TOWER HILL
The garlands wither on your brow;
Then boast no more your mighty deeds;
Upon Death’s purple altar now
See where the victor-victim bleeds:
Your heads must come
To the cold tomb;
Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust.
J. SHIRLEY.
The actual spot on which the scaffold was erected on the hill is marked,
in the garden by which it is now surrounded, by a square of stone paving
set in the turf just within the gate on the south-western side of the
enclosure. Happy children skip and play on this blood-stained bit of
ground; the flowers leap up in April and the birds make melody in May;
Nature has healed the sore and done lavishly to make us forget, by her
gifts, that here was the scene of angry mobs crying for the slaughter of
some of the nation’s noblest men. The block was set up on a high wooden
platform so that the ceremony of decapitation was performed well above
the heads of the dense crowd that gathered on the hill when the more
notable Tower prisoners were brought here to die. It is stated that
during the making of the tunnel that goes through Tower Hill to-day the
wooden foundations of the scaffold were discovered, and also, near by,
the remains of two victims whose bodies had been interred there. Neither
the imbedded timber nor the human bones were disturbed, and both still
lie beneath the turf to fix accurately the spot of execution. Tower Hill
seems to have possessed a gallows also, for we find frequent record of
criminals being “hanged in chains” there, either for State or other
offences. Under an oak tree that grew on the slope towards the Tower
gateway, the public stocks stood, and in the vestry minutes of
Allhallows Barking, under the date December 16, 1657, we find it
recorded that an order was given “for the erection of stocks and
whipping-post required by the statute at the churchyard corner in Tower
Street against Mr. Lowe’s, the draper’s, with a convenient shed over
them.” How Mr. Lowe, the draper, took the proposition we are not
informed, but if he expressed his feelings in forcible language he
might, perchance, have met the fate of his neighbour, Mr. Holland, who,
three years previously, on April 26, 1654, “was fined 3s. 4d. by
Alderman Tichbourne for vain oaths sworn” within the parish of
Allhallows. Tower Hill would seem, in those days, to have had a peculiar
attraction for “beggars and common vagrants.” It was a popular resort
for those who lived to beg and those who begged to live--two very
different classes of people, but both equally inconvenient. In the
middle seventeenth century the condition of affairs became serious and
gave alarm both to officials and to the annoyed inhabitants of the
district. In May, 1647, the Vestry of Allhallows “takes into
consideration the destitute condition of the poor, and it is ordered
that a collection for the poor shall be made every second Sabbath in the
month; the churchwardens shall stand at the door ... to receive the
freewill offerings of the parishioners,” and in 1654 the residents
appeal to the Lord Mayor, for “grate, grate, very grate are your
petitioners’ wants, and may it please your Honour to afford them some
relief ... without which they are unable to maintain so great a charge.”
Hither came “a poore starving Frenchman,” who was solaced with 2s.; a
like sum was granted to a “poore Spaniard turned Protestant” and a
“poore Dutch minister.” The dwellers on the side of Tower Hill were
themselves at times reprimanded by the authorities, for we find that in
May, 1653, “Goodman Dawson and his wife” are summoned to appear,
“because they would not let their daughter, aged seventeen, go out to
service: their pension to be stopped as long as they encourage such
indolence,” which seems a just enough proceeding.
This district suffered severely during the three years after the Great
Fire. Tower Hill lay on the eastern edge of the city of desolation. The
poor proprietor of the Blue Bell tavern, which stood in picturesque
angularities overlooking the hill before the catastrophe which reduced
it, to quote its owner’s words, “to nothing but a ruinous heap of
rubbish,” sought exemption, in 1669, from arrears of lawful dues. These
old inns bordering Tower Hill were the scene of frequent “Parish
dinners,” at which the consumption of food was so considerable as to
lead one to believe that Tower Hill was noted in those days, as it is
to-day, for its fresh air, which sharpens the edge of appetite. These
feeds were partaken of by just as many “men of import in the parish” as
could get into a small
[Illustration: THE TOWER AND TOWER HILL, SHOWING SITE OF THE SCAFFOLD,
IN THE GARDEN]
room, “mine host’s best parlour.” On April 26, 1629, they consumed “5
stone of beefe, 2 legges of mutton, 2 quarters of lamb, 3 capons,” and
so on. A few weeks afterwards they are at it again and “dine upon 5
ribbs of beef, a side of lamb, 2 legges of mutton, 2 capons; and did
drink wine and beer to the value of £l:7s.” This reminds one of
Falstaff’s feeds in Eastcheap and his capacity for imbibing Canary sack.
At one meal, in _Henry IV._, Shakespeare makes the fat knight, if we go
by the bill presented afterwards, drink sixteen pints of wine! In 1632
sack was sold in the City at 9d. per quart, claret at 5d., and Malmsey
and muscadine at 8d.
In Queen Anne’s reign Tower Hill is described as “an open and spacious
place, set with trees, extending round the west and north parts of the
Tower, where there are many good new buildings, mostly inhabited by
gentry and merchants.” In the contemporary drawings it is shown as an
open space, but singularly devoid of trees. The artists may have been so
intent upon crowding their pictures with tightly packed citizens gazing
upon the decapitation of some unfortunate nobleman that they forgot to
put in the trees. Certainly several of the fine trees that now adorn
Trinity Square are of some age, and represent the survivors of that
fragment of the ancient forest which crept up to the eastern side of the
hill, and which we see so plainly marked in many of the old maps.
In a house on the western side of Tower Hill Lady Raleigh dwelt with her
son when her husband was denied her society. From her window she could
look out day by day upon the Brick Tower to which Raleigh had been
removed, and tradition asserts that she was able to communicate with him
and send him gifts in spite of Waad’s stringent orders. The house in
which William Penn was born, on October 14, 1644, stood on the east side
of the hill; its site is covered by the new roadway leading to the
Minories. Penn was sent to school at Chigwell, in Essex, and it was
during those days of boyhood that he had been impressed by the preaching
of a Quaker preacher which led him to forsake the Church of his baptism
(he was baptized, as we shall see in the following chapter, in
Allhallows Barking), and join the Society of Friends. Thomas Otway, the
poet, abused by Rochester in his _Session of the Poets_, and praised by
Dryden, died, it is believed of starvation, in the Bull Inn on Tower
Hill, when only thirty-four years old. That great Elizabethan, Edmund
Spenser, was born near Tower Hill in 1552, and passed his boyhood there,
before going, when sixteen, to Pembroke College, Cambridge. In Little
Tower Street, in a timber-fronted, many-gabled house, now, alas, swept
away, James Thomson wrote his poem _Summer_, published in 1727. So much
for literary associations.
Peter the Great, who raised Russia “out of the slough of ignorance and
obscurity,” in order to superintend the building of a navy took upon
himself the task of learning shipbuilding, first as a common labourer,
afterwards as a master craftsman. He came to London for four months and
worked in the dockyards by day and drank heavily in a public-house in
Allhallows Barking parish at night. He was accustomed “to resort to an
inn in Great Tower Street and smoke and drink ale and brandy, almost
enough to float the vessel he had been helping to construct.” Barrow,
his biographer, states that “the landlord had the Czar of Muscovy’s head
painted and put up for his sign, which continued until the year 1808,
when a person of the name of Waxel took a fancy to the old sign and
offered the then occupier of the house to paint him a new one for it. A
copy was accordingly made from the original, which maintains its
station to the present day as the sign of the Czar’s Head.” The house
has since been rebuilt and the sign removed, but the name remains. While
the Earl of Rochester was in disgrace at Court in Charles II.’s time he
is said to have “robed and bearded himself as an Italian quack or
mountebank physician, and, under the name of Bendo, set up at a
goldsmith’s house, next door to the Black Swan in Tower Street,” where
he advertised that he “was to be seen from three of the clock in the
afternoon till eight at night.” The second Duke of Buckingham came, once
or twice in disguise, in his days of political intrigue, to a house
facing Tower Hill, to consult an old astrologer who professed to draw
horoscopes. In Seething Lane, then known as Sidon Lane, which runs from
Allhallows Barking to the Church of St. Olave’s, Hart Street, Sir
Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s principal secretary, dwelt “in a
fair and large house.” This foe of the Jesuits died here on April 5,
1590, “and was buried next night, at ten of the clock, in Paul’s
Church.”
St. Olave’s Church is a building with many interesting associations, and
a well-written little pamphlet has recently been issued which visitors
will do well to read. There is only space here to mention the Pepys
monument, in the South Aisle, where the diarist was buried in June,
1703, the service being taken by his friend Dr. Hickes, Vicar of
Allhallows Barking. The registers of the parish show that from July 4 to
December 5, 1665, there were buried 326 people who had died of the
plague. A quaint skull and crossbones carving can still be seen over the
gateway within which the burial pit lay. Pepys, going to church
reluctantly early in the following year, is relieved to find snow
covering the plague spot. St. Olave’s has renewed its old-time activity
under the care of its present rector, the Rev. A. B. Boyd Carpenter.
There is much of interest, also, in the neighbouring church of St.
Dunstan-in-the-East, lying between Tower Street and Lower Thames Street.
Its graceful spire is a familiar landmark, and, with its flying
buttresses set in bold relief when seen from Tower Hill against a sunset
sky, makes a noble crown to the church hidden from sight. St. Dunstan’s
list of rectors dates back to the early fourteenth century. In 1810 the
church became ruinous, and the walls of the nave, owing to insecurity of
foundation, showed signs of collapsing altogether. The present building
was opened in 1821 after restoration and reconstruction. The registers
of St. Dunstan’s escaped the Fire, and date back to 1558. A valuable
model of the church as rebuilt by Wren, and almost contemporaneous with
the rebuilding, may be seen in the vestry.
The chief Mint of England was, from the Conquest down to 1811, situated
within Tower walls. It was removed in the year just mentioned to the
present buildings on the eastern side of Little Tower Hill, over which
visitors are shown if application be made beforehand to the
Deputy-Master. The art of “making money” is here shown from the solid
bar of gold to the new sovereign, washed and tested, sent out on its
adventurous career in a world which will welcome its face in whatever
company it appears. The Mint also possesses an excellently arranged
museum of coins and medals, in which are many invaluable treasures.
Trinity House, headquarters of the Trinity Brethren, stands on Tower
Hill, facing the Tower. A graceful and well-proportioned building, it
supplants the older quarters in Water Lane, Great Tower Street. The
corporation of Trinity House was established in 1529 as “The Masters,
Wardens, and Assistants of the Guild, or Fraternity, or Brotherhood of
the Most Glorious and Undividable Trinity,” and the first headquarters
was situated near the river, at Deptford. The guild was founded by Sir
Thomas Spert, Comptroller of the Navy to Henry VIII., and commander of
the great ship, “a huge gilt four-master, the _Harry Grace de Dieu_,” in
which the King sailed to Calais on his way to the Field of the Cloth of
Gold. In 1854 “the exclusive right of lighting and buoying the coast”
was given to the Board of Trinity House. Within Trinity House to-day may
be seen models of practically all the important lighthouses and
lightships on the English coast. The regulations of Trinity House in
former times are described by Strype, and among them we find rules to
the effect that “Bumboats with fruit, wine, and strong waters were not
permitted by them to board vessels. Every mariner who swore, cursed, or
blasphemed on board ship was to pay one shilling to the ship’s poor-box.
Every mariner found drunk was fined one shilling, and no mariner could
absent himself from prayers unless sick, without forfeiting sixpence.”
The present House on Tower Hill was built in 1793-95 by Samuel Wyatt. On
the front, Ionic in character, are sculptured the arms of the
corporation, medallions of George III. and Queen Charlotte, genii with
nautical instruments, and representations of four of the principal
lighthouses on the coast. The interior is beautified by several valuable
pictures, one of them a large Gainsborough, and a suite of most handsome
furniture. Here, too, is preserved a flag taken from the Spanish Armada
by Drake, and many curious old maps and charts. The present Master of
Trinity House is H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, who visits Tower Hill every
Trinity Monday, and, with the Elder Brethren, walks through Trinity
Square and Catherine Court to service at the parish church.
An old print hanging in one of the rooms of Trinity House depicts, with
some realism, the last execution on Tower Hill, in 1747, when Lord Lovat
suffered. In August of the previous year the Earl of Kilmarnock and Lord
Balmerino had been brought to the block after the Culloden tragedy. A
journal of the time gives us a most detailed account of the proceedings,
from which some extracts may be taken in order to form some idea of
procedures that were soon to end for ever. “About 8 o’clock the Sheriffs
of London ... and the executioner met at the Mitre Tavern in Fenchurch
Street, where they breakfasted, and went from thence to the house, on
Tower Hill near Catherine’s Court [now Catherine House], hired by them
for the reception of the lords before they should be conducted to the
scaffold, which was erected about thirty yards from the said house. At
ten o’clock the block was fixed on the stage and covered with black
cloth, with several sacks of sawdust up to strew on it; soon after the
coffins were brought, also covered with black cloth.” The leaden plates
from the lids of these coffins are those now preserved on the west wall
of St. Peter’s on Tower Green. “At a quarter after ten,” the account
proceeds, “the Sheriffs went in procession to the outward gate of the
Tower, and after knocking at it some time, a warder within asked, ‘Who’s
there?’ The officer without replied, ‘The Sheriffs of London and
Middlesex.’ The warder then asked, ‘What do they want?’ The officer
answered, ‘The bodies of William, Earl of Kilmarnock, and Arthur, Lord
Balmerino,’ upon which the warder within said, ‘I will go and inform the
Lieutenant of the Tower,’ and in about ten minutes the Lieutenant with
the Earl of Kilmarnock, and Major White with Lord Balmerino, guarded by
several of the warders, came to the gate; the prisoners were then
delivered to the Sheriffs, who gave proper receipt for their bodies to
the Lieutenant, who as usual said, ‘God bless King George!’ to which the
Earl of Kilmarnock assented by a bow, and the Lord Balmerino said, ‘God
bless King James!’ Lord Kilmarnock had met Lord Balmerino at the foot of
the stairs in the Tower and said to him, ‘My lord, I am heartily sorry
to have your company in this expedition.’” The prisoners were led to the
house near the block in Trinity Square, and they spent what time was
left to them in devotions. Kilmarnock was brought out to the scaffold
first. “The executioner, who before had something administered to keep
him from fainting, was so affected by his lordship’s distress, and the
awfulness of the scene that, on asking his [Lord Kilmarnock’s]
forgiveness, he burst into tears. My Lord bade him take courage, giving
him at the same time a purse with five guineas, and telling him he would
drop his handkerchief as a signal for the stroke.... In the meantime,
when all things were ready for the execution, and the black bays which
hung over the rails of the scaffold having, by the direction of the
Colonel of the Guard, or the Sheriffs, been turned up that
[Illustration: THE BLOCK, AXE, AND EXECUTIONER’S MASK]
the people might see all the circumstances of the execution, in about
two minutes after he kneeled down his lordship dropped his handkerchief.
The executioner at once severed the head from the body, except only a
small portion of the skin which was immediately divided by a gentle
stroke. The head was received in a piece of red baize and, with the
body, immediately put into the coffin.” Lord Balmerino followed shortly
afterwards, wearing the uniform in which he had fought at Culloden. His
end was not so swift as Lord Kilmarnock’s had been; twice the
executioner bungled his stroke, and not until the third blow was the
head severed.
Lord Lovat, whom Hogarth had seen, and painted, in the White Hart Inn at
St. Albans as the prisoner was being brought to London, was led to the
block on Tower Hill on Thursday, April 9, 1747, and his was the last
blood that was shed there. Just before his execution, a scaffolding,
which had been erected at the eastern end of Barking Alley, fell and
brought to the ground a thousand spectators who had secured places upon
it to view the execution. Twelve were killed outright and scores of
others injured. “Lovat,” as the account puts it, “in spite of his awful
situation, seemed to enjoy the downfall of so many Whigs.” Lord Lovat’s
head was, at one blow, severed from his body, and Tower Hill’s record of
bloodshed was at an end.