Hill. Forde was a priest, and was executed for denying
Elizabeth’s supremacy in the Church; and Stoughton and Gage are also
supposed to have been priests. Of the Italian, Battista, no record has
come to us. Near the top of this tower a small doorway opens on to the
platform that runs along the Ballium wall. Close to this doorway is a
narrow cell 6 feet deep and 3½ feet wide, with only one small loophole
to admit air and light.
The building known by the name of the King’s Private Wardrobe stood
close to this tower, as well as another tower called the Wardrobe.
Both these buildings were cleared away before the reign of James II.,
their sites being now covered with offices or stores. The Royal robes,
armour, and probably the Royal upholstery, such as tapestry, hangings,
etc., were kept in the Wardrobe buildings, which were connected with
the Palace.
The Salt Tower forms the south-east angle of the Inner Ward. In the
reign of Henry VIII. it was called Julius Cæsar’s Tower, although it
had no more connection with Julius Cæsar than with Sardanapalus. It
is circular in shape, and has three floors, which are connected by a
small winding staircase. Upon the first floor is a fine chimney-piece
decorated with scroll mouldings. The upper storey was used as a powder
store; but, having fallen into decay, it was restored in 1876. The Salt
Tower is probably one of the oldest buildings in the Tower, dating
as far back as the reign of William Rufus. It possesses a vaulted
dungeon with deep recesses in the walls. In a prison on the first floor
are some inscriptions cut into the wall, and amongst them is a very
elaborate device representing a sphere intersected by lines radiating
from the signs of the Zodiac. Above the sphere is this inscription,
“Hew: Draper : of Brystow: made : thys : Spheer : the : 30 : day : of
: Maye : Anno : 1561.” Draper was imprisoned on a charge of sorcery and
magic.
One of the most interesting escapes from the Tower is closely connected
with this place, and although the story of adventures that befell a
poor Jesuit priest named Father Gerard, in the reign of Elizabeth,
is a long one, it deserves being told in some detail, for the manner
of his escape from the fortress is one of the most curious records
of prison-breaking. Father Gerard, together with many other Roman
Catholic priests, was hunted down as a criminal of the deepest dye,
and being captured, was clapped into the Salt Tower, in a prison on
its upper floor, the charge against him being that he was concerned in
a plot against the life of the Queen. He was examined on the day of
his arrival in the Tower by the Lords of the Council in the Governor’s
Lodging—now the King’s House, and in the same room in which Guy Fawkes
was afterwards interrogated. Amongst Father Gerard’s judges were the
Attorney-General, Sir Edward Coke, Sir Francis Bacon, and Sir William
Waad. Questioned as to the plot, in which another priest, Father
Garnet, was involved, Gerard refused to give any information. He was
told that if he persisted in his silence he would be tortured, and an
order was produced by which they were given permission (for torture has
always been illegal in England) if necessary “to prolong the torture
from day to day as long as life lasted.” The threat failing in its
effect Gerard was taken to “the place appointed for the torture,” and,
to quote his own words, “We went in a sort of solemn procession, the
attendants preceding us with lighted candles because the place was
underground (the subterranean passage under the White Tower) and very
dark, especially about the entrance. It was a place of immense extent,
and in it were ranged divers sorts of racks, and other instruments
of torture. Some of these they displayed before me, and told me that
I should have to taste them. They led me to a great upright beam or
pillar of wood, which was one of the supports of this vast crypt.”
Father Gerard was then hung up by his hands, these having first been
placed in iron gauntlets which were attached to an iron rod fixed in
the pillar. A stool upon which he stood was taken from under him, and
he hung by his wrists, the whole weight of his body depending from
them. He was a heavy man, and his sufferings were acute. Whilst in this
position the Commissioners looked on, pressing the suffering man with
questions, but receiving no reply they left him, and for the next hour
the wretched priest hung suspended by his tortured wrists. He fainted
several times from the anguish; later in the afternoon Sir William
Waad returned and again tried to obtain some confession from Gerard,
but when nothing could be wrung from him, Waad turned on his heel in
a rage, crying, “Hang thou then, till you rot.” Raleigh’s description
of the Lieutenant of the Tower as “that beast Waad” had certainly some
justification. When the tolling of the bell in the Bell Tower gave
the signal that the fortress would be closed, the Commissioners were
obliged to leave the Tower, and the poor, tortured, half-dead priest
was taken down, and, scarcely able to crawl, was led back to his prison
in the Salt Tower. On the following day Gerard was again taken to the
Lieutenant’s Lodging, where Waad informed him that he had been with
“Master Secretary Cecil,” who knew for a fact that Father Gerard had
been mixed up with other plotters in schemes against Elizabeth’s life,
and that more details would have to be given by him on this matter.
Again Gerard refused to say anything that could compromise others, upon
which Waad summoned a terrible personage, the chief superintendent
of the torturers of the prison, to whom Sir William said, “I deliver
this man into your hands. You are to wrack him twice a day until such
time as he chooses to confess.” Thereupon, says Father Gerard, they
went down again to the torture chamber with the same solemnity as on
the previous day, and he was again subjected to the torture of the
gauntlets, made additionally painful from the swollen state of his
hands and wrists. He swooned repeatedly, and was revived with some
difficulty. All through these hours of agony he refused to give one
name, or to make any kind of confession of guilt, and Waad swore and
raged in vain. As long, Gerard declared, as he lived he would say
nothing. For the third time he was tortured and hung up by the wrists.
But when Waad at length saw the futility of torturing him to death he
ordered him to be taken back to his prison, whence, as we shall see, he
effected his escape.
Another Roman Catholic, named John Arden, who was a fellow-prisoner
of Gerard’s at this time, was confined in the Cradle Tower, a small
tower in the Outer Ward standing on the Ballium wall some 100 feet
south of the Salt Tower and facing the Thames. The two prisoners were
sufficiently near to see each other from their respective prison
windows, the space between the two towers being then occupied by the
Privy garden of the Palace. Father Gerard persuaded his gaoler to allow
him to pay Arden a visit in his prison, and the two men, laying their
heads together, concocted the following plan. By writing to their
friends outside the tower in orange juice, which caused the letters to
be invisible unless subjected to a treatment known to the initiated,
Father Gerard succeeded in getting a thin cord with a leaden weight
attached to one end. It was further planned that upon a certain night
a boat should be brought to a certain place by the river bank opposite
the Cradle Tower. On this particular evening Father Gerard lingered
late in Arden’s prison, and when the pre-arranged hour came they slung
the lead at the end of the line across the moat. This was caught by
their friends in the boat, and a stout rope having been fastened to the
line, the two prisoners hauled it over the roof of the Cradle Tower
from the boat, and made it fast. Gerard was the first to descend from
the roof, swarming along the rope in the darkness; and he reached the
boat in safety. For three weeks after the torture of the gauntlets, his
hands were paralysed, and it was five months before the sense of touch
returned to them.
Next to the Salt Tower in the Inner Ward stands the Lanthorn Tower,
which has been entirely rebuilt. In former days this tower communicated
with the exterior rampart by an embattled gateway; it faces the river
and stands half-way between the Salt and the Wakefield Towers. In Henry
VIII.’s time the Lanthorn Tower was called the New Tower, and then
formed the end of the Queen’s Gallery in the Palace, “over the Kyng’s
bede-chamber and prevy closet,” as the survey taken in that reign
describes it. This tower had been almost destroyed in a fire in 1788,
and what remained was removed, only the basement vault being left. This
basement was used as a cellar by the keeper of the soldiers’ canteen,
which stood on the opposite side of the way: to such base uses had the
old tower of the Palace adorned by Henry III. fallen. Henry III. built
the Ballium wall and fortified it with this tower, which he fitted up
splendidly for his own habitation, and whose chambers he decorated with
frescoes; the subject of one of these was the story of Antiochus. The
tower was circular in shape, and surmounted by a small turret, as can
be seen by referring to Haiward and Gascoyne’s plan. After the fire of
1788 a huge unsightly warehouse was built on its site, blocking out
the fortress from the river front. This monstrosity was only removed
some five-and-twenty years ago. The present building is as nearly as
possible a reproduction of the original tower of Henry the Third, by
Salvin, who also carried out the building of the handsome curtain wall
of the Inner Ward, commencing at the Salt Tower and terminating at the
Wakefield Tower.
In an interesting article in the _Nineteenth Century_, Mr A. B. Mitford
says that, although it was impossible to give back the stones that
prated of the wars of the Roses, “the old towers and walls rose again
as nearly as possible similar to their predecessors as the skill of man
could make them,” under Salvin’s superintendence. There is a view of
the old Lanthorn Tower before its destruction in 1788, in a rare print
of the early part of the eighteenth century, which is here reproduced.
THE OUTER WARD
The Outer Ward forms a strip of ground varying in breadth from 20
to 100 feet, its wall forming the scarp of the moat. It is defended
by bastions to the north-east and north-west, which are 80 feet in
diameter, that to the north-east being called the Brass Mount Battery,
that to the north-west, Legge’s Mount, so named from George Legge,
first Earl of Dartmouth, who was Master-General of Ordnance in the
reign of Charles II. The Brass Mount probably derived its name from
the cannon with which it was mounted. Between these bastions is a more
modern one, called the North Bastion. These three bastions defend the
north side of the fortress. Of the five towers which protected the
Palace on the river front, the Byward and St Thomas’s Towers have
already been described. There remain the Cradle, the Well, and the
Develin Towers to notice.
The Cradle Tower stands parallel with the Well Tower on the outer or
curtain wall. It was through an archway in the Cradle Tower that the
principal entrance from the river lay in former times. From the top
of the tower a square-shaped turret rises on the western side. The
Cradle Tower dates from the reign of Henry III., and prisoners were
landed here as well as at Traitor’s Gate, entering the fortress over a
drawbridge. Its upper chambers, which were in the form of the letter ⏉,
are believed to have formed part of the Palace. The present tower is
altogether modern, having been rebuilt from the foundations in 1878.
The next tower on the curtain wall is the Well Tower, also entirely
rebuilt. It is rectangular, and forms a portion of the curtain wall.
Its basement lies below the level of the Inner Ward, and within it
is a vaulted chamber 11 feet high by 14 feet wide, from which a well
staircase leads to an upper room, and thence on to the rampart.
The last of these towers at the eastern end of the fortress is the
Develin Tower. In 1549 it was known as Galligman’s Tower, and in the
plan of the Tower in 1597 it is called the “tower leading to the Inner
Gate.” Formerly, it was used as a powder magazine.
THE WHITE TOWER
In the days of the Plantagenets, “La Tour Blanche” owed that
appellation to its having been frequently whitewashed. The earliest
of these whitewashings took place in the reign of Edward III., since
whose reign it is impossible to guess how often the grim old building
has been externally whitened. In an illumination taken from an old
French MS. made in the reign of Henry V., and preserved in the Harleian
collection in the British Museum, of the poems of Charles of Orleans,
the vivid whiteness of the old Norman White Tower stands out in bold
relief surrounded by the dark towers and walls of the fortress. And
after half-a-thousand years of London grime and smoke, the White Tower
remains the same “Tour Blanche” of the days of the Plantagenets.
The old Norman keep of the Tower has changed but little in outward
aspect since it was limned in the old illumination of the MS. of
Charles of Orleans, some six centuries ago. The general features are
the same, and even the little leaden roofs of the four turrets at
the angles, appeared then much as they do to-day. No one has been
able to inform me as to the period when the leaden tops first capped
the masonry of this tower. Two great authorities on the history of
the Tower—Professor Freeman and Mr Clark—have told us how Norman
William, on crossing the Thames, found that London was protected on
its landward side by a Roman wall—the defences of ancient Augusta—a
wall strengthened by mural towers, and an external moat. Of these
relics of ancient Augusta, a fragment is to be seen at the eastern end
of the White Tower. According to both historians, the building of the
White Tower was commenced in 1078. When a tramway was run from the
river wharf, some years ago, to the base of the White Tower for the
shipment of stores, the engineers had to excavate some 20 feet of solid
masonry into the Norman keep, such was its huge strength and solidity.
Freeman always writes with enthusiasm of the Tower—“the mighty Tower
of London,” he loves to call it; and when he wrote of the Tower, he
had the White Tower in his mind. Regarding the builders of the White
Tower, Freeman quotes the following Latin text from Hearner’s “Textus
Roffensis”—“Dum idem Gundulfus, ex praecepto Regis Wilhelmi Magni,
prœesset operi magnae turris Londoniae, et hospitatus fuisset apud
ipsum Ædmerum.” The name Tower, and not Castle, adds Freeman, belonged
to the fortress of Gundulfus from the first.
It will be necessary here to give some figures and proportions of
this ancient keep. Its height is 90 feet from ground to battlements.
The Keep has four turrets, three being circular, and one square. The
windows were much modernised by Sir Christopher Wren, but those in the
upper storey are the least altered; only one pair of these, however,
have been left in their original state. It was from this window that
Bishop Flambard is said to have made his escape. A stone staircase,
11 feet wide, and built in the circular turret on the north-east of
the Keep, communicates with all the floors and leads to the roof.
The basement of the Keep is a little below the level of the soil on
the north side, and is flush with it on the south side. The walls
are from 12 to 15 feet thick, the internal area being 91 feet by 73
feet. The large chambers have timbered ceilings, and the smaller
are stone-vaulted. Formerly, the basement and the prison within it
could only be reached from above, by the staircase running through the
circular turret. The great western chamber is 91 feet long by 35 feet
in width. In the vault or sub-crypt under the Chapel of St John there
is a prison called “Little Ease,” and here Guy Fawkes is supposed to
have passed his last fifty days on earth. It opens into a great dungeon
which is 47 feet long by 15 feet broad. Formerly, this place was in
total darkness, and could have had but little air; at its eastern end
it terminates in a semicircle. It was here that in the reign of King
John some hundreds of Jews were imprisoned with their families. In
later times it was fitted up into a powder magazine, and it is not many
years since it was cleared of “villainous” saltpetre. Its walls have
been coated with brick, and the ceiling refaced and vaulted, whilst
passages have been pierced through its eastern and western extremities.
A well 6 feet wide, its sides lined with ashlar stone, which may be
of Roman origin, has been found in the floor of this vault, near its
south-western angle.
[Illustration: _Stone Staircase in the White Tower._]
On the second floor of the White Tower the walls are 13 feet in
thickness, the cross walls being 8 feet. On this floor are five
openings communicating between the eastern and the western chambers.
The latter is 92 feet long by 37 broad; a vaulted passage 2 feet
10 inches wide being constructed in the thickness of the wall. The
eastern chamber is 68 feet long and 30 wide. There is a recess in the
north wall which communicates with the exterior of the tower by a
double flight of stone stairs facing the river front. And it was at
the foot of these steps that the bones, supposed to be those of the
little Princes, were discovered in the reign of Charles II. They were
subsequently taken to Westminster Abbey. The present stairs are modern.
An ancient door, 3 feet in width, opens from this chamber on to a short
passage, 5 feet in width, cut in the thickness of the wall, which leads
to the well staircase communicating with all the floors. Another door
in the south wall leads into the crypt of St John’s Chapel, which is
13 feet 6 inches broad by 39 feet in height; at the east end it is
apsidal. Near the apse is a passage 2 feet wide which leads into a
vaulted cell 8 feet long by 10 wide. This cell has no windows, and
when, in former times, the door, which has been removed, was closed,
this dismal prison was plunged in total darkness. It has been asserted,
without any foundation, that this cell was that in which Raleigh passed
his first imprisonment in the Tower. There is not a shadow of proof
to corroborate this. It was probably used in the early years of the
fortress as a strong-room for the safekeeping of the church treasure.
Although no proof exists as to the imprisonment of Raleigh in this
black hole, prisoners were confined here in the days of the sanguinary
Queen Mary, as is shown by some half-obliterated inscriptions which
can still be seen on the sides of the doorway leading from the crypt
to the cell. In one of these the following words have been traced—“He
that endureth to the ende shall be saved. M. 10. R. Rudston. Dar. Kent.
Ano. 1553.” “Be faithful unto deth, and I wil give the a crowne of
life.—J. Fane. 1554.” Also the following:—“T. Culpeper of Darford.”
These persons were implicated in the Wyatt insurrection. Lord de Ros
mentions rather vaguely in his book on the Tower, an inscription which
was discovered about 1867 “in the vault of the White Tower,” of which
the following is a copy:—“Sacris vestibus indutus dum sacra mysteria
servans, captus et in hoc augusto carcere indusus.—R. Fisher.”
Until some thirty years ago this crypt was used as an armoury, and here
many may remember having seen a figure of Queen Elizabeth, mounted on
a wooden steed, in a dress supposed to have been worn by her when she
returned thanks at St Paul’s for the destruction of the Armada. (This
is now in the lower gallery of the White Tower.)
The rooms on this floor of the tower are 15 feet high, with wooden
ceilings, which are supported by massive wooden pillars placed in
double rows. These wooden columns are comparatively modern, and were
probably placed here when the rooms were converted into an armoury,
store rooms, and record offices. They are now filled with small-arms,
and the roofs are supported by beams strengthened with iron girders.
The ancient fireplaces still remain in the eastern wall.
On the second floor of the White Tower are three great chambers. That
to the west is 95 feet by 32; that to the east 64 feet by 32; they are
15 feet high. St John’s Chapel, which is on the second floor, forms
its cross chamber, and rises through the roof to the top of the tower.
A mural passage at the extremity of the western chamber leads to the
west end of the south aisle. Mr Clark believes that this was formerly
a private entrance from the Palace into the Chapel, being connected
with the State rooms of the Tower, one of which is still called the
Banqueting Hall.
The fourth floor of the Keep is called the State Floor, and is divided
into three chambers 28 feet in height. The room to the west, which
is called the Council Chamber, was the scene of that episode at the
commencement of the reign of Richard III., immortalised by Shakespeare,
when that monarch accused Lord Hastings of treason and had him taken
out to instant execution (_Richard III._ Act iii. Scene 4). This
chamber is 95 feet long by 46 wide. Within the exterior walls runs a
vaulted passage communicating with the stairs in the north-eastern
turret. It was in this passage, which is only 3 feet in width, that the
soldiers were concealed when Richard had planned Hastings’s death. In
Norman times this chamber was used as a State prison, and it was from
one of its windows that Bishop Flambard let himself down by a rope. It
was also the prison of Charles of Orleans in the reign of Henry V., and
had probably served the same purpose in the reign of Edward III., and
may have held in its walls both King John of France and David, King of
Scotland; here, too, the brothers Mortimer were probably imprisoned in
1324.
It is not easy to picture in one’s mind the appearance of this place
when used as a State prison, or as a Council Chamber, for the only view
of the interior of the Tower that has come down to us from the Middle
Ages is the little illumination in the Harleian MSS., which has been
reproduced in this work, in which Charles of Orleans is seen writing in
this chamber surrounded by his guards.
The earliest account of the interior of the Tower occurs in Paul
Hentzner’s description of his visit in the reign of Elizabeth. “Upon
entering the Tower,” he writes, “we were obliged to quit our swords
at the gate and deliver them to the guard. When we were introduced,
we were shown above a hundred pieces of arras belonging to the Crown,
made of gold, silver, and silk; several saddles covered with velvet
of different colours; an immense quantity of bed furniture, such as
canopies, and the like, some of them most richly ornamented with
pearl; some royal dresses, so extremely magnificent as to raise one’s
admiration at the sums they must have cost. We were then led into the
armoury.” But I will reserve what Hentzner said about the arms and
the armour until later. This intelligent German traveller pertinently
remarks: “It is to be noted, that when any of the nobility are sent
hither on the charge of high crimes punishable with death, such as
treason, etc., they seldom or never recover their liberty.”
With the exception of the Lady Chapel at Durham Cathedral, St John’s
Chapel in the White Tower is the most beautiful of the Norman chapels
in England, and it was owing to the excellent advice given by the
Prince Consort that this splendid relic of Norman times has received,
if not its former splendour, something of its pristine condition.
Although no attempt has been made to re-decorate its walls and
interior, it is now cleansed of the rubbish which covered its floor,
until the Prince called attention to the desecration with which it was
treated until the middle of the nineteenth century.
[Illustration: _Interior of Sᵗ. John’s Chapel._]
Inclusive of the semicircular apse at its east end, the Chapel is 55
feet 6 inches long by 31 feet wide. It is divided into a nave and two
aisles, which have four massive pillars on either side with varied
capitals, supporting thirteen arches. The pillars are 2 feet 6 inches
in diameter and 6 feet 6 inches high, not inclusive of their bases,
which are 20 inches high, giving the pillars from the floor to the
top of the capitals a height of 10 feet. Each capital is cut out of a
solid block of stone. The stone ceiling of the nave is barrel shaped.
The triforium is 7 feet 6 inches in diameter. The upper gallery was
formerly used by the royal family, and communicated with the State
rooms of the Palace. It is probable that the walls of this chapel were
decorated with mural paintings and hung with tapestry, the windows
to the east glowing with figures of saints and angels. Henry III.,
in 1240, ordered three stained glass windows for the chapel, and in
one of these, that looking to the north, was pictured “a little Mary
holding her child.” In the two others, looking to the south, “the Holy
Trinity, with St John, Apostle and Evangelist.” The rood screen and
Cross were also ordered by this King, and “two fair images” to be set
up and painted, “et fieri faciatis et depingi duas ymagynes centius
fieri possint in capella.” The latter were probably representations of
St Edward holding a ring which he presents to the Patron of the Royal
Chapel.
When the Reformation came in 1550, St John’s Chapel was despoiled of
all its artistic treasures by order of the Government. Its frescoes
were coated over with whitewash, its stained glass windows were
destroyed, and all its ecclesiastical ornaments were removed; in
later times the Chapel became a repository for the Tower records. It
was during Lord de Ros’s Governorship in 1857 that the accumulated
lumber of centuries was, as has already been said, in consequence of
Prince Albert’s wish, cleared away from the Chapel. It had actually
been proposed to turn this beautiful building into a military tailor’s
warehouse. Such was the honour bestowed on this sacred and beautiful
English building comparatively only a few years ago. But in recent
years it must be admitted that we have shown a more enlightened regard
towards the relics connected with the history of our country, none of
which is of greater interest, or more worthy of regard and veneration,
than the old Norman Chapel of St John’s in the Tower.
Royal scenes of pomp and mourning this ancient building has beheld
within its mighty walls. All our Norman and Plantagenet kings here
worshipped a God whose laws they seldom obeyed. Here lay in state the
corpse of the White Rose of York, Elizabeth, the Queen of Henry VII.;
and here, those upon whom the honour of knighthood was to be conferred,
passed their solemn all-night vigil, watching their armour.
The summit of the White Tower covers a space of 100 feet on the eastern
side, by 113 on the north and south. The four turrets, the most
conspicuous points in any view of the Tower, rise 16 feet above this
leaden field, and each is crowned with pepper-box-shaped roofs made of
lead. The turret crowning the south-eastern angle contains a chamber
traditionally known as the prison of Joan of Kent. In the early years
of the eighteenth century it was used as an observatory by Flambard,
the Astronomer-Royal, and a contemporary of Isaac Newton, some years
before the great Observatory was built at Greenwich.
Although cannon were mounted on the roof in Tudor days, the platform
could not have supported very heavy artillery, as it was only built of
shingle. As I have said elsewhere, no record has come down to us of the
time when the turrets with their little pepper-castor tops were first
placed there, but the Harleian MSS. prove that similar ones existed as
far back as the reign of Henry V.
There is much difference of opinion as to the original mode of entrance
into the White Tower. Probably the principal entrance lay on the south
and river side of the Keep, near its western angle, for on the second
floor there is a large opening on the exterior of the masonry which has
parallel sides, and was doubtless formerly used as a doorway. Near this
opening, and on the eastern side of the Keep, is a small door opening
into the base of the well staircase. Both Mr Clark and Mr Birch believe
that these doors formerly communicated with a building which stood on
the south of the White Tower, having its outer entrance at the east
end. This building would probably date back to the days of the Normans.
The main entrance of the White Tower opened out on the first floor
of the Keep, whence a turnpike staircase led up to the second floor,
and downwards to the basement with its dungeons. The mural corridors
or passages in the thickness of the walls which encircle the State
rooms, are so narrow that only one person could pass along them at a
time, which would have been of great advantage in case of an attack on
the building, for a small number of men could have defended the White
Tower against a host of besiegers. The Normans showed a rare skill
in the strategic construction of their strongholds. For instance, in
the ruined Castle of Arques near Dieppe, a contemporary building,
the plan of its Keep resembles in structure that of the White Tower.
These Normans were master builders, and the skilful manner in which
they concealed the entrances to their fortresses is well worth study.
Their keeps were generally rectangular, and in no instance is the
entrance of these towers on the ground floor, or in a conspicuous part
of the building. At the Castle of Arques the entrance to the Keep is
carefully concealed, as was the case with the White Tower, and is
fully 30 feet above the level of the ground, besides being hidden and
protected by a massive and lofty wall which forms a part of the Keep.
A tortuous passage leads into the heart of the building, but before
it could be entered, a very long and almost perpendicular staircase
had to be mounted. This staircase commenced in the thickness of the
wall of one of the outer counter-forts, placed at the northern angle
of the fortress, which wound along the inner face of the Keep, giving
access to a landing, beyond which was the passage that led into the
fortress. Before the kernel of the Keep could be reached, another
narrow passage, cut out of the thickness of the wall, had to be
passed; this passage was on the level of the first floor. This style
of defensive construction was introduced by the Conqueror and his
clerical architect, the quondam monk of the Abbey of Bec in Normandy,
who ended his life as Bishop of Rochester; and to these two men we owe
the solidity and time-defying strength of the great Norman White Tower.
In order to complete this Norman system of defensive architecture it
was necessary to suppress all unnecessary openings, such as windows,
in the lower stages of the massive square towers. Consequently, the
Norman windows, which were only narrow slits in the masonry, called by
the significant name of _meurtrières_, from the use made of them by the
besieged to hurl missiles or pour boiling oil, or lead, upon the enemy
beneath, were always restricted in numbers, and were always placed in
the upper parts of the Keep. For this reason Sir Christopher Wren, by
placing the large windows with their stone facings, now in the White
Tower, completely destroyed one of the most characteristic features
of its Norman workmanship, an extraordinary act of vandalism for so
great an architect. In our day Salvin restored some of the Norman
windows on the western side of the White Tower—those belonging to St
John’s Chapel—and one regrets that he did not carry out the restoration
throughout the building, for in looking at any representation of the
White Tower taken before the Great Fire, one sees how much the old
Norman Keep has lost in character by Wren’s tasteless substitution of
Carolean for Norman windows.
Of the prisoners of State who passed weary years within the White
Tower, mention has already been made of Charles of Orleans. Stevenson’s
description in his “Familiar Studies of Men and Books,” relating
to the imprisonment of the Duke, gives a perfect word-picture: “In
the magnificent copy of Charles’s poems, given by our Henry VII.
to Elizabeth of York on the occasion of their marriage, a large
illumination figures at the head of one of the pages which, in
chronological perspective, is almost a history of his imprisonment. It
gives a view of London with all its spires, the river passing through
the old bridge, and busy with boats. One side of the White Tower has
been taken out, and we can see, as under a sort of shrine, the paved
room where the Duke sits writing. He occupies a high-backed bench in
front of a great chimney: red and black ink are before him, and the
upper end of the apartment is guarded by many halberdiers, with the
red cross of England on their breasts. On the next side of the tower
he appears again, leaning out of the window and gazing on the river.
Doubtless, there blows just then ‘a pleasant wind from out the land of
France,’ and some ships come up the river, ‘the ship of good news.’ At
the door we find him yet again, this time embracing a messenger, while
a groom stands by holding two saddled horses. And yet further to the
left, a cavalcade defiles out of the Tower; the Duke is on his way at
last towards ‘the sunshine of France.’”
Referring to his imprisonment in England at the trial of the Duke
d’Alençon, the Duke said, “I have had experience myself, and in my
prison of England, for the weariness, danger, and displeasure in which
I then lay, I have many a time wished I had been slain at the battle
where they took me.”
It was one of Joan of Arc’s hallucinations that could Charles of
Orleans be delivered from his captivity in England and restored to
France, that country would be delivered from its conquerors. She
declared that he was specially favoured by the Almighty, and longed
with all the strength of her great heart to restore him to her native
land, and said that if there was no other way of freeing him, she would
herself cross the sea and bring him back with her. When, after many
years, Charles of Orleans was released, the heroic girl had met her
martyrdom nine years before. It is a strange coincidence that whilst
the Keep of the Tower held the French poet prince within its walls,
another Royal captive, James the First of Scotland, was whiling away
the days of his imprisonment by writing verses in the Keep of Windsor
Castle.
Until quite recently, the collection of arms and armour stored in the
White Tower and the adjacent galleries was in a disgraceful state of
neglect, and even in a worse condition than that of mere neglect, for
the custodians, in their ignorance, gave names and titles to the arms
and armour which must have caused infinite amusement to visitors who
possessed any knowledge of the subject. The middle-aged may recall the
rows of so-called English kings, beginning with the Plantagenets and
ending with the Stuarts, seated on wooden horses. If I mistake not, one
of these was dubbed Edward I., and yet another mythical gentleman on
his wooden steed played the _rôle_ of a “Royal Crusader.” These things
were as genuine as Mrs Jarley’s Waxworks. “Previous to the year 1826,”
write Britton and Brayley in their history of the Tower, “nothing could
present a more incongruous mass of discordant materials than the Horse
Armoury of the Tower of London. Armour of the time of Edward the Sixth
was ignorantly appropriated to that of William the Conqueror: foot
soldiers were ranged between the horsemen, and those humble ciceroni,
the warders, ascribed to the various implements of war names and uses,
alike unknown, either in ancient or modern warfare.” But better times
were at hand, and a great authority on ancient armour, and the owner
of the finest collection of it in England, Dr S. R. Meyrick, undertook
to arrange the armour in the Tower. Another expert in armour, J. R.
Planché, Somerset Herald, and author of an able history of British
costume, as well as of many clever burlesques and extravaganzas, drew
up a catalogue. But a huge mass of rubbish and spurious armour were
allowed even then to remain amongst the historic and genuine specimens.
It is only since Lord Dillon undertook the great task, on which he
is still engaged, of entirely re-arranging and re-cataloguing the
arms and armour in the White Tower, that it can be properly studied
and appreciated. The new catalogue, which will be a work of historic
importance, is still unpublished, but from the accounts Lord Dillon
has written of the collection, and which is published in the excellent
“Authorised Guide” to the Tower and its contents, I am indebted for
much of the following information.
[Illustration: _Horse and Foot Armour (XVIᵗʰ. Century)_]
Although not to compare in extent or importance with the great
collections of Madrid, Vienna, or Turin, the armour in the White Tower
must be, to an Englishman, of great interest, for, although none of the
suits of armour date further back than the fifteenth century, and but
very few single pieces are of an earlier epoch, there are among the
former, suits of great beauty and of high historic value, and it is the
only national collection of armour that England possesses. As far back
as the year 1213 arms and military stores were kept in the White Tower.
In that year Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, was commanded to
surrender with the fortress “the arms and other stores within”; in the
second year of Henry the Third’s reign, a mandate was issued to the
Archdeacon of Durham to send to the Tower “twenty-six suits of armour,
five iron cuirasses, one iron collar, three pair of iron fetters, and
nine iron helmets.” In the reign of Edward II. we find that a certain
“John de Flete, Keeper of the Wardrobe in the Tower,” was ordered to
deliver up all the armour therein to John de Montgomery. This armour
had belonged to Montgomery’s father.
Various documents are extant relating to armour in the Tower during
the reign of Richard II., and in those of the fourth, fifth, and sixth
Henrys. There is, in the library of the Society of Antiquaries, an
inventory in MSS. of the arms and ammunition kept in different castles
in the kingdom, written in the first year of the reign of Edward the
Sixth. In this work particular mention is made of some “brigandines”
in the Tower. These were military jackets. Other offensive and
defensive weapons are enumerated, such as targets, pole-axes, “great
holy water sprinklers” (a kind of stave with a cylindrical-shaped end,
“and with a spear-point at the top,” according to Meyrick). In the
reign of Elizabeth, we hear of cross-bows and arrows in the Tower, of
“bow-stones” and of “slurbowes,” as well as half-a-dozen different
kinds of armour.
At the beginning of this notice of the White Tower, I mentioned Paul
Hentzner’s description of the armour he saw. He writes as follows:—“We
were next led into the armoury, in which are these peculiarities:
spears, out of which you may shoot; shields, that will give fire
four times; a great many rich halberds, commonly called partuisans,
with which the guard defend the royal person in battle; some lances,
covered with red and green velvet, and the body-armour of Henry VIII.
Many and very beautiful arms, as well for men as for horses in horse
fights—(Hentzner probably means tournaments);—the lance of Charles
Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, three spans thick; two pieces of cannon—the
one fires three, the other seven balls at a time; two others made
of wood, which the English had at the siege of Boulogne, in France.
And by this stratagem, without which they could not have succeeded,
they struck a terror into the inhabitants, as at the appearance of
artillery, and the town was surrendered upon articles; nineteen cannons
of a thicker make than ordinary, and in a room apart, thirty-six of a
smaller; other cannon for chain shot, and balls proper to bring down
masts of ships; cross-bows, bows and arrows, of which to this day the
English make great use in their exercises; but who can relate all that
is to be seen here. Eight or nine men, employed by the year, are scarce
sufficient to keep all the arms bright.”
[Illustration: _German Armour (XVIᵗʰ. Century.)_]
One cannot help wishing that Hentzner had told us more about the Tower
itself as it looked in Elizabeth’s days, and less about the armour.
Charles the First had a survey written of the arms and armour in
the Tower when he succeeded to the Throne, but during the Civil War
much of it disappeared, in common with most of the Royal possessions
in that troubled time. After the Restoration, William Legge, Lord
Dartmouth, who had been deprived by the Commonwealth of his post of
“Master of the Armouries,” was reinstated, and he had an inventory of
the armour in the Tower drawn up in 1660. There is an interesting list
in Britton and Brayley’s Tower book of the different officers to whom
the making of the military stores in the Tower had been entrusted,
up to the time of Charles II., when the employment of the following
ceased:—There was first the “Balistarius,” who lodged in the Bowyer
Tower, and who provided the cross-bows. In the reign of Henry III. this
officer received a shilling a day and “a doublet and surcoat furred
with lambskin” once a year. The “Attiliator Balistarum” provided the
harness and accoutrements for the cross-bows: and received “seven pence
halfpenny per diem and a suitable robe every year.” Then came the
“Bowyer,” an inferior Balistarius; he also received a robe annually.
After him came the “Fletcher,” or maker of the flêches or arrows.
This craftsman supplied arrows to the whole army. To him succeeded
the “Galeator,” the maker of helmets and head-pieces, and after him
the Armourer, who made and supervised all the armour and military
accoutrements in the Tower. But the greatest of these was the Master
of the King’s Ordnance, who, as far back as the reign of Edward the
Fourth, provided all warlike stores for the Army and also the Navy.
He received eleven shillings per diem, and his clerk and valet were
each paid sixpence per diem, which, according to the present value
of money, would be about five pounds a day for the master, and five
shillings for the two men. At the close of the reign of George the
Third the following officers formed the Board of Ordnance:—First came
the Master-General, chosen from among the Generals of the Army, “who
by virtue of his office was Colonel-in-Chief of the Artillery and
Engineers.” Next to him came the Surveyor-General, the head of all the
store departments. Beneath him ranked the Clerk of the Ordnance; then
the Store-keeper, the Clerk of the Deliveries; and, closing the list, a
Treasurer and a Paymaster, both attached to the Ordnance Office.
Returning to the White Tower and its memories, the changes and
revolutions that its massive walls have witnessed, rise before the
mind. Merely glancing at the changes of fashion, as seen in the suits
of armour in its armoury, one is carried back to the Middle Ages. And
although the armour is all of a later time, the Norman barons in their
steel-ringed surcoats and pointed helmets, as they are pourtrayed on
the Bayeux tapestry, have been seen here. All the chivalry of England,
from the time of the Normans down to our present Guardsmen with their
bearskin head-dresses, are closely bound up with the old Norman
fortress, and it should be remembered that from the end of the eleventh
century up to the present day the Tower has always retained the rank
and position of chief fortress and depository of arms in the realm, and
so may still be regarded as the “Arx Palatina” of the British Empire.
The oldest armour in the Tower are some “bassinets” of the second half
of the fourteenth century. Until the death of Henry VIII., the royal
collection of armour was kept in the Palace at Greenwich, and the
possessions of that monarch now form by far the finest portion of the
Tower Armoury, consisting of several splendid suits of armour given
him by the Emperor Maximilian. The best armour was made in Italy and
Germany, and Henry, who loved a fine suit of armour almost as much as
a handsome woman, had a number of skilled armourers sent to England
to work for him. As we see by Hentzner’s narrative, foreigners of
distinction were shown the collection of armour in the Tower as one of
the principal sights of London. During the Civil War a great deal of
the armour was carried away from the Tower, and but little of it was
returned, even when the Restoration had become an accomplished fact.
[Illustration: _Nurembery Armour (XVIᵗʰ. Century.)_]
The collection now occupies the two upper floors of the White Tower.
On the lower floor are kept the more modern weapons and the Oriental
armour, of which there is a great quantity. On the upper floor the far
more interesting of the earlier weapons, and all the suits of foot and
horse armour, are ranged along the walls and in rows down the middle of
the hall, making an imposing show of mounted and unmounted mail-clad
figures of men and horses.
In the lower floor we will only take a glance at the Indian and
Oriental arms and at the modern European weapons, as these are of
little historical interest. There are, however, amongst them some
relics of the so-called “good old days” worthy of inspection. These
consist of a grim collection of instruments of death and torture. Here,
for instance, are the thumbscrews, the bilboes, and the Scavenger’s
Daughter—in the last the victim was almost bent double in its iron
embrace. Here, too, is an iron collar, very massive, with a row of
iron spikes within its ring, which, when fastened round the sufferer’s
neck, must speedily have caused death. This horrible instrument is
incorrectly stated to have been taken in one of the ships of the
Armada, but Lord Dillon vouches for its having been used in the Tower
long before the Spanish ships were seen in the Channel. Here, too, is
a small model of the rack, the most general form of torture employed
in the Tower during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when even
women were cruelly torn almost limb from limb by its cords and pulleys.
This toy rack does not give so vivid an impression of the torture as
does a small wood-cut from Fox’s “Book of Martyrs.” Here is also the
block, with the axe. The latter was kept here as far back as the year
1687, so it is uncertain whether it is the axe that was used for the
execution of the Duke of Monmouth and William, Lord Russell, but it is
probable that it was the one used for beheading the rebel lords after
the two Jacobite risings in Scotland, and it was undoubtedly used for
decapitating Lord Lovat in 1747.
As regards the block, it appears to have been the custom for a new one
to be made for each State execution, and although there is more than
one mark made by the axe on the top of this block, it does not follow
that it was used for more than one execution.
The upper floor is reached by a staircase in the south-eastern corner
of the Tower. On reaching this upper floor a collection of spears
of all sorts and sizes is seen. Among these is a formidable-looking
weapon called a “holy water sprinkler,” which consists of a staff
with a wooden ball at the top, covered with long iron spikes. Another
sinister-looking weapon is the “Morning Star,” so named by the Germans,
and certainly calculated to raise up many a star before the eyes of
anyone who had the misfortune to be struck by it. Besides these there
is a goodly array of partisans, halberds, and pole-axes. In the centre
of this gallery is an equestrian figure clad in sixteenth-century
armour which was made at Nuremberg, where the best armour in Germany
was manufactured. The whole of the knight’s armour, as well as the
panoply of the horse, is ornamented with that quaint device, the
Burgundian cross “ragule,” and also the flint and steel pattern, the
same that appears on the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece: from
these ornaments and devices it follows that this armour was made for
one of the Burgundian princes, perhaps for the Emperor Maximilian, it
having been given to Henry VIII. by that monarch.
There are many suits of armour which, until Lord Dillon re-arranged
and classified the collection, passed as genuine, and among them is
a sham suit of armour worn by Lord Waterford at the famous Eglinton
tournament—a tourney which ended by the competing knights taking
shelter from the rain under their umbrellas. Another splendid specimen
of the German armourers’ work is the fluted suit for man and horse
belonging to the early part of the sixteenth century. Two other suits
of armour which are placed in the centre of the gallery belonged to
Henry VIII.; they are of prodigious weight, and as they were intended
for fighting on foot, it must have required considerable physical
strength to walk when clad in this ponderous habiliment: it certainly
would have been impossible for its wearer to run away with it upon his
back. Lord Dillon believes that both these suits are of Italian or
Spanish workmanship; one of them is made up of 235 separate pieces.
Besides these, two other suits of Henry VIII.’s armour are in the
collection; one of them still retains traces of gilding, and must have
shone resplendently when worn by the bluff king.
[Illustration: _Horse and Foot Armour (XVIIᵗʰ. Century.)_]
Regarding the equestrian suit of armour in the centre of the gallery,
Lord Dillon thinks “that it is one of the finest in existence.” It was
made at Augsburg by the famous German armourer Conrad Sensenhofer, and
was given to Henry by the Emperor Maximilian in 1515. It is covered
with devices, such as roses, pomegranates, and portcullises—the badges
of Henry and Catharine of Arragon—the letters H and K stand out in bold
relief on the horse armour. Engraved within panels are representations
of scenes from the lives of St George and St Barbara. No finer example
of the great German’s art workmanship than this truly Imperial suit can
be seen, not even in the great German, Spanish, and Italian collections.
Close to this stands a curious shield, one of eighty similar ones
made for Henry VIII., with a pistol in the middle. Worthy of note is
a helmet with a mask attached, also a gift to Henry from Maximilian.
It was formerly known as Will Somers’s mask (the King’s Jester), but
recent research does not show that Somers ever used this ugly vizor.
Here, also, is a very gorgeous suit of gilt armour which belonged
to the Earl of Cumberland, one of Elizabeth’s smartest courtiers,
who fitted out at his own expense no less than eleven expeditions
against the Spaniards. Noticeable, too, are the quaint double
weapons—staves with pole-axes and gun-barrels attached; one of these
has three barrels, a kind of gigantic early revolver which was called
King Harry’s Walking-Stick. Here are also ancient saddles used for
tournaments. One of these belonged, and was probably used by Charles
Brandon, Henry VIII.’s brother-in-law: much horse armour besides these
tilting saddles is to be seen here,—“chaufons” and “bards” made of
leather, known by the name of “cuir bouall,” and “vamplates,” worn
when tilting to protect the hand, and into which the tilting spear
was fastened. More suits of armour for men and horses are those which
belonged to the Earl of Worcester in Elizabeth’s time, and a still
richer one, once worn by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, bearing
all over it the badge of the rugged staff, and the double collars of
the English order of the Garter and the French one of St Michael. The
armour of another of Elizabeth’s favourites is here, a suit which is
believed to have belonged to Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. To come
to later times, and the House of Stuart, the most conspicuous of the
armour of that period is a gilt suit which belonged to Charles I., but
very inferior in workmanship and artistic excellence to the earlier
work of the German armourers. There is also a small suit of armour made
for Charles I., when a child. Here, too, are models of cannon made for
Charles II., when he was Prince of Wales, and a richly decorated suit
of armour given to Henry, Prince of Wales, by the Prince de Joinville.
Of all this display of arms and armour in the Tower, of which I have
but touched upon the chief objects of historical and artistic interest,
the “processional” axe is, to my mind, by far the most interesting
in regard to the Tower and its history, for it is the outward and
visible sign of the part the “great axe,” as Shakespeare called it, has
played in our country’s history, the symbol of its highest justice,
whether it appeared with its edge turned towards or turned away from
the prisoner: and what scenes in English history has not that steel
reflected in its impassive surface. This axe is in itself an epitome of
the history of the Tower, and consequently of England.
[Illustration: _Horse and Foot Armour (XVIIᵗʰ. Century.)_]
Beneath the western wall of the White Tower is a varied park of
artillery. Here, placed side by side, are cannon taken from out the
wreck the _Mary Rose_, a warship lost off Spithead in 1545, with others
from the _Royal George_, which sank in the same place in 1782. Here is
a Portuguese cannon made in 1594 and taken at the siege of Hyderabad
in 1843; and guns made for Napoleon at Avignon, with the crowned N
engraved upon them. What is curious amongst the old English cannon of
the sixteenth century, is their being made of iron bars welded together
and bound round with iron hoops. One of these belonged to the _Mary
Rose_, and still holds within its barrel a stone shot. Here is also
a breech-loading cannon made early in the sixteenth century, and two
triple brass guns made for Louis XIV. bearing his device of the sun and
the motto, “Ultima ratio regum.” The old French and English mortars
are also of interest, the earliest of the latter being dated 1686; one
was used by William III. at the siege of Namur in 1695. There is a
French mortar made by Keller, Louis’s gun-founder at Douai, in 1683.
In 1708 there were sixty-two guns on Tower Green and the river wharf:
the latter were fired on festivals; they are now used for saluting from
“Salutation Battery,” which faces Tower Hill. Amongst these weapons of
destruction one is almost certain to find a pair of venerable ravens
hopping about; they are a pair of weird and eerie fowls, and one might
imagine the spirit of some guilty wretch had been re-incarnated under
their black feathers.
In Mr W.H. Hudson’s book, entitled “Birds of London,” these and
other birds are described as follows:—“At the Tower of London robins
occasionally appear in autumn, but soon go away. The last one that
came, settled down and was a great favourite with the people there
for about two months, being very friendly, coming to window-sills
for crumbs, and singing every day very beautifully. Then one day he
was seen in the General’s garden wildly dashing about, hotly pursued
by seven or eight sparrows, and, as he was never seen again, it was
conjectured that the sparrows had succeeded in killing him. The robin
is a high-spirited creature, braver than most birds, and a fair
fighter, but against such a gang of feathered murderous ruffians, bent
on his destruction, he would stand no chance.
“The Tower sparrows, it may be added, appear to be about the worst
specimens of their class in London. They are always at war with the
pigeons and starlings, and would gladly drive them out if they could.
It is a common thing for some foreign bird to escape from its cage on
board ship and to take refuge in the trees and gardens of the Tower,
but woe to the escaped captive and stranger in a strange land who seeks
safety in such a place! Immediately on his arrival the sparrows are
all up against him, not to ‘heave half a brick at him,’ since they are
not made that way, but to hunt him from place to place until they have
driven him, weak with fatigue and terror, into a corner where they can
finish him with their bludgeon beaks.”
It is worthy of notice that no mention is made of the Tower in Domesday
Book, London being altogether omitted from that work. Of all the Norman
strongholds and castles which rose in London along the river-side, of
Montfichet, Baynard’s Castle, the old Palace at Blackfriars, or of
Tower Royal, Stephen’s palace in Vintry Ward, no trace remains, and of
them all the great Norman keep of the Conqueror remains little altered
in outward form from what it was eight centuries ago.
[Illustration: _Horse and Foot Armour (XVIIᵗʰ. Century.)_]
TOWER HILL
Tower Hill, which lies to the north-west of the Tower, is more closely
allied with the history of the fortress than any other spot within
the City boundaries, and the short space intervening between it and
the entrance gate of the Tower was, in most cases, the final journey
of the State prisoners condemned to death. Writing of Tower Hill,
Stow, the antiquary, says it was “sometime a large plot of ground, now
greatly straightened by encroachments (unlawfully made and suffered)
for gardens and houses. Upon the hill is always readily prepared at the
charge of the City, a large scaffold and gallows of timber, for the
execution of such traitors or transgressors are as delivered out of the
Tower, or otherwise, to the Sheriffs of London, by writ, there to be
executed.”
Hatton, however, describes Tower Hill in the reign of Queen Anne as “a
spacious place extending round the west and north parts of the Tower,
where there are many good new buildings, mostly inhabited by gentry and
merchants.”
The Sheriffs of London and Middlesex were responsible for State
prisoners so long as they were within the City and county boundaries,
and when such prisoners were taken through the streets of London from
the Tower, the Sheriffs received them from the Lieutenant of the Tower
at the entrance to the City, and gave a receipt for their persons.
The City officials, too, were responsible for the scaffold on Tower
Hill, but in the reign of Edward IV. this scaffold was erected at
the charge of the King’s officers. Constant quarrels and disputes,
however, arose on the subject of the boundaries between the City and
the Lieutenant of the Tower, until the charge of Tower Hill was finally
vested in the City. In the view of the Tower and its surroundings, to
which I have so often referred, made by Haiward and Gascoyne in 1597,
the scaffold is shown standing some distance to the north of Tower
Street: its site is now a pleasant garden, the place of execution being
recorded by an inscription on a tablet placed on the grass plot within
the railings.
Tower Hill is almost entirely associated with the shedding of blood,
with the masked executioner, his block and axe, and has little
historical interest besides, save that Lady Raleigh lodged in a house
on the Hill with the child born to her in the Tower, after James I.
refused to allow her to share her husband’s imprisonment. William Penn,
the Quaker, and founder of Pennsylvania—which he mortgaged for £6600
in his old age—was born on Tower Hill in 1644; Otway the poet died at
the Bull public-house, it is supposed of starvation; and it was at a
cutler’s shop on Tower Hill that Felton bought the knife with which he
mortally stabbed George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, at Portsmouth.
STAINED GLASS IN THE TOWER
Of all the richly coloured windows placed in the chapel of St John in
the White Tower by Henry III. and the brilliant glass in the church of
St Peter ad Vincula, very little now remains, and the only coloured
glass to be found in the Tower at the present day, as it was originally
placed, is in the window of a little room used as the library for
the Tower warders close to the Byward Tower—this room in one respect
resembles the most famous library in the world, that of the Vatican,
from the fact that no books are visible, they being all put away in
cupboards—and this consists only of two royal badges in coloured glass.
These royal arms appear to be of the time of James I., and although
they have been much restored, that containing the three feathers of the
Prince of Wales retains much of its old glaze and is a good example of
emblazoned glass of the period. It may possibly have been intended for
the cognisance of Prince Henry, or Charles I., when Prince of Wales.
A quantity of stained glass panels were found in the crypt of St John’s
Chapel, in which some interesting and valuable fragments, mostly
incomplete in themselves, of heraldic glass of the sixteenth century
and of small pictorial subjects, were mixed with modern and valueless
glass of subordinate design. The whole was carefully examined by Messrs
John Hardman, who separated the ancient from the modern glass, and
using delicate leads to repair the numerous fractures of the former,
and setting the various fragments in lozenges of plain glass, filled
the right windows of the chapel with the following subjects:—
The first window in the south front, entering from the west, a coat of
arms, with the words “Honi soit qui mal y pense” around it on the upper
portion; a sepia painting in the centre, representing the Deity and two
angels appearing to a priest, with flames rising from an altar. In the
lower portion is another sepia painting with the Deity depicted with
outstretched arms, one hand on the sun, the other on the moon, and the
earth rolling in clouds at the feet. This is generally supposed to be
emblematical of the Creation, but has been suggested as representative
of the Saviour as the Light of the World.
The second window has a head and bust near the top, with a peculiar cap
and crown. The centre is a sepia representing the expulsion of Adam
and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and the guardian angel. At the bottom
there is another sepia, depicting a village upon a hill, probably a
distant view of Harrow.
The third window has at the top a figure of Charles I. in sepia; in the
centre a knight in armour, skirmishing, and at the bottom what appears
to be a holly-bush with the letters H. R.
The fourth window has a negro’s head with a turban in the upper
portion; in the centre a sepia of Esau returning from the hunt to seek
Isaac’s blessing, Rebecca and Jacob being in the background. Near the
bottom is another sepia of the exterior of a church, probably Dutch.
The fifth window, and the last of the series facing south, has a coat
of arms and motto like those in the first window; in the centre, a
sepia of the anointing of David by Samuel, and near the bottom Jehovah
in clouds, with the earth and shrubs bursting forth. This is probably
emblematical of the Creation.
The south-east apsidal window has the coat of arms and royal motto as
before, with two smaller coats of arms and the same motto below, a
royal crown and large Tudor rose being near the bottom.
The eastern window (in the centre of the apse) has a crown with
fleur-de-lys and leopards at the top, and in the centre the small
portcullis of John of Gaunt and the wheat-sheaf of Chester. These are
by far the best heraldic devices in the whole series of windows.
The north-east window has a very imperfect coat of arms with
fleur-de-lys and leopards, as well as two other coats with the royal
motto. There is also a device which might be taken to represent the
letter M, but which is probably the inverted water-bottles of the
Hastings family. Daggers are quartered upon the other coats of arms.
At the bottom of this window is a Tudor rose and several fragments of
glass much confused.
The glass has been placed in the windows with great care, the subjects
being made as complete as the broken fragments permitted. Each of the
eight windows is ornamented with leaded borders.