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Title: The Tower of London
Author: Benham, William
Language: English
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[Illustration: THE TOWER OF LONDON.
_From a MS. of the Poems of Charles, Duke of Orleans.
British Museum_, 16 _F._ II.]
THE
TOWER OF LONDON
By
WILLIAM BENHAM, D.D., F.S.A.
_Rector of St. Edmund the King, Lombard Street,
and Honorary Canon of Canterbury_
[Illustration]
LONDON
SEELEY AND CO. LIMITED, GREAT RUSSELL STREET
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
1906
_To_
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL
SIR GEORGE BRYAN MILMAN, K.C.B.
MAJOR OF THE TOWER,
THE FOLLOWING ACCOUNT OF THE NOBLE FORTRESS,
OF WHICH HE IS SO EARNEST AND ENTHUSIASTIC A GUARDIAN,
_is Dedicated_
IN TOKEN OF DEEP RESPECT FOR HIS NAME AND WORK,
AS WELL AS IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT
OF THE HELP WHICH HE HAS GIVEN ME
IN THIS LABOUR OF LOVE.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
EARLY HISTORY 1
CHAPTER II.
GENERAL SURVEY OF THE BUILDINGS 13
CHAPTER III.
IN THE DAYS OF THE LATER PLANTAGENETS 24
CHAPTER IV.
IN THE TIME OF THE TUDOR KINGS 38
CHAPTER V.
THE TUDOR QUEENS 52
CHAPTER VI.
THE STUARTS 68
CHAPTER VII.
THE HOUSE OF HANOVER 92
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
PRINTED IN COLOURS FROM ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS
THE TOWER OF LONDON. From a _MS. of the Poems of Charles,
Duke of Orleans_. (British Museum, 16 F. ii.)
_Frontispiece_
ASSAULT ON A FORTRESS. From a _MS. of Boccaccio de
Casibus Virorum et Fœminarum Illustrium_.
(British Museum, 35321) 26
ARTILLERY OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. From a _MS. of the
Chronicles of England_. (British Museum, 14 E. iv.) 34
A TOURNAMENT. From a _MS. of the Romance of the Sire
Jehan de Saintré_. (British Museum, Nero D. ix.) 42
OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS
1. SOUTH AISLE OF ST. JOHN’S CHAPEL. From a _Drawing by
J. Wykeham Archer_. (British Museum) 8
2. BUILDING A GATEWAY. From a _MS. of Le Trésor des
Histoires_. (British Museum, Aug. A. v.) 8
3. MEN-AT-ARMS CROSSING A DRAWBRIDGE. From a MS. of
_Les Chroniques d’Angleterre_. (British Museum,
14 E. iv.) 8
4. STAIRCASE OF THE WHITE TOWER. From a _Drawing by
J. Wykeham Archer_. (British Museum) 8
5. INDIAN ELEPHANT AND RHINOCEROS BROUGHT OVER IN 1686.
From a _Mezzotint by P. Vander Berge_.
(Gardner Collection) 8
6. LIONS’ DENS IN THE TOWER. From a _Drawing made in_
1779. (Gardner Collection) 8
7. THE TOWER, SHOWING THE EAST OUTER BALLIUM. From a
_Drawing by H. Hodge_. (Gardner Collection) 16
8. THE SALT TOWER, AND PART OF THE ANCIENT BALLIUM.
From a _Drawing by J. Wykeham Archer_.
(British Museum) 16
9. THE PRISONERS’ WALK. From a _Drawing by
C. J. Richardson_. (Gardner Collection) 16
10. THE WAKEFIELD TOWER. From a _Drawing by
C. Tomkins_. (British Museum) 16
11. TRAITORS’ GATE, FROM WITHOUT. From a _Drawing
by C. Tomkins_. (Gardner Collection) 16
12. TRAITORS’ GATE, FROM WITHIN. From an
_old Engraving_ 16
13. BANQUET GIVEN BY RICHARD II. From a _MS. of the
Chronicles of England_. (British Museum, 14 E. iv.) 24
14. AN ACT OF ARMS BEFORE THE KING AND QUEEN. From
a _MS. of the Romance of Sire Jehan de Saintré_.
(British Museum, Nero D. ix.) 24
15. GATEWAY OF THE BLOODY TOWER. From an _Engraving
by F. Nash_, 1821 24
16. QUEEN IN A HORSE LITTER, ATTENDED BY HER LADIES ON
HORSEBACK. From a _MS. of Froissart’s
Chronicles_. (British Museum, 18 E. ii.) 24
17. VAULTED ROOM IN THE CRYPT OF THE WHITE TOWER, IN WHICH
THE RACK STOOD. From a _Drawing in the
Gardner Collection_ 40
18. A CELL IN THE BLOODY TOWER. From a _Drawing
by J. Wykeham Archer_. (British Museum) 40
19. THE PRIVY COUNCIL CHAMBER IN THE LIEUTENANT’S LODGING.
From a _Drawing by P. Justyne_. (Gardner Collection) 40
20. A ROOM IN THE BEAUCHAMP TOWER, WITH PRISONERS’
INSCRIPTIONS ON THE WALLS 40
21. THE BEAUCHAMP TOWER AND ST. PETER’S CHAPEL.
From a _Drawing by P. Justyne_. (Gardner Collection) 40
22. THE LIEUTENANT’S LODGING. From a _Drawing
by C. J. Richardson_. (Gardner Collection) 40
23. THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF ST. KATHARINE, LOOKING WEST.
From an _Engraving by J. Carter_ 40
24. THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF ST. KATHARINE, LOOKING EAST.
From an _Engraving by B. T. Pouncey_ 40
25. THE EXECUTION OF THE EARL OF STRAFFORD. From the
_Engraving by W. Hollar_ 80
26. THE SEVEN BISHOPS TAKEN TO THE TOWER. From a
_Dutch Etching of the time_. (Gardner Collection) 80
27. THE SOUTH VIEW OF THE TOWER OF LONDON. _By Samuel
and Nathaniel Buck_, 1737 80
28. THE TOWER AND OLD LONDON BRIDGE. From an
_Engraving after J. Maurer_, 1746. (Gardner
Collection) 80
29. THE MOAT. From an _Engraving after J. Maurer_,
1753. (Gardner Collection) 96
30. THE TOWER AND THE MINT, FROM TOWER HILL.
From a _Drawing by T. S. Boys_, 1842 96
31. THE TOWER FROM THE THAMES. _After E. Duncan_ 96
32. THE CITY BARGES AT THE TOWER STAIRS. From a
_Drawing on stone by W. Parrott_.(Gardner Collection) 96
PLAN OF THE TOWER OF LONDON. From a _Drawing made
between_ 1681 _and_ 1689 104
_The numerous subjects drawn from the collection formed
by the late Mr. J. E. Gardner are reproduced by kind
permission of Mr. E. T. Gardner. The skill of Miss
E. A. Ibbs has contributed to the production of the
illustrations in colour._
THE TOWER OF LONDON
CHAPTER I
EARLY HISTORY
_Ancient London—Its Port and Trade—The Tower its
Safeguard—Invasion by Julius Caesar—The Roman Province of
Britain—Roman Wall and Tower—The Roman Abandonment—Saxon
Invasion—London the East Saxon Capital—Danish
Invasions—Desertion of London—Its Restoration by Alfred—The
Norman Conquest—Bishop Gundulf, the Conqueror’s Architect
of the White Tower—It becomes a Royal Palace for the
East as Westminster for the West—The Royal Menagerie
in the Tower—Great Additions made by Henry III—His
unpopularity—The Civil War—How the Tower became a State
Prison—Additions made by Edward I—Quarrels of Edward II with
his Barons—His Occupation of the Tower—His Flight—Murder
of Bishop Stapledon—Murder of the King—Residence of Edward
III in the Tower, first as his Mother’s Prisoner, then
independent—Execution of Mortimer—The Beginning of the
Hundred-Years’ War—Strange use made of the Tower in the days
of preparation—Imprisonment of illustrious French Captives,
the Comte d’Eu, King John of France, Charles of Blois—Also of
King David Bruce of Scotland—Peace of Bretigny—The Mint—St.
Katharine’s Hospital._
The Tower of London is the most interesting fortress in Great Britain;
it has a history equalled in interest by few fortresses in the world.
The Acropolis at Athens and the Capitol of Rome are far more ancient,
but they are fortresses no longer. The only rival in this respect that
occurs to me is the massive tower at the Western Gate of Jerusalem. It
was probably built by King David, and enlarged by Herod; and it is a
military castle at this day. So is our Tower, and it was built for that
use.
The Port of London held a high position from the beginning of the
history of Western Europe. Before the first Roman invasion of Britain
there was a City of London, carrying on trade not only with the inland
towns, but with the Continent. It was, as it is, a splendid position,
and on the site of the present Tower the Britons had a fortress to
protect it. Fifty-four years before the Christian era Julius Caesar
led the first Roman invasion of this country, but he was only here
three weeks, and it is very doubtful whether he ever came to London. He
makes no mention of it in his _Commentaries_. We may therefore treat
the story that he built the Tower as a myth, though Shakespeare does
take it for granted (_Richard II_, act v, sc. 1). The Roman Conquest of
our island was not achieved until nearly a century later; from which
time, until the latter half of the fifth century, Britain was a Roman
Province. The conquerors made London their chief city in Southern
Britain, built the Roman wall, of which many portions still exist, and
renewed the British fortress which held its commanding position as
the safeguard of the city. On the south side of the great keep is a
fragment which was laid bare some years ago, when some buildings were
pulled down, and that fragment is certainly Roman. It is part of the
_Arx Palatina_ constructed during their domination. They abandoned the
island at length, and after a brief interval came the invasion of our
Teutonic forefathers, and London thus became the capital of the Kingdom
of the East Saxons.
But it was now anything but a flourishing city. The Danish invasions
for a while destroyed its prosperity, and as Sir Walter Besant holds,
caused the greater part of the population to flee. It was King Alfred
who restored London, repaired the broken walls, and brought back the
trade. “There were great heroes before Agamemnon,” the poet tells us,
“but they found no chronicler to recount their feats.” And in like
manner, one may say, the Tower had, no doubt, passages of historic
interest before the Norman Conquest, which have not come down to us. It
is barely mentioned in the Saxon chronicles. A few Saxon remains are
noted by antiquaries. But at the Norman Conquest the continuous and
most striking history begins, and continues unbroken. As we look upon
it to-day, spite of all the mighty changes which Time has wrought, not
only in the surroundings, but in the building itself, the great square
keep is the most conspicuous object, and it was built by William the
Conqueror. He brought, on the recommendation of Lanfranc, from the
monastery of Bec a Benedictine monk named Gundulf, and made him Bishop
of Rochester. He had travelled not only over many parts of Europe, but
in the East, and was familiar with the beauties of Saracenic art,
which he made subservient to the decoration of his monastery, and now
brought into use in his new See. He rebuilt Rochester Cathedral, and
the noble castle beside it has also been ascribed to him, but this
seems to be a mistake. And then the great King set him to work on
the London fortress; and he built the White Tower, as we call it, as
well as St. Peter’s Church and the old Barbican, the present Jewel
House. “I find,” writes Stow, “in a fair register book, containing
the acts of the bishops of Rochester, set down by Edmund of Hadenham,
that William I, surnamed Conqueror, built the Tower of London, to
wit, the great white and square tower there, about the year of Christ
1078, appointing Gundulf, then Bishop of Rochester, to be principal
surveyor and overseer of that work.” Gundulf was the greatest builder
of his time; several still existent Norman towers in Kent are almost
certainly his;[1] but he was also most earnest in the discharge of his
episcopal duties, and both Lanfranc and Anselm entrusted much spiritual
work to him. Even the rough and brutal Rufus, as well as his brother
Henry I, treated him with marked respect. He died in 1108 at the age
of eighty-four. The massive Ballium wall, varying from thirty to forty
feet in height, was probably also his work.
Henry I was the earliest King apparently to use the Tower as a State
prison. He shut up Ralph Flambard, Bishop of Durham, in the White Tower
on the charge of illegally raising funds to build the very fortress.
Probably the imprisonment was a sop to public opinion, for the Bishop
was hated for his exactions. He escaped, however; got possession of
a rope which had been hidden in a wine cask, invited his keepers to
supper and made them drunk; then fastening the rope to a window bar he
let himself down. A swift horse which some friends had provided for him
carried him to the coast, and he went over to Normandy, where he was
cordially received by Duke Robert. But after the battle of Tenchebrai
had destroyed all the hopes of the latter, King Henry welcomed the
overtures which Flambard made to him, and restored him to his see at
Durham, where he afterwards achieved his beautiful architectural works.
The Tower was from that time onwards a Royal Palace, as was Westminster
in the West. We catch incidents of residence in two or three reigns,
but they are few. It is noted by one chronicler that during the contest
between Stephen and Matilda, Stephen broke through the older custom and
kept the Pentecost festival in the Tower instead of at Westminster.
One fact comes out clear enough. Some of the Norman Kings kept wild
beasts; Henry I had some lions and leopards at his palace at Woodstock.
Frederick II of Germany sent three leopards as a present to Henry III,
and they were placed in the Tower, where were already some lions, an
elephant, and a bear, probably other beasts as well. There is an old
account of the arrival of an elephant at Dover, and the amazement of
the people as it was led up to London. Amid all its vicissitudes the
Tower remained a royal menagerie until 1834. The Sheriff of London
was ordered in 1252 to pay fourpence a day for the keep of the bear,
as well as to provide a muzzle and chain for him when he was set to
catch fish in the Thames. All through the Plantagenet days the beasts
had food provided at the cost of 6_d._ a day. Their keeper was a Court
official, styled “The Master of the King’s bears and apes.” The bears
dwelt in a circular pit, like that in the main street of Berne to-day.
It was situated where the ticket office and refreshment rooms are now.
In the days of James I the bears were baited for the brutal amusement
of the privileged. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth a German tourist
named Hentzner saw here “a great variety of creatures, viz. three
lionesses, one lion of great size called Edward VI, from his having
been born in that reign, a tiger, a lynx, a wolf excessively old, a
porcupine, and an eagle. All these creatures are kept in a remote
place, fitted up for the purpose with wooden lattices at the Queen’s
expense.” All through our literature there are references from time to
time to the Tower menagerie. The “Lion Gate” was so called from its
proximity to this.
When Richard I went on Crusade, he left the Tower in charge of his
Chancellor, Longchamp, Bishop of Ely. John, on usurping the kingdom,
besieged the Tower, which Longchamp abandoned to him, and he committed
it to the care of the Archbishop of Rouen, who held it till Richard’s
return. When John’s kingdom was invaded by the French Dauphin, Louis,
at the invitation of the rebellious barons, the Tower was handed over
to him, but he does not seem to have resided there.
The next important builder after William the Conqueror was Henry III.
A good deal of English fortification work is to be attributed to him.
His master mason at the Tower was Adam of Lambourne, but the King
himself may be called his own clerk of the works. He built the outer
wall facing the ditch which had been dug in Norman days, and of course
supplied with water from the Thames. It will be remembered that this
King was the builder of the greater portion of Westminster Abbey;
whatever his defects as a ruler, he was a man of learning and taste,
and he decorated the Norman chapel in the White Tower with beautiful
frescoes and stained glass, and gave bells to St. Peter’s Church on
Tower Green. The Lantern Tower, on the new wall, he chose for his
bedroom, and built a tiny chapel in it for his own devotions, which
was so used by his successors until the tragedy of a king murdered
before the altar destroyed the sanctity. Traitors’ Gate, also, was his
work, the great entrance from the river side, and a very noble piece
of engineering; how it got its name we shall see abundantly hereafter.
A yet more important work of his, and for a while most unpopular,
was the Wharf: the strip of bank alongside the river like the Thames
Embankment of our own day. Adam of Lambourne was the engineer also of
this remarkable work. Piles of timber were driven into the mud, and
rubble thrown in between them, and then the whole mass was faced with
a barrier of stone. At the beginning of the work the high tide washed
it down, and carried away completely a tower which he was constructing
to guard it. The citizens sent a remonstrance, not only against the
expense, but against the harm which they considered it would cause
to trade navigation, but the King persisted and ordered Adam to make
his foundations stronger. A cry was even got up that the ghost of St.
Thomas of Canterbury had appeared to denounce the work. But the King’s
wisdom was so far justified by the result, that there to-day is the
Wharf, and its foundations are firm as ever.
I have told in the story of _Old St. Paul’s_ how his Queen, Eleanor of
Savoy, had much to do with King Henry’s unpopularity. She was beautiful
to look upon, and highly accomplished, a patron of the arts, and the
bringer of musical excellence, both of voice and instrument, from
her native land of Provence. But she was greedy of money, proud,
arrogant and vindictive, and always bent on enriching her kindred. Her
uncle, Boniface of Savoy, whom she made Archbishop of Canterbury, was
detested by the clergy, especially by the monks, for his insatiable
and unblushing avarice. Her husband loved the Tower as a place of
residence, but when one day she started forth in her barge for
Westminster she was received with curses and cries of “Drown the
witch,” and had to hasten back in terror and take refuge once more
within the Tower walls. Her son, Edward I, never forgave the Londoners
for so insulting his mother, and not long after found an opportunity of
revenging it. At the Battle of Lewes he defeated a regiment of London
citizens fighting on the side of the Barons, and pursued them far out
of the field, slaughtering some 2,000 of them. But his leaving his
father to look after himself had much to do with his losing the battle.
The war between King Henry and the Barons came to an end with the
defeat and death of Montfort at Evesham in 1264. The Barons had held
the Tower until then, but the King now resumed authority over it, and
increased its fortifications. He first made the famous Hugh de Burgh,
Earl of Kent, Constable, but afterwards replaced him by Peter de
Roches, Bishop of Winchester. Before long the peace of the country was
again disturbed by Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, who having
obtained possession of the city of London denounced the Papal Legate
Otho for residing in the Tower; it was “a post,” he said, “not to be
trusted in the hands of a foreigner, much less of an ecclesiastic.”
The Legate, in defiance, went to St. Paul’s, and under pretence of
preaching in favour of the Crusade, broke forth into fierce invectives
against the earl, who was present. The preacher had some difficulty in
making his way back to the Tower, which was besieged by de Clare; but
he held it successfully until the siege was raised by the royal army.
One notable prisoner of this reign was Griffin, son of Llewelyn, Prince
of Wales, who was caught and detained in the Tower as a hostage in
1244. He attempted to escape as Flambard had done, making a rope of
his bedclothes. But he was very fat, it broke, and he was killed. His
nephew Llewelyn was the chieftain who afterwards gave so much trouble
to Edward I.
Prince Edward went away to the Holy Land, and during his absence his
father, Henry III, died. The custody of the Tower was committed to the
Archbishop of York till his return to England, when he completed the
works in the fortress which his father had begun, and erected some
additional fortifications on the western side. Stow quotes a record of
his in which he commands the Treasurer and Chamberlain of the Exchequer
“to deliver unto Miles of Andwarp [Antwerp] 200 marks towards the worke
of the ditch, then new made about the bulwarke, now called the Lion
Tower.” Then, says Bayley, “may be regarded as the last additions of
any importance that were ever made to the fortress.” During Edward’s
active and powerful reign the Tower was chiefly appropriated to the use
of a State prison. Of the multitudes of Jews who were apprehended in
1278, on the charge of clipping and adulterating the coin of the realm,
no less than 600 were confined at once in the Tower, and the conquest
of Wales and the attempt to conquer Scotland both provided a succession
of illustrious prisoners, who lost their liberty in an unequal struggle
for their country’s freedom. It was in 1296 that Edward began his war
for the conquest of Scotland. The battle of Falkirk in 1298 scattered
the whole Scottish army, but the subjugation was not complete, for
the English had to retire for want of provisions, but the leaders of
the Scottish army, the Earls of Athol, Menteith and Ross, with their
poor King Baliol and his son Edward, and other Scottish leaders, were
brought to the Tower, as in 1305 was William Wallace. The latter was
executed in Smithfield, August 25, 1305. His was one of the first
trials in Westminster Hall.
Edward II, like his father, showed no partiality for the Tower as a
residence, but occasionally retired to it as a place of safety. In 1322
his eldest daughter was born here, and was called in consequence “Joan
of the Tower,” as his youngest son was called John of Eltham from his
birthplace. During that miserable reign the conspiracies raised by the
barons, first against Piers de Gaveston, and afterwards against the
Despensers, the successive favourites of the unhappy King, caused the
issuing of frequent orders for putting the Tower in a state of defence.
In 1312 engines were constructed, and other precautions taken to make
it impregnable, for the barons were in open rebellion. In 1324, Lord
Mortimer being confined in the Tower, and more rebel barons in other
fortresses, a plot was laid to set them at liberty simultaneously. This
failed, but Mortimer contrived to escape by inviting the governor of
the Tower, Sir Samuel Segrave, with other officers of the fortress,
to a banquet and making them drunk. Though every exertion was made
to recapture him he got away to France, where in conjunction with
the Queen, Isabella, he brought about the unnatural conspiracy which
deprived the wretched King of his throne and his life. Segrave was
removed from his post and imprisoned, and the custody of the Tower
was committed to Walter Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter—a terrible
trust, as was soon proved. For the rebellion was already assuming
the most formidable shape. In the early part of 1326 the Queen and
her accomplice Mortimer landed in Suffolk. The King retired to the
newly-fortified Tower, summoned the Mayor, Sheriffs and Aldermen
of the city to his presence-chamber, and gave his commands for the
preservation of the tranquillity of the capital. He further issued a
proclamation offering a reward for Mortimer’s head. But the rebels came
on, in the full confidence of victory. The King in vain endeavoured
to rouse the Londoners in his defence; and so on October 2 he left
the Tower in charge of Bishop Stapledon, his young son John of Eltham
being there also, and hastened away to the West of England, in hopes
of finding greater loyalty there. He had hardly left London when the
rebel spirit of its inhabitants broke out in fury; they seized the
bishop in charge, dragged him into Cheapside, and beheaded him with
some other officers, and appointed officers of their own to rule in the
name of John of Eltham. Stapledon was a man not only of rectitude of
character, but a munificent patron of learning. Exeter College, Oxford,
owes its foundation to him, and much of the beauty of Exeter Cathedral
is his work. He was first buried in the Church of St. Clement Danes,
but afterwards removed to his Cathedral, where a magnificent monument
covers him. The “she-wolf” queen and her paramour, after the King’s
murder at Berkeley Castle, ruled for a while in the name of the young
King Edward III, and kept him secluded in the Tower as a mere puppet.
But they misjudged their power; he broke through their control, and
threw himself on the nation; Mortimer was arrested at Nottingham and
brought to the Tower, whence on November 29 he was carried to “Tyburn
Elms,” hanged, drawn, and quartered—treated, in fact, as he had
treated the Despensers.
[Illustration: 1. SOUTH AISLE OF ST. JOHN’S CHAPEL. _From a drawing
by J. Wykeham Archer, 1852. British Museum._]
[Illustration: 2. BUILDING A GATEWAY. _From a MS. of Le Trésor des
Histoires, British Museum, Aug. A. v._]
[Illustration: 3. MEN-AT-ARMS CROSSING A DRAWBRIDGE. _From a MS.
of Les Chroniques d’Angleterre, British Museum_,
14 _E iv._]
[Illustration: 4. STAIRCASE OF THE WHITE TOWER. _From a drawing
by J. Wykeham Archer, 1851. British Museum._]
[Illustration: 5. INDIAN ELEPHANT AND RHINOCEROS BROUGHT OVER IN 1686.
_From a mezzotint by P. Vander Berge. Gardner Collection._]
[Illustration: 6. LIONS’ DENS IN THE TOWER. _From a drawing made
in 1779. Gardner Collection._]
The great but unrighteous claim of Edward III to the crown of France,
resulting in the “hundred years’ war” concerns us here thus far, that
he resided in the Tower whilst he was making his preparations to
enforce his claim; and on his departure placed a strong garrison in
it, and furnished it as a fit and secure residence for his son, Prince
Edward, whom he appointed regent in his absence. In 1341 he secretly
returned to England, landed at the Tower at midnight on November 30,
accompanied by the Earl of Northampton, Sir Walter Manny, and other
great men, and finding the fortress badly guarded, imprisoned the
governor and officers and treated them with exemplary rigour. He took
up his residence in the Tower, discharged the Lord Treasurer and the
Lord Chancellor, Robert Bishop of Chichester, and delivered the great
seal to Robert Bourchier, who afterwards fought at Crecy. All these
strong measures were in consequence of the disorders and abuses which
he found. From this time till 1342 King Edward kept his Court here, and
here, during that period, his Queen Philippa gave birth to a princess
who was named Blanche, but who died in infancy and was buried in
Westminster Abbey.
That great war wrought momentous changes in the course of English
history, which will indirectly concern us in these pages. It also
changed very decidedly and materially the position and the uses of
the Tower, which from this time onwards became peculiarly celebrated
as the prison of illustrious captives. On July 27, 1346, King Edward
captured Caen, one of the richest and most powerful towns in Normandy,
and took prisoner the Constable of France, the Count d’Eu, the Count
of Tankerville, and sent them with 300 of the most opulent citizens
as prisoners to the Tower of London. He then marched along Northern
France, on August 26 won the battle of Crecy, and on September 3
laid siege to Calais, a very strong town, which had done much harm
to the English and Flemings by piracies. That memorable siege lasted
just eleven months, and we all remember the pretty story of the
self-devotion of Eustace de Saint Pierre and the averting of the King’s
vengeance by the intercession of Queen Philippa.
While this siege was going on King Philip of France persuaded the King
of Scotland, David Bruce, to invade England, and so to revenge past
injuries, and secure future independence. He came with 50,000 men,
laid waste all the border country, and drew nigh to Durham. But here
he was met by a small body of English, led by Lord Percy, and entirely
defeated. This was the battle of Neville’s Cross, fought on October
17, 1346. King David was taken prisoner, as were the Earls of Fife and
Monteith and several more Scottish chiefs. They were all brought to
London to the amazing joy and delight of the citizens. The captive King
was mounted on a high black courser; the City Guilds, clad in their
respective liveries, made a great escort for him, through street after
street, until he was committed to the custody of Sir John D’Arcy, the
Constable of the Tower, on January 2, 1347. The same year the roll of
illustrious captives was increased by the famous Charles of Blois, one
of the competitors for the Duchy of Brittany, and, on the surrender
of Calais, by its valiant governor, John of Vienne, and twelve of his
comrades. Bruce continued in captivity here for eleven years.
In 1358 the great fortress received a yet more illustrious prisoner.
King John of France and his son Philip were taken captive by Edward the
Black Prince at the battle of Poitiers, and brought to London. At first
they were lodged in the Duke of Lancaster’s palace in the Savoy, then
at Windsor, and apparently had a fine time with hawking and hunting and
good cheer. Next year when King Edward returned to France “he made all
the lordes of France, such as were prisoners, to be put into dyvers
places and strange castelles, to be the more sure of them, and the
Frenche Kynge was set in the Towre of London, and his yonge sonne with
hym, and moche of hys pleasure and sport restrayned; for he was then
straytlyer kept than he was before.” They had not a bad time of it,
however, here apparently. The Scottish King had just been liberated,
but there were many French nobles to make up a court for him. Next year
the treaty of Bretigny restored him to his country.
* * * * *
Coining operations had been carried on in the Tower here ever since
the Norman Conquest, if not long before. It was not, however, the only
place. In the reign of Charles I there seem to have been fifteen mints,
but an edict of the reign of Edward III enacted that all moneys,
wherever coined, should be made uniform with those of the Tower.
After the Restoration, small rolling-mills were set up in the Tower,
driven by horse and water power, and a great improvement was hereby
effected—milled instead of hammered coins. The workshops were between
the inner and outer walls, and the road which runs between St. Thomas’s
Tower and the Bloody Tower was formerly called Mint Street. In 1696
an Act was passed, calling in the old hammered coinage, to be melted
down in a furnace at Westminster, and sent in ingots to the Tower, to
reappear in milled form. Sir Isaac Newton, Master of the Mint, made
many more improvements. In 1810 the Mint was removed outside—to Little
Tower Hill, where it is at this day.
Though it did not belong to the Tower, nor was within its limits, the
Royal Hospital of _St. Katharine’s by the Tower_ cannot be passed
over without mention. It was founded in 1148 by Matilda, wife of King
Stephen, for the repose of her two children, for the maintenance of
a master and several poor brothers and sisters. Eleanor, Henry III’s
widow, augmented it in 1273, “for a master, three brethren, chaplains,
three sisters, ten bedeswomen, and six poor scholars.” The foundation
was placed under the especial patronage and jurisdiction of the Queen
Consorts of England, and, with all changes, has so remained to the
present day. The office of Master is the only preferment in the gift
of the Queen Consort or Queen Dowager. Queen Philippa, Edward III’s
wife, gave houses in Kent and Herts for its additional support. Thomas
de Bekington, Master in 1445, afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells,
obtained a charter of privileges, by which the precincts of the
hospital were decreed free of all jurisdiction, civil or religious,
except that of the Lord Chancellor, and to help the funds an annual
fair was to be held on Tower Hill, to last twenty-one days from the
Feast of St. James.
Henry VIII and Katharine of Aragon founded here a guild of St. Barbara,
among the governors of which was Cardinal Wolsey. He did not suppress
it with the other religious houses, in compliment to Anne Boleyn, whom
he had lately married.
The Church was in the Decorated style, very close to the Iron Gate of
the Tower, properly St. Katharine’s Gate. Stow, writing in 1598,
describes it as “enclosed about and pestered with small tenements and
homely cottages.” When the royal assent was given to the making of St.
Katharine’s Docks in 1825, the hospital was removed to Regent’s Park.
There were some interesting monuments in the old church. The first
President of the Royal Society, Lord Brouncker, was buried here, and
Ducarel the Antiquary. The fine tombs of John Holland, Duke of Exeter,
his duchess, and his sisters, were removed to the Regent’s Park. The
Duke, who died in 1447, was High Admiral of England and Ireland and
Constable of the Tower.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The fine old keep at Malling, in Kent, (now like Rochester only a
shell) is the work of Gundulf.
CHAPTER II
GENERAL SURVEY OF THE BUILDINGS
_A Walk round Tower Hill—The Moat—The Outward Ballium—The
Legge and Brass Mount Batteries—Develin, Well, Cradle, and
St. Thomas’s Towers—Traitors’ Gate—The Inner Ward, its
Shape—Bell, Beauchamp, Devereux—Towers on the West; Flint,
Bowyer, Brick, Martin, on the North; Constable, Broad Arrow
on the East; Lanthorn, Wakefield and Bloody on the South—The
Great Keep, its Construction—The Chapel—Armoury—Little
Ease—The Ancient Palace, now removed—Church of St. Peter ad
Vincula—The King’s House—Officers of the Tower—The Yeomen of
the Guard._
Here we may conveniently pause; the building is substantially
completed, the great keep, the two enclosures, the Inner and Outer
Ballium. Subsequent changes are all within these, and we shall have
occasion to notice them at later dates, but now that we have seen the
fortress completed, and used, partly as a Royal residence, partly as a
State Prison, we will survey the whole in detail. And I ask attention
to the Plan opposite p. 104, which will make each point clear. I
propose, then, first to take a walk round the outside and start from
the bottom of Tower Hill by the main entrance, where the visitors are
busy buying their tickets of admission. The modern building where they
are doing this is the site of the old Lion Tower. Facing us is the
Middle Tower, the gateway which leads over the Moat into the fortress
itself. But as I am keeping outside I pass this and ascend the hill.
To-day the whole of the bank of the Moat on the western and northern
side is laid out as a flower garden, and the many seats among the trees
are well occupied with loungers, mostly poor, some asleep and some
reading the newspaper. The Moat, which is as old as the Tower itself,
was deepened by Bishop Longchamp while he held the place for Richard
I, and again by Henry III, the water of course being supplied from the
Thames, which flowed in at what we call Traitors’ Gate. Its greatest
width is about a hundred feet. It is said that bathing in it in the
days of the Plantagenets was a capital offence, but some one suggests
that this simply means that it was so unsanitary as to be likely to
prove fatal. There can be no doubt that the water splashing upon the
walls and bastions added greatly to the picturesqueness; you see
that in all the old pictures, but the changes of Time put aside its
usefulness, and after eight centuries of its ebb and flow, the Duke
of Wellington, when he was Constable, had it filled up to its present
level and the communication with the river cut off. So now we look
down upon a smooth level, on the west side gravelled, a place for
recreation, and sometimes also a drying-ground of the Tower laundry. On
the other sides, when we get to them, we see great portions laid down
for garden ground. On the other side of the Moat is the Outward Wall,
built by Henry III. Surveying it from this western side we see first
the Byward Tower, which, as a glance at the plan will show, is opposite
the Middle Tower, and forms the land entrance into the fortress. On the
opposite end of this western side is the “drum bastion,” segment of a
circle about 80 feet diameter, called _Legge’s Mount Battery_, probably
after George Legge, Earl of Dartmouth, who had charge of it in the
seventeenth century.
Turning eastward, and surveying the north side, we observe that this
is not, like the western, a straight line, but an obtuse angle, which
is bounded on the east by the Brass Mount, probably so called because
brass cannon were mounted on it. At the bend is the North Bastion, a
modern erection containing three tiers of casements, each pierced for
five guns. At the north-east we leave the side of the Moat, and passing
up through the gardens emerge opposite the Mint into the open road,
which leads over that wonderful achievement of modern engineering, the
Tower Bridge. But as our present business is not with it, we go down a
flight of steps into Little Tower Street, on a level with the Thames.
The wall on the eastern side is quite straight; and so we pass to the
eastern end of the river front. This, as being the most exposed and
also having the moat narrower, is fortified with five regular towers,
the Develin, Well, Cradle, St. Thomas’s and Byward Towers. The Develin
(_temp._ Henry III) formerly led into the precincts of St. Katharine’s.
Till lately it was used as a powder magazine. The Cradle Tower is in
front of what were the royal apartments, and was a gate specially for
the convenience of royalty. There was in those days a portcullis, and
a hoist or lift by which a boat could be lifted from the river to the
level of the gateway. Hence the name “cradle,” a movable bed.
Next we come to St. Thomas’s Tower, almost always called now Traitors’
Gate, from its ancient function. It was the water-gate of the Tower,
and commanded the communication between the Thames and the Moat. It
is in fact a barbican, probably unique, placed astride upon the Moat,
which was here about 40 feet broad, and perforated by a passage leading
from the river. The original name was the _Watergate_; “Traitors’ Gate”
dates from the time of Queen Elizabeth. Independently of its historical
associations it is really a wonderful structure, a magnificent arch, 62
feet span, with no key-stone, the stones of the two rows of the arch
fitted together with perfect accuracy. The state prisoners were brought
down the river in the government barge, conveyed beneath this arch to
the flight of steps, by which they ascended to the gateway of the Inner
Ward. Of course, like the rest of the Moat, the bed is now dry and the
river walled out, but there, under the arch, are still the massive
folding trellised gates, as well as the steps, the latter partially
renovated, no doubt, but unmistakably showing some of the old ones
which so many feet have trod. We think of the men, not only brought in
as prisoners, but carried forth again to Westminster Hall for trial,
and brought back so often under sentence of death, with the edge of
the axe turned towards them. Not the Roman Capitol, nor the Römer of
Frankfurt, nor the Bridge of Sighs at Venice can count such a list of
names as Traitors’ Gate. St. Thomas’s Tower was built by Henry III, and
named by him after St. Thomas of Canterbury. There is an old piscina
showing that it once contained a chapel. Passing it we come along the
Wharf to our starting-point, the Middle Tower, and so have completed
the walk round the outside.
And now starting from the Middle Tower and crossing a stone bridge over
the Moat, which replaces a wooden drawbridge which gave entrance of
old, but has been withdrawn now that there is no longer need of it, we
are in the Inner Ward, and I shall do with this as with the Outer, and
first walk round it on the outside. It is enclosed within a curtain
wall, having twelve mural towers and a gatehouse. Its longest side
faces the river, the east and west sides incline inwards, so that the
north face is narrower than the base, and like the corresponding wall
in the outer ballium, is broken by an obtuse angle, having like that
a central salient. When we get to the inside we shall find that this
Inner Ward is on a higher level than the Outer, some 15 or 20 feet.
This may be partially owing to the earth excavated by Longchamp when
the ditch was made being thrown up here. There is a clear passage
between the Inner and Outer Ward, to which the ordinary visitor is not
admitted. It is known as “The Casemates.” We first, by the courtesy
of the authorities, walk round this and note the semicircles of the
towers: on the west side, the Bell, Beauchamp and Devereux; on the
north, Flint, Bowyer, Brick, Martin; on the east, Constable, Broad
Arrow, Salt; on the south, Lanthorn, Wakefield, Bloody. Most of these
will be noticed in turn. This passage round, which is now quite
open, was formerly filled up with houses, warders’ residences and
storehouses, which were removed in 1867. There are doorways along it
into the outer wall, in which are lodgings for officials and chambers
for stores. And now we make a yet further move, and pass within the
wall, and so are in the heart of the Tower itself. The original
entrance was through the Bloody Tower; it is so now for one division
of visitors, but the Wakefield is made another entrance. Within,
naturally, the prominent object in view as in historical interest is
the Keep, the great White Tower of William the Conqueror. It stands on
sloping ground, so that the north side basement is 25 feet higher than
the south; quadrangular, 107 feet north and south by 118 east and west.
The two western angles are square; that on the north-east has a round
stone turret; the south wall terminates eastward in a bold half-round
bow, marking the apse of the chapel. This keep is 90 feet high,
composed of three floors, or four stages. The basement is below ground
on the north, and on the ground level on the south. The walls are from
12 to 15 feet thick. The internal area is divided by a wall 10 feet
thick, which rises from bottom to top, and so makes a separate smaller
western and larger eastern portion. This last is again subdivided into
two by another wall running east and west. The vault or subcrypt of
the chapel is known in Tower phrase as “Little Ease.” We shall have it
hereafter. On the first floor is the crypt and the upper storeroom. On
the second floor is St. John’s Chapel, nave and aisle, and the Lower
Armoury; on the third floor the chapel triforium and the Upper Armoury,
the ancient Council Chamber, or “state floor.”
[Illustration: 7. THE TOWER, SHEWING THE EAST OUTER BALLIUM.
_From a drawing by H. Hodge, April, 1880.
Gardner Collection._
THE DEVELIN OR IRONGATE TOWER.
THE SALT TOWER.
THE BROAD ARROW TOWER.
THE CONSTABLE TOWER.
BRASS MOUNT BASTION.
THE WELL TOWER.
THE JEWEL TOWER.
]
[Illustration: 8. THE SALT TOWER, AND PART OF THE ANCIENT BALLIUM.
_From a drawing by J. Wykeham Archer_, 1846. _British Museum._]
[Illustration: 9. THE PRISONERS’ WALK. _From a drawing
by C. J. Richardson_, 1871. _Gardner Collection._]
[Illustration: 10. THE WAKEFIELD TOWER. _From a drawing
by C. Tomkins_, 1801. _British Museum._]
[Illustration: 11. TRAITORS’ GATE, FROM WITHOUT. _From a drawing
by C. Tomkins_, 1801. _Gardner Collection._]
[Illustration: 12. TRAITORS’ GATE, FROM WITHIN. _From an old
engraving. British Museum._]
We can trace here the origins of our old Law Courts. From the first it
was a recognized rule that the Inner Ballium was sacred to royalty,
and the general world coming on business had to content itself
with admission to the Outer Ballium. The great Council Chamber was
especially the “King’s Curia,” the _King’s Bench_, where his justices
sat to supervise the proceedings of inferior courts, as well as to
deal with criminal matters directly affecting the Crown. The _Court of
Common Pleas_, suits between subject and subject, was held in the Hall
Tower close to the Outer Ballium, to which there was an entrance into
the Royal Palace. And here strict rules were kept, in order to keep
the commonalty at a distance. There was a preliminary meeting at the
Church of All Hallows Barking, to settle who were to be admitted for
the pleadings. This last Court was removed to Westminster Hall by Magna
Charta.
The entrance into this wonderful building is by a well-stair at the
south-west angle. The keep was restored on the outside by Sir C. Wren,
who faced the windows with stone in the Italian style. The inside has
been very little altered. The largest of the four turrets was the
original Observatory of the great astronomer, Flamsteed.
The Chapel, dedicated to St. John the Evangelist, is a very rare,
if not unique, example of such a large and complete apartment in a
Norman keep. It is in plan a rectangle 40 feet by 31 feet, terminating
eastward in a semicircular apse of its full breadth, making the total
length 55 ft. 6 in. It is divided into a nave and aisles, a splendid
example of Norman work, simple, complete. It was intended primarily,
no doubt, for the devotions of the Conqueror and his descendants; the
church of St. Peter below was built for the use of the garrison. Though
architecturally plain, it was probably painted and hung with tapestry.
Henry III gave some stained glass. The only fireplace in the great keep
is on this floor.
The Armoury was begun by Henry VIII. His original locality of the
armour was Greenwich, and consequently there is little armour here
older than the fifteenth century. It used to be kept in a temporary
gallery, removed in 1883, on the south side of the keep; it was then
removed to the top floor, and within the last few years the floor below
is also required. I make no attempt to classify the armour here; the
subject has been fully treated in the _Portfolio_ monographs, Nos. 33
and 38.
South of the keep, between it and the ward wall facing the river,
formerly stood the Royal Palace, which was removed at various times by
James I and Cromwell to make room for storehouses. Some portions even
remained until after the Restoration. The Castle Keep in the Middle
Ages was the occasional residence of the lord, but he almost always
had his ordinary lodging close by. In the plan will be observed “_k._
little storehouse in Cold Harbour”; it was the old gateway into the
King’s residence, and the Queen had her own rooms between the Salt and
Lanthorn Towers. At “_h._ Mortarpiece Storehouse” was the Great Hall
where the King heard cases and received deputations.
Of the twelve mural towers the _Wakefield_ is the most ancient. It is
also known as the Record Tower, the national records having been kept
there until they were removed to their present home in Fetter Lane. In
the survey of Queen Elizabeth it is the Hall Tower, from its proximity
to the hall just mentioned. It is a large circular building; the lower
part is probably the work of William Rufus. The upper storey consists
of a fine handsome chamber, with a recess which it is said Henry VI
used as his private chapel, fitting it with aumbry and piscina; and
tradition states that it was whilst he was praying here that he was
murdered. The Wakefield Tower is now the receptacle of the King’s Crown
and all the other splendid articles of the English regalia.
Bloody Tower was the original gatehouse of the Inner Ward. It stands
opposite to Traitors’ Gate, and also abuts against the Wakefield
Tower, does not bulge out into semicircle as do the others, but its
exterior face ranges with the curtain wall. All this indicates that
its safeguarding was carefully thought of. Its original name was the
Garden Tower, and it is so called in the survey of Henry VIII. This was
owing to its being close to the Constable’s garden, now the Parade. Its
present name is given to it in the survey of 1597; popular prejudice
rather than Tower tradition attributes the change to the murder of
Edward and his brother, but the word seems hardly appropriate to the
_smothering_ of the poor children. The chief warder showed me some
hooks in the gateway. On these, he told me, heads were stuck after
executions, and these he said were the origin of the name.
The _Bell Tower_ was so called from the alarm bell suspended from its
summit. The bell now discharges the duty of summoning the garrison to
St. Peter’s Church.
The _Beauchamp_ or Cobham Tower is one of special interest owing to the
number of memorials cut upon its walls by its distinguished prisoners.
We shall have some of them hereafter. Its name is derived from Thomas
Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, who was imprisoned here towards the end of
the fourteenth century. The _Devereux_ was originally the Robert the
Devil Tower. The name was altered when Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex,
was confined in it in 1601. The Flint and Curtain Towers were rebuilt
not many years ago. The _Bowyer_ is so called because it was the
workshop of the royal maker of bows.
_Martin’s Tower_ became the Jewel House in 1641. The jewels were moved
that year from the south side of the White Tower, because, as that was
used for a powder magazine, it was feared they might be endangered. It
was here that Colonel Blood made his audacious attempt in 1673, as we
shall see.
The others have nothing special which need detain us; they were all
at one time or other used as prisons, except the Lanthorn Tower which
was the King’s bedchamber and private room at the time when he had his
palace here. It has been recently restored. It took its name from the
light placed on the top for the benefit of vessels coming up the river.
The Church of _St. Peter ad Vincula_, in the north-west corner of the
Inner Ward, was in existence from Norman times. There is mention of it
in the days of King John, but the present building is mostly of the
Perpendicular period. It is devoid of ornament, but has a deep interest
as having been the burial place of so many victims who perished on the
scaffold almost close to it on the Parade or Tower Green, as well as
on Tower Hill outside. Most of them however have been removed to other
resting-places. Some years ago the remains of the victims of the ’45
were found, and the lead coffin plates are now fastened on the wall.
The chaplain is appointed by the Crown, but is under the jurisdiction
of the Bishop of London.
The King’s House is the official designation of the Lieutenant’s
lodging, on the south-west part of the Inner Ward. This also has many
interesting historical associations. In the _Council Chamber_, now
occupied as a bedroom, the Commissioners appointed by James I examined
the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot. A long Latin inscription on
the wall commemorates the circumstances. Here was imprisoned Margaret,
Countess of Lenox, grandmother of James I, for marrying her son, Lord
Henry Darnley, to the Queen of Scots.
It has been found desirable to state these details as the canvas on
which the historical incidents which follow can be written in their
due course. But this seems also the place to give some account of the
officers of the Tower.
When William the Conqueror had achieved his great work of building the
Tower, he showed his high sense of its importance by conferring the
charge of it on one of his faithful followers, Geoffrey de Mandeville,
who had distinguished himself greatly at the Battle of Hastings. He
was called the “Constable,” sometimes “of the Tower,” sometimes “of
the sea”; this last owing to the jurisdiction which he exercised over
the ships that came up the river. There are constant cases, dispersed
through the records, how he allowed and restrained merchants to depart
from the port, prevented forestalling, took security not to go to
forbidden places, compelled those who brought fish to London for sale
to take them to Queenhithe, and so on.
He had various customs and profits. From every boat coming to London
laden with rushes, such a quantity as could be held between a man’s
arms was to be laid for him on the Tower Wharf; from every oyster boat
“one maund” (hand-basket full); from every ship laden with wine, one
flagon before and one from behind the mast; swans coming under London
Bridge towards or from the sea belonged to the Constable; horses,
cows, pigs, sheep falling from the bridge into the Thames were the
Constable’s if he could rescue them; and for every foot of such animals
feeding within the ditches of the Tower, he was entitled to one penny.
Then there were tenements on Tower Hill of which the rents were his, as
well as those for herbage growing on Tower Hill; herring boats from
Yarmouth paid him twelve pence. Then prisoners had to pay heavy fees—a
duke paid twenty pounds, an earl twenty marks, a knight a hundred
shillings. And there was an annual fee of fifty to a hundred pounds,
and allowances of wax, wine, and other necessaries for the use of
the household. It is needless to add that though these particular
privileges have gone, the Constable of the Tower has always been a very
important personage, holding his appointment by Royal Letters Patent
under the Great Seal. He has the honour of the privilege of audience
of, and direct communication with the King. On his installation the
keys are delivered to him by the Lord Chamberlain. He, always a man,
therefore, of high rank, appointed a Lieutenant, to whom he allowed
£20 a year, with such savings as could be made in furniture and food.
In the reign of Henry VIII, the Lieutenant, who had now become the
actual prison warder, had a new house built for his accommodation, in
a courtly quarter, under the Belfry. This is now “the King’s House,”
the residence of the present Major of the Tower, General Milman, who
is, _ex officio_, a Justice of the Peace for the Tower Liberties,
and a Deputy Lieutenant of the Tower Hamlets. The Tower Commitment
Book, containing the date of all prisoners as far back as 1666, is
in his custody. By him the Yeoman. Warders are sworn in as special
constables, their duties being confined to the limits of the Tower.
They are described in the official regulations as “Honorary members of
the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard.” They are selected
from warrant officers and noncommissioned officers of the army, and
are on the same footing as serjeant-majors of the army. The “Yeoman
Gaoler” who carries the curious old axe (figured in the Tower trophy
of arms) on state occasions is responsible for the general maintenance
of order. The “Yeoman Porter” is chief warder; has charge of the gates
and drawbridges; also has the care of the Warders’ Uniforms. He asserts
the right of the Tower authorities over Postern Row and George Street,
by closing the iron bars across these thoroughfares on the first
working day in August. Every night at 11 o’clock, when the Tower gates
are locked, the Yeoman Porter applies five minutes beforehand to the
serjeant of the guard at the Main Guard for the escort for the King’s
keys. The serjeant acquaints the officer that the escort is called for,
who furnishes a serjeant and six men for this duty, at the same time
placing his guard under arms. When the keys return, the sentry at the
guard-room challenges—“Halt! who comes there?” Yeoman Porter answers
“The keys.” “Whose keys?” “King Edward’s keys.” Yeoman Porter places
himself, with the escort, in front of the guard; the officer of the
guard gives the word, “Present arms!” The Yeoman Porter then says in an
audible voice, “God preserve King Edward!” and the whole guard answer
“Amen!” The keys are then carried by the Yeoman Porter to the King’s
House. A similar escort is called for in the morning at the opening,
but no ceremony takes place then.
The Yeomen of the Guard were first appointed by Henry VII, and made
their first public appearance at his coronation. Since then there has
been no Royal Pageant in which they have not been conspicuous. The
word “Yeoman” of itself is a puzzle. It evidently signified an officer
of high grade; we have “Yeomen of the Guard,” “of the Black Rod,”
“of the Chamber,” “of the Pantry,” “of the Robes,” “of the Crown,”
“of the Mouth.” But the derivation of the word is quite uncertain.
The _Gentleman’s Magazine_ says (vol. xxix.) that it is of military
origin, like “esquire,” and that as these were so called because they
carried shields (_ecu_), so the yeomen were archers, who carried yew.
But Johnson and Skeat both prefer _ga_ (A.S. “village”) _man_. Another
question is, why are they called “Beefeaters”? a question not likely to
be ever settled. When I was a child, my old rector, Archdeacon Bayley,
told me with much impressment that because one of their duties was to
watch the royal _beauffet_, they were called “beauffetiers,” and that
it has got thus corrupted. And this is the derivation given to the
first query in _Notes and Queries_ (I. iii. 167). Skeat (_Notes and
Queries_, V. vii. 64) treats this with the utmost contempt. He says it
was a mere guess of Steevens’s, that the yeomen didn’t wait at table,
and that the word means “an eater of beef,” and by consequence “a jolly
yeoman.” There are very many discussions running through _Notes and
Queries_, and it seems to me that Skeat holds his ground well.
There are 100 yeomen. The costume is said to be that of the private
soldier of Henry VII’s time. It will be remembered that he may be
said to be the first monarch who had a standing army. The _Naval and
Military Gazette_ of 1876 has the following:—
“The Yeomanry of the Guard were formed into a corps in
1485 and first made their appearance at the coronation of
Henry VII in white gaberdines, ornamented with the royal
device, and caps surrounded by the roses of York and
Lancaster. The King, who loved a joke, would sometimes
dress himself in the habit of his yeomen, and scour the
country in search of adventures. On one occasion he paid a
visit to the Abbot of Chertsey, who, ignorant of his guest
and rank, but nevertheless hospitably inclined, placed him
before a round of beef, which disappeared with marvellous
rapidity. The worthy dignitary exclaimed that he would give
a hundred marks for such an appetite. Shortly afterwards the
churchman was arrested on the King’s warrant, and imprisoned
in Windsor Castle, where he was fed on bread and water. At
the end of some days a baron of beef appeared, to which the
abbot did justice, and lifting his eyes at the end of his
meal, saw the yeoman before him, who claimed the hundred
marks. ‘Who art thou, Beefeater?’ exclaimed the priest. The
King revealed himself, and took the hundred marks. But the
Abbot profited by the joke, for he was not long after made
Bishop of Bangor.”
Fuller tells the same story, but makes the King, with more probability,
not Henry VII, but VIII.
CHAPTER III
IN THE DAYS OF THE LATER PLANTAGENETS
_Coronation of Richard II—The Wat Tyler Rebellion—Murder of
Archbishop Simon of Canterbury—The Rebellion Quelled—Fresh
Troubles raised by the Duke of Gloucester and quieted by
Archbishop Courtenay—Still Troubles Continue—Execution
of some Prominent Members of Parliament, and of Sir Simon
Burley, the King’s Tutor—First Legal Execution on Tower
Hill—Richard’s Wilfulness and Treachery—His Dethronement,
August 19, 1399—Accession of Henry IV—Death and Burial
of Richard II—Conspiracies against Henry IV—Battle of
Shrewsbury—Prisoners shut up in the Tower—Among them
James of Scotland, “The King’s Quhair”—The Great War with
France—Charles, Duke of Orleans, a formidable rival; his
Imprisonment and Life in the Tower—His Return to France—The
Lollards—Sir John Oldcastle—His Plots and Death—Death
of Henry V—Fall of the English Power in France—Rival
Nobles in England: Dukes of Bedford and Gloucester, Cardinal
Beaufort, Earl of Warwick—Marriage of Henry with Margaret of
Anjou—Public Discontent—Cade’s Rebellion—Claim of Richard
Duke of York—Battle of Wakefield—The Wakefield Tower—Battle
of Towton—Accession of Edward IV—Henry VI a Prisoner in
the Tower—Warwick’s Tergiversation—Battles of Barnet and
Tewkesbury—King Henry slain in the Wakefield Tower—Continued
Tragedies, Duke of Clarence’s Disaffection and Plottings—His
Death in the Bowyer Tower—Death of Edward IV—Edward V and
his Brother brought to the Tower by their Uncle Gloucester,
who has Lord Hastings beheaded for loyalty to Edward—Edward
deposed—Richard Crowned King—Edward and his Brother secretly
Murdered—Discovery of their Bones and Burial at Westminster._
The reign of Richard II began with festivities and pageantries of
unprecedented magnificence, and the Tower was the scene of some of the
most prominent. On the day of the Coronation, according to Holinshed,
the King, clad in white robes, issued from its gate surrounded by a
vast assemblage of nobles and knights. The streets were hung with
drapery, and the conduits ran wine. In Cheapside was a castle with four
towers, from two sides of which “the wine ran forth abundantly, and at
the top stood a golden angel, holding a crown, so contrived that when
the King came near, he bowed and presented it to him. In each of the
towers was a beautiful virgin, of stature and age like unto the King,
apparelled in white vestures, who blew in the King’s face leaves of
gold and flowers of gold counterfeit. On the approach of the cavalcade,
the damsels took cups of gold, and filling them with wine at the spouts
of the castle, presented them to the King and his nobles.”
[Illustration: 13. BANQUET GIVEN BY RICHARD II. _From a MS. of
The Chronicles of England, Vol. III.
British Museum_, 14 _E. iv._]
[Illustration: 14. AN ACT OF ARMS BEFORE THE KING AND QUEEN.
_From a MS. of the Romance of the Sire Jehan de
Saintré. British Museum. Nero D. ix._]
[Illustration: 15. GATEWAY OF THE BLOODY TOWER.
_From an engraving by F. Nash_, 1821.]
[Illustration: 16. QUEEN IN A HORSE LITTER, ATTENDED BY HER LADIES
ON HORSEBACK. _From a MS. of Froissart’s Chronicles_.
_British Museum_, 18 _E ii._]
These revels were scarcely ended, when the Wat Tyler insurrection broke
out, and the King, with his mother, fled for refuge within the Tower
from which he had lately so proudly emerged. The insurgents assembled
on Blackheath and asked for a conference. Richard having heard mass in
the chapel, sailed down the Thames to meet them, but was so frightened
by their menacing looks that he precipitately fled back to the Tower.
Therefore the angry mob advanced, quartered themselves in and near
St. Katharine’s Hospital and invested the fortress, “hooting,” says
Froissart, “as loud as if the devils were in them.” The Lord Mayor,
Walworth, recommended a sally upon them, as the majority were drunk,
but this was deemed too desperate, and the King declared he would
meet them and hear their grievances. He had no sooner quitted the
gates, than some of the insurgents, who had lain concealed, broke into
the fortress, and killed some of the King’s officers.[2] But their
main quarry was the Archbishop of Canterbury, the King’s Chancellor,
Simon of Sudbury, whom John Ball, the Socialist priest, had furiously
denounced. They made their way into the chapel where he was engaged in
prayer. “Where is the traitor to the kingdom, where is the spoiler of
the Commons?” they shouted, and Sudbury replied, “Here am I, my sons;
your Archbishop, neither traitor nor spoiler.” They dragged him out on
Tower Hill. He saw what was coming and warned them, but in vain. After
he had spoken further, and given as far as in him lay absolution to
John Starling of Essex, who was standing ready to behead him, he knelt
down. He was horribly mutilated, not being killed till the eighth blow
of the axe. Hales the treasurer and two others were slain with him, and
all the heads were stuck on poles, a cap on the Archbishop’s to
distinguish him, and were placed on London Bridge. Two days later
Sudbury’s head gave place to Wat Tyler’s, and he was buried with great
pomp in his Cathedral at Canterbury, to which he had been a great
benefactor. His fine monument is still to be seen there.
How this rebellion was quelled is no part of our subject, but the
troubles of King Richard were by no means ended. In 1387 he had again
to fly to the Tower for security against his uncle Gloucester and
the other disaffected barons. His weakness and imbecility, and the
corruptness of his ministers, had exasperated the nation against him,
and Gloucester seized the regal authority and placed it in the hands
of commissioners. The King summoned a Parliament at Nottingham which
supported him; the nobles retorted by marching on London with forty
thousand men. There was much anxiety and some fighting, but Archbishop
Courtenay mediated with great patience and wisdom. Richard had gone to
the Tower and was in fact besieged, and in the great Council Chamber
there Courtenay arranged a meeting between the nobles and the King,
with the result that the mutual differences were for the time adjusted.
But the King had not in the least regained the confidence either of
the nobles or of the commonalty. In fact the prominent members of the
Parliament which had declared in his favour were arrested. Some were
fined, others banished, others confined in the Tower. Of these latter
Sir Robert Tresylian, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; Brembre, Mayor
of London; Sir John Salisbury, Sir John Beauchamp and Sir James Berners
were put to death at Tyburn. One of the victims calls for special
mention. Sir Simon Burley had distinguished himself under the Black
Prince in the French war. Edward had such a high opinion of him that he
bequeathed the education of his son Richard to him. He seems to have
justified the choice in the early days of the young King, and it was he
who arranged his marriage with Anne of Bohemia, thereby incurring the
enmity of the Lancastrian party. Although he had warned the King of his
folly in the early days of his reign, he supported him in Parliament in
his struggle against the barons, and in consequence he was sentenced on
May 5, 1388, to be hanged, drawn and quartered, but this was commuted
to beheading. We have seen that Archbishop Sudbury was executed on
Tower Hill, but that was by mob violence. Burley was now condemned by
law to die on the same spot. It was the first legal execution on the
place which was for many years to come the regular place of execution.
[Illustration: ASSAULT ON A FORTRESS.
_From a MS. of Boccaccio de Casibus Virorum
et Foeminarum Illustrium.
British Museum_, 35,321.]
Richard bitterly resented this execution. He never forgave it. Burley
had been a loyal and faithful friend both to his father and himself,
and he waited for his opportunity of revenge. It came at last. He was
accustomed to hold festivals from time to time with tournaments and
feastings, and there was special merrymaking on the occasion of his
second marriage. His first wife, “the good Anne” of Bohemia, died in
1396, and next year he married Isabel, daughter of Charles VI., the mad
King of France. She was lodged in the Tower, awaiting her coronation.
In the midst of the festivities the Duke of Gloucester, with the Earls
of Arundel and Warwick and some others, were treacherously seized, and
brought to the Tower. Gloucester was shipped off to Calais and murdered
by the King’s command; Arundel was beheaded on Tower Hill; Warwick was
confined in the Beauchamp Tower, named after him. But Richard dared not
kill a man who had more than any man living fought for his country in
the French wars, and he was sent away to the Isle of Man and kept close
prisoner for life.
But Nemesis presently came. Arundel’s memory was revered by the people,
who knew him as one of their great heroes, and his grave in the Church
of the Austin Friars was visited by crowds day by day. Meanwhile the
wretched King lost all self-control. Probably his mind had become
unhinged. He dissolved the Parliament, announced that he intended to
rule without one, and seized the lands of his uncle, John of Gaunt, who
had lately died. On August 19, 1399, Gaunt’s son, Henry of Lancaster,
landed in England, made him prisoner in Wales and brought him to
London. On September 2 he was lodged in the Tower with the universal
approval of the nation. On the 29th he formally resigned the crown
“with a cheerful mien,” and next day Henry IV. seated himself on the
throne. The fallen man remained in the fortress for a while, but as
it became known that conspiracies were being formed to replace him on
the throne, it was decided to remove him secretly and confine him in
some secure place. First he was taken to Leeds Castle in Kent, then to
Yorkshire. There is no reasonable doubt that he died at Pontefract on
February 14, 1400, probably of starvation. His body was brought to
London, and exposed to the public in St. Paul’s, was then buried at
King’s Langley, and afterwards removed to Westminster Abbey by Henry V,
whom as a boy he had treated with kindness.
There was a grand ceremonial in the Tower on the eve of Henry IV’s
Coronation, and forty-six new Knights of the Bath watched their arms
all night in St. John’s Chapel. But the fortress under the Lancastrian
kings became less of a royal residence and more of a prison.
Henry IV, after the Battle of Shrewsbury, shut up in the Tower some
of the adherents of Owen Glendower, and also a number of preaching
Friars, who had circulated taunting rhymes against him to excite an
insurrection, and who in due course died as traitors at Tyburn. But
King Henry’s most illustrious prisoner here was James, the son and heir
of Robert III, King of Scotland. That unfortunate monarch, amiable
and just, but infirm in body as in will, was heavily troubled by the
plottings of his brother the Duke of Albany, and also by the divisions
arising out of the English troubles. The Earl of Northumberland and his
son Hotspur were joined by Earl Douglas, and they were all defeated
at Shrewsbury. Poor old King Robert, worried by this, and having good
reason to distrust Albany, determined to send his remaining son James,
a boy of eleven (his eldest son, the Duke of Rothsay, had been got rid
of by foul play), for safety to France, for the expressed reason that
he could receive a good education there. The vessel conveying him was
intercepted off Flamborough Head by an English ship, and the boy was
conveyed to London; Henry IV gave orders that he should be confined in
the Tower. This was in February, 1406. His poor old father sank under
this fresh trouble and died that year, and thus James became King. But
King Henry still, contrary to all law, kept him prisoner, and the Duke
of Albany was appointed regent.
For nineteen years the young King remained in exile. From the recent
publication of English and Scottish records we learn that his expenses
in the Tower were reckoned at 6_s._ 8_d._ a day for himself and 3_s._
4_d._ for his suite. Though his capture was a flagrant breach of law,
he was well treated and received an excellent education. He was moved
about from time to time: part of the while he was in Nottingham Castle,
then at Evesham, then at the palace of the Archbishop of Canterbury
at Croydon. The poem which he wrote in his captivity, “The King’s
Quhair” (Little Book), was the expression of his love for Lady Jane
Beaufort, whom he met at Windsor. His marriage with her attached him
to the royal family of England, and at length in 1424 he obtained his
release, returned, and took possession of his throne, ruled with vigour
and justice, until his earnest endeavours to assure the rights and just
treatment of his people led to his assassination in 1436.
Another royal prisoner, partly contemporaneous with King James,
and not less illustrious in history, was Charles, Duke of Orleans.
Richard II, as we have seen, married for his second wife Isabel of
Valois, daughter of King Charles VI. of France. After his death she
married Charles, Duke of Orleans, whose clever, reprobate father
Louis, brother of Charles VI, had been assassinated by order of the
Duke of Burgundy. The two young people were therefore first cousins.
When Louis had laid claim to the French throne, our Henry IV made a
counterclaim, and thus there was fierce rivalry between the two men,
and Louis took every opportunity of sending insulting messages to “the
usurping Duke of Lancaster,” and married his son Charles to the young
widowed Queen, when Hal, the madcap Prince of Wales, was eagerly wooing
her. The hapless young wife died in childbirth in 1409, her husband
being only nineteen years old. He bewailed his loss in some very
beautiful verses. The little child lived to become Duchess of Alençon.
Reasons of State induced Charles to marry again, his wife being Bona,
daughter of the Count of Armagnac, who bore him no offspring. In 1415
came the memorable invasion of France and the great English victory
at Agincourt. Charles, with his brothers and other members of the
French royal family, had done their best in defence of their rights.
Shakespeare depicts his zeal and his hatred of the invader in his
flying utterances. The brave fellow fell among the wounded, and was
found by the victor bleeding and speechless on the field. He made much
of him, brought him to England, and sent him to the White Tower, fixing
a ransom of 300,000 crowns on his head. He was now twenty-four years
old, and Henry was anxious that the ransom should not be forthcoming.
For he now married Isabel’s youngest sister, Catherine of Valois, and it
was most important in his estimate that Charles should have no children
to dispute the rights of those of his wife. It was part of the treaty
into which he entered that he should succeed to the French throne,
and a son of Charles of Orleans would be a most formidable rival. The
result was that the latter remained a prisoner in England for five and
twenty years.
And here he continued faithful to his old troubadour instincts, and was
constantly occupied in writing lyrics, chiefly on his lost love and
his absent wife, some in French, some in English, in which he became
proficient. There is in the British Museum a manuscript volume of his
poems, beautifully illuminated, with the arms of Henry VII and Prince
Arthur introduced into the borders. It contains our frontispiece, the
oldest picture of the Tower of London which is known to exist. In the
background is London Bridge with the City behind it, in front Traitors’
Gate, though the name had not yet been given. There is the Prince
seated in the now demolished banqueting hall, writing his verses. He
is seen again looking out of window, evidently hoping for freedom, and
again we see him below embracing the messenger who brings his ransom.
Next we behold him riding away, a freed man; and in the distance he is
seen finally seated in the boat, which is being pulled off to the ship
which shall carry him back to France.
That deliverance did not come until 1440. Henry V had been dead
eighteen years, his widow Catherine, had married Owun Tudor and his
conquests in France were now nearly all lost, thanks to the Maid of
Orleans and to Charles’s natural brother, John of Dunois. Every year
Charles’s life had become more precious to France, as the children of
Charles VI dropped one by one into the grave. The Duke of Burgundy paid
the enormous ransom, and Charles returned to find his wife Bona dead,
and his daughter a woman of thirty. Reasons of State caused him to
marry again, his third consort being Mary of Cleves. By her he had a
son, who afterwards became King Louis XII.
A large body of prisoners of a widely different character, namely the
Lollards, occupied the Tower at the same period; the most remarkable
of them was Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham. There is undoubtedly much
mystery about his life and doings. He was a gentleman of Herefordshire,
and makes his first appearance in history as a trusted servant of
Henry IV, who committed to him the charge of putting down insurrection
in Wales at the time of the battle of Shrewsbury. It was then that
he made the acquaintance of the Prince of Wales, which ripened into
close friendship. In 1409, when a second time a widower, he married
Joan, Lady Cobham, who on her side was in her third widowhood. She
brought him two Kentish estates, Cobham Manor and Cowling Castle, and
in this latter he took up his residence, and still remained high in
favour of Henry IV and his son. Wyclif died on the last day of 1384.
His opinions had become largely popular, in Kent as much as anywhere.
A severe law was passed against them in 1401. How Oldcastle had come
to adopt these there is no evidence to show, but in 1410 a great
outcry was made against him because his chaplain was preaching Lollard
doctrines, and he was accused of trying to bring the Prince of Wales
over to them. Convocation which met at St. Paul’s in March, 1413, just
before the death of Henry IV, denounced him unsparingly, and produced
manuscripts emanating from Paternoster Row of which he was alleged
to be the author. It is said that Henry V was so mindful of his old
friendship that he wanted to prevent action against him, though he
viewed his opinions with horror, and tried in vain to wean him from
them. The sequel was that he withdrew from Court and shut himself
up in Cowling Castle. When at length he was arrested he was brought
before Archbishop Arundel and Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, who were
both anxious to save him, perhaps knowing the regard of the King for
him; but he refused to recant and was handed over to the secular arm,
and meanwhile was committed to the Tower. From it in some mysterious
manner he escaped, and there is strong evidence that he engaged in a
widespread Lollard conspiracy. The official indictment charged the
conspirators with “plotting the death of the King and his brothers,
with the prelates and other magnates of the realm, the transference of
religious to secular employments, the spoliation and destruction of all
cathedrals, churches and monasteries, and the elevation of Oldcastle
to the position of regent of the kingdom.” The plot was discovered
and defeated. The body of conspirators found out in time that it was
so, and escaped home; Oldcastle left London and fled into Wales.
He remained hid, but apparently still plotting, until he was again
captured, was brought back to the Tower, and on December 14, 1417, was
condemned to death, was drawn on a hurdle to St. Giles’s Fields, and
there hanged and burnt to ashes. This is the man whom Shakespeare,
following an older play, represents as the original of Falstaff. But
though young Oldcastle was, as we have seen, a friend of Prince Hal in
his youth, he was never a _roué_.
It would almost seem as if fuller knowledge had convinced Shakespeare
of this, and that it was in this way of retractation that he put these
words in the Epilogue:—“For Oldcastle died a martyr and this is not
the man.”
The death of Henry V, August 31, 1422, was a heavy calamity for
England. He was a wise and pious king, and his claim to the French
crown, however ill-advised, was in his view just. His son was an infant
of nine months old, and the mismanagement of the Government, and the
victories of Jeanne d’Arc, the Maid of Orleans, make up a great chapter
of English disaster. The heroine was burnt at Rouen, May 31, 1431, but
it was speedily seen that her work had been successful. Henry VI was
indeed crowned King of France at Paris that year, but what popularity
remained to the English party was dissipated by the arrogance of
the King’s rulers. He returned to England, and the cause still went
down. His two royal guardians and uncles, the Dukes of Bedford and
Gloucester, were at bitter feud. Two other nobles were now grown active
and strong. The first was Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, the
illegitimate son of John of Gaunt and Catherine Swynford, a man of
great ability as well as of patriotism. Henry V had reposed strong
confidence in him, and had willed that he should be the guardian of his
son during his minority. This had been set aside, but although Bedford
and Gloucester had been substituted, their absence abroad and their
quarrels gave Beaufort real power, which had steadily grown. The other
was Richard, Earl of Warwick. He too had been highly esteemed by Henry
V, and he and Beaufort were now exerting themselves to guide the King
wisely, when he on attaining his majority was foolishly interfering in
matters which he did not understand. Bedford died, the English cause in
France grew more and more hopeless, and through Beaufort’s influence
Henry married Margaret of Anjou, niece of King Charles VII. A few years
followed during which Henry gave himself to useful work, the
foundations of Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, among them.
Gloucester died in 1447; murder was suspected, but probably without
ground. Beaufort died the same year; William de la Pole, Duke of
Suffolk, was murdered in 1450. That nobleman was one of the most
distinguished in England. His father and three brothers had died on
battlefields in the French wars. He had been a Knight of the Garter for
thirty years when the Cade rebellion broke out, and his enemies got up
against him a charge of supporting it. He took ship at Dover to fly
to Calais, but was captured in the Strait by the captain of a vessel
called _Nicholas of the Tower_. When he heard the name he lost all
hope, for he had been told by a soothsayer that if he could escape the
danger of the Tower he would be safe. His head was hacked off, and his
body thrown upon Dover beach.
The Tower was ever receiving new occupants, and the kingdom was
becoming more and more disturbed. Cade’s rebellion broke out in June,
1450, and was a very formidable danger for a short time. The King, to
propitiate the rebels, sent Lord Say to the Tower; they dragged him
forth and beheaded him in Cheapside. The rebellion was put down in
consequence of the worthlessness of Cade himself, but the discontent
grew, being increased by the high-handed dealing of Queen Margaret,
and that same year Richard, Duke of York, proclaimed himself, with the
sanction of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, as the deliverer of the
kingdom from anarchy. The difficulties were increased by the mental
illness of the King, from which after a while he recovered, but his
popularity had still further decreased. The Queen bore him a son, but
this strengthened York’s ambition. He claimed the crown and civil war
began. The partisans of York made an attack on the Tower, and here
comes a decided novelty in its history. It is said that cannon were
first used at the battle of Crecy. They were used now to batter the
Tower walls, but unsuccessfully apparently. When the moat was cleared
out in 1843 a great number of stone cannon balls were found, which were
probably a relic of that bombardment. They are now under a glass case
in the Beauchamp Tower. Similar balls are shown in our illustration.
On December 29, 1460, York was defeated by Queen Margaret and slain at
the battle of Wakefield, while King Henry was keeping Christmas in
London. She was fighting for her son’s rights; the King was under the
care of the Earl of Warwick, who was actually supporting the claims of
the Yorkists. In the following February Margaret was defeated three
times, and Edward, Duke of York, was proclaimed King in London without
waiting for Parliament. On Palm Sunday, 1461, the battle of Towton,
the most terrible ever fought on English ground, placed the kingdom in
Edward IV’s hands. The number of prisoners sent up to the Tower after
the battle of Wakefield caused what had been hitherto the Hall Tower
to be called “the Wakefield Tower,” a name which it has borne ever
since. Queen Margaret still kept an army in the north, and Henry moved
about from place to place. In 1464 he was captured and lodged in the
Tower. Statements differ as to his treatment. One account says that
Warwick, acting for the Yorkists, carried him through Cheapside and
Cornhill with his legs bound under a horse with leathern thongs and a
peasant’s hat on his head. Yorkist writers assert that he was treated
“with all humanity and reverence.” He remained five years in this
imprisonment; then came a revolution. Warwick joined Margaret and King
Edward’s brother, the Duke of Clarence, and with such apparent vigour
that Edward fled to Flanders. Henry was brought forth and marched
through the London streets with great pomp to Westminster. But the
chronicler Hall contemptuously remarks, with an epigram worthy of Sam
Weller, “This moved the citizens of London as much as the fire painted
on the wall warmed the old woman.” The citizens were flourishing under
Yorkist encouragement of commerce, and were by no means disposed to
Lancastrian restoration. Edward came back, and on Easter Day, April 14,
1471, Warwick was slain at the battle of Barnet, and Queen Margaret was
defeated at Tewkesbury on May 4 following, and her son was slain. On
May 21 King Henry was murdered in the Wakefield Tower by Richard, Duke
of Gloucester, on the very day of the return of his brother King Edward
to London.
[Illustration: ARTILLERY OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
_From a MS. of “The Chronicles of England,” Vol. III.
British Museum_, 14 _E. IV._]
In the octagonal chamber of the Wakefield Tower in which the regalia
are now placed are two deep recesses opened into the walls. That to the
south-east was formerly an oratory, and is so described in the Tower
records in 1238. Tradition states that in this oratory Duke Richard,
entering through the passage from the palace, stabbed Henry to death
with many wounds as he was praying. His body was next day carried to
St. Paul’s, “and his face was open that every man might see him, and in
his lying he bled.” He was buried at Chertsey and the word went about
that he was a saint and martyr. Henry VII afterwards requested Pope
Julius II to canonize him, but gave up the idea on learning how much
it would cost. He had the body removed from Chertsey, but to this day
it is uncertain whether it was buried at St. George’s, Windsor, or in
Westminster Abbey.
The reigns of the Kings of the House of York are full of Tower
tragedies. Edward IV lived a good deal in the Tower, increased its
fortifications, and deepened the moat. He had two brothers, the Dukes
of Clarence and Gloucester. The former had long been disaffected,
had joined Margaret of Anjou and the Earl of Warwick, whose daughter
he had married, in the conspiracy which caused Edward’s temporary
flight, and after the latter had recovered himself and was again
firmly seated on the throne, Clarence was certainly plotting against
him. Clarence’s wife was dead and he aspired to the hand of Mary of
Burgundy, to Edward’s indignation, who saw that he still hoped for
the crown. He first sent him to the Tower, then accused him before
Parliament, and he was sentenced to death. Edward was loth to carry
the sentence out, but the House of Commons urged him, and to avoid
the disgrace of a public execution he gave orders that it should be
done in secret, and according to tradition he was drowned in a butt of
malmsey in the Bowyer Tower. And perhaps it is owing to his brother
Gloucester’s general bad character that he is accused of superintending
the execution. The memory of this tragedy is said to have embittered
the whole of Edward’s subsequent life. He was now secure on his
throne, but his self-indulgent life was destroying his health, and his
recklessness, joined with the perfidy of Louis XI, continually produced
fresh troubles. He died at the age of forty-one, on April 19, 1483. His
wife had borne him ten children, of whom seven survived him, two sons
and five daughters.
The short reign of Edward V was merely a struggle for power between his
uncle Gloucester and his mother’s relations, the Woodvilles. He was in
Wales when his father died. His uncle, Lord Rivers, and half-brother,
Lord Richard Grey, were bringing him up for his Coronation, when the
Dukes of Gloucester and Buckingham intercepted them at Northampton,
sent them prisoners to Pomfret, and brought the young King up to the
Tower with every demonstration of loyalty, even declaring that the
coronation should take place on June 22. Queen Elizabeth, anticipating
what was coming, threw herself into Sanctuary with the Abbot of
Westminster with her other son. A Parliament was summoned ostensibly
to declare Gloucester protector, but he had already laid his train.
The queen was called upon to allow her second boy to be placed with
his brother in the Tower, and though she could see from the windows
carpenters, vintners, cooks all making preparations for her son’s
coronation, she knew in her heart that it would never be. Gloucester
proceeded to make out a case for the illegitimacy of the children, on
the ground that their father had made a previous marriage. That he
had been a gross libertine was already notorious; Gloucester produced
a witness who declared that he had married the King to one of his
mistresses, Elinor Talbot. It is incredible, but there may have been
some miserable frolic. Gloucester called a Council in the Council
Chamber of the White Tower, and there caused his claim to be put forth
in a tentative fashion. Lord Hastings thereupon declared his loyalty
to Edward, and Gloucester, who had been listening outside, strode into
the room. Turning up his sleeve, he showed an arm which he declared had
been withered by the sorceries of Hastings, and called on the terrified
councillors to condemn him. Words were useless. “I will not dine until
your head is off,” he cried, and Hastings was carried down to Tower
Green. The block was out of place, but a beam of wood was near; he was
thrown on it and the deed was consummated.
Gloucester then got a creature, a brother of the Lord Mayor, to preach
at Paul’s Cross from the text (Wisdom iv. 3), “Bastard slips shall not
take deep root,” a sermon impugning the validity of Edward’s marriage,
but the immediate result was to fill the listeners with shame and
indignation. The Duke of Buckingham made a speech of the like character
at the Guildhall, and it became known that Gloucester was getting an
army together. So a packed assembly went to the schemer and offered him
the crown, which he with feigned reluctance accepted. This was on June
28, 1483, and on July 6 he was crowned at Westminster. Immediately
afterwards he started on a progress through the country with the
intention of strengthening his position by granting privileges and
making promises, but the conscience of the Londoners and of the
country was roused, and almost immediately a fresh shock was given by
the news that the boy King and his brother had been murdered in the
Tower. There can be no doubt of the main fact, but the precise date is
uncertain. Richard had placed the two boys under the care of Sir Robert
Brackenbury, and after he had left London sent a message ordering him
to kill them. When Brackenbury refused he sent Sir James Tyrrell with a
warrant to receive possession of the Tower keys. Tyrrell’s groom, John
Dighton, with one of the gaolers, Miles Forrest, entered the chamber
of the two boys in the Bloody Tower, killed them, called on Tyrrell to
recognize the bodies, then buried them at the foot of a staircase. This
was some time in the latter part of August, and was not divulged until
it was known that a plot was hatching to place the young Edward upon
the throne.
The life of Richard III, which bears the name of Sir Thomas More as its
author, but which appears to have been written by Cardinal Morton and
edited by More, gives information which may be implicitly trusted as to
the circumstances of this cruel murder. The new king, superstitious as
wicked men so frequently are, was uneasy in his mind, and ordered the
Tower priest to remove the bodies, and he did so, but dying soon after,
no one could ascertain where he had laid them. More does not know, and
says so frankly. Shakespeare expresses the uncertainty:—
The Chaplain of the Tower hath buried them,
But where, to say the truth, I do not know.
Henry VII would have been glad to learn at the time when Perkin Warbeck
was declaring that he was one of the alleged murdered boys. It was
not until the reign of Charles II that two skeletons were found under
the old stone steps of the royal chapel in the great keep. They were
covered with earth and had been carefully bestowed. As they answered
in every way to the bones which had been vainly sought after it was
concluded, and certainly with probability, that they were the bones of
the murdered children, and they were laid, by King Charles’s command,
in a royal sepulchre in Westminster Abbey.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] Stow says that though there was a garrison of 1,200 well-armed
men in the Tower, they were so panic-stricken that they offered no
resistance to the rebels, many of whom rushed into the King’s chamber
and wantonly rolled about upon his bed, and insisted on kissing his
mother. Mr. Trevelyan, in his _England in the Age of Wycliffe_,
evidently thinks that Richard betrayed this fortress to the rebels as
Louis XVI did the Tuileries in 1792, and sent orders that the mob were
to be admitted.
CHAPTER IV
IN THE TIME OF THE TUDOR KINGS
_Henry VII.—Battle of Bosworth—Thomas Wyatt and the Cat—Edward,
Earl of Warwick—Perkin Warbeck—Sir William Stanley—Edmund
de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk—Sir John Tyrrell—Sir John
Wyndham—Marriage of Prince Arthur and Katharine—His
Death and Death of his Mother, Elizabeth of York—Death
of Henry VII—Henry VIII—Empson and Dudley—Marriage
with Katharine of Aragon—High Festival—Building of the
Lieutenant’s House and other Improvements—Stafford, Duke
of Buckingham—Marriage with Anne Boleyn—Completion of the
Tower Buildings—Birth of the Princess Elizabeth—Execution
of Anne—Fisher and More—Lord and Lady Howard—The
“Pilgrimage of Grace” and its Victims—Courtenay, Marquis of
Exeter—The Pole Family—Treachery of Geoffrey Pole—Thomas
Cromwell, his Rise and Fall—Marriage with Anne of Cleves
and Divorce, 1540—Marriage with Katharine Howard, and her
Execution—Anne Askew, Protestant Martyr, Friend of Katharine
Parr—Festivities to French Ambassadors—Dukes of Norfolk
and Surrey Condemned—Death of Henry VIII—Edward VI—His
Uncles the Seymours—Their Fall—Ascendancy of the Duke of
Northumberland—Other Executions—The King’s Death._
We have come to the end of secret murders, but the Tower was never more
in use as a State prison than under the house of Tudor, which began its
royal course after the battle of Bosworth, August 22, 1485.
In the reign of Richard III Henry Wyatt, a gentleman of Surrey and
member of the House of Commons, was thrown into the Tower for favouring
the claims of Henry Tudor. According to his son’s statement, Richard
had him tortured, vinegar and mustard being forced down his throat,
and afterwards remonstrated with him. “Wyatt, why art thou such a
fool?” said he, “Henry of Richmond is a beggarly pretender; forsake
him and become mine. Thou servest him for moonshine in water. I can
reward thee, and I swear to thee, I will.” “If I had chosen thee for my
master,” answered the prisoner, “I would have been faithful to thee.
But the Earl of Richmond, poor and unhappy though he be, is my master,
and no allurement shall drive me from him, by God’s grace.” And here
comes a pretty legend, we hardly dare regard it otherwise, which is
told in the Wyatt papers. King Richard, in a rage, had him confined
in a low and narrow cell, where he had not clothes sufficient to warm
him and was a hungered. A cat came into this cell, he caressed her for
company, laid her in his bosom and won her love. And so she came to
him every day and brought him a pigeon when she could catch one. He
complained to his keeper of his short fare, and received for answer,
that “he durst not better it.” “But if I can provide any,” said Sir
Henry, “will you dress it for me?” “I may well enough promise that,”
was the answer, and so he promised. And he was as good as his word,
and dressed each time the pigeon which the faithful cat brought. When
Richmond became King Henry VII he rewarded his faithful liegeman by
making him a Privy Councillor and giving him rich offices enough to
enable him to buy Allington Castle, one of the finest in Kent. He was
equally well regarded by Henry VIII, who visited him at Allington; but
more of this farther on.
The two most noteworthy occupants of the Tower, however, in this reign,
strangely different in character and circumstances, were brought into
close connexion with each other. Edward, Earl of Warwick, was the
eldest son of the Duke of Clarence, and was three years old when his
father was put to death in the Tower. His early history is obscure; at
one time Richard III, after the death of his son, thought to nominate
him as his heir, but changed his mind, and sent him to Sheriff Hutton
Castle, Yorkshire. After Bosworth Henry VII brought him from thence
and shut him up in the Tower, his only offence being that he was the
representative of the fallen dynasty of York. The injustice of this
was widely felt, and this, combined with the uncertainty as to the
whereabouts or movements of the youth, induced a usurper named Lambert
Simnel to personate him in Ireland in 1487, and he was actually crowned
in Dublin Cathedral. King Henry found it advisable to bring the Earl
forth for a day and march him through the streets to St. Paul’s. It was
the last day of his life that he spent outside the limits of the Tower.
He was taken back and remained there for twelve years longer. And here
we have to take up another history. Perkin Warbeck was the son of a
citizen of Tournay, who came to England as a serving man to two or
three English gentlemen, and in 1491, moved by vanity and ambition,
whilst in Ireland, where feeling against Henry VII was strong, declared
himself to be the Duke of York, who had been reported murdered in
the Tower with his brother Edward V. The King of Scotland, James
IV, acknowledged him, and two years later gave him his own cousin,
Catherine Gordon, to wife. Charles VIII of France also for a while
acknowledged him. But his strongest ally was Margaret, Duchess of
Burgundy. This remarkable woman has little to do with the Tower, but
is too much connected with English history to be passed over. She
was the sister of Edward IV, fifteen years old when he became King.
In 1467 she married Charles, Duke of Burgundy, and is favourably
remembered as having patronized Caxton, who gave up the Mastership of
the Merchant-Adventurers of Bruges to enter her service, and produced
his first great printing work under her patronage. In 1477 her husband
was killed at the battle of Nancy, and she was left a childless widow.
The rest of her life was spent in the Netherlands, and when Henry VII
confiscated the dowry which her brother King Edward had granted her,
nothing more was needed to ensure her hatred of his rule, and desire
to get the Yorkist dynasty restored. She had abetted Simnel, and
now furnished Warbeck with means to carry out his attempt. When the
latter, after repeated failures, was taken prisoner in October, 1497,
his life was spared on his making full confession of his imposture,
and he was then placed in the Tower, after being paraded through the
streets in mockery. In 1498 he escaped, but was captured in a week,
placed in the stocks in Westminster Hall and in Cheapside, and then
sent back to the Tower. Next year he renewed his attempt at escape by
bribing his gaolers, and unhappily induced the Earl of Warwick, who was
of course nothing loth, to join him. The plot was discovered, and on
November 23 Warbeck was hanged at Tyburn, and five days later Warwick
was beheaded on Tower Hill. This last was a shameful act of injustice,
but Henry longed to get rid of him, and it is said that his aversion
was furthered by the refusal of King Ferdinand of Aragon to marry his
daughter Katharine to Arthur, Prince of Wales, so long as a son of the
Duke of Clarence existed as a possible claimant of the succession.
When, years later Katharine of Aragon was bewailing the injustice done
to her, she observed that it was a judgment of God upon her because her
former marriage was sealed with blood, namely Warwick’s.
[Illustration: 17. VAULTED ROOM IN THE CRYPT OF THE WHITE TOWER, IN
WHICH THE RACK STOOD.
_From a drawing in the Gardner Collection._]
[Illustration: 18. A CELL IN THE BLOODY TOWER.
_From a drawing by J. Wykeham Archer.
British Museum._]
[Illustration: 19. THE PRIVY COUNCIL CHAMBER IN THE LIEUTENANT’S
LODGING.
_From a drawing by P. Justyne_, 1873.
_Gardner Collection._]
[Illustration: 20. A ROOM IN THE BEAUCHAMP TOWER, WITH PRISONERS’
INSCRIPTIONS ON THE WALLS.
_From an old engraving._]
[Illustration: 21. THE BEAUCHAMP TOWER, AND ST. PETER’S CHAPEL.
_From a drawing by P. Justyne_, 1873.
_Gardner Collection._]
[Illustration: 22. THE LIEUTENANT’S LODGING. _From a drawing
by C. J. Richardson_, 1871. _Gardner Collection._]
[Illustration: 23. THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF ST. KATHERINE, LOOKING WEST.
_From an engraving by J. Carter_, 1780.]
[Illustration: 24. THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF ST. KATHERINE, LOOKING EAST.
_From an engraving by B. T. Pouncey_, 1779.]
There was yet another victim to Warbeck’s imposture. Sir William
Stanley, who had turned the scale in King Henry’s favour at Bosworth
Field, was, in 1495, impeached as having been heard to say that “if he
were sure that the young man called Perkin was really the son of Edward
IV, he would never draw sword against him.” For this he was sent to the
Tower, tried in its Council Hall, and beheaded on Tower Hill, February
16, 1495.
Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, was the son of Elizabeth, sister of
Edward IV. His plottings against Henry VII, encouraged by Maximilian,
failed, and he fled the kingdom, and remained abroad several years.
But Philip, King of Castile, who had given him shelter, visiting Henry
in 1506, persuaded him to spare the fugitive’s life on his surrender,
and Suffolk was committed to the Tower. Here he remained until 1513,
when he was beheaded by order of Henry VIII on a charge of plotting.
But he had involved two men in his ruin; Sir James Tyrrell, the same
who had assisted at the murder of the two princes, and Sir John
Wyndham, who had been knighted for his good service against Perkin
Warbeck, were both executed on Tower Hill for their share in Suffolk’s
treason. Tragedies enough, these, for one reign; yet we have hardly
come to the end of them. The marriage of Prince Arthur with Katharine
of Aragon took place in St. Paul’s Cathedral on November 14, 1501,
and the rejoicings took the form of a succession of tournaments and
feasts within the Tower walls. There were great pageants to emphasize
the descent of the bridegroom from his namesake the British hero whose
fabulous exploits fill the pages of Geoffrey of Monmouth. But they
could not alter the fact that he was a poor sickly child of fifteen,
and five months later he died. The calamity was a terrible blow to
his mother, Elizabeth, of York, whose health appears to have failed
from that time. On February 2, 1503, she gave birth to a daughter,
Katharine, in the Tower, and died nine days later, on her birthday,
aged thirty-eight. An amiable and beautiful woman, according to all
accounts; “brilliant, witty, and pious,” so says Erasmus. Six years
later her husband was buried by her side in the Abbey.
The reign of Henry VIII forms an epoch in the history of the Tower.
There are tragical events in plenty, but there are other notes on
which it is pleasant and interesting to dwell. He began his reign by
imprisoning Empson and Dudley, who had been his father’s instruments
of extortion. He did so because he knew how they were hated by the
nation, though he profited by their misdeeds, for Henry VII bequeathed
him what was then the enormous sum of £1,850,000. Next year they were
both beheaded on Tower Hill. Meanwhile the King was holding high
festival to celebrate his marriage with his brother’s widow Katharine.
He was now nineteen years old, and she twenty-five. Surrounded by a
splendid retinue he created four and twenty Knights of the Bath, after
which there was a gorgeous procession from the Tower to Westminster;
the details are given at length, and dismal enough they are when one
sees the hollowness of them all in what followed. Henry was bent on
improving the Tower buildings, and appointed Commissioners to take the
work in hand. In the S.W. corner a Lieutenant’s house was built with
many chambers, having a free passage both into the Beauchamp and Garden
Towers. This house was flanked by two smaller buildings, warders’
houses, one on the West, the other on the South. The Bell Tower part
of this building had a stone vault pierced for archers, who from it
could sweep the outer works. This is called in old records the Strong
Room. Though not intended for the reception of prisoners, it presently
received an illustrious one, as we shall see. In the State Papers of
the reign are the following memoranda of repairs done in the Tower
during the summer of 1532: “Work done by carpenters and taking down old
timber, etc., at St. Thomas’ Tower, and for alterations in the palace.”
“There has also been taken down the old timber in the four turrets of
the White Tower; and the old timber of Robert the Devil’s Tower—that
is Julius Caesar’s tower; and of the tower near the King’s wardrobe.
Half of the White Tower is now embattled, coped, indented, and cressed
with Caen stone to the extent of 500 feet.” The cost is given as £3,593
14_s._ 10_d._
[Illustration: A TOURNAMENT.
_From a MS. of the Romance of the Sire Jehan de Saintré._
_British Museum, Nero D._ IX.]
But we have perforce to return to the tragical records. We have already
recorded how the Earl of Suffolk, Edmund de la Pole, was beheaded in
1513. Edward Stafford, third Duke of Buckingham, was the great grandson
of Humphrey Stafford, son of Anne, daughter of Thomas of Woodstock,
son of Edward III. Humphrey Stafford had received his dukedom for his
services under Henry VI, had tried in vain to reconcile Queen Margaret
with the Yorkists, and was slain at the battle of Northampton. His
grandson was executed at Salisbury by Richard III in 1483. The Duke
with whom we are now concerned was sworn a Privy Councillor in 1509,
and was for a while high in favour with Henry VIII. But he hated
Cardinal Wolsey, and the hatred was returned, and the Cardinal appears
to have brought before the King some boasting speeches of the Duke
about his royal lineage, implying a claim to the throne. For this
he was sent to the Tower, was tried for high treason, and on May
17, 1521, was beheaded on the Green. Shakespeare gives us several
pathetic touches in his Henry VIII. Half a dozen Augustinian friars,
in gratitude for the many kind deeds which the Duke had done to poor
religious men in his lifetime, took up his body and buried it in the
Church of Austin Friars.
We come to scenes of revelry again in May, 1533, when the King brought
hither his new wife Anne Boleyn; painful enough to read in connexion
with the rest of the history. He had gone through a marriage service
with her in the previous January, before his divorce from Katharine had
been pronounced. Anne was now some months advanced in pregnancy. She
was brought to the Tower preparatory to a stately march to Westminster
for her coronation, and it was all very magnificent to look at, but the
people viewed it in sullen silence; enthusiasm there was none. What
was yet worse, the King’s passion for her was already on the wane. She
gave birth to the future Queen Elizabeth on September 7, 1533, had a
miscarriage the next year, and a still-born child in January, 1536,
only three weeks after the death of Katharine of Aragon. On Mayday
following she was charged with unfaithfulness to the King, was brought
a prisoner to the Tower next day, tried in the Great Hall on the 15th,
beheaded on Tower Green on the 19th. This is not the place to discuss
the question of her guilt or innocence. The twenty-five peers who tried
her gave a unanimous verdict against her; the President of the Court
was her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. Mr. Gairdner expresses his opinion
that the evidence against her was not conclusive, but that her conduct
had long been indecorous.
But between her coronation and execution two illustrious victims had
passed away. John Fisher, who as a College Principal had done splendid
service in the way of advice and assistance to the munificent works
of the “Lady Margaret,” Countess of Richmond, Henry VII’s mother, was
raised in 1504 to the bishopric of Rochester. He was a man of saintly
life, and eager to promote learning. There seems to have been a mutual
distrust between him and Wolsey, which Burnet bluntly attributes to
Fisher’s grief at the Cardinal’s lax morality. When the question of
King Henry’s divorce was raised Fisher expressed himself firmly against
it, and when, further, the doctrine of the royal supremacy was proposed
to Convocation, he declared that the acceptance of it would “cause the
clergy of England to be wiped out of God’s holy Catholic Church.” When
it was carried in Convocation, it was he who procured the addition
of the saving clause “quantum per Dei legem licet.” Unfortunately he
compromised himself by giving countenance to Elizabeth Barton, “the
nun of Kent,” when the _soi-disant_ prophetess threatened calamity to
the King for his marriage with Anne Boleyn. In April, 1534, he and Sir
Thomas More were summoned to Lambeth to take the oath to the Act of
Succession. They both agreed to that portion of the Act which fixed the
succession to the offspring of the King and Anne, but firmly objected
to call the Princess Mary illegitimate, and to the words denying
faith, truth, and obedience to the Roman Church. The commissioners
were anxious, Cranmer at the head of them, to accept the submission
as sufficient for the occasion, but they were both sent to the Tower;
and when the Act of Supremacy was passed in November, 1554, Secretary
Cromwell read it to Fisher, with the clause making it high treason to
deny the King’s right to the claim. Fisher declined to subscribe to it.
Henry was unwilling to proceed to extremities, but at this very moment
Pope Paul III, ignorant (as he afterwards declared) of the unhappy
relations between King and bishop, and desirous of rewarding learning,
made Fisher a Cardinal. Henry broke out into ungovernable fury when
he heard it, and declared that the red hat might come, but that there
should be no head on which to place it. The bishop was brought to trial
at Westminster and beheaded on Tower Hill June 15, 1535. “There is in
this realm no man,” said Sir Thomas More, “in wisdom, learning, and
long approved virtue together, meet to be matched and compared with
him.” He died with perfect calmness and dignity. The head was fixed
on London Bridge, and the body lay exposed to insult all day. In the
evening it was buried without ceremony in the Church of Allhallows
Barking.
A fortnight later Sir Thomas More shared the same fate, and on the
same charge. His brilliant abilities, wit, and virtue have made his
name illustrious. Many of his noble friends visited him in confinement
and did all they could to persuade him to yield, but in vain. Not only
his firmness, but his cheerfulness remained undiminished. When he was
brought through Traitors’ Gate the porter, according to ancient custom,
demanded his uppermost garment as his fee. More handed him his cap,
telling him that this was his “uppermost garment,” and that he wished
it was of more value. When he ascended the scaffold he observed that
it was somewhat insecure. “Prythee, good fellow,” he said to one of
the guards, “help me up; when I come down let me shift for myself.”
And when the headsman prayed his forgiveness, “I forgive thee, good
fellow, with all my heart,” he said as he laid his head on the block.
Immediately after he raised it for a moment to remove his beard.
“That,” he said, “has not committed treason; pity it should be cut.”
Every succeeding year of this darkening reign brought more prisoners to
the Tower. Thence Lord Howard was sent with his wife, the King’s niece,
because they had married without the royal consent. Here the husband
died and then the widow was released. She afterwards became the mother
of Darnley.
“The Pilgrimage of Grace,” in other words the series of insurrections
which broke out in the North because of dissatisfaction at the
promulgation of the reformed doctrines and the dissolution of the
religious houses, filled the Tower dungeons with prisoners. Among
them were the Lords Darcy and Hussey, Sir Robert Constable, Sir John
and Lady Bulmer, Sir Francis Bigot, Sir Thomas Percy, brother of the
Earl of Northumberland, Sir Stephen Hamilton, William, son of Lord
Lumley, Nicholas Tempest and Robert Aske; also the Abbots of Rievaulx,
Fountains and Jervaux, and the Prior of Bridlington. All were convicted
of treason and put to death in 1536.
In 1538 Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, Sir Edward Neville,
Sir Nicholas Carew and others were accused of holding a traitorous
correspondence with Cardinal Pole, and were imprisoned in the Tower; as
were also the Cardinal’s brothers, Lord Montague and Sir Geoffrey Pole,
their mother the Countess of Salisbury, the Marchioness of Exeter, Sir
Adrian Fortescue and Sir Thomas Dingley. Reginald Pole, who had never
hesitated in his conferences with the King to condemn the divorce,
had been entrusted by Henry to go on a mission to the Pope to make
peace if possible. Pope Paul IV had made him a Cardinal, to Henry’s
indignation, and he was still on the Continent. The Marquis of Exeter
was a grandson of Edward IV, and Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, was
the daughter of his brother, the Duke of Clarence. The King was roused
to fresh anger against them because Charles V and Francis I had laid
aside their enmity and become friends, and the Pope, looking to them
for assistance, had issued a bull of excommunication against him.
Geoffrey Pole saved his life by giving evidence against the plotters.
Exeter and Montague were beheaded, December 9, 1538, Carew on March 3
following. Lady Exeter was pardoned, but the Countess of Salisbury was
kept in confinement for two years longer, when she was brought to the
scaffold on the fatal Green. Froude thinks it was because she was found
to be still secretly corresponding with her son the Cardinal against
the King, and there were fresh alarms of a rising in the North under
Sir John Neville. Froude discredits the story told by Lingard, that
the aged Countess refused to lay her head on the block on the ground
that she was no traitor, and that the headsman hacked it off as he best
could; and Mr. Gairdner evidently does not believe it.
Of the King’s chief adviser in these terrible doings we have as yet
said nothing, but it becomes necessary to do so now. Thomas Cromwell,
who had risen from low estate, and whose early history is almost a
blank to us, after a youth spent on the Continent, was appointed by
Wolsey collector of his revenues of the see of York, entered Parliament
in 1523 and became a member of Gray’s Inn. Wolsey leaned much upon him,
made him one of the commissioners appointed (1525) to inquire into the
conditions of the smaller monasteries—and in this work he acted with
great harshness—and he also managed the work of the foundation of the
Cardinal’s Colleges at Oxford and Ipswich. He seems to have remained
faithful to Wolsey to the end, but it was he more than any one who
persuaded Henry VIII to make himself supreme head of the Church by way
of facilitating his divorce from Katharine, and he rose high in favour
with the King and became Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1535 he was
made Vicar-General for a general visitation of churches, monasteries
and clergy, was rewarded with large gifts of confiscated church lands,
and was made Lord Chamberlain in 1539. This was the culmination of a
career clever and wary, but tyrannical and oppressive to the English
nation and utterly unprincipled towards foreign powers. His fall,
which had long been desired by the Catholic party in England, was
hastened by his negotiating the King’s marriage with Anne of Cleves.
Henry’s disgust at his first sight of his affianced bride would not
have sufficed to cause the agent’s ruin, but the alliance with German
Protestants, of which the marriage was to be the seal, was unpopular,
and as it had served its purpose, nothing more was to be got out of it.
For arranging the marriage he was created Earl of Essex April 1540, and
on June 10 following the Duke of Norfolk denounced him as a traitor at
the Council board, and he was at once sent to the Tower, charged with
receiving bribes wholesale, selling commissions, secretly dispersing
heretical books, and designing to marry the Princess Mary and make
himself King. He was not tried but proceeded against by attainder.
Archbishop Cranmer vainly tried to stem the tide. He was beheaded on
Tower Green July 28, 1540. It was one sign of a Catholic reaction.
The Tower and other metropolitan prisons were crowded with Protestant
heretics, who were dragged away on hurdles and burnt in Smithfield, as
were also some Catholics at the very same period for denying the King’s
supremacy.
Anne of Cleves was married to Henry on January 6, 1540, and divorced
in July following. She lived the rest of her life in England with a
pension, quite content, and rode in the procession along with the
Princess Elizabeth at Queen Mary’s coronation. She was buried in
Westminster Abbey, August 1557.
Immediately after this divorce Henry married Katharine Howard, niece of
the Duke of Norfolk, and for a while all seemed bright. The royal pair
next year went on a tour through the North. At Hampton Court they kept
All Saints’ Day, 1541, with much solemnity, and the King gave
directions to the celebrant, the Bishop of Lincoln, to return thanks to
God “for the good life which he hoped to lead after sundry troubles.”
Next day after mass Archbishop Cranmer sorrowfully handed the King a
paper which gave evidence of Katharine’s unchastity both before and
after marriage. She was confined for a while at Syon House, on February
10 was brought to the Tower, and beheaded on the Green three days
later. It was a strange request which she made, and which was complied
with—that the block might previously be brought to her cell that she
might learn how to place her head upon it aright. With her died Lady
Rochford, who had connived at her immoralities.
Anne Askew, our next prisoner, presents a strange contrast. She was the
daughter of a Lincolnshire gentleman, who married in early life a Mr.
Kyme, an ardent Roman Catholic. Anne’s friends in London were equally
ardent believers in the Reformed faith; among these friends was Queen
Katharine Parr. Anne’s husband, who for some time had neglected her,
charged her with heresy, resting his charge on the recently passed “Six
Articles” Act, which ordained that denial of Transubstantiation should
be punished with death by burning. It was in 1545 that she was charged.
Bishop Bonner appears to have been so moved by the sight of her simple
beauty as to try to save her, but the Chancellor, Wriothesley, pressed
her with questions, and she was firm in her answers, and was condemned.
Her first place of confinement was Newgate, but she was sent to the
Tower to be racked. The rack, says Lord de Ros, was regarded with
such horror by the people as to be applied only in secrecy, and there
might have been an outbreak in the city had all this become known. The
application of the torture was in order to force her to incriminate
the ladies who had supported her, but she resolutely closed her lips,
first declaring that she was grateful to all her friends and would
not betray them, and that it was her faithful maid who had kept her
from starvation by going out and begging for her “of the prentices and
others she met in the streets.” Wriothesley himself worked the rack
until she was nearly dead. She was taken off the machine, but was no
longer able to walk, so she was carried in a cart to Smithfield and
burned. Queen Katharine appears to have been in danger, but the King’s
sympathies were moved by the accounts which reached him of the
sufferer’s noble constancy, and when Wriothesley came to him to excite
him against the Queen, Henry called him a beast and a fool and drove
him out of the room.
One more cheerful record remains of this terrible reign. In 1546, in
honour of the peace which had been made between France and England, the
former country sent its Lord High Admiral, the Bishop of Evreux, and
some other nobles on an embassy to England. They landed at Greenwich
and thence were conducted to the Tower, where a splendid banquet
awaited them; thence to Lambeth Palace, and finally to Hampton Court,
where the treaty was signed.
And still we have two more illustrious prisoners to name in this reign.
The Duke of Norfolk was now seventy-four years old: He had commanded
the victorious army at Flodden, had led another victorious campaign in
Scotland, and had done good service in France. He was a son-in-law of
King Edward IV, and two of his nieces had been Queens of England. The
jealousy of Henry was aroused; he knew himself to be nearing his end,
and feared that the Duke and his son, the Earl of Surrey, had designs
upon the crown. He appointed Lord Hertford, his son’s uncle, to be his
guardian during his minority, and sent to Parliament a complaint that
Norfolk and his son were plotting to seize the government. Surrey was
accused of quartering the arms of King Edward the Confessor on his
shield, after the manner of an heir-apparent, and also (it is shocking
to have to record it) of having persuaded his sister, the widow of the
King’s natural son, the Duke of Richmond, to become Henry’s mistress,
of course with a view to ruling his movements. Surrey was tried by
jury January 13, 1547, and perished six days later on Tower Hill. The
Duke of Norfolk was condemned by bill of attainder, and would have
died in like manner, had not the King himself died January 28, 1547, a
few hours before the appointed time of execution. The Duke remained a
prisoner until the accession of Mary, when he was released. He presided
at the trial of the Duke of Northumberland, and died in his bed in
1554, aged eighty-one.
The young Edward, now ten years old, was at Hatfield when his father
died. Next day his uncle, the Earl of Hertford, brought him up to the
Tower with great pomp and ceremony. Here he received knighthood by the
accolade of his uncle, and in return conferred on him the title of Duke
of Somerset. On February 24 the coronation took place at Westminster
with the usual pageants.
Almost immediately disturbances began. Thomas, Lord Seymour, Somerset’s
younger brother, was sent to the Tower on the charge of aspiring to
the kingdom by offering marriage to the Princess Elizabeth. He had
secretly married Queen Katharine Parr on King Henry’s death, and when
she died (Sept. 5, 1548) he made this new move. Other acts of ambition
were charged against him, as well as of using his office of Lord High
Admiral for privateering. He was beheaded on Tower Hill March 20,
1549, and though he was not worthy of much sympathy, public opinion
was indignant against the heartlessness of his brother the Protector,
and advantage was taken of it by the Catholic party to form a faction
against him. He was accused, not unjustly, of accumulating vast riches
by seizing property of the Church and Crown. A leader of the opposition
to him was found in Dudley, Earl of Warwick. A meeting of his opponents
was held in Ely Place in October 1549, with the result that the Tower
was seized and Somerset was shut up in it. He was deposed from the
Protectorate, and in February 1550 was pardoned and re-admitted to the
Privy Council. But in October 1551 he was again arrested on the charge
of plotting to raise the country and murder Warwick. On this charge
he was tried and beheaded on Tower Hill. He was the first Protestant
ruler of England, “a rank Calvinist,” and was, in fact, in close
communication with Calvin. It was certainly his influence which led
to the changes between the two English prayer-books of 1549 and 1552.
His royal nephew, apparently, was, as Burnet puts it, “not greatly
concerned” for him. This is his entry in his diary: “January 22, the
Duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon Touer Hill between eight and
nine a cloke in the morning.” His fall involved the ruin of some of
his principal supporters. Thus Sir Ralph Vane (or Fane; he belonged to
the still existent Westmoreland family), though he had distinguished
himself in the army, had offended the Duke of Northumberland. He was
charged with complicity with Somerset and hid himself in a stable at
Lambeth, but was arrested. Before the Privy Council he showed a bold
front, and on his condemnation declared that his murder would make
Northumberland’s pillow uneasy. He was hanged, and the royal diary
recording his “felony” and death adds that on his trial he “answered
like a ruffian.” Sir Miles Partridge was also hanged; Sir Thomas
Arundel and Sir Michael Stanhope were beheaded; the Earl of Arundel,
Lords Grey and Paget were acquitted.
Edward VI’s was a short reign, but a terrible amount of blood was shed
on the scaffold, through the machinations of evil counsellors.
CHAPTER V
THE TUDOR QUEENS
_Grave Difficulties as to the Right of Succession—Statement
of the Various Claims—Duke of Northumberland’s Selfish
Scheme—Its Failure—His Arrest and Execution—Lady Jane
Grey—Triumph of Mary—Her Coronation—Sir Thomas Wyatt’s
Rebellion—Execution of Lady Jane and her Husband—Execution
of Duke of Suffolk and Sir Thomas Wyatt—Accusation against
the Princess Elizabeth—Her Imprisonment and Liberation—Death
of Mary and Accession of Elizabeth—Her Coronation—Religious
Troubles—Lord and Lady Hertford—Plots in Favour of the
Queen of Scots—Hopes of the King of Spain—Hatred of Spain
in the English Nation—Execution of the Duke of Norfolk, the
First for Fourteen Years—Fresh Prisoners owing to the Jesuit
Activity against the Queen—Execution of the Queen of Scots at
Fotheringhay, and Results—Sir Walter Raleigh’s Imprisonment
and Liberation—Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex—His Prosperity,
Folly, Downfall—Death of the Queen._
There had been no doubt about the succession when Henry VIII died. Jane
Seymour, the mother of Edward, was Henry’s lawful wife beyond question,
for Queens Katharine and Anne were both dead when he married Jane. But
on the death of Edward the matter looked very complicated in many eyes.
Let us take the possible claimants in order. First, there were the two
sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, who had both been declared illegitimate on
the ground that their mothers had never been lawful wives. King Henry,
it is true, in his later years, had received them as his daughters, and
as possible heirs, though the Statute disqualifying them had not been
repealed. Next, Henry VII had left two daughters. The elder, Margaret,
married James IV of Scotland, who was killed at Flodden. His son, James
V, was father of Mary Queen of Scots, but she was excluded from right
of succession by the Alien Act, having been born on a foreign soil. But
further, Margaret, within a year of King James’s death, had married the
Earl of Angus, and a wretched marriage it was. He had a wife already,
but a papal brief decreed that, as she had married in good faith, her
child Margaret was legitimate.
Henry VII’s second daughter, Mary, married Louis XII of France, but he
died in his honeymoon. She then married Charles Brandon, afterwards
created Duke of Suffolk, he having a wife alive. Their eldest daughter,
Frances, was given in marriage to Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, the
greatgrandson of Sir John Grey, first husband of Elizabeth Woodville.
Edward IV, on marrying her, made her son a peer. It is a miserable
fact to have to record that the Marquis of Dorset, who now married
the daughter of Brandon and Queen Mary, had put away his lawful wife
in order to do so, the Lady Catherine FitzAlan, sister of the Earl
of Arundel. No wonder that the latter, who had been an affectionate
brother-in-law, became Dorset’s fierce enemy, and nursed his wrath
in secret. Grey was created Duke of Suffolk on account of his royal
spouse, and perhaps thought that the injury he had done was forgotten
in his prosperity. His wife Frances, a lady of amiable temper, brought
him three daughters, the eldest being the Lady Jane Grey, and out of
all this crooked dealing came a great tragedy.
The Duke of Northumberland, who had risen victorious over the Seymour
family, and was apparently in the plenitude of power at King Edward’s
death, was an able, bold, and unprincipled man. He had wedded his
fourth son, Lord Guildford Dudley, to the Lady Jane, and caused the
dying Edward to declare her his legitimate successor. Obviously this
was not the case, for her mother was yet alive, and would under any
circumstances have had first claim. The poor girl was only sixteen
years old. All accounts agree in making her both learned and amiable.
She had no ambitions, but was told that duty lay upon her. The Duke
for some hours kept the King’s death secret, while he took measures
for securing the person of Mary, and brought the Lady Jane to the
Tower, and also a large number of influential peers, to swear homage to
her. But the Londoners were silent, “not a single shout of welcome or
Godspeed was raised as they passed through the silent crowd on their
way to the Tower,” writes Machyn in his diary. The Duke was hated for
his arrogance, and the interference of France and Spain was to be
looked for if Mary’s rights were interfered with. And Jane’s husband,
a poor, wretched, selfish creature, whined and sulked because he had
expected to be declared King Consort. Northumberland, having had Jane
duly proclaimed, went forth to encounter Mary, and soon saw that the
game was up. The fleet off Yarmouth had declared in Mary’s favour, so
had the soldiers which he had sent against her. And so in the street
at Cambridge he threw his cap up in the air with the cry, “God save
Queen Mary!” But it availed him nothing. The Earl of Arundel, who had
been forced by Northumberland to offer allegiance to Jane, but who
waited his opportunity, came forward with a warrant for his arrest,
signed by Mary, and on July 25, nineteen days after Edward’s death,
he was brought a prisoner to the Tower; on August 18 he was tried and
condemned for high treason in Westminster Hall, the Duke of Norfolk
presiding as Lord High Sheriff. He was taken back to the Beauchamp
Tower, and inscriptions which were cut by him and his sons may still be
read on the walls. Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, had been a prisoner
there under King Edward; he was now restored to his dignity, and he
paid a visit to Northumberland, who, in the hope of saving his life,
declared himself a Catholic. Gardiner naturally took the opportunity;
Mass was celebrated in the White Tower Chapel, and the Duke received
after making recantation. Next day he was beheaded on Tower Hill, still
clinging desperately to the hope of life, and making profession all the
way to the scaffold of the fervency of his faith. Sir John Gates and
Sir Thomas Palmer, both implicated in the same treason, perished with
him.
Meanwhile the “nine days’ reign” of the hapless Lady Jane was at an
end. She was consigned to the Lieutenant’s Lodging, called the King’s
House, and her husband to the Beauchamp Tower, where the one word
“Jane,” carved on the wall by him, is still to be seen. All through
the month of September Jane was allowed to walk in the garden, and her
husband and his brother Henry to promenade the outer walk on the wall
which leads from the Beauchamp to the Bell Tower.
Queen Mary was crowned with great splendour on October 1. She was
accompanied by her half-sister Elizabeth.
On November 13 a procession went forth from the Tower Gate to the
Guildhall. First the Gentleman Chief Warder, carrying the axe, next
Archbishop Cranmer, followed by Lord Guildford Dudley and Lady Jane,
the last-named accompanied by two of her ladies. They were arraigned
for high treason, the Lord Mayor presiding, with the Duke of Norfolk as
High Sheriff. They pleaded guilty, received sentence, and were taken
back to the Tower.
It is possible that Mary may have had it in her mind to spare Lady
Jane’s life, but there came a new event, namely, Wyatt’s ill-starred
rising against the projected marriage of Queen Mary with Philip of
Spain. The opinion of the nation was strongly against it, and Wyatt
was certainly moved with an honest purpose. I would not venture to say
as much for his fellow-conspirator, the Duke of Suffolk, Lady Jane’s
father, who probably renewed his hopes of setting his daughter on the
throne. He undertook to head a rising in Leicestershire, as Sir Peter
Carew did in Devon. With the details of this unhappy expedition we have
little to do here. Wyatt started from Maidstone, after publishing a
declaration against the Queen’s marriage, and advanced with a numerous
force to Rochester, where he defeated the Duke of Norfolk and Sir
Henry Jerningham, who had been sent against him. Then he moved on to
Gravesend, where he was met by some members of the Privy Council, who
exhorted him to make known his grievances in a less disorderly manner.
He assented, provided “the custody of the Tower and the Queen within
it” were entrusted to him. This condition being declined, he went on
towards London. Mary was exhorted to take refuge in the Tower, but
cowardice was not one of her faults; she refused, and offered a reward
of a hundred pounds a year to any man who would bring her Wyatt’s head;
she also gave out to the citizens of London that she would not marry
Philip if the match should be disagreeable to the nation. Wyatt, too,
unappalled by his perilous situation, appeared at Southwark, opposite
the Tower, fired upon it and was fired upon by the garrison, on both
sides without effect, but the fact is to be noted as the last time in
its history that the Tower was ever attacked. How he went on, crossed
the river at Kingston, found himself more and more deserted, but still
came forward with the courage of despair until he was captured between
Temple Bar and Ludgate Hill, we all know. Now let Holinshed take up the
narrative: “As for the principals of this faction, Thomas Wyat, William
Knevet, Thomas Cobham, two brethren named Mantells, and Alexander
Bret, were brought by Sir Henry Jerningham by water to the Tower,
prisoners, where Sir Philip R. Denny received them at the bulworke, and
as Wyat passed he said: ‘Go, traitor, there never was such a traitor in
England’; to whom Sir Thomas Wyat turned and said, ‘I am no traitor,
I would thou shouldst well know that thou art more traitor than I, it
is not the point of an honest man to call me so,’ and so went forth.
When he came to the Tower gate, Sir Thomas Bridges, the Lieutenant,
took him through the wicket, first Mantell, and said, ‘Ah thou traitor,
what hast thou and thy companie wrought.’ But he, holding downe his
head, said nothing. Then came Thomas Knevet, whom Master Chambeleine,
gentleman porter of the Tower, tooke in. Then came Alexander Bret,
whome Sir Thomas Pope tooke by the bosome, saying, ‘Oh traitor, how
couldest thou find in thy heart to worke such a villanie, as to take
wages, and being trusted ouer a band of men, to fall to hir enemies,
returning against hir in battell.’ Bret answered, ‘Yea I have offended
in that case.’ Then came Thomas Cobham, whome Sir Thomas Poines tooke
in, and said, ‘Alas, Maister Cobham, what wind headed you to worke such
treason’; and he answered, ‘Oh sir, I was seduced.’ Then came in Sir
Thomas Wyat, whom Sir John Bridges tooke by the collar and said, ‘Oh
thou villen and unhappie traitor, how couldest thou find in thy hart to
worke such detestable treason to the queenes maiestie, who gaue thee
thy life and liuing once alreadie, although thou diddest before this
time beare armes in the field against hir and now to yeeld hir battell.
If it were not (saith he) but that the lawe must passe upon thee, I
would sticke thee through with my dagger.’ To the which, Wyat holding
his arms under his side, and looking grieuously with a grim looke upon
the Lieutenant, said, ‘It is no maisterie now’; and so passed on.
Thomas Wyat had on a shirt of maile, with sleeues verie faire, thereon
a veluet cassocke, and a yellow lace, with the windlace of his dag
hanging thereon, and a paire of boots on his legs, and on his head a
faire hat of veluet, with a broad bone worke lace about it. William
Kneuet, Thomas Cobham, and Bret, were the like apparelled.”
Wyatt was confined in the first floor of the great keep, his adherents
in the crypt beneath. It is hardly to be wondered at that this fixed
the fate of poor Lady Jane. Her father was imprisoned on February 10.
Two days before Feckenham, the Queen’s confessor, afterwards Abbot of
Westminster, was sent to bid her and her husband prepare for death,
and to exhort them to embrace the Roman faith; but on this point they
were both firm in their refusal, and the 12th was fixed for the fatal
day. It was originally intended that they should both die on Tower
Hill, but the fear that Jane’s beauty, simplicity, and sweetness would
excite popular sympathy, induced the authorities to change the place
of her suffering to the Tower Green. When Lord Guildford was told this
he requested a final interview with her, but she declined it, lest it
should change their constancy. On the day appointed he was led forth,
and as he passed the window of “Master Partridge’s House,” where she
was confined, she waved her farewell to him. At the Bulwark Gate, the
sheriffs met him and conducted him to the scaffold, where he met his
fate with firmness. The body was conveyed on a litter to the Tower
Chapel, and Jane saw it on its way thither. “O Guildford, Guildford!”
said she, “the antepast is not so bitter that thou hast tasted, and
which I shall soon taste, as to make my flesh tremble: it is nothing
compared to the feast of which I shall partake this day in Heaven.”
When the Lieutenant of the Tower came to conduct her to her death,
and asked her for some small present which he might keep in memory
of her, she gave him her tablets on which she had just written three
sentences, Latin, Greek, and English. At the scaffold she addressed
the bystanders, protesting that she had erred through bad advice,
in the belief that she was serving the interests of the country,
and that she submitted to the consequences of her error without
murmuring. She prayed fervently, and then—but let us hear Holinshed
once more—“stood vp and gaue hir maid (called Mistress Ellin) her
gloues and handkercher, and hir booke she also gaue to Maister Bridges,
(brother of) the Lieutenant of the Tower, and so untied hir gowne: and
the executioner pressed to helpe hir off with it, but she desired him
to let hir alone, and turned hir toward hir two gentlewomen, who helped
hir off therewith, and with hir other attires, and they gaue hir a fair
handkercher to put about hir eies. Then the executioner kneeled downe
and asked hir forgiuenesse, whom she forgaue most willinglie. Then he
willed hir to stand vpon the straw, which doone, she saw the blocke,
and then she said, ‘I pray you dispatch me quicklie.’ Then she kneeled
downe, saiing, ‘Will you take it off before I laie me downe?’ Whereunto
the executioner answered, ‘No, Madame.’ Then tied she the handkercher
about hir eies, and, feeling for the blocke, she said, ‘Where is it?
where is it?’ One of the standers-by guided hir thereunto, and she laid
downe hir head vpon the blocke, and then stretched forth hir bodie, and
said, ‘Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit,’ and so finished hir
life.”
Eleven days later her father, the Duke of Suffolk, was beheaded, and
many other participators in the ill-concerted rebellion were also put
to death; three were hanged at Maidstone, three at Sevenoaks, more
than fifty died in the City on the block or the gallows, the gates
and London Bridge were disfigured with clusters of rotting heads, in
several of the principal streets gibbets bore their ghastly burdens in
chains, and the air was tainted far and wide. In the midst of this time
Mary was married to Philip at Winchester.
Wyatt, who was put to death on April 11, had used some expressions
which were held to implicate, among others, the Princess Elizabeth.
The latter was lying sick, in semi-custody, at Ashridge in Herts, and
a strong guard was sent to escort her to London, which performed its
duty so zealously as to force admission into her bedchamber. She was
brought, in spite of her remonstrances, by easy stages to London, and
remained for a fortnight in close confinement at Whitehall, and was
then conveyed to the Tower. Her angry protestations made a scene as
she was landed at Traitors’ Gate on Palm Sunday, that day being fixed
upon because the citizens were strictly ordered to Church, and it was
feared that popular disaffection would be exhibited if the Princess
was conducted through the city. Whilst in the Tower, her confinement
was of the most rigid character; the Mass, though offensive to her,
was constantly said in her apartment; at first she was not allowed to
pass the threshold of her room, and when afterwards she obtained the
privilege, through the intercession of Lord Chandos, she was constantly
attended by the Lieutenant and Constable of the Tower, with a guard.
“Queen Elizabeth’s Walk” is still the name of the path she daily
promenaded. She was frequently examined by the Council, but nothing
against her could be found, and Wyatt with his dying breath declared
her innocence. On May 19 she was liberated from the Tower, and
conveyed, under the charge of Sir Henry Bedingfield, to Woodstock. In
the old London Tavern in Leadenhall Street is preserved a heavy pewter
meat dish and cover, which it is said was used at the meal which she
took after leaving the Tower. And there is another tradition that the
bells of some of the city churches were joyously rung on her release,
and that to these churches on her accession she gave silken bell-ropes.
There still remained many prisoners in the Tower who had been concerned
in the Lady Jane attempt and Wyatt’s subsequent rebellion. A large
number of these were now released. The Earl of Warwick and his three
brothers, Ambrose, Robert and Dudley, were in the Beauchamp Tower, but
the Earl died in October, 1554, and his brothers were liberated next
year. There was a strong desire to win popular favour and make the
Spanish marriage less unpopular. The Archbishop of York, who had been
imprisoned for refusing to attend Queen Mary’s coronation, and some
twenty other knights and gentlemen were set free.
With the religious persecutions which followed for three years and a
half we have no concern here. There was one more rising against the
increasing authority of the Spaniards; Thomas, the second son of Lord
Stafford, landed at Scarborough and took the castle, but was defeated
by the Earl of Westmoreland, and a large number of prisoners were
brought to the Tower. Stafford was beheaded on Tower Hill, and the
others were hanged at Tyburn. Queen Mary died on November 17, 1558, and
the accession of Elizabeth was certainly hailed with joy by the English
nation.
Elizabeth was at Hatfield when her sister died. On November 28 she came
to London, and entered, amidst general acclamations, the fortress where
she had been so rigorously imprisoned. It is no wonder if it found no
charms for her; on December 5 she retired first to Somerset House, then
to Whitehall, where she remained until the eve of her coronation, when
she came back to the Tower again. The procession from hence to the
Abbey was more splendid than any that had been recorded. Seated in an
open chariot all glittering with gold, herself blazing with jewels,
she was carried through streets strewn with flowers, with banners
and tapestry on the houses, the conduits running wine, and the city
companies manning the streets in their gorgeous liveries. A young woman
called Deborah stood under a palm-tree in Fleet Street, and prophesied
great prosperity to the nation.
Though the horrors of the stake were at an end, religious persecution
was not; and the Tower seldom appears in the reign of Elizabeth save
as a State prison. The Reformers were only too ready to retaliate on
the Roman party, and so the Bishop of Winchester (Gardiner), who had
rendered himself obnoxious under Mary, was soon in durance here, and
was followed by the Archbishop of York, the Bishops of Ely, Lincoln,
Worcester, Exeter, and Bath, and by Feckenham, Abbot of Westminster,
and other Church dignitaries, for denying the Queen’s supremacy.
And there were fresh prisoners of State. Lady Catherine Grey, one of
Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting, Lady Jane’s sister, married in 1560
Lord Hertford, eldest son of the Duke of Somerset, but secretly, as
it was known that the Queen would not approve of the match. He was
twenty-two, and she twenty. The young people walked from Whitehall
to Lord Hertford’s house in Fleet Street, and here the marriage took
place, though they could not remember the name of the minister who thus
clandestinely united them. When in due time the union could no longer
be concealed they were in a terrible fright, Lady Catherine being of
near kin to the Queen. Lord Hertford could not face her majesty’s
anger, and fled across sea, leaving his poor wife to do the best she
could for herself. This was not much, for when she threw herself at her
royal mistress’s feet and begged for pardon, Elizabeth in a fury sent
her off to the Tower, where, soon after, her child was born.[3] Lord
Hertford, returning to England, was sent also, and remained there many
a long year, in the deeper disgrace because he could produce no proof
of his marriage. He was separated from her, but bribed the keepers
and gained access to her chamber, the result of which was the birth
of another child. Elizabeth, we need hardly say, was more furious
than ever; she declared, and probably thought, that there had been no
marriage, dismissed summarily the Lieutenant, Warner, and had Hertford
brought before the Star Chamber, where he was fined £15,000 and sent
back to his prison, where he lay for nine years longer. During that
time Lady Catherine died (1567). After his liberation he married again,
but proved the validity of his first marriage in 1606 by discovering
the minister who had performed it (Collins’s _Peerage_).
The Earl of Lennox was imprisoned in 1561, on suspicion of privately
corresponding with the Queen of Scots, but was released next year. His
wife, however, being a near kinswoman of Elizabeth, was continually
suspected by her, and was imprisoned three times, “not for any crime of
treason,” says Camden, “but for love matters; first when Thomas Howard,
son of the first Duke of Norfolk of that name, falling in love with
her, was imprisoned and died in the Tower of London; then for the love
of Henry, Lord Darnley, her son, to Mary, Queen of Scots; and lastly
for the love of Charles, her younger son, to Elizabeth Cavendish,
mother to the Lady Arabella, with whom the Queen of Scots was accused
to have made up the match.” In the King’s House there is an inscription
in one of the rooms recording the second of these imprisonments.
The struggle between Elizabeth and the Queen of Scots was long and
fierce. Before it closed on the scaffold at Fotheringhay, February,
1587, it had brought many prisoners to the Tower. Among the earliest
were two more members of the Pole family, Arthur and Edmund, great
grandchildren of the Duke of Clarence. They were imprisoned in the
Beauchamp Tower in 1562 on the charge of conspiring to set Mary Stuart
on the English throne. Inscriptions on the wall may still be seen,
bearing their names. There can be no question that Elizabeth’s position
was one of great danger. England was half ruined when she came to
the throne—no army, no fleet, a huge debt, and the whole country
containing a population less than that of London to-day. And Spain was
rich and populous, with the finest army and navy in the world. Philip
expected England to buy his support against her neighbour, France, by
becoming a dependency of Spain. But he misjudged not only the courage
of the Queen, but the indomitable determination of her nation. They
had had enough of Spain. Unjustly, no doubt, they attributed all the
miseries and disasters of Mary’s reign to the Spanish alliance, and
it was the special feature which so wonderfully marked the reign of
Elizabeth that her people rallied round her in the hour of danger as
people had never done to a sovereign before. We have to bear this
in mind when thinking of the high-handed doings of Burleigh and the
astute diplomacies of Walsingham. A suspicion of conspiracy was a most
serious matter then. In 1569 Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, son of
the ill-fated Surrey, was brought in on the charge of high treason,
his overt act being the proposal to wed the Queen of Scots. Others
implicated in the conspiracy to place Mary on the throne were the Earls
of Arundel and Southampton, Lord Lumley, Lord Cobham, and his brother
Thomas. A batch of letters, written by an Italian banker named Ridolfi,
resident in London, on the same business, got into the hands of the
government, with the result that a fresh haul of prisoners was brought
in. They furnished evidence that the Duke of Alva was laying plans for
the murder of Elizabeth, prior to Norfolk’s marriage with Mary. These
prisoners were distributed in the various towers, and a young man named
Charles Bailly, who was seized at Dover with a number of treasonable
letters in his possession, was placed in the Tower, and under torture
gave evidence against many prisoners. There are several inscriptions
by him in the Beauchamp Tower. The Duke of Norfolk was beheaded on
Tower Hill June 2, 1579, the first execution there for fourteen years.
The old scaffold had become rotten, and a new one was set up for the
occasion. John Leslie, Bishop of Ross, when put on his trial for the
same crime, pleaded that, being an ambassador, he was not amenable to
criminal trial. And on this plea he was put back, kept prisoner for two
years longer, and then dismissed the kingdom, to which he never
returned. Some more executions took place, and a great many culprits
were fined and set at liberty.
For the next few years the Tower held but few captives. Peter Burchet,
a member of the Middle Temple, was committed in October, 1573, for
attempting to murder Hawkins, the celebrated admiral, whom he mistook
for the Chancellor Hatton. During his confinement, he struck to death
a man left in charge of him, who was quietly reading the Bible at the
window. His hand was first struck off for striking a blow in a royal
palace, after which he was hanged at Temple Bar. In 1577 a gentleman
named Sherin was drawn on a hurdle from hence to Tyburn and hanged for
denying the Queen’s supremacy, and six others were carried to Norwich
for the like fate for coining.
But it was in 1580 that the cells again became filled with Roman
Catholic prisoners. It is easy to account for this. The breach with
Rome was complete; the Papal Bull had been issued for the dethronement
of Elizabeth, and the newly-established Order of Jesuits was sending
forth its missionaries to carry out the decree. And so it was war to
the knife. Thus, in June 1580, we have William and Robert Tyrwhitt
sent to the Tower for attending Mass at their sister’s marriage; the
Archbishop of Armagh, the Earls of Kildare and Clanricarde, with other
nobles, for being concerned in the Earl of Desmond’s insurrection in
Ireland; and before the year was out, six Catholic priests and three
laymen are added. Next year it appears as if a system of torture was
established; some were confined in “Little Ease,” a dungeon twenty
feet below the level, in which they could neither stand upright nor
lie down at length; some were racked, some placed in the “Scavenger’s
Daughter,” an iron instrument which held bound the head, hands and
feet. Add to these the thumbscrew and the boot. The most conspicuous
prisoner in 1581 was Father Campion, an eloquent Jesuit who had worked
hard to raise sedition in various parts of the country. He was dragged
off with two other seminary priests to ignominious death, so were
seven more priests that year; in 1583 a Warwickshire gentleman named
Somerville strangled himself to avoid the ghastly dismemberment, but
his father-in-law Arden suffered it. In 1584 five seminary priests
suffered, as did Francis, the eldest son of Sir John Throckmorton,
convicted of treasonable correspondence with the Queen of Scots. In
January, 1585, a clearance was made of those prisoners charged with
religious offences, and twenty-one of them were shipped off to France.
But their places were occupied by others, charged with complicity with
the treasonable practices of Throckmorton. Among them were the Earls
of Northumberland and Arundel. The former killed himself in the Tower
to prevent that bitch, as he called the Queen, from getting possession
of his estates by his attainder. Arundel was tried and condemned to
death in 1589, but Elizabeth delayed the execution, though she gave
very strict orders about his confinement. He might “walk in the Queen’s
garden two hours in the day, with a servant of the Lieutenant’s to
attend him, the garden door being shut at the time of his walking.”
This severity, coupled with the strictest religious austerities
which he constantly practised, hastened his death (Nov. 19, 1595). A
memorial of his piety, graven with his own hand, may be seen in the
Beauchamp Tower. William Parry, instigated from Rome, arranged with
Edmund Neville to shoot the Queen when she was out riding. But the Earl
of Westmoreland died in exile. Neville was his next heir, and hoped
that by revealing the plot he might recover the forfeited estates.
The result was that Parry died a traitor’s death and Neville was kept
close prisoner for many years. Many prisoners were brought in in 1586,
charged with being concerned in Babington’s conspiracy. So was Davison,
the Secretary of State, who was charged with sending the warrant for
the death of the Queen of Scots without Elizabeth’s sanction. This
is generally considered to have been a crafty device of the Queen to
screen herself from the odium. He exculpated himself, but was kept in
the Tower, and ruinously fined by the Star Chamber. In 1598 Sir John
Perrot, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, whose righteous endeavours had
done much to restore tranquillity to that country, having incurred the
enmity of Lord Chancellor Hatton, was recalled home and sent to the
Tower on a charge of treason. He was a hot-tempered man, and had used
some disrespectful words against the Queen. This was the only charge
proved against him, but on it he was condemned. On being conveyed to
the Tower he said to the Lieutenant in great anger that the Queen was
“suffering her brother to be offered up as a sacrifice to his strutting
adversaries.” He was said to be an illegitimate son of King Henry
VIII. Whether or not, when this speech was reported to the Queen, she
refused to sign the warrant for his execution, and declared that his
accusers were all knaves. He died in the Tower six months afterwards,
broken-hearted.
An illustrious name comes before us in the annals of 1592. Sir Walter
Raleigh was lodged here, having incurred the Queen’s displeasure by
his amour with Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, the
celebrated statesman. He soon regained his liberty, however, by using
the most fulsome adulation of his royal mistress. Here is just one
specimen, an extract from a letter which he wrote to Cecil, of course
in order that it might be shown to her Majesty:—“My heart was never
broken till this day, that I hear the Queen goes away so far off [she
was about to start on her annual progress], whom I have followed so
many years with so great love and desire in so many journeys, and am
now left behind her in a dark prison, all alone. While she was yet near
at hand, that I might hear of her once in two or three days, my sorrows
were the less, but even now my heart is cast into the depth of all
misery. I, that was wont to behold her riding like Alexander, hunting
like Diana, walking like Venus, the gentle wind blowing her fair hair
about her pure face like a nymph, sometimes sitting in the shade like
a goddess, sometimes singing like an angel, sometimes playing like
Orpheus.”
Elizabeth was always open to flattery, but in this case her
“love-stricken swain” was further assisted by the arrival at Dartmouth
of his good ship _The Roebuck_, which had taken a great Spanish
treasure ship off Flores, with a treasure which Raleigh estimated at
half a million pounds. The Queen gave him his liberty and sent him off
to arrange the disposal of his capture, and of course got the lion’s
share of it. He returned to Court fresh as ever, and this return was
a fatal event in the fortunes of another brilliant courtier, in fact
the most brilliant, of Elizabeth’s surrounding, Robert Devereux, Earl
of Essex. He and Raleigh were bitter enemies. Ireland was again giving
trouble. Raleigh advised that the disturbers should remorselessly be
trampled out, Essex that justice and good-will should be shown. The
discussion between them was firm on both sides, and when we remember
that both men were high-spirited, full of ambition, jealous of each
other as to the royal favour, we can understand how their selfwill
and egotism proved the ruin of them both. Essex was strikingly
handsome, brilliant both at Court and in the field. His father had
been a personal friend of the Queen, the Earl of Leicester was his
step-father, Sir Francis Knollys his grandfather, Walsingham his
father-in-law, Lord Burleigh his guardian, Shakespeare his friend.
He was now sent to Ireland with the task before him of subduing the
factions which kept the country in continual insurrection, and he
failed, whilst his enemies traduced him at home. Enraged at learning
this, and in despair at his continued illfortune, he returned after
two years to England unbidden, hoping to justify his actions in the
presence of the Queen. But several charges of misconduct were proved
against him, and he was deprived of his offices and banished from
Court. The Queen had said that an unruly horse must be kept short
of provender, and when this was repeated to him he retorted that
the Queen’s mind was as crooked as her body, and it is difficult to
imagine a speech which would anger her more. Then, instigated by his
secretary, Cuffe, he formed the desperate resolution of breaking in
upon the Court, removing by force the courtiers, and so ruling the
Queen by force. A terrible blunder to make. He was perhaps the most
popular noble in London, but the citizens had no idea of imperilling
their lives and fortunes by countenancing such a harum-scarum idea as
this. Nobody came to his call, and after a short siege in his own house
in the Strand he was captured, along with the Earl of Southampton, and
conveyed through the fatal Traitors’ Gate. This was on February 6,
1601; on the 19th he was adjudged a traitor, and on the 25th beheaded.
The execution took place within the Tower, some say because Essex was
so popular that there was a fear of a demonstration in his favour if it
had been on Tower Hill, others that it was his own wish to die within
the walls. He was buried in St. Peter’s Chapel. He was only thirty-five
years of age! There is a story that the Queen expected a ring which he
was to send her when in trouble, and which was to win him forgiveness;
that he had entrusted it to Lady Nottingham, who kept it back; but this
story is certainly untrue. Elizabeth, as one can quite understand, was
unwilling to sign the warrant, considering the favour in which she had
once held him, and after its execution she fell into a terrible fit of
despondency, from which in fact she never recovered. Raleigh, who
was never popular with the Londoners, was hooted in the streets for
his enmity towards Essex, so was Bacon as one of his judges. Four of
Essex’s fellow-conspirators were beheaded; Cuffe was hanged at Tyburn.
Southampton was kept in close confinement, but liberated by special
command of James I in 1603. Essex’s son, born 1593, lived to lead the
Parliamentary army against Charles I.
Sad enough are the accounts of the last days of the great Queen, her
loneliness and terror. No doubt the nature of her disease produced fits
of delirium. She seemed to have no one near her to whom she could look
for a loving or tender word. But she was a great monarch, and under her
rule England rose out of weakness, confusion, distraction. Elizabeth
had triumphed over all her enemies. Her bitterest foe, Philip of Spain,
had gone to his grave five years before her, but not until he had seen
his “Invincible Armada” beaten all to pieces. England was now in the
first rank of the nations.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] In the wardrobe accounts in the British Museum (Lansdowne MSS.,
No. V., Art. 41), the furniture of Lady Catherine’s prison-room is
catalogued. “There were five pieces of tapestry for hanging the
chamber; three window-pieces of the like stuff; a sparver for a bed, of
changeable silk damask; a silk quilt of red striped with gold; a bed
and bolster of down with two pillows of down; one white linen quilt
stuffed with wool; four pairs of fustians; two Turkey carpets; one
small window carpet; one chair of cloth of gold raised with crimson
velvet, with two pannels of copper gilt and the Queen’s arms on the
back; one cushion of purple velvet; two footstools covered with green
velvet; one cupboard joined; one bed, one bolster and a counterpane for
her woman.” But some marginal notes in the handwriting of Sir Edward
Warner, the Lieutenant of the Tower, state that it was all old, worn,
broken and decayed, and another letter of his to Cecil in the same
collection of MSS. says that the Lady Catherine did further injury to
this furniture with her monkeys and her dogs.
CHAPTER VI
THE STUARTS
_James I, arrival at the Tower—Lady Arabella Stuart—George
Brooke—Sir Walter Raleigh—His Liberation—Fresh
Imprisonment—Execution—The Gunpowder Plot—Sir
Thomas Overbury—Carr, Earl of Somerset—Ascendency of
Buckingham—Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex—Charles I—His
Avoidance of the Tower—Sir John Eliot—Felton, Assassin
of Buckingham—Lord Loudoun—Earl of Strafford—Archbishop
Laud—Tower passes into power of Parliament when the Civil War
begins—Imprisonments under the Commonwealth—Lord Capel—The
Restoration—Execution of the Regicides—Villiers, Second Duke
of Buckingham—Colonel Blood’s Attempt to Steal the Crown—The
Mystery of his Pardon—Titus Oates—Lord Stafford—The Rye
House Plot—Accession of James II—The Duke of Monmouth—The
Seven Bishops—Bevis Skelton—Judge Jeffrey—William and
Mary, only one Execution in the Tower all the Reign—But many
Prisoners._
When King James arrived from Scotland he took up his residence and
held his first Court in the Tower, but the plague was in London and
there was no procession to Westminster at his Coronation, though the
Londoners had made preparations for it. At the close of the year (1603)
a conspiracy to place the crown on the head of Lady Arabella Stuart
caused the imprisonment of many eminent men, among them Henry Brooke,
Lord Cobham, his brother George Brooke, Thomas, Lord Grey of Wilton,
and Sir Walter Raleigh. Lady Arabella was the daughter of Charles
Stuart, Earl of Lennox, Darnley’s brother, and was therefore King
James’s first cousin; she was also, as we have already had occasion
to note, related to the Tudors, and this double relationship was the
great misfortune of her life. At the trial of Lord Cobham it was
clearly proved that she had no share in the scheme to make her queen.
She had had many suitors, Henry IV of France and the Archduke Mathias
of Austria among them, but had fallen in love with William Seymour,
grandson of the Earl of Hertford, and for this Queen Elizabeth had kept
her in close confinement. In 1609 King James heard that she was about
to marry some foreign prince; his jealousy was aroused, and he sent her
to the Tower, but finding that his fears were groundless, he gave his
consent to her marrying one of his subjects. She took him at his word,
and married Seymour. In wrath the king sent her to Lambeth Palace as
prisoner, and her husband to the Tower. From Lambeth she was ordered
to Durham, to be under the Bishop, but at Highgate pleaded illness and
remained there, and planned an escape for herself and husband. She
obtained a male disguise and got to Blackwall, where her husband was to
meet her, he having got out of the Tower by dressing like a labourer
and following a cart of firewood. When he reached the appointed
meeting-place he found that Arabella had sailed away in a French boat.
He could not follow her, as the wind was against him, and he had to go
to Ostend. Meanwhile an alarm was raised, Arabella was pursued, caught
in mid-strait, and brought back to the Tower, which she never left
again until her death, September 25, 1615. She had been for some years
insane. She is buried beside Mary Queen of Scots in Westminster Abbey.
Her husband survived her for nearly fifty years, and married a second
wife, a sister of the famous Parliamentary general, the Earl of Essex,
son of Queen Elizabeth’s Essex. In 1660 he became Duke of Somerset, and
lived just long enough to welcome Charles II.
But in following Arabella’s fortunes I have greatly anticipated. We
must go back to the conspiracy. George Brooke and two priests were the
first to be tried and executed. His brother, Lord Cobham, and Lord Grey
de Wilton were also condemned and actually brought out to be executed,
but a respite had been previously signed, and it was produced at the
block in a _coup de théâtre_. They were sent back to their prison, and
for fifteen years longer Cobham lay in confinement. Then, his health
failing, he was allowed to visit Bath in the custody of gaolers, after
which he returned to his prison. Whether he died in the Tower or was
allowed, as some accounts imply, to retire to an obscure house in
the Minories, is uncertain. He died in January, 1619. There was much
underhand dealing about his estates and those of his brother, by which
Cecil gained possession of the greater part of them; and this entered
into the soul of William Brooke, George’s son, who became one of the
most determined foes of Charles I, and died fighting against him at
Newbury. Lord Grey of Wilton, a brilliant young man who might have
served his country well, languished in the Brick Tower till his death
in 1617.
Again disregarding contemporary events for awhile, we take up the
history of Sir Walter Raleigh. He was detained for twelve years, mostly
in the Bloody Tower, in rooms not uncomfortably furnished, was allowed
two servants, and his wife and son could visit him. He had also the
liberty of the garden which lay between his prison and the lieutenant’s
house, and in it he constructed a little room for chemical experiments.
And during this time he wrote his _History of the World_. In conception
it was a colossal book, but he only completed his plan as far as the
end of the second Macedonian war. It is a torso, one of the most
wonderful books in literature, a great folio, very scarce; in fact,
hardly ever to be seen except in old libraries, but full of learning,
wit, shrewdness, when you get the opportunity of perusing it. In the
early days of his captivity Sir George Harvey was lieutenant of the
Tower. They were personal friends, and Raleigh often spent the evening
with him. But when Harvey was succeeded by Sir William Wade things
were changed. The new lieutenant had a personal dislike to Raleigh,
and seems to have taken much trouble to curtail his privileges and
make his life irksome. Henry, Prince of Wales, was partial to him, and
frequently visited him, and the queen is said to have entreated the
king to set him free. But James personally disliked him; partly, it is
said, because he had heard that Raleigh made jests on his ugly face and
uncouth gestures and accent. But, further, he was hated by Spain for
his labours to make the English fleet the most powerful on the seas,
to extend the English colonial possessions, and destroy the Spanish
supremacy; and the Spanish ambassador, Gondomar, was the most powerful
minister at the English court. Prince Henry died in 1612, a heavy loss
to Raleigh, but he got his liberty in 1616 by bribing Villiers, who
went to the king and roused his cupidity by explaining that if Raleigh
were allowed to make a fresh expedition to the West Indies he might
gather great spoils, the lion’s share of which would go to the king.
And so the warrant for his liberation was signed in March, 1616, at the
time when Shakespeare was dying at Stratford-on-Avon. The wretched king
at the same time not only gave a pledge to Gondomar that if Raleigh
touched any Spanish person or property he would hand him over to the
Spanish Government to be hanged at Seville, but also showed him a
private letter of Raleigh, stating the exact number of his ships and
men, as well as the spot on the banks of the Orinoco where he expected
to find a great silver mine. As the Spaniards claimed the whole of that
territory, the vileness of the treachery becomes apparent. He started
from Plymouth in March, 1617, with fourteen ships and nine hundred men.
Continual disaster is the summary of the expedition. His eldest son
was killed fighting gallantly in Guiana. In August, 1618, he returned
a ruined man, and was again lodged in the Tower. The king was burning
to get rid of him, but what should the pretext be? The Council of
State was in uttermost perplexity. Bacon advised acting on the former
sentence. Raleigh pleaded that the commission sending him to America
was a reversal of that sentence both in law and reason, but the Lord
Chief Justice Montagu gave his judicial opinion that it held good,
and so on October 24 the warrant was signed, and on the 29th he was
beheaded in Old Palace Yard.
Again we have to retrace our steps. In 1604 the penal laws against the
Roman Catholics were re-enacted. On November 5, 1605, Guy Fawkes was
seized in the vaults of the Houses of Parliament and conveyed to the
Tower, as were also Thomas and Robert Winter, Robert Keyes, Thomas
Oates, John Grant, Ambrose Rookwood, and Sir Everard Digby. They were
placed in the dungeons beneath the White Tower. The room is still shown
in the King’s House in which Guy was brought before the Council of
State. And, moreover, in the subterranean dungeon are the bases of the
rack on which he was tortured He is said to have been kept in “Little
Ease” for fifty days. He was put to death, along with Thomas Winter,
Rookwood and Keyes, in Old Palace Yard on January 31, 1606. Digby,
Rookwood and Keyes suffered the same horrible death in Old Palace Yard.
But there were other persons who were implicated and brought in
prisoners, of whom some account must be given, among them Henry Percy,
the aged Earl of Northumberland, Lords Mordaunt and Stourton, and three
Jesuit priests, Garnet, Oldcorne, and Gerard. Northumberland had to
pay an enormous fine and remained a prisoner here for sixteen years;
Mordaunt and Stourton were also heavily fined and kept in durance.
Fathers Garnet and Oldcorne were put to death in the usual horrible
manner, one in St. Paul’s Churchyard, the other at Worcester. With
Gerard it was different. He was questioned in the King’s House about
Garnet’s knowledge of the plot and refused to answer, whereupon he
was taken into the subterranean chamber and hung up by his wrists, he
being a heavy man. In this position he was pressed with questions for
an hour, and several times fainted. When he still refused to open his
mouth Wade, the lieutenant, cried out in a rage, “Hang there, then,
till you rot.” However, when the tolling from the Bell Tower gave
notice to the Commissioners to quit the fortress for the day, the poor
priest was suffered to crawl to his prison room at the top of the Salt
Tower. Next day the same torture was renewed, and when he fainted he
was restored by having vinegar poured down his throat. It was of no
use, and he was again carried back to his prison, where he lay fifty
days. Another Roman Catholic named Arden was confined in the Cradle
Tower, some hundred feet off; they could see one another, and could
even exchange a few words across the Privy Garden. Gerard persuaded his
gaoler to let Arden visit him, and they planned an escape. They wrote a
letter with orange juice, which is invisible until it is subjected to
a process known to the initiated, and got it sent to co-religionists
outside, who came opposite with a boat, and to them the prisoners threw
a thin cord across the moat by means of a leaden weight attached to it.
The boatmen fastened a stout rope to this, and it was hauled up and
made fast within the chamber, and down it the two men “swarmed,” though
Gerard was in agony from his swollen arms. But they succeeded and got
away safely, Gerard to Rome, where he wrote a full account of his trial
and escape.
We pass on to one of the foulest records in the history of our great
fortress. Thomas Overbury, the son of a judge, was sent by his father
“on a voyage of pleasure” to Edinburgh in 1601, and there made
acquaintance, which ripened into intimate friendship, with one Robert
Carr, page to the Earl of Dunbar. On the accession of King James to the
English throne he showed Carr great favour, and brought him to
London. Carr, conscious of his own defective education and training,
leaned much on Overbury’s ability, who thus to some extent shared his
prosperity and was knighted in 1608. Carr was made Earl of Rochester in
1610. Their intimacy continued so close that men about court cringed
to Overbury with a view to gaining Rochester’s favour, but now came a
bitter feud. Rochester involved himself in a liaison with the Countess
of Essex, a woman of altogether abandoned character, and she obtained
a divorce with a view of marrying Rochester. But against this marriage
Overbury raised an indignant protest, and entreated his friend to
abandon the idea. Rochester resented his interference, and the countess
in wrath excited him to retaliate. Rochester hesitated—probably
Overbury was in possession of secrets which it was not desirable to
bring out—and tried to persuade him to accept a diplomatic appointment
abroad. He steadily refused all offers, and the Earl of Northampton,
the countess’s uncle, who was keen for the match, persuaded the king,
who was already prejudiced against Overbury, to send him to the Tower,
on a charge of having spoken disrespectfully of the queen. Rochester
regarded this imprisonment as a temporary expedient only; but far
other was the idea of the countess. After making one or two proposals
to officers to assassinate Overbury, she procured the dismissal of
Wade from the governorship, and put in a tool of her own, Sir Gervase
Helwys, by whose management the wretched captive was slowly and
skilfully poisoned, September 15, 1613, three months and seventeen days
after his first committal. A few weeks later Rochester was created
Earl of Somerset. Nearly two years later a boy in the employment of
one of the apothecaries revealed the crime. Investigations were made
and proofs were abundantly forthcoming. Helwys and the attendants were
hanged. The Earl of Northampton, it was clearly proved, had been an
accomplice, but he had died. The Earl and Countess of Somerset were
arrested, tried and convicted in May, 1616, but were pardoned and
released from the Tower in 1621. Public opinion was much outraged;
there were demonstrations in the streets, and it was even broadly
intimated that King James must have been privy to the murder. There was
a tradition that Mrs. Turner, one of the principal agents employed in
this crime by Lady Essex, appeared at her trial in a stiffened ruff
which was all the fashion, and which we constantly see in portraits of
that time, and in the same decoration was hanged (March, 1615), the
result being that these ruffs immediately went out of fashion.
There were other occupants of the Tower during the reign of James I,
and the records are miserable enough; intrigues and plots among rival
aspirants to power frequently ended in imprisonment of the defeated.
The rise of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, is undoubtedly a
notable fact of the ignoble reign, but can only be touched upon here
as connected with the imprisonment of Sir John Eliot, Sir Edward
Coke, and Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex. Cranfield, a creation
of Buckingham, was one of the foremost accusers of Bacon for corrupt
practices. He had been made Master of the Wardrobe and Lord High
Treasurer. He was convicted of robbing the magazine of arms, of
pocketing bribes and selling offices, and of making false entries of
the royal debts. He was condemned to pay a fine of £50,000, and to be
imprisoned for life. He was released, however, in a few weeks, lived in
retirement for the rest of his life, and remained neutral during the
Civil War. He died in 1645. Two sons in succession succeeded him, after
which the family became extinct.
The schemes and intrigues concerning the proposed marriage of Charles
with the Infanta of Spain and the tortuous policy of the Duke of
Buckingham have not come within our scope. But it has to be noted that
Sir John Eliot, who had by reason of his great ability been appointed
Vice-Admiral of Devon, had got into trouble during Buckingham’s absence
in Spain, by arresting a notorious pirate named Nutt, who was under the
secret patronage of Calvert, the Secretary of State, and Eliot was sent
to prison on false charges. He was liberated after some months and got
a seat in Parliament in 1624, where he almost immediately displayed
remarkable power of oratory. Buckingham had now broken with Spain, and
in this Eliot heartily went with him, but his feeling was altogether
based upon the rights of the House of Commons and the popular feeling
against any Spanish alliance. He was one of the leaders also of the
impeachment of the Earl of Middlesex. Soon there appeared serious signs
of his divergence from the king’s policy. He was no Puritan, having
a strong antipathy to Calvinism; but he urged enforcement of the
recusancy laws against the Roman Catholics, because religion “made
distractions among men.” As Mr. Gardiner puts it, his creed was “_the
monarchy of man_.... There must be unity and purity of faith, and
that faith must be one which brought man face to face with his Maker”
(vol. v., p. 343). In those same early days he was in conflict with
another man who was to become one of the most prominent politicians of
his day—Thomas Wentworth, presently Lord Strafford. Wentworth too,
according to his light, was a patriot. He was sincerely desirous for
the prosperity of the country, but held that strength is the essence
of good government, had a contempt for constitutional forms, and in
his arrogance, knowing his own good intentions, paid no respect to
those who opposed him. Eliot stood at the opposite pole. Parliament
was to him the voice and the majesty of the nation. He earnestly
and strenuously opposed the entrance of Wentworth into the House of
Commons, on the ground that his election had been a forced one and was
a sham: and he carried his point.
Further alienation followed. Buckingham’s war with Spain was a failure.
Eliot, after some hesitation on account of old friendship, spoke
bitterly against him in King Charles’ first Parliament of 1626; an
impeachment followed, of which Eliot was one of the managers, and for
this the king sent him and Sir Dudley Digges to the Tower. But the
cleavage between king and parliament had grown serious; the Commons
refused to proceed to business until their members were freed, and it
was done, but he was dismissed from offices which he held. The third
parliament met in 1628, and again Eliot spoke against Buckingham and
against arbitrary taxation, and it was mainly by his energy that the
Petition of Right was carried. Next year Buckingham was murdered by
Felton. Eliot next directed his energies against Archbishop Laud, who
had expressed his intention of raising Church ceremonial, and excluding
Puritan teachers from office in the Church, and thus, according to
Eliot, of making war upon the religious convictions of the nation. In
the midst of an angry debate the king prorogued parliament, Eliot was
again sent to the Tower, and parliament was dissolved (March 10, 1629).
When examined as to his conduct he refused to answer, on the ground
that it would be yielding up the privilege of parliament. The Crown
lawyers had much difficulty in meeting this contention, but they
managed to secure his conviction in the Court of King’s Bench, on the
ground that he had calumniated the minister of the Crown, and he was
fined £2,000. A word of acknowledgment from him that he had been in the
wrong would have procured his liberty, but he would not speak it, for
to surrender the privileges of parliament would have been in his eyes
to betray the liberties of the nation. So he lay in prison writing the
treatise which he called _The Monarchy of Man_, which had a profound
effect on public opinion and the change in the balance of forces. He
showed signs of consumption, and petitioned for leave to go into the
country to recruit his health. But it was refused, and he died November
27, 1632. His family petitioned that he might be buried with his
ancestors, but this also was refused, and he was laid in St. Peter’s
chapel.
It was convenient to carry on Eliot’s history unbroken, but it is
necessary to look back to the assassination of Buckingham. The
assassin, Felton, bought his knife at a stall on Tower Hill, went to
Portsmouth, and there committed his crime. His motives still remain
uncertain. Probably religious fanaticism was one, but private vengeance
for supposed injustice as to promotion was another. Buckingham was so
unpopular that when Felton was brought down the river to the Tower,
blessings and prayers were cried after him by the crowd. He expressed
deep penitence, and requested that he might be allowed to wear
sackcloth and a halter until the day of his death, and might receive
the Communion. He was hanged at Tyburn in December, and his body was
hung in chains at Portsmouth.
Lords Spencer and Arundel were shut up in the Tower over a private
quarrel. Arundel insulted Spencer by telling him that at no distant
time back his ancestors had been tending sheep, to which the retort
was, “And at that time yours were plotting treason.”
James I was the last monarch who used the Tower as a royal residence.
Charles I did not even rest there on the night preceding his
coronation, nor is there any record of his having visited the place
during his whole reign.
One line may be given to Mervyn, Lord Audley and Earl of Castlehaven,
who was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1631 for a whole series of revolting
crimes which probably indicate insanity. But the cells continued to
be filled by offenders against the Government, Denzil Holles, Selden,
Valentine, Coryton, Sir Miles Hobart, Sir P. Heyman among them. The
first-named was brother-in-law of Lord Strafford, and strove to save
him, but he took a strong part against the king’s policy, though after
the Civil War broke out he opposed Cromwell and the Independents, and
after the Restoration he was in the confidence of the king. John Selden
was a steady opponent of the king, but after his fall kept entirely
clear of politics, and gave himself to his great and valuable legal
labours. Lord Loudoun was one of the commissioners sent to England by
the Scottish Covenanters, and was committed to the Tower on the charge
of treasonable correspondence. Clarendon has a story that the king
ordered that he should be executed by virtue of his royal warrant,
that the Marquis of Hamilton made his way to the royal presence to
remonstrate, and was met with a curt refusal to listen. “Let the
warrant be obeyed,” said the king, whereupon Hamilton said, “Then I
shall start posthaste for Scotland to-morrow morning, for the whole
city will be in an uproar, and I will show that I had no hand in it.”
Thereupon Charles gave way, and soon after Loudoun was released. But
the truth of this story has been questioned. He afterwards showed a
genuine desire to reconcile the king with the Presbyterians, and was
present at the coronation of Charles II at Scone in 1650.
But we come now to the two most prominent prisoners of King Charles’s
time. On November 11, 1640, the Earl of Strafford was at Whitehall
making proposals for the impeachment of the parliamentary leaders
for treason. At the same moment Pym was impeaching Strafford in the
House of Commons. The earl heard of this, and hastened to the House to
defend himself, but was not allowed to speak, and was carried off to
the Tower. So was Archbishop Laud. In January Strafford was brought to
trial in Westminster Hall, and defended himself with superb eloquence.
“Never any man,” says the Puritan chronicler Whitelock, “acted his
part on such a theatre with greater reason, constancy, judgment and
temper, and with better grace in all his words and gestures.” But he
was condemned to die. The king was eager to save him, and there
was at one moment a possibility of it. Charles had made overtures
for a ministry composed of the popular leaders, in which Pym was
to be Chancellor of the Exchequer and Holles Secretary of State.
But meanwhile he was planning to bring up the army from the North,
discontented as it was by want of pay, to seize the Tower and free
Strafford. He also reckoned on support from the Scotch, who were
divided into opposing parties. But Pym became aware of his double
dealing, a peremptory message was sent to him by the House of Commons
for the death warrant, and Charles signed it. We have all heard how
the earl wrote to the king beseeching him not to endanger his crown by
opposing the will of the people, and how when he heard of the king’s
assent he exclaimed, “Put not your trust in princes.” He was led out
to Tower Hill to die on May 12, 1641. On his way he passed the Bloody
Tower, in which Laud was imprisoned, and knelt to receive the blessing,
which the prelate uttered with uplifted hands.
That was the turning-point in the history, the victory of Parliament
over the minister whose theory of government was personal authority.
And the same conflict of principles was seen in the case of the
Archbishop. He was not brought to trial indeed for some years, for the
House of Commons had pressing work on hand and the case was much more
complicated. For there were those among the Puritans who loved the
Prayer Book with all their hearts, whilst they rejected Laud’s theory
of Church government. The prelate had been educated by Buckeridge,
president of St. John’s College, Oxford, who had always set his face
against Puritanism in the latter days of Elizabeth’s reign, and had
laid much stress on sacramental grace and episcopal organization;
and Laud had entirely accepted this teaching, and all his life was
earnestly attached to the observance of external order. And herein
he was supported by an increasing number of theologians hostile to
Calvinism. In his early controversial writings he followed the teaching
of Hooker, desiring to bring questions not of necessity vital, under
duly authorized authority. He became president of his college in 1611,
Archdeacon of Huntingdon 1615, Dean of Gloucester 1616, Bishop of St.
David’s 1621. But these successive advancements were not so important
in his life as the ascendency which he acquired at the accession of
Charles I. He had consistently held to his opinions, and now he saw
his way, as he thought, to enforce authority as the rule in religion,
with uniformity as its natural consequence. In 1626 he was made Bishop
of Bath and Wells, in 1628 of London, Chancellor of the University of
Oxford in 1629, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633. It is needless to
say that his determination to enforce uniformity was identified by
the Presbyterians as of a piece with Strafford’s “thorough.” Of his
zeal, his honesty and purity of purpose there is no question, any more
than of his holiness of life. But he was blind to the necessity of
paying due respect to the convictions of others, and his meaning was
misjudged. Thus, when he insisted on placing the Lord’s Table at the
east end of every church instead of in the middle, he was accused,
quite untruly, of desiring to restore the Roman Catholic faith. He
was angry at the charge, and himself incurred the anger of the queen,
Henrietta Maria, for repudiating Roman doctrine.
Meanwhile the Civil War broke out (August, 1642), and in London for the
time being Puritanism had the upper hand; the Bishops were excluded
from Parliament, the Archbishop lay in close confinement in the Bloody
Tower. His diary remains to tell us of the hardships he went through.
On March 10, 1643, he was brought to trial and charged in general
terms with “high treason and other misdemeanours.” The total want
of particularity in the articles of accusation, however, prove the
irregular nature of the proceedings. Sergeant Wild on the part of the
prosecution admitted this, but said that when all the Archbishop’s
evil deeds were put together they made many grand treasons. “I crave
your mercy,” retorted Laud’s counsel; “I never understood before, Mr.
Sergeant, that two hundred couple of black rabbits made a black horse.”
The trial lasted for twenty days, with many intervals, but at length he
was condemned on the charge that he had “attempted to subvert religion
and the fundamental laws of the realm.” He was beheaded on Tower Hill
on January 10, 1645, in the seventy-second year of his age, and was
buried in the chancel of Allhallows Barking, but the body was removed
to St. John’s, Oxford, in 1663.
From the time when Charles unfurled his standard at Nottingham, the
Tower, though nominally held in his name, was in the keeping of
Parliament, and its prisoners were the king’s supporters. Thus Sir Ralph
Hopton, who had voted for Strafford’s attainder and opposed King
Charles’s taxation schemes, was sent here “for ten days” by the
Parliament because he protested against violent speeches by his fellow
members against the king. He afterwards joined the king’s army, and
was created Baron Hopton. On the overthrow he retired to Bruges, where
he died. He was a sincere patriot, and received earnest assurances
from the Puritan leaders of their personal respect for him. Sir John
Gayer, Lord Mayor of London, was shut up for publishing the king’s
proclamation against the militia; so were three aldermen and a sheriff,
Sir John Glynne, Recorder of London, a first-rate lawyer and splendid
orator, a supporter of the Solemn League and Covenant, but imprisoned
for opposing the ascendency of the army and the intolerance of the
Independents; released and re-admitted to parliament, and one of the
commissioners appointed to treat with the king at Carisbrooke; but
still distrusted; made a speech in favour of monarchy in 1658, made
king’s sergeant to Charles II. Two great names are those of John
Paulet, fifth Marquis of Winchester (“Old Loyalty”), the celebrated
defender of Basing House, and Monk, the future Duke of Albemarle,
taken prisoner by Fairfax at the siege of Nantwich, and released from
imprisonment on condition that he would fight for them in Ireland, but
not in England. Two of his fellow-prisoners who had been fighting by
his side, Lord Macquire and Colonel MacMahon, were captured in trying
to escape by swimming the moat, and were hanged.
[Illustration: 25. THE EXECUTION OF THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
_From a contemporary engraving by Hollar._]
[Illustration: 26. THE SEVEN BISHOPS TAKEN TO THE TOWER.
_From a Dutch etching of the time. Gardner Collection._]
[Illustration: 27. _THE SOUTH VIEW OF THE TOWER OF LONDON._]
[Illustration: 28. THE TOWER AND OLD LONDON BRIDGE.
_From an engraving after J. Maurer_, 1746.
_Gardner Collection._]
At the time of the tragedy at Whitehall, January 30, 164-8/9, many of
the king’s supporters were prisoners in the Tower, and some of the
most illustrious of them shared his fate—the Duke of Hamilton, the
Earl of Holland, Arthur Lord Capel. A brave old Welsh knight, Sir John
Owen, who was also sentenced, made a low bow to the judges, and said
they had “done honour to a poor gentleman of Wales to sentence him
with such noble fellow-prisoners.” Ireton was so moved with this that
he made a speech to the Commons pleading that whereas the rest had
advocates to speak for them, plain Sir John Owen had none, and moved
that he be pardoned. It was carried, and Sir John went back to Wales
and died in peace in 1666. Another Lord Mayor, Sir Abraham Reynardson,
was imprisoned and fined because he would not publish the parliamentary
ordinance abolishing royalty. After the Restoration he was again Lord
Mayor. There is a fine portrait of him in Merchant Taylors Hall.
Christopher Love is another prisoner who claims mention. He was a
Puritan minister, very eloquent, and attracted large congregations.
In his horror at the execution of the king he turned royalist, and
was beheaded for plotting for the Restoration. After the battle of
Worcester in 1651 a great number of prisoners were brought hither—the
Marquis of Worcester, Earls of Crawford, Lauderdale, and Rother; they
remained until the Restoration. In July, 1656, a mandate was sent by
Cromwell to the Lieutenant of the Tower for the release of Lucy Barlow
and her child. She was otherwise named Lucy Walters, and was one of
Charles II’s concubines. The child was afterwards Duke of Monmouth. She
had been imprisoned for some time. Miles Syndercombe, who had been in
Cromwell’s army, and in very intimate friendship with him, took affront
at some slight and tried to assassinate him in 1657. He was sentenced
to death, but committed suicide, and the body was dragged at a horse’s
tail from the Tower to Tyburn, and there buried with a stake driven
through it. Dr. John Hewitt was minister of the Church of St. Gregory
by St. Paul’s, and Cromwell’s daughter, Elizabeth Claypole, was a
regular member of his congregation. It is recorded that the Protector
himself frequently joined her. This did not prevent Hewitt from raising
forces in Kent and Sussex for the Restoration, and he was beheaded on
Tower Hill, though Mrs. Claypole earnestly interceded for him. With him
died Sir Henry Slingsby. There were very many others, and even after
Cromwell’s death plotters were brought in, among them Henry Mordaunt,
brother of the Earl of Peterborough, Lady Mary Howard, the Earl of
Chesterfield, Lords Falconbridge, Falkland, De la Ware, Bellasis,
Charles Howard and Castleton. They were subsequently released. When
Cromwell died, and the nation was yet in uncertainty as to the course
of events, the Tower became the object of much attention. There was
the army on one side and the Parliamentary party on the other, and the
latter arranged with Colonel Fitz, the Lieutenant, that Colonel Okey,
with three hundred men, should appear at a given hour and demand and
receive admittance. But this was divulged and the army sent Colonel
Desborough with a force, which seized the lieutenant, and placed a
fresh garrison. This fell to quarrelling, whereupon Lenthall, the
speaker, sent another force, which took possession under Sir Anthony
Ashley Cooper. Then came General Monk’s grand _coup_, and he seized the
fortress in the name of King Charles.
The Restoration, as was probably inevitable, brought fierce reprisals
on those who had been severe and unrelenting. Thomas Harrison had
been one of the most eager of the regicides; he had afterwards been
strenuous in support of Cromwell for a while, but, as an anabaptist,
had become a Fifth Monarchy man, and had been twice sent to the
Tower as such. Being released in 1659, he retired to his house in
Staffordshire, and in May 1660 was arrested there, was brought to trial
in October, drawn on a hurdle to Charing Cross, and there executed
(October 13). So were Gregory Clement, a London merchant, Colonel John
Jones, Thomas Scot, who had all taken part in the king’s trial. So were
Colonels Axtel and Hacker, who had commanded the guard at the trial and
at the execution. Sir Harry Vane, who had taken no part in the trial,
was charged with having endeavoured to prevent the Restoration, and
suffered on that charge. Some escaped, probably with the connivance of
the guards. Three who had so escaped, and had reached Holland—Colonels
Barkstead and Okey and Miles Corbet—were treacherously brought back
and put to death at Tyburn in 1662. Some of the delinquents, e.g. Lord
Monson, Sir H. Mildmay, Robert Wallop, were sentenced to be drawn on
sledges from the Tower to Tyburn and back with halters round their
necks, and then to suffer perpetual imprisonment. In contrast there
were grand doings, and certainly not without national enthusiasm, in
the coronation procession from the Tower to Westminster.
In the great fire of 1666 the Tower was largely indebted for its escape
to the energy of the king, who had the buildings contiguous to the
moat and the entrance blown up with gunpowder. Pepys was an eyewitness
of this measure, and declares that as the White Tower was the powder
magazine, “it would undoubtedly not only have beaten down and destroyed
all the bridge, but sunk and torn the vessels in the river, and
rendered the demolition beyond expression for several miles about the
country.”
There were many committals in the early years of Charles II’s reign,
on charges of “seditious practices” and dangerous designs, but few
of any abiding interest. Thomas, Lord Buller, of Moor Park, was sent
for challenging the Duke of Buckingham, and the Marquis of Dorchester
for “using ill language” about the same noble, and in 1667 the duke
himself was shut up here, and not for the first nor second time. There
is no need here to discuss the character of George Villiers, second
Duke of Buckingham. Dryden’s character of him as “Zimri” appears to
be as true as it is masterly. He was an infant when his father was
assassinated, and was brought up with the children of Charles I, and
served them after the king’s death, fighting for the younger Charles
at Worcester. But in Holland he quarrelled with the queen-mother and
Clarendon, returned to England and married Fairfax’s daughter, for
which he was sent to the Tower in 1658. Released at the Restoration, he
was again admitted to royal favour and was an influential member of the
Cabal ministry, but in 1668 seduced the Countess of Shrewsbury, killed
her husband in a duel, was consequently treated with coldness by the
Duke of York, and joined the Whigs; was again sent to the Tower for
intriguing, but apparently his ribald conversation got him into favour
again with Charles II, and he was restored to Court favour. From that
time he kept out of politics and wrote verses. His clever play, the
_Rehearsal_, holds its place in English literature.
We turn aside a while to record a most daring and sensational crime,
namely Colonel Blood’s attempt to carry off the regalia from the Tower.
He was a brutal ruffian, said to have been Irish born, half sailor,
half highwayman, who had served under Cromwell, and for that reason
styled himself Colonel. After the Restoration he became a spy of the
Government, and if he could have had his way would have sent some
innocent persons to death.
In 1671 Sir Gilbert Talbot held the post of “Master of the Jewel
House.” His pay had been lowered, and by way of compensation he was
allowed to admit visitors to his treasures and to charge. One day
in April, 1671, came an intensely clerical-looking personage to the
Martin Tower, with a long cloak, cassock and girdle, accompanied by a
woman whom he represented as his wife, who was very anxious to see the
regalia. The glorious dazzle made her faint, and the old curator, Talbot
Edwards by name, whom Sir Gilbert had placed in charge, called his
wife to attend to the sick lady. The restoratives administered were so
efficacious that the couple went off overflowing with gratitude and
promising to return. And soon the “cleric” came again, bringing a pair
of gloves to Mrs. Edwards in return for her kindness to Mrs. Blood.
During this visit he announced that he had a nephew just come back
from abroad after some prosperous ventures, and that he had set his
heart on this nephew marrying Edwards’s daughter, and the negotiations
so far advanced that he was invited to bring the nephew to dinner.
At dinner he said a long grace with much emotion, and afterwards
announced that he should bring two friends next day, who were leaving
London, and very anxious to see the crown first. And next day (May 9)
they came, all with concealed daggers and pocket pistols, and rapiers
hidden in their canes, and directly they were shown into the room
Edwards was effectually gagged, enveloped in a thick cloak, and told
that if he attempted to give an alarm they would kill him. He could
not cry out, but he struggled manfully, and they beat him on the head
with a wooden mallet, stabbed him, and left him for dead. Then they
turned their attention to their quarry. Blood hid the crown under his
cloak, one companion put the orb in his breeches pocket, and another
began to file the sceptre in two pieces, as it was too long to carry
away without being seen. At this moment advancing steps were heard;
Edwards’s son had unexpectedly come back from Flanders, and he heard
his father endeavouring to give the alarm. The thieves ran downstairs;
young Edwards, accompanied by his brother-in-law, Captain Beckman,
who had arrived with him, hurried in pursuit. They had crossed the
drawbridge leading to the wharf, Blood firing two pistols as he ran.
There were horses waiting for them, but Beckman rushed at him, a fierce
struggle followed, in which Blood was worsted and captured, as were
his companions. When he dropped the crown some of the gems fell out
but were recovered, as was a ruby which was found, having belonged to
the sceptre. In fact the treasures were uninjured, but poor Edwards,
who was eighty years old, died in a few days. Blood cynically remarked
when he was brought a prisoner to the White Tower that “it was a brave
attempt, for it was for a crown.”
It is an absolute mystery why Charles II sent for him forthwith, and
not only pardoned him, but conferred a pension of £500 a year on
him and certain Irish estates. Evelyn, in his diary, expresses his
amazement. Some think that Charles, wanting money, had commissioned
Blood to steal the treasures and pawn or sell them in Holland, and
divide the spoil with him; others suppose that Blood knew some awkward
secrets about the king and threatened to reveal them. He often appeared
at Court, and returned kindness which the Duke of Buckingham had shown
him by a peculiarly atrocious attempt to blackmail him, for which he
was fined £10,000. He died in Bowling Street, Westminster, August 24,
1680. His likeness in the National Portrait Gallery quite confirms
Evelyn’s description of him, “a villainous unmerciful face, a false
countenance.”
Yet even his rascality grows dim beside that of Titus Oates, whose
horrible concoction of lies concerning a pretended Popish plot sent
nearly forty men to the scaffold. The execution of William Lord
Stafford on Tower Hill, December 29, 1680, on the charge sworn to by
Oates that he planned to kill the king and place the Duke of York on
the throne, was the turning-point in the agitation. When it began
Oates was half deified by the excited populace as the deliverer of
the country; but as time went on men shook their heads, doubtfully
at first, then strongly. Lord Stafford on the scaffold declared his
absolute innocence, and the spectators cried out with tears, “We
believe your lordship.” Oates had made too rich a harvest to give up
his devilish business, but after this he found no more believers.
But that there was good reason to expect an endeavour to restore the
Roman faith no one doubted. As far back as 1670 the Duke of York had
given his adhesion to it, and therefore the “country party,” as it
was called, were eager to prevent his accession to the throne. The
struggles over the Exclusion Bill need not detain us here; but the
failure of that Bill, owing to the “trimming” of some of its chief
supporters who loved the favour of royalty, led to a secret project of
the earnest Whigs to avert what they held to be a calamity. The leader
of this party had been Anthony Ashley, first Earl of Shaftesbury.
“Of these the false Ahithophel was first,” wrote Dryden in his great
satire. He was joined by Lord William Russell, the Duke of Monmouth,
Algernon Sidney, the Earl of Essex, son of Lord Capel, who was beheaded
in the early days of the Commonwealth, John Hampden, grandson of the
great Parliamentary leader, and Lord Howard. Shaftesbury had been sent
to the Tower in 1677 for agitating against the king’s high-handed
proceedings against the Corporation of London, but had been released
on submission. He now protested against the king holding a Parliament
at Oxford and was again lodged in the Tower, but the Whig grand
jury threw out the charge. But he soon found that his friends would
not take such energetic measures as he called for, so he retired to
Holland, where he soon died. His companions formed new projects of
insurrection, but could not agree; Sidney and Lord Essex were for a
Commonwealth, Monmouth hoped for the crown for himself. Russell and
Hampden were attached to the old constitution, and sought for “redress
of grievances.” And whilst they were discussing, the “Rye House Plot”
was formed by some inferior conspirators of the same way of thinking.
The Rye House lay on the road to Newmarket. The owner, Rumbold, was an
old Republican, and a plan was formed to kill the king on his way to
Newmarket races. It was made known to the Government, and though it
was shown that some of the greater men had held meetings at the Rye
House in support of their general views, it was also clear that neither
Russell, Essex nor Sidney were parties to the assassination scheme. The
trial of Lord Russell, and the devotion of his wife furnish a pathetic
chapter in history. He was beheaded in Lincoln’s Inn Fields July 21,
1683. On the same day Lord Essex was found in the Tower with his throat
cut. Some held that he had been murdered by the king and the Duke of
York, but the coroner’s jury brought in a verdict of suicide, and
Gardiner and Green both consider this as the most probable view. Sidney
followed. He was in principle a republican, though he had refused to
accept a seat among the judges of Charles I. He was now condemned on
the sole evidence of his companion, Lord Howard, who had turned king’s
evidence to save his own life, and on that of some letters of his in
which he upheld the lawfulness of resisting tyrants. Jeffreys, who was
now Chief Justice, tried him, and persuaded the jury to convict. He was
beheaded on December 7.
Charles II and his brother James are said not to have visited the Tower
for fifteen years before they came thither at the time of Essex’s death.
When Charles died, February 6, 168-4/5, the Tower may be said to have
ceased to be a royal residence. At the coronation of James II, the
usual procession from thence to Westminster was omitted, and has never
since been revived. But it continued to be a state prison. There is no
need to tell how the unhappy son of Charles II and Lucy Walters, James,
Duke of Monmouth, took up arms to obtain the crown, and how he was
defeated at the battle of Sedgemoor, the last battle fought on English
ground, July 6, 1685. He was captured and brought to London on the
13th, and being allowed an interview with the king, with abject cries
supplicated in vain for his life. He was sent to the Tower, and two
days later, a bill of attainder having been previously passed against
him, he was beheaded on Tower Hill. The Bishops of Ely and Bath and
Wells (Turner and Ken) accompanied him to the scaffold, where his head
was hacked off after five blows.
But a memorable time was reached in the history of the Church and
Nation when “the Seven Bishops” were brought hither as prisoners. The
king announced his intention of repealing by his own personal act
the Penal Laws against Roman Catholics and Dissenters. The leading
Dissenters in reply—Baxter, Howe, Bunyan—rejected such “indulgence,”
which they said should be by Act of Parliament, not by an absolute
overruling of the law. They saw, of course, clearly what his aim was.
He was, as usual, obstinate, published the “Declaration of Indulgence,”
which all the clergy were commanded to read in church. Four only did
it in London, and when they began the congregations walked out, and
a similar spirit was shown in the country. The Archbishop, Sancroft,
summoned his brother bishops to Lambeth, and the six who were able to
obey him, namely Lloyd of St. Asaph, Ken of Bath and Wells, Turner
of Ely, Lake of Chichester, White of Peterborough, and Trelawney of
Bristol, joined in a temperate protest, in which they told the King
that the declaration was illegal, and asked him to withdraw it. In
anger he sent them all to the Tower for “uttering a seditious libel.”
They were carried to Traitors’ Gate, the banks of the river thronged
with cheering spectators; the very sentinels knelt for their blessing
and the soldiers drank their healths. The narrative of their trial in
Westminster Hall is perhaps the most splendid chapter in Macaulay’s
_History._ On June 29 they were acquitted, although the jury had been
packed and the judges were tools of the Crown, and the roof of
Westminster Hall cracked at the tremendous applause which followed the
verdict.
A curious episode occurred in the last days of James’s reign. Bevis
Skelton was English minister in the Netherlands, and warned James of
the designs of the Duke of Orange, whereupon the latter pressed for
his recall. James sent him then to Versailles, and he moved Louis XIV
to oppose William’s schemes. But King James resented his interference,
recalled him, and sent him to the Tower; and then finding that the
danger from Orange was imminent, made Skelton governor of the fortress
in which he had been a prisoner. When James fled, the keys of the Tower
were taken from Skelton and confided to Lord Lucas, who held them for
the Prince of Orange. Skelton followed the king across seas and died in
his service.
Lucas had not long held his office before he was entrusted with the
custody of Judge Jeffreys. That this extraordinary man was violent of
temper no one questions; he was also a man of strong convictions; he
never in his subservience to his royal master showed any yielding to
that master’s faith; he had great natural ability; and as we read of
his unrelenting cruelty in his progress through Dorset and Somerset
to try the rebels after the Sedgemoor campaign, it is also impossible
not to see how skilfully he produced evidence against his prisoners.
In that “Bloody Assize” 350 rebels were hanged, more than 800 were
sold into slavery beyond sea, and a yet larger number were whipped and
imprisoned. Even loyal subjects were appalled at the cruelty, and he
was regarded with horror and disgust. James made him Lord Chancellor,
and when James fled, Jeffreys knew that his own fall was imminent. He
heard the mob shouting his name and disguised himself as a collier, and
hid himself in a little house at Wapping until such time as he could
escape beyond sea. He was recognized, whilst looking out of window, by
a clerk that he had bullied from the bench, was seized and conveyed
first to the Mansion House, then to the Tower. And here he died, on
April 19, 1689. He was only forty-one years old. He is buried in the
chancel of St. Mary, Aldermanbury.
During the twelve years’ joint reign of William and Mary there was
only one political execution, namely that of Sir John Fenwick, who was
beheaded on Tower Hill, January 28, 1697, for conspiring to assassinate
King William. He was a man of irregular life, and there is no doubt
of his guilt. But the Tower was constantly receiving fresh captives,
partisans of the House of Stuart. Thus in 1690 “Francis Cholmondeley,
Esquire, a member of the House of Commons, was committed for refusing
to take the oaths of allegiance; and Matthew Crosse, otherwise Long,
Colonel John Butler, Major George Matthews, Lieutenant-Colonel Knyvet
Hastings and the Earl of Yarmouth, in the same year, ‘for abetting
and adhering to their Majesties’ enemies.’ To these may be added
Charles Halton, Esquire, for publishing a treasonable libel; Bernard
Howard, Esquire; Lord Ross; Arthur, Earl of Torrington; Sir John Gage
and Sir Walter Vavasour, for various political offences amounting
to high treason. Mr. Stafford, the Earls of Newburgh, Clancarty
and Tyrone; with Thomas, Lord Morley and Monteagle; Henry, Earl of
Clarendon; George, Lord Dartmouth; Major-General Maxwell; Lord Cahire;
Major-General Dorrington and Mr. Maxwell were also prisoners, but the
specific charges under which they were committed are unascertained”
(Britton).
In 1692, John, Earl of Marlborough, was imprisoned on a charge “of
abetting and adhering to their Majesties’ enemies,” as were also Lord
Brudenell, the Earl of Huntingdon, Sir Robert Thorold and Colonel
Langston. They were, after two months’ confinement, released on bail
to reappear if called upon. Charles, Lord Mohun, was also a prisoner
in the same year, for having killed William Mountford, the celebrated
comedian, in a quarrel on account of Mrs. Bracegirdle, an eminent
actress. Readers of Esmond will remember the story. “In February,
1692, Lord Viscount Falkland and Henry Guy, Esquire, suffered a
short confinement in the Tower for having, as Members of Parliament,
received bribes; and, at various intervals during the year, Colonel
John Parker; Bartholomew Walmesley, Esquire; Sir Thomas Stanley; Caryl,
Lord Viscount Mollineux; Sir Rowland Stanley; Sir Thomas Clifton; Sir
William Gerard; Peter Leigh and William Dicconson, Esquires, were
immured in the same prison on charges of adhering to the enemies of the
Government, and levying war against their Majesties.”
“In 1696, Charles, Earl of Monmouth, ‘for having spoken disrespectfully
of the king,’ and Henry Buckley, Esquire; Thomas, Earl of Ailesbury;
Sir Philip Constable; Arthur, Lord Forbes; and Sir John Fenwick were
imprisoned here on various charges of sedition and treason. Thomas,
Lord Kerry, and Brigadier Richard Ingoldsby were committed, in the
following year, for having challenged the Lord Chancellor of Ireland;
as were, likewise, John Knight and Charles Duncombe, Esquires, members
of the House of Commons, the former for having falsely endorsed
exchequer bills, and the latter for aiding and assisting in his illegal
practices. Two years afterwards, Sir Richard Levin was lodged in this
fortress for aspersing the characters of four of the commissioners
of Irish forfeitures; as were also Charles, Lord Mohun, and Edward,
Earl of Warwick and Holland, on a charge of murdering Richard Coote,
Esquire; but those noblemen were unanimously acquitted by their peers.”
The largeness of the number of prisoners is shown by a paper in the
handwriting of Sir C. Wren in 1695. He was directed to examine the
Bloody and Beauchamp Towers to see what additions could be made for
the reception of prisoners, apparently with special reference to the
arrivals from Ireland. He replies, “I have also viewed the place
behinde the Chappell, and considered and do approve the annex’d
draught proposed to be built wch I take to be as Large as ye place
will afford containing 15 square and if it be well built in 3 storeys,
Cellars and garretts it will cost £600. As to the number of Prisoners
the place may hold I can only report wt number of rooms each place
contains. Beauchamp Tower hath a large Kitching 2 large rooms and 2
small servants rooms. Bloody Tower hath a kitching one room and one
closet. The new building may contain 9 single rooms, besides cellars
and garrets and a kitching, all wch is humbly submitted.”
In the early years of Queen Anne’s reign there were a good many sent
to the Tower, taken in the French wars, but no state prisoners. But
in 1712 a notable attempt was made on a famous public man, Sir Robert
Walpole. He had been in Parliament since the queen’s accession, and
had displayed such brilliant ability as a financier as to induce the
Duke of Marlborough to give him office in the Government. But his
Whiggism, moderate as it was, offended Harley and Mrs. Masham, who
gained continually more ascendency over the queen, and Harley intrigued
shamefully against him, and brought a vague charge of breach of trust
in office and of corruption. It was a thoroughly unjust charge, but on
the strength of it he was sent to the Tower and expelled from the House
of Commons. But public opinion was roused by the injustice, and largely
withdrew its confidence from the Tory ministry. Whilst he remained in
the prison he was visited by great people, and his constituency (King’s
Lynn) returned him again as its member. He remained in confinement from
February to July, and employed his time in writing political pamphlets.
CHAPTER VII
THE HOUSE OF HANOVER
_Accession of George I—Impeachment of Harley—The Rebellion of
1715—Execution of Lords Derwentwater and Kenmuir—Escape of
Nithisdale—Plots of Atterbury and others in 1722—Imprisonment
of Lord Macclesfield—The “45”—Execution of Lords Kilmarnock,
Balmerino, Charles Retcliff, and Lord Lovat—Imprisonment and
Trial of Wilkes and his Friends on the Charge of Treason—of
Alderman Oliver and Lord Mayor Crosby for alleged Condonation
of Misdemeanour—of Horne Tooke and his Companions for
Treason—of Sir Francis Burdett for Breach of Privilege—Of
the Cato Street Conspirators—The Fire of 1841—The Fenian
Conspiracy of 1885—Conclusion._
The accession of George I was at once marked by the ascendency of the
Whigs, and they lost no time in showing this. Robert Harley, whom Queen
Anne had made Earl of Oxford, and who had been a favourite minister of
the nation, was impeached on the charge that during the French wars,
in his hatred of the Duke of Marlborough, he had instructed the French
king as to the best method of capturing Tournai. On June 10, 1715, the
House of Commons, of which but a short time before he had been the
idol, sent him to the Tower, where he languished for two years, never
losing confidence. His continual petition to be tried was at last
conceded, and he was acquitted in July, 1717.
But there was an influential party among the high Tories who were
unmistakably anxious to restore the Stuarts, and even the Duke of
Marlborough, who all his life through had a passion for intrigue,
finding that he was not trusted by King George, seems to have entered
into negotiations with the Pretender, “the Chevalier de St. George,”
who in August, 1715, published from France a manifesto, asserting his
right to the throne. When the Whig Government impeached Bolingbroke and
the Duke of Ormond for complicity, they fled to France. But the rising
incapable man; and though he was joined by other nobles in the North,
and might have won most dangerous successes, he shrank before the
Duke of Argyll, who had been sent by the king to oppose him. The
result was the rebellion of 1715 and its failure. The most conspicuous
character in this ill-starred attempt was James Radcliffe, Earl of
Derwentwater, a young man of twenty-six who deserved a better fate,
for all accounts describe him as singularly attractive and winning in
person and manner. He was the only Englishman of note who joined the
enterprize. His mother, Mary Tudor, was a natural daughter of Charles
II, who brought him up as a Roman Catholic. He was very rich for those
days. His home, from which he took his title, was an island in the
most beautiful of English lakes, and his income from mines was nearly
£40,000 a year. With him were six Scotch nobles, William Maxwell, Earl
of Nithisdale; Robert Dalzell, Earl of Carnwarth; William Gordon, Lord
Kenmure, brother-in-law of Carnwarth; George Seton, fifth Earl of
Wintoun; William, Lord Nairn; and William, fourth Lord Widdrington.
They were brought up to London tightly bound on horseback, and paraded
through the streets to the prison. Much interest was made for them in
Parliament, and a vote of petition for pardon was carried in the House
of Lords. They were tried in February, 1716, and condemned. Wintoun
was the only one who refused to plead guilty, but was convicted and
sentenced. Next year Widdrington, Carnwarth and Nairn were pardoned,
the others were left for death. So greatly was Derwentwater loved in
his own home that it is said the peasantry drove his wife out of it
because, as they alleged, she had driven him to rebel and so deprived
them of a generous landlord. But when the crowds assembled on Tower
Hill, they found, to their great amazement, that there were only three
victims. For Lord Nithisdale had escaped the night before. His young
wife had travelled up, through the winter snow, all the way from their
home in Dumfriesshire to beg forgiveness for him. Failing in this, she
formed her plans with great skill, and has left the narrative, which
reads like an entrancing romance—the taking into the condemned cell
a friend to whom she had confided her method as they walked along the
street, the double dress which she persuaded the friend to put on at
entrance, enduing the prisoner with the outer dress, and so deceiving
the sentinels. They got away safely, hid for a few days in London,
and then he went away to Rome, disguised as one of the footmen of
the Venetian ambassador. Not content with this feat, she resolved to
petition for the restoration of the estates, and made her way into St.
James’s Palace, and into the king’s presence. He would have gone out
without answering her, but she writes, “I caught hold of the skirt of
his coat that he might stop and hear me. He endeavoured to escape out
of my hands, but I kept such strong hold that he dragged me on my knees
from the middle of the room to the very door. At last one of the Blue
Ribands who attended his Majesty took me round the waist, while another
wrested the coat from my hands.” They lived together at Rome till 1749,
when he died, and she not long afterwards. How Wintoun escaped is not
precisely known, but the probability seems to be that he bribed a
warder and filed through the bars of a window.
The zeal for the house of Stuart was by no means quenched, and the
failure of the South Sea project, the panic in the money market arising
out of it, the downfall of great commercial houses, produced general
discontent, which rekindled the hopes of the Jacobites. This time, in
1722, the movement was led by Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester
and Dean of Westminster. Joined with him were the Duke of Norfolk,
Lords North, Orrery and Grey, some commoners, and an Irish priest
named Kelly. They planned to seize the Tower and the Bank, to arrest
the king, and proclaim King James. But the plot became known to the
regent Orleans, who was on terms of friendship with the English king,
and told him of it. The conspirators were all sent to the Tower on a
charge of high treason. They lay in prison for some months. Atterbury
was deprived and banished the country. He died eight years later, just
seventy years old, and was brought to England and buried in the abbey
that he loved.
Lord Chancellor Macclesfield was imprisoned in 1724 for “venality in
the discharge of his office.”
We come now to a very serious and important passage in the records of
the great fortress, namely, the rebellion of “the Forty-five.” The
Scotch were, as we have seen, largely in sympathy with the exiled
family. In 1743 a Highland regiment, distinguished for its good order
and discipline, mutinied on being ordered to Flanders. They declared
that they had received a promise that they should not be sent abroad
where they would very likely be brought into warfare with their
Jacobite friends. A hundred and nine of them laid down their arms and
marched away. Three regiments of dragoons were sent to bring them back;
they were sent to the Tower; three were shot, and the others sent to
the plantations. This cruel measure produced a most bitter feeling
through Scotland, and rendered comparatively easy a fresh endeavour of
the Stuarts to re-establish themselves. Twenty years of calm had passed
when Charles Edward, “the Young Pretender,” landed in Inverness-shire
in July, 1745. His adventures are nowhere better told than in
_Waverley._ He defeated Cope at Prestonpans, marched into England as
far as Derby, retreated, was crushed by the Duke of Cumberland at
Culloden on April 8, 1746, and the hopes of the Stuarts were at an end
for ever. He, as we know, made his escape, but the “rebel lords” who
had thrown in their lot with him were brought to the Tower, which had
seen no political prisoners for more than twenty years. William Boyd
was fourth Earl of Kilmarnock; William Murray, Marquis of Tullibardine,
son of the Duke of Atholl, had been pardoned after taking part in
the “15”; he now brought a great number of Atholl men at this second
rising, gave himself up after Culloden, quite worn out, though he
was only fifty-eight; he died in the Tower in a few days. Arthur
Elphinstone, sixth Baron Balmerino, had also been pardoned after the
“15,” but joined the fresh rebellion, hid himself after Culloden, but
was betrayed. There were also Charles Radcliffe, a younger brother of
the Earl of Derwentwater, who had perished in 1715, and a few others
of little mark. Horace Walpole, writing to Sir Horace Mann, gives a
striking account of the trial of the three lords in Westminster Hall.
Kilmarnock and Cromarty pleaded guilty, Balmerino not guilty, but he
was condemned by the unanimous vote of the peers. He was evidently a
man of high character; “the brave, noble old fellow,” Walpole calls
him. His calmness, courage, piety in his last days, had a profound
effect upon all who were with him. Cromarty was afterwards pardoned.
The _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for 1745 gives full details of the execution
of the other two on Tower Hill. They died with firm courage. Radcliffe
also died on the same scaffold. Somewhat later followed another
execution; Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, an utterly unscrupulous political
intriguer, and a man whose disreputable life reads like a bad novel. He
had what was probably a unique experience, in having been a prisoner
in the Bastille in 1702, on the charge of betraying a Jacobite plot to
the English Government, and in the Tower for treasonable correspondence
with the Pretender. While on his way from his capture in Scotland to
the Tower he rested at the _White Hart_ at St. Albans, and there fell
in with Hogarth, who there and then made the portrait of him which is
now in the National Portrait Gallery, and the engravings of which are
so familiar to us. This engraving was made under the superintendence of
the painter, and there was such a run upon it, the printing press being
always at work, day and night, that for a considerable time he made £12
a day by the sale. Lovat was beheaded on April 9, 1747, and it was the
last execution on Tower Hill. There were two more executions from the
Tower—Earl Ferrers in 1760 for shooting his steward, and Henry Francis
de la Motte, a French spy—but these were both hanged at Tyburn. Lord
Ferrers would certainly in our day have been acquitted on the ground of
insanity.
A few more names have to be mentioned before we close the history of
the Tower as a State prison. John Wilkes, M.P. for Middlesex, was
brought in on April 30, 1763, as the author of No. 45 of _The North
Briton_, which was styled in the warrant committing him, “a most
infamous and seditious libel.” After argument in the Court of Common
Pleas, Chief Justice Pratt decided that the misdemeanour charged
against him was “not an offence sufficient to destroy the privilege
of a member of Parliament,” and he was immediately liberated (May 3).
Alderman Oliver and Sir Brass Crosby, Lord Mayor, were both sent to the
Tower in March, 1771, for admitting a man to bail who had, under the
Speaker’s warrant, apprehended the printer of the _London Evening Post_
for publishing the debates of the House of Commons. They justified
their conduct on the ground of city privileges, and the House against
them asserted its authority. They remained immured till Parliament was
prorogued in the following July, and were then released; but public
opinion was evidently so strong in their favour that the Commons from
that time gave in. Lord George Gordon was imprisoned after the riots of
1780, was tried next year, and declared “not guilty.” At the same time
the Earl of Pomfret was committed for challenging the Duke of Grafton.
In 1794 John Horne Tooke, John Thelwall, Thomas Hardy and others were
imprisoned on the charge of high treason. They had distributed the
writings of Thomas Paine, and had gone certain lengths in favour of
the “Rights of Man,” but repudiated the application of the principles
of the French Revolution to England. They were “radicals” in desiring
reform, yet were not in favour of general subversion. In fact, they
were men who, after raising a cry, were frightened at the logical
consequences of it, and settled down into quietude. Chief Justice Eyre
tried them with conspicuous fairness, and they were at once pronounced
“Not guilty,” to the satisfaction of the spectators.
[Illustration: 29. THE MOAT. _From an engraving after
J. Maurer_, 1753. _Gardner Collection._]
[Illustration: 30. THE TOWER AND MINT, FROM TOWER HILL.
_From a drawing on stone by T. S. Boys_, 1842.]
[Illustration: 31. THE TOWER, FROM THE THAMES.
_From an engraving after E. Duncan._]
[Illustration: 32. THE CITY BARGES AT THE TOWER STAIRS.
_From a drawing on stone by W. Parrott. Gardner Collection._]
Arthur O’Connor and three other “United Irishmen” were charged with
high treason in 1798; they were accused of holding a traitorous
correspondence with the French Directory. They were acquitted, but
O’Connor lay in the Tower for some time; he was then discharged and
went to France, where he received a commission from Napoleon. Sackville
Tufton, Earl of Thanet, was also tried for attempting to release
O’Connor, and was sentenced to be imprisoned for a year in the Tower
and to pay £1000 fine.
In April, 1810, Sir Francis Burdett, M.P. for Westminster, who had
laboured unselfishly and conscientiously on behalf of liberty of
speech and Parliamentary reform, made a speech in the House of Commons
demanding the discharge from custody of a radical orator who had
been imprisoned for objecting to the exclusion of strangers from the
debates. He was defeated by a large majority, 153 against 14. Thereupon
he printed and published his speech. This was declared a breach of
privilege, and Speaker Abbot issued a warrant for his arrest. He shut
himself up in his house, and there was great excitement on the question
whether it might be forcibly entered. The soldiers were called out,
and after four days’ excitement the house was entered and Burdett was
conveyed to the Tower, with many thousands of soldiers guarding the
town. He remained in prison till Parliament was prorogued, when he was
released and went quietly home by water, much to the disgust of the
mob, who wanted to have a great demontration. He pursued his steady
course of promoting reforms, but still declared that he was not a party
man, and his disapproval of the speeches of O’Connell drove him into
union with the Tories in his later years. He was a generous and kindly
man, a perfect type of a country gentleman.
In March, 1820, Arthur Thistlewood, Richard Tidd, James Ings, John
Harrison, William Davidson, James Brunt and John Monument entered into
a plot to assassinate all the Ministry at a Cabinet dinner at Lord
Harrowby’s, in Grosvenor Square. This is known as the Cato Street
Conspiracy, from the place where the meetings were held. It was
divulged in time, and the cut-throats were arrested and placed in the
Tower, and tried at the Old Bailey. All the above, except Monument,
were hanged outside Newgate. This is the last time that the Tower was
ever used as a State prison. Thistlewood, who had held a commission
in the Militia, was confined in the Bloody Tower, the others in the
Middle, Byward and Salt Towers.
It remains to chronicle two events in the history of the great fortress
in the reign of Queen Victoria. The ugly Armoury which had been begun
by James II and completed by William III caught fire on October 30,
1841, from the Bowyer Tower, on which it abutted. The latter building
was set ablaze by an overheated flue. The whole building was destroyed,
as were 150,000 stands of small arms piled up within it. A policeman
named Pierce, at the risk of his life, broke the bars of the cage
in which the regalia were kept and handed them out, with the result
that not one was missing, though the cloth in which some of them
were wrapped was charred. The only relic of much interest which was
destroyed was the wheel of Nelson’s ship _Victory._ The site is now
occupied with the barracks, built under the direction of the Duke of
Wellington, and reaching from the end of St. Peter’s Church to the East
Wall, loopholed for musketry, and capable of holding a thousand men.
The Iron Duke’s primary idea of the place was as a fortress.
On January 24, 1885, a plan was concocted by Fenians for a simultaneous
threefold outrage in London. Explosive packages were placed at 2 p.m.
in St. Stephen’s Chapel, the Inner House of Commons, and the Tower of
London. In the first case a lady saw it, and, suspecting mischief, told
a constable on duty. Constable Coles rushed into the chapel and picked
up the packet, but almost as soon as he reached Westminster Hall he was
obliged to let it fall, and it went off with a terrific explosion, blew
holes both in the floor and the roof, and smashed windows. In the House
itself a few minutes later the explosion tore off doors and brought
down the Speaker’s and Peers’ gallery, and injured two constables
badly. At the Tower the miscreants chose the middle storey of the White
Tower, used as a storehouse for modern arms. The chief damage was done
to the large Hall and St. John’s Chapel. The Armoury caught fire, but
it was extinguished in about an hour. Two boys and three girls were
badly injured. The perpetrator in this case was caught, and proved to
be an old hand at like outrages. He was sentenced to fourteen years’
hard labour.
* * * * *
So ends our history. From the nature of the case, it has mainly dealt
with crime and punishment, but we all feel that it would be unfair and
untrue to call it a history of gloom. The history of suffering contains
elements of sublime beauty, of courage, and self-denial, and faith,
and patient endurance. “The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in
pain,” but it does so in faith, sometimes in blindness, always looking
for and striving after the revelation of the Perfect Will, the Visible
Kingdom of God. I have thought so continually in writing these records,
constant war and bloodshed, too often the offspring of unholy ambition
and selfish greed. But there was always a King above the waterfloods,
and therefore our national history is a history of God subduing the
wrath of man and turning it to His praise. Norman, Plantagenet, Tudor,
Stuart—the Tower has memorials of evil deeds wrought by each one in
turn; but there is not one of them all which has not left beneficent
and abiding results. We have seen how More and Fisher died the death
of heroes in defence of the Roman faith, and how Anne Askew was burned
for rejecting it, and who will deny her the name of faithful martyr
also? But one or the other must be wrong, I may be told. And I answer,
Neither was wrong; each was clinging to the truth which God was
revealing to the soul. A fragment of truth, no doubt, but real in its
measure. “Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, and then
shall each have praise from God.”
Our little systems have their day,
They have their day and cease to be;
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.
Noble words of the great poet; and what student of Theology or History
has not felt their truth? Strafford died a martyr to a great cause, as
he honestly deemed it, namely, the good order and permanence of the
kingdom, and Sir John Eliot died broken-hearted in the Tower because he
resisted him, as the defender of personal liberty. Laud died because he
believed in the divine mission of the Church of England, and Richard
Baxter was imprisoned and persecuted as a Puritan. But the honest
reader of their lives will call them both saints. William Penn wrote
his “No Cross no Crown” in the Tower.
And the great Keep lifted on high above the surrounding city tells
of stern strength and repression; yet this is not its message to the
passers-by. The life of a great nation contains two essential elements,
Permanence and Progress. And to the teeming thousands who live in sight
of it, the Tower of London may speak of both. All through the centuries
it has looked down upon a people who have risen to greatness; upon a
nation which, beginning on an island, has become a benefactor to the
whole world by loving its ancient traditions and recognizing God as
its King. And its records also tell that under the hand of God this
has been done by men who suffered hardships, imprisonment, violent
death, to bear witness of their hope, to strive for the right, to make
their country, according to their light, more worthy of its name, more
conducive to the glory of God, more beneficent to mankind.
INDEX
Adam of Lambourne, 5
Agincourt, Battle of, 29
Albany, Duke of, 28
Albemarle, Duke of, George Monk, 80, 82
Alfred, King, 2
All Hallows Barking, 17, 45, 79
Anne, Queen, 90
Anne Boleyn, 11, 43, 44
Anne of Bohemia, Queen of Richard II, 26, 27
Anne of Cleves, 47
Anselm, Archbishop, 3
Arabella Stuart, 69
Arden, Escape of, 72
Argyll, Duke of, 93
Arthur, Prince of Wales, 40, 41
Arundel, Archbishop, 31
Arundel, Earls of:
Richard Fitzalan, fourth Earl, 27;
Henry Fitzalan, twelfth Earl, 51, 54;
Philip Howard, thirteenth Earl, 62, 64;
Thomas Howard, fourteenth Earl, 74
Askew, Anne, 48
Atterbury, Bishop, 97
Austin Friars, 27, 43
Babington’s Conspiracy, 62
Bacon, Lord, 71
Bailly, Charles, 62
Baliol, John, King of Scotland, 7
Ball, John, 25
Balmerino, Lord, 95
Barton, Elizabeth, the Maid of Kent, 44
Barnet, Battle of, 34
Bayley, John, Historian of the Tower, 7
Beaufort, Henry, Bishop of Winchester, 31, 32, 33
Beaufort, Margaret, Countess of Richmond, 44
Bedford, Duke of, 32
Bekington, Thomas de, 11
Blood, Colonel, 83
Bona, Duchess of Orleans, 30
Boniface, Archbishop, 6
Bonner, Edmund, Bishop of London, 48
Bosworth, Battle of, 39
Bourchier, Robert, 9
Brackenbury, Sir Robert, 37
Bretigny, Peace of, 10
Brooke, George, 68, 69
Brouncker, Lord, 12
Bruce, David, King of Scotland, 10
Buckingham, Dukes of:
Henry Stafford, second Duke, 36
Edward Stafford, third Duke, 42, 43
George Villiers, 74
George Villiers II, 83
Burchet, Peter, 63
Burdett, Sir Francis, 97
Burgundy, Duke Philip of, 29, 30
Charles the Bold, 40
Burgundy, Margaret, Duchess of, 40
Burleigh, Lord, 66, 69
Burley, Sir Simon, 26
Burgh, Hubert de, 6
Cade, Jack, 33
Caen, 9
Calais, Siege of, 9
Campion, Father, 63
Catherine of Valois, 29
Cato Street Conspiracy, 98
Caxton, William, 40
Charles I, 10, 74, 77
Charles II, 37, 77, 83, 86
Charles of Blois, 10
Charles VI of France, 29
Charles VIII, 40
Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, 95
Chertsey, Abbot of, 23
Clare, Gilbert de, 6
Clarence, Duke of, 34, 35
Cobham, Lord, Sir John Oldcastle, 30
Cobham, Lord, Henry Brooke, 68, 69
Constable of the Tower, The, 20
Courtenay, William, Archbishop of Canterbury, 26
Courtenay, Henry, Marquis of Exeter, 45, 46
Cranfield, Lionel, Earl of Middlesex, 77
Cranmer, Archbishop, 44, 47, 48, 55
Crecy, Battle of, 9, 33
Cromwell, Elizabeth, 80
Cromwell, Oliver, 18, 81
Cromwell, Thomas, 46
Cromarty, Earl of, 9
Culloden, Battle of, 95
Cuffe, Henry, 66, 67
Cumberland, Duke of, 95
Danes, The, 2
Darcy, Sir John, 10
Darnley, Lord, 20, 61
Davison, William, 64
Derwentwater, Earl of, 93
Despensers, The, 79
Dudley, Edmund, 42
Dudley, Lord Guildford, 53, 59
Edward I, 6, 7
Edward II, 7
Edward III, 8, 9
Edward IV, 34, 53
Edward V, 35
Edward VI, 49, 55
Edward, the Black Prince, 9, 26
Edwards, Talbot, 82, 83
Eliot, Sir John, 74, 78
Eleanor of Savoy, Queen of Henry III, 5, 11
Elizabeth, Queen, 43, 47, 52, 58, 59
Elizabeth Woodville, Queen of Edward IV, 35, 36, 53
Elizabeth of York, Queen of Henry VII, 41
Empson, Richard, 42
Essex, Earl of, Robert Devereux, 65, 67
Essex, Countess of, 73
Exeter, Duke of, John Holland, 12
Evesham, Battle of, 6
Eustace de St. Pierre, 9, 10
Fawkes, Guy, 71
Feckenham, John de, Abbot of Westminster, 57, 60
Felton, John, 76
Fenwick, Sir John, 88
Fisher, John, Bishop of Rochester, 44
Flambard, Ralph, Bishop of Durham, 3, 6
Flamsteed, John, 17
Froissart, 25
Gardiner, Stephen, Bishop of Winchester, 54, 60
Gaveston, Piers, 7
Gerard, John, 72
Glendower, Owen, 28
Glynne, Sir John, 80
Gloucester, Dukes of:
Thomas of Woodstock, 26, 27
Humphrey, 32
Richard III, 37, 38
Gondomar, 70
Gordon, Lord George, 96
Grey, Lady Jane, 53, 54, 55, 58
Grey, Lady Catherine, 60
Griffin, son of Llewelyn, Prince of Wales, 6
Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester, 2, 3
Hall, Edward, the Historian, 34
Hamilton, James, third Marquis of, 77
Harley, Robert, Earl of Oxford, 92
Harrison, Colonel, 82
Harvey, Sir George, 70
Hastings, Lord, 36
Helwys, Sir Gervase, 73
Henry I, 3, 4
Henry III, 4, 5, 7, 13, 15, 17
Henry IV, 27, 28, 29, 31
Henry V, 29, 31
Henry VI, 32, 34
Henry VII, 21, 23, 35, 37, 38, 53
Henry VIII, 11, 18, 21, 39, 41-9
Henry, Prince of Wales, 70
Hertford, Earl of, Edward Seymour, 49
Holinshed, 55, 57
Holles, Denzel, 77, 78
Hopton, Sir Ralph, 80
Howard, Lord Thomas, 45, 61
Ireton, General, 80
Isabel of Valois, Queen of Richard II, 29
Isabella, Queen of Edward II, 8
James I, 4, 18, 68, 70, 73
James II, 83, 86
James I of Scotland, 28
James IV of Scotland, 40
Jane Seymour, Queen, 54
Jeanne d’Arc, 32
Jeffreys, Judge, 86, 88
Joan of the Tower, 7
John, King, 4
John II, King of France, 10
John of Eltham, 78
John of Gaunt, 27, 32
John of Vienne, 10
Katharine of Aragon, Queen, 40, 43
Katharine Howard, Queen, 47
Katharine Parr, Queen, 48, 50
Kilmarnock, Earl of, 95
King’s Keys, The, 22
“King’s Quhair,” 29
Lanfranc, Archbishop, 3
Laud, Archbishop, 77, 78
Legge, George, 14
Leicester, Earl of, 66
Lennox, Margaret Countess of, 20, 45, 61
Lenthall, William, 82
Leslie, John, Bishop of Ross, 62
Lewes, Battle of, 6
Lieutenant of the Tower, 21
Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, 4, 13
Londoun, Earl of, 77
Louis VIII of France, 4
Louis XI of France, 35
Louis XII of France, 53
Lovat, Simon Fraser, Lord, 96
Love, Christopher, 81
Major of the Tower, 21
Mandeville, Geoffrey de, 20
Mar, Earl of, John Erskine, 93
Margaret of Anjou, Queen of Henry VI, 32, 34, 35
Margaret, Countess of Richmond. _See_ Beaufort
Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, 40
Marlborough, Duke of, 89, 92
Mary, Queen, 54, 55
Mary, Queen of Scots, 61
Matilda, Wife of King Stephen, 4, 11
Mohun, Lord, 89, 90
Monmouth, Duke of, 85, 86, 87
Montague, Lord, 46
Montfort, Simon de, 6
More, Sir Thomas, 37, 44
Mortimer, Roger de, 8
Neville, Edmund, 64
Nithisdale, Earl of, 93
Norman Conquest, 2
Norfolk, Dukes of:
Thomas Howard, third Duke, 43, 46, 49, 54;
Thomas Howard, fourth Duke, 62
Northampton, Earls of:
William de Bohun, 9
Henry Howard, 62
Northumberland, Duke of, John Dudley, 49, 50, 54
Northumberland, Earls of:
Henry Percy, eighth Earl, 64
Henry Percy, ninth Earl, 71
Oates, Titus, 83
Oldcastle, Sir John. _See_ Cobham, Lord
Orleans, Charles, Duke of, 29
Orleans, Louis, Duke of, 29
Owen, Sir John, 80
Overbury, Sir Thomas, 72
Paul III, 44
Pepys, 82
Perkin Warbeck, 37, 40, 41
Perrot, Sir John, 64
Peter de Roches, Bishop of Winchester, 6
Philip VI of France, 10
Philip, King of Castile, 41
Philip II of Spain, 41
Philippa, Queen of Edward III, 9
Pilgrimage of Grace, 45
Poitiers, Battle of, 10
Pole, Geoffrey, 46
Pole, Reginald, Cardinal, 46
Pym, John 77, 78
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 65, 70
Reynardson, Sir Abraham, 80
Richard I, 4, 13
Richard II, 24-9
Richard III, 37, 38
Rivers, Lord, 35
Robert, Duke of Normandy, 3
Robert III, King of Scotland, 28
Roman Invasion, 1, 2
Russell, Lord William, 85, 86
Rye House Plot, 86
St. Clement Danes, 8
St. Katharine’s by the Tower, Hospital of, 11, 21, 25
Salisbury, Countess of, Margaret Pole, 46
Sancroft, Archbishop, 87
Say, Lord, 33
Segrave, Sir Samuel, 8
Selden, John, 77
Seven Bishops, Trial of the, 87
Seymour, Baron Thomas, 50
Seymour, Lord William, 68
Shaftesbury, Earl of, Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl, 83
Shakespeare, 29, 32, 37, 66, 70
Shrewsbury, Battle of, 28, 31
Simnel, Lambert, 39
Simon of Sudbury, 28
Skelton, Bevil, 88
Somerset, Dukes of:
Edward Seymour, 49, 50
William Seymour, 68
Somerset, Robert Carr, Earl of, 73
Southampton, Earls of:
Henry Wriothesley, second Earl, 62
Henry Wriothesley, third Earl, 66, 67
Stafford, Viscount of, William Howard, 85
Stafford, Thomas, 59
Stanley, Sir William, 41
Stapledon, Walter, Bishop of Exeter, 8
Starling, John, 25
Stephen, King, 4, 11
Stow, John, the Chronicler, 3, 7, 11, 25
Strafford, Earl of, Thomas Wentworth, 75, 77
Suffolk, Dukes of:
William de la Pole, 33
Charles Brandon, 53
Suffolk, Earl of, Edmund de la Pole, 41, 42
Surrey, Earl of, Henry Howard, 49
Syndercombe, Miles, 81
Talbot, Eleanor, 36
Talbot, Sir Gilbert, 83
Tenchebrai, Battle of, 3
Tewkesbury, Battle of, 35
Thistlewood, Arthur, 98
Throckmorton, Sir John, 64
Throckmorton, Sir Nicholas, 65
Tooke, Horne, 97
Torture, Instruments of, 48, 63
Tower of London:
Armoury, 17, 98;
Ballium Wall, 3;
Barbican, 3;
Beauchamp (or Cobham) Tower, 16, 18, 27, 33, 42, 54, 61, 64, 90;
Bell Tower, 16, 18, 42, 54, 72;
Bloody Tower, 11, 16, 18, 74, 78, 79, 90;
Bowyer’s Tower, 16, 35, 98;
Brass Mount, 14;
Brick Tower, 16, 70;
Broad Arrow Tower, 16;
Byward Tower, 14, 98;
Casements, 16;
Constable Tower, 16;
Council Chamber, 17;
Cradle Tower, 14, 72;
Develin Tower, 14;
Devereux (or Robert the Devil) Tower, 16, 19;
Flint Tower, 16;
Great Hall, 43, 99;
Inner Ward, 15, 16, 18;
Jewel House, 3;
Keep, _see_ White Tower;
King’s House, 20, 21, 24;
Lantern Tower, 5, 16, 18;
Little Ease, 16, 65, 71;
Lion Gate, 4;
Lion Tower, 7, 13;
Martin’s Tower, 16, 19;
Menagerie, 4;
Middle Tower, 13, 15, 98;
Moat, 10, 13, 14;
Moat, 13, 14, 15;
North Bastion, 14;
Outer Ward, 14, 15, 16;
Parade, 18, 19;
Privy Garden, 72;
Royal Palace, 18;
St. John’s Chapel, 5, 17, 28, 54, 99;
St. Katharine’s (or Iron) Gate, 11;
St. Peter’s Church, 3, 5, 17, 18, 66, 76;
St. Thomas’ Tower, _see_ Traitors’ Gate;
Salt Tower, 16, 72, 98;
Tower Green, 5, 19, 43;
Traitors’ Gate, 5, 11, 13, 14, 15, 18, 45, 58, 66;
Wakefield Tower, 16, 18, 34;
Well Tower, 14;
The White Tower, 3, 5, 13, 16, 18, 29, 42, 82, 99;
Tower Hill, 19, 21, 25, 26, 41, 59, 62, 78
Tower Wharf, 5
Towton, Battle of, 34
Tullibardine, Marquis of, 95
Tyler, Wat, 25, 26
Tyrrell, Sir James, 37, 41
United Irishmen, 37
Vane, Sir Harry, 82
Vane, Sir Ralph, 50
Victoria, Queen, 97
Wade, Sir William, 72, 73
Wakefield, Battle of, 23
Wallace, William, 7
Walpole, Horace, 90
Walpole, Sir Robert, 95
Walsingham, Sir Francis, 66
Walworth, Sir William, 25
Warbeck, Perkin, 37, 40, 41
Warwick, Earls of:
Thomas de Beauchamp, 27
Richard de Beauchamp, 32
Richard Neville, 34
Edward, son of Duke of Clarence, 39, 40
John Dudley, afterwards Duke of Northumberland, 51, 59
Wellington, Duke of, 98
Wilkes, John, 96
William I, 2, 17
William II, 3, 18
Wintoun, Earl of, George Seton, 93, 94
Wolsey, Cardinal, 11, 43, 44, 46
Wriothesley, Sir Thomas, 48
Wren, Sir Christopher, 17, 90
Wyatt, Sir Henry, 38, 39
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 55, 58
Wycliffe, John, 25, 31
Wyndham, Sir John, 41
Yeomen of the Guard, 21, 22
York, Third Duke of, Richard, 33, 37
Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.
[Illustration: PLAN OF THE TOWER OF LONDON
(From a Drawing made between 1681 and 1689 by order of L^{d.}
Dartmouth, Maj. Genl. of the Ordnance.)
_A Martin’s Tower_
_B By Ward Tower_
_C Legge Mount_
_D Brass Mount_
_E Develin Tower_
_F Well Tower_
_G Cradle Tower_
_H Traitors’ Gate_
_I Draw Bridge_
_K Bell Tower_
_L Beauchamp Tower_
_M Devereux Tower_
_N Flint Tower_
_O Bowyers Tower_
_P Brick Tower_
_Q Jewell Tower_
_R Constable Tower_
_S Broad Arrow Tower_
_T Salt Tower_
_V Lanthorn Tower_
_W Record Tower_
_X Bloody Tower_
_Y The Chapel_
_Z The Main Courtyard_
_a The White Tower_
_b Lieutenant’s Lodgings_
_c Lower Old Storehouse_
_d Upper Old Storehouse_
_e The Great New Storehouse_
_f Office of the Ordnance_
_g Constable’s Lodging_
_h Mortar Piece Storehouse_
_i Treasury house_
_k Little Storehouse in Cold Harbour_
_l Mint Street_
_m Place for the Lions_
_n Cranes on the Wharfe_
_o Traitors’ Bridge_
_p Banbury Castle_
_q Brewer’s Quay_
_r Waggon house_
]
THE PORTFOLIO MONOGRAPHS, No. 46
_With 4 Illuminations in Colours and Gold,
and 33 other Illustrations.
Sewed, 5s. nett, or in cloth, gilt top, 7s. nett._
THE CATHEDRAL
BUILDERS IN ENGLAND
By EDWARD S. PRIOR, M.A., F.S.A.
_Author of “A History of Gothic Art in England,” etc._
In this volume Mr. Prior treats of the Great
English Mediæval Cathedrals, with special
reference to the men by whom they were designed,
and the craftsmen by whom they were erected. He
thus characterizes the successive periods of
Cathedral building in England:—
1. Norman, Benedictine, “Romanesque.”
2. Angevin, Neomonastic, “Transitional to Gothic.”
3. Insular, Episcopal, “Early English.”
4. Continental, Regal, “The Summit of Gothic.”
5. English, Aristocratic, “Decorated.”
6. After the Black Death: Official, “Perpendicular.”
7. Fifteenth Century: Parochial and Trading, “Perpendicular.”
8. Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries: the Craftsman and the Architect.
9. Nineteenth Century: the Restorer and Revivalist.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
MINIATURES FROM ILLUMINATED MSS. IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM,
PRINTED IN COLOURS.
Christ in Glory. From a _Missal_ of the Fourteenth Century.
The Angels with the Seven Vials. From an _Apocalypse_ of the
Fourteenth Century.
Bishop carrying the Sacrament. From a _Lectionary_ of the
Fifteenth Century.
Group of Bishops. From a _Psalter_ of the Fifteenth Century.
OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS
Westminster Abbey. Confessor’s Chapel. BOYCE.
Westminster Abbey. N. Ambulatory. NASH.
Canterbury Cathedral, from the S. HOLLAR.
Durham Cathedral, from the River. DANIELL.
Durham Cathedral from the West. COTMAN.
Winchester Cathedral, N. Transept. BLORE.
Norwich Cathedral, Nave. F. MACKENZIE.
Canterbury Cathedral. N. Aisle of Choir. G. CATTERMOLE.
Wells Cathedral, Arches under the Central Tower. GARLAND.
Wells Cathedral, N.W. Tower. J. H. GIBBONS.
Chichester Cathedral, S.E. View. GARLAND.
Southwark Cathedral, Nave. DIBDEN.
Salisbury Cathedral, Small Transept. F. MACKENZIE.
York Minster, from the North, ED. BLORE.
York Minster, North Transept. GARLAND.
Lincoln Cathedral, from the West, DE WINT.
Lincoln Cathedral, the Chancel. GARLAND.
Lincoln Cathedral, from the East. HOLLAR.
Salisbury Cathedral, the Chapter House. F. MACKENZIE.
Salisbury Cathedral, from Cloisters. TURNER.
Exeter Cathedral, from the S.E. S. RAYNER.
Ely Cathedral, the Octagon. GARLAND.
Gloucester Cathedral, Presbytery. J. HAROLD GIBBONS.
Gloucester Cathedral, Cloisters. GARLAND.
York Minster, East End. F. MACKENZIE.
Winchester Cathedral, West Front. GARLAND.
York Minster, Choir. F. MACKENZIE.
Sherborne Minster. CONSTABLE.
St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, from S. HOLLAR.
St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. Interior of Choir. HOLLAR.
St. Paul’s Cathedral, West Front. T. MALTON.
St. Paul’s Cathedral, Interior of Choir. R. TREVITT.
Truro Cathedral, from the South-East.
“It is satisfactory to find the subject
approached after a masterly and in many
respects an original fashion. This book is
brightened by various able reproductions of
some of the best old engravings of England’s
minsters.”—_Athenæum._
“To not a few every page will be a delight.”—_Church Times._
LONDON: SEELEY & CO., LIMITED, 38 GREAT RUSSELL STREET.
_Extra Crown 8vo, with 33 Illustrations,
and a photogravure vignette,
in cloth, gilt top, 7s. 6d. nett._
DISCOURSES
DELIVERED TO
Students of the Royal Academy
BY
SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, KT.
With a General Introduction and Special Introduction to each
Discourse, and Notes by
ROGER E. FRY
Author of _Giovanni Bellini_, etc., etc.
Of the value of Reynolds’ Discourses to art-students
of the present day, Professor Clausen said, in one
of his lectures delivered at the Royal Academy in
1904: “There is no book that an artist can read so
illuminating and helpful as Sir Joshua Reynolds’
Discourses.... These admirable Discourses give with the
utmost candour and clearness, with entire freedom from
the sentimentality and gush which mars so much that is
written on artistic subjects, the ripe conclusions of
a great artist. We see the perfect workman—the master
craftsman, if I may say so—putting his methods before
us and laying bare his mind to us.”
The illustrations for the edition now presented have
been selected with much thought and care by Mr. Roger
Fry, who has also endeavoured in his Introductions and
Notes to bring to bear on the subject the results of
modern criticism and research.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. Design. Photogravure on Title Page.
SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. Cymon and Iphigenia.
ANNIBALE CARACCI. Youth Pouring a Libation.
LUDOVICO CARRACCI. Virgin and Child between St. Frances
and St. Jerome.
LORENZO BERNINI. David.
LE SUEUR. Descent from the Cross.
TINTORETTO. The Last Supper.
PAOLO VERONESE. The Marriage of St. Catherine.
CLAUDE. The Enchanted Castle.
CORREGGIO. St. Thomas and St. James the Less.
GUIDO RENI. Pietà.
SALVATOR ROSA. Cain and Abel.
NICOLAS POUSSIN. Memoria della Morte.
RAPHAEL. The Crucifixion.
GUERCINO. St. Bruno’s Vision.
CARAVAGGIO. Entombment.
BAROCCIO. Holy Family.
GUIDO RENI. Samson Drinking from the Jawbone of an Ass.
TINTORETTO. The Road to Calvary.
JACOPO BASSANO. Il Riposo.
ANNIBALE CARACCI. The Flight into Egypt.
RUBENS. Landscape in Moonlight.
REMBRANDT. Man in Armour.
PARMEGIANINO. Madonna del Collo lungo.
FILIPPINO LIPPI. St. Paul Visiting St. Peter in Prison.
RAPHAEL. Part of the Cartoon of St. Paul Preaching
at Athens.
TITIAN. St. Sebastian.
TITIAN. Detail from the Bacchus and Ariadne.
CORREGGIO. Drawing for La Notte.
RUBENS. Altar of St. Augustine’s, Antwerp.
SALVATOR ROSA. Landscape.
SEBASTIAN BOURDON. Return of the Ark.
PELLEGRINO TIBALDI. Composition.
MICHEL ANGELO. Study for a Crucifixion.
“No reprint could be welcomer.”—_Pall Mall
Gazette._
“Rendered of great value by the critical
introductions.... The interest of the plates
is further considerably enhanced by Mr.
Fry’s brief appreciation of the various
articles.”—_Athenæum._
LONDON: SEELEY & CO., LIMITED, 38 GREAT RUSSELL STREET.
_In large 4to, price Five Guineas net, in cloth_
_THE_
ETCHINGS
OF
REMBRANDT
_BY_
P. G. HAMERTON
_WITH FIFTY FACSIMILES IN PHOTOGRAVURE_
_and_
_AN ANNOTATED CATALOGUE OF REMBRANDT’S ETCHINGS_
_by_
CAMPBELL DODGSON
_Of the Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum._
“I have been studying,” said Mr. Hamerton in 1894,
“the works of Rembrandt’s immediate predecessors and
contemporaries in etching, with a view to understand
his relative position more accurately. The result
has only been to deepen my sense of the master’s
incomparable greatness, of his sterling originality,
and especially of that wonderful quality in him by
which he does not belong to the seventeenth century,
but quite as much to the closing years of the
nineteenth. In like manner, when it comes, he will be
at home in the twentieth century, and in many another
after it.”
Much has been done, since those words were written,
to spread the great etcher’s fame through the many
reproductions of his plates that have been published.
The art of reproduction, however, is a very modern one,
and has only recently attained perfection. The plates
here offered have been pronounced by experts to be
superior to any hitherto produced.
The selection has been made with the view of showing
Rembrandt’s work in its rich variety, and it includes
several of his most important and largest subjects.
Mr. Hamerton was specially qualified to write on
the subject from his intimate practical knowledge of
the technicalities of etching. His valuable essay was
highly appreciated at the time of its appearance; and
Mr. Campbell Dodgson has now added to it a complete
annotated catalogue of all Rembrandt’s etchings,
embodying the latest conclusions of the best critics.
The edition is limited to 250 copies, of which only
225 are for sale. Each copy will be numbered.
LIST OF THE FIFTY PLATES
1 REMBRANDT’S MOTHER, HEAD AND BUST
2 REMBRANDT’S MOTHER SEATED AT A TABLE
3 THE RAT KILLER
4 THE (LARGE) RAISING OF LAZARUS
5 ANGEL APPEARING TO THE SHEPHERDS
6 REMBRANDT WITH RAISED SABRE
7 JAN UYTENBOGAERT
8 REMBRANDT AND HIS WIFE SASKIA
9 BEARDED MAN WEARING A VELVET CAP WITH A JEWEL CLASP
10 YOUNG MAN IN VELVET CAP
11 THREE HEADS OF WOMEN
12 STUDY OF SASKIA AS ST. CATHERINE. “THE LITTLE JEWISH BRIDE”
13 JOSEPH TELLING HIS DREAMS
14 DEATH APPEARING TO A WEDDED COUPLE
15 UYTENBOGAERT, RECEIVER GENERAL. “THE GOLDWEIGHER”
16 REMBRANDT, RICHLY DRESSED, LEANING ON A STONE SILL
17 OLD MAN WITH A DIVIDED FUR CAP
18 VIEW OF AMSTERDAM
19 CORNELIS CLAESZ ANSLO, PREACHER
20 THE ANGEL DEPARTING FROM THE FAMILY OF TOBIAS
21 LANDSCAPE WITH WINDMILL
22 READING WOMAN IN SPECTACLES
23 MAN IN AN ARBOUR
24 COTTAGE WITH A WHITE PALING
25 THE HOG
26 THE THREE TREES
27 CHRIST CARRIED TO THE TOMB
28 ABRAHAM AND ISAAC
29 SIX’S BRIDGE
30 VIEW OF OMVAL
31 EPHRAIM BONUS, JEWISH PHYSICIAN
32 JAN SIX, BURGOMASTER OF AMSTERDAM
33 BEGGARS AT THE DOOR OF A HOUSE
34 CHRIST HEALING THE SICK. “THE HUNDRED GUILDER PRINT”
35 LANDSCAPE WITH A SQUARE TOWER
36 LANDSCAPE WITH THREE GABLED COTTAGES
37 THE BLINDNESS OF TOBIT
38 THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT. A NIGHT PIECE
39 CLEMENT DE JONGHE, PRINTSELLER AND ARTIST
40 CHRIST PREACHING
41 DR. FAUSTUS IN HIS STUDY WATCHING A MAGIC DISC
42 TITUS, REMBRANDT’S SON
43 PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE, IN THE DARK MANNER
44 CHRIST TAKEN DOWN FROM THE CROSS, BY TORCHLIGHT
45 CHRIST AT EMMAUS
46 ABRAHAM’S SACRIFICE
47 THOMAS JACOBSZ HAARING, AUCTIONEER. “THE YOUNG HAARING”
48 PORTRAIT OF ARNOLD THOLINX
49 JAN LUTMA (THE ELDER), GOLDSMITH AND SCULPTOR
50 THE PHŒNIX, OR THE STATUE OVERTHROWN. “LE TOMBEAU ALLEGORIQUE”
LONDON: SEELEY & CO., LIMITED, 38 GREAT RUSSELL STREET.
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