THE EDWARDS
At the close of Henry’s troubled reign we find the Tower in the keeping
of the Archbishop of York, a post he held while the young King, Edward
the First, was absent upon an expedition in Palestine. Although this
monarch was not often at the Tower, he added to its buildings, and
strengthened its fortifications, which, after the two sieges they had
lately undergone, no doubt stood much in need of repair, and it was
during his reign that the fortress became the recognised place of
incarceration for State prisoners, and the principal prison in the
realm. The dungeons beneath the White Tower were crowded with hundreds
of unfortunate Jews in 1278,—a strange way, it seems, of repaying
these people for the courage and loyalty some of their brethren had
so recently displayed in the reign of the King’s father, in defending
the same fortress against the King’s enemies. These Jews—there were
some six hundred of them—were imprisoned in the Tower on the charge of
clipping and defacing the coin of the realm.
The prisons were often filled after Edward’s campaigns, many captives
being brought from Wales and from Scotland. Amongst the latter, after
the defeat of the Scottish army at Dunbar in 1296, was King Baliol,
with the Earls of Athol, Sutherland, Menteith, Ross, and others,
Baliol’s son, Prince Edward, with other Scottish chiefs and knights,
being added to the former batch of State prisoners in the following
year.
It was in 1305 that one of the greatest heroes of that or any other
period was brought a prisoner to London, and one would give much to
know with any certainty whether William Wallace was imprisoned or not
in the Tower, and where he spent the last days of his glorious life.
But it is a matter of uncertainty whether he ever entered the walls of
that fortress. He appears, when brought to London, to have been lodged
in a citizen’s house in Fenchurch Street, whence he was taken to his
trial at Westminster Hall; there he was impeached, and, as Holinshed
has it, “condemned and thereupon hanged at Smithfield.” Had Wallace
been imprisoned in the Tower, Holinshed would probably have recorded
the fact. The manner of the hero’s death will ever remain a stain upon
England and upon the memory of his judges. He was treated worse than
a common felon; dragged in chains to the gallows, and killed with
every detail of barbarous cruelty. Three other distinguished Scottish
prisoners were imprisoned in the Tower in 1306, after the battle of St
John’s Town, before their execution. These were the Earl of Athol, Sir
Simon Fraser, and Sir Christopher Seton. Their heads were placed on the
turrets of the White Tower.
Not only did the dungeons of the Tower hold the King’s enemies in this
reign, but also many of his clergy and judges. Of the former was the
Abbot of Westminster, with a following of eight of his monks, who were
imprisoned upon the charge of having robbed the King’s Treasury to the
amount of one hundred thousand pounds—a prodigious sum in those days.
Among the judges imprisoned in the Tower at this time (1289) were Ralph
de Hengham, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, and the Master of the
Rolls, Robert Lithbuy, with others, charged “with criminal partiality
in the discharge of their offices”; they were only released after
paying heavy fines.
The succeeding monarch Edward II., frequently occupied the Tower,
leaving his queen and children within the fortress for safety in 1322,
whilst he invaded Wales; and it was in the Tower that his eldest
daughter was born—Jane of the Tower, as she was styled on account of
the place of her birth. She lived to marry David Bruce and to become
Queen of Scotland in 1327. During this reign the once powerful order
of the Knights Templar fell into unspeakable ruin, the Tower becoming
the prison of all the knights of the order who had been arrested south
of the Tweed, their Grand Master dying there. Besides these there
were many prisoners of note taken in Scotland and Wales, and mention
is made of a woman having been imprisoned there for the first time.
The lady who gained this unpleasant celebrity appears to have richly
deserved her incarceration. On the occasion of a visit made to the
shrine of St Thomas at Canterbury by Queen Isabella and her retinue,
the royal pilgrim, on her return journey to London, was obliged to
crave the hospitality of the _châtelaine_ of Leeds Castle in Kent.
Lady Badlesmere, for such was the name of the lady of the Castle, not
only refused to admit the royal party, but gave orders for it to be
attacked, and several of the Queen’s servants were killed. As a result
of this conduct upon the part of the strong-minded Lady Badlesmere,
Leeds Castle was taken, its governor hanged, and the inhospitable lady
herself was conveyed to London, and occupied a prison in the Tower.
Amongst the Welsh prisoners in the Tower towards the close of Edward’s
reign were the two Lords Mortimer of Wigmore and of Chirk, the former
of whom, making his escape and gaining France in safety, returned
at the head of an army. Edward had thrown himself into the Tower,
but fled to Wales when he heard that Mortimer and the Queen—his most
implacable enemy—were in arms against him. The King was captured, and
soon afterwards murdered at Berkeley Castle. Meanwhile Mortimer had
seized the Tower and beheaded the Bishop of Exeter, whom Edward had
left in charge, had taken the keys from the Constable, Sir John Weston,
and, releasing the prisoners, gave the Tower into the keeping of the
citizens of London. After Edward the Second’s murder, his son, the
young King Edward the Third, was kept in a state of semi-captivity in
the Tower by his mother, Queen Isabella, and her paramour Mortimer.
Edward, however, soon showed the strength of his character, and, after
capturing Roger Mortimer and his sons at Nottingham in 1330, carried
them to the Tower, where they were promptly hanged.
The French and Scottish wars waged by the third Edward brought many
State prisoners to the Tower. From France came the Counts of Eu and
Tankerville, taken at the close of the siege of Caen in 1346, together
with three hundred burghers of that town. From Scotland came David
Bruce, with a large following of his nobles, Sutherland, Carrick, Fife,
Menteith, Wigton, and Douglas, captured by Percy at the Battle of
Neville’s Cross in 1346. Froissart and Rymer describe the huge escort
of twenty thousand armed men which guarded the captive Scottish King,
mounted on a black charger, on his arrival at the Tower on 2nd January
1347, how the streets were crowded with eager sightseers, the City
companies drawn up clad in their richest liveries, and Sir John Darcy,
the Constable, receiving the King at the Tower gate. Bruce remained
a prisoner in the fortress until he was liberated on the payment of
an immense ransom, the companions of his imprisonment being the brave
defender of Calais, Jean de Vienne, with twelve of its principal
citizens, after the siege and capture of that city. Eleven years later,
in 1358, another sovereign was a prisoner in the Tower, John, King of
France, with his son Philip, remaining there for two years after the
Battle of Poitiers, until the Treaty of Bretigny set them free in 1360.
A minute survey of the Tower had been made in 1336, and in the
following year orders were given by Edward for repairs therein, “on
account,” the King said, “of certain news which had lately come to
his ears, and which sat heavy at his heart; the gates, walls, and
bulwarks shall be kept with all diligence, lest they be surprised by
his enemies.” He ordained that the gates of the fortress should be
closed “from the setting till the rising of the sun.” But in spite of
these royal commands, it appears that the Tower was allowed at this
period to fall into disrepair; for, three years after these orders had
been issued by Edward, we find him, on his second return from warring
in France, landing secretly one November night at the Tower, and
finding the place so ill-guarded that he had the Governor and some of
the other officers imprisoned, amongst them being the Lord Chancellor,
who combined that office with the Bishopric of Chichester. About this
time Edward’s Queen, Philippa, was brought to bed of a daughter in the
Tower, but the little Princess, who was named Blanche, died in her
infancy, and was buried in the Abbey Church of Westminster.