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Title: The Tower of London, (Vol. 1 of 2)
Author: Gower, Ronald Sutherland, Lord
Language: English
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THE TOWER OF LONDON
[Illustration: _The Duke of Orleans a Prisoner in the Tower_
(_From a MS. in the British Museum_)]
THE
TOWER OF LONDON
BY
LORD RONALD SUTHERLAND GOWER, F.S.A.
ONE OF THE TRUSTEES OF THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
With Numerous Illustrations
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.
[Illustration]
LONDON
GEORGE BELL & SONS
1901
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION xi
CHAPTER I. THE BUILDINGS 1
II. THE TOWER UNDER THE NORMAN AND PLANTAGENET KINGS 79
III. THE EDWARDS 85
IV. RICHARD II. 90
V. THE LANCASTRIANS 100
VI. THE WARS OF THE ROSES 107
VII. THE TUDOR KINGS—HENRY VII. 120
VIII. HENRY VIII. 124
IX. EDWARD VI. 169
X. MARY TUDOR 181
XI. QUEEN ELIZABETH 202
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
COLOURED PLATE
The Duke of Orleans a Prisoner in the Tower. (From a MS.
in the British Museum) _Frontispiece_
PHOTOGRAVURE PLATES
PAGE
The Tower. (From a sketch by H. Colls) 1
Plan of the Tower in 1597, by Haiward and Gascoyne 6
The Byward Tower 8
Postern Gate in the Byward Tower 10
Yeoman Porter of the Tower, bearing his emblem of office 12
The Wakefield and Bloody Towers 14
Traitor’s Gate, time of George III. 16
The Bloody Tower, looking towards Traitor’s Gate 20
Groining in Ceiling of the Bloody Tower 22
The Council Chamber in the Governor’s House 26
Prison in the Governor’s House 28
The Beauchamp Tower 30
Prison in the Beauchamp Tower 32
Prison Chamber in the Beauchamp Tower 34
Interior of St Peter’s Chapel 36
Monument of Sir Richard Cholmondeley and his Wife, in St
Peter’s Chapel 40
Tomb of the Blunt Family in St Peter’s Chapel 42
Stone Staircase in the White Tower 54
Interior of St John’s Chapel 58
Horse and Foot Armour (XVIth Century) 64
German Armour (XVIth Century) 66
Nuremberg Armour (XVIth Century) 68
Horse and Foot Armour (XVIIth Century) 70
Horse and Foot Armour (XVIIth Century) 72
Horse and Foot Armour (XVIIth Century) 74
Site of the Scaffold on Tower Hill 96
The Wakefield Tower, time of George III. 116
Prison beneath the Wakefield Tower 118
Queen Anne Boleyn. (From an engraving after a contemporary
portrait) 130
John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. (From the drawing by Holbein
at Windsor) 134
Sir Thomas More. (From the drawing by Holbein at Windsor) 138
A Daughter of Sir Thomas More, supposed to be Mrs Roper.
(From the drawing by Holbein at Hammerfield) 140
Queen Mary Tudor. (From a portrait at Latimer) 182
Lady Jane Grey. (From the portrait at Madresfield Court by
Lucas van Heere) 184
Lord Guildford Dudley. (From the portrait at Madresfield Court
by Lucas van Heere) 186
Lady Jane Grey. (From an engraving by Wijngaerde, after the
portrait by Holbein) 190
Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk. (From the portrait by Joannes
Corvus in the National Portrait Gallery) 197
Robert, Earl of Essex. (From a contemporary engraving) 222
BLOCKS
The Jewel House 18
Doorway of the Jewel House 18
St Thomas’s Tower from the Wharf 104
View in the Inner Ballium 112
All Hallows, Barking 120
The Curfew Tower from the Moat 144
Traitor’s Gate 148
Heading Block and Axe 150
St Peter’s Chapel and Place of Execution 154
St Thomas’s and Curfew Towers 158
Traitor’s Gate from the Bloody Tower 164
Back of the Byward Tower 168
The King’s House 174
Middle Tower 198
Queen Elizabeth’s Walk, from the Curfew Tower to the
Beauchamp Tower 208
Queen Elizabeth’s Walk, from the Beauchamp Tower to the
Curfew Tower 210
PLAN OF THE TOWER _at End_
INTRODUCTION
To the English race the Tower of London will always be the most
interesting of its Monuments; for it forms a group of buildings that
for eight centuries has been the very heart of the English capital,
and, since the victor of Hastings raised the great Keep—or White
Tower—through all the succeeding centuries, the Tower has been closely
connected with the history of England.
It would be vain to search any other city, Rome itself not excepted,
for another such group of buildings, or to match the historic interest
and splendid record of the ancient Norman structure. The Tower is
indeed rife with interest; the most dramatic events of our country’s
history during more than seven hundred years have been enacted within
or near its walls.
To see it is to conjure up a vision of scenes, some brilliant and
stately, some tragic and awful, but all full of deepest interest to the
hearts and minds of Britons, to whom the history of their land is dear.
Although several works—some voluminous, such as the two ponderous
quartos by John Bayley, published in 1825, and some more recent,
such as the histories of the Tower by Britton and Brayley, and, more
recently still, those by Lord de Ros and Doyne Bell—have appeared, I
venture to think that in writing the present account of the Tower I
have not undertaken a thankless or a useless task.
My object in giving the following book to the public has been a hope
that to those who already know the Tower some fresh knowledge may
perhaps be added to their acquaintance with that noble old pile; and
that to those who do not know it, the admirable illustrations taken
from the building itself by Messrs Colls, and the reproduction of old
views and scenes connected with the Tower from the days of Charles
the First to those of Queen Victoria, will enable them to realise its
incomparable historic interest.
Until the reign of Edward the Third the records of the Tower are
miserably meagre and scanty. It would require a far more imaginative
mind than I possess to infuse any life or movement or interest into
them. It has been my humble intention merely to narrate in this work
what is of undoubted authority as regards the history of the Tower,
and were I even capable of adding colour to the dry chronicles of
historical fact in these pages, it would be distasteful to me to try
to enhance the interest of this narrative by setting down that which
I have no good evidence for regarding as strictly true; or to attempt
to adorn the dry facts, which the old chroniclers have given us, by
imaginary incidents and tales for which there is no better evidence
than that coming from the author’s imagination. An historical novel
such as that most entertaining work the “Tower of London,” by Harrison
Ainsworth, is a delightful effort of the writer’s imagination; but
a book which professes to be a history must not be a hotch-potch of
truth and fiction. That would be the worst of literary frauds. Feeling
strongly on this matter, I must beg my readers to pardon the dulness of
my records relating to the early history of the Tower, but I can assure
them that what I have written is, as far as possible, accurate history;
and, at the same time, beg them not to be disappointed if they find no
flights of fancy in these pages.
RONALD SUTHERLAND GOWER.
ERRATUM.
The illustration at page 198 represents the Byward Tower,
not Middle Tower.
[Illustration: _The Tower of London_
(_From a Sketch by H. Colls._)]
THE TOWER
CHAPTER I
THE BUILDINGS
Nothing has come down to us of any authentic value regarding ancient
London until Tacitus writes of Londinium as a place celebrated for the
numbers of its merchants and the confluence of traffic. In the days of
the Roman occupation St Albans, then called Verolanium, was a far more
important place than Roman Londinium; and, perhaps, it was Verolanium
whereto Cæsar marched in his second descent on Britain in B.C. 54, and
which he described as a place “protected by woods and marshes.” Such
a description would equally apply to Londinium, and, for aught we can
know to the contrary, the town Cæsar describes as being surrounded by
woods and marshes may have been our capital.
To the north of Roman London stretched vast primeval forests, and where
St John’s Wood now stands, the wild boar roamed in trackless thickets.
Marshes lay to the west and south, on the sites of Westminster and
Southwark; a less likely place for the situation of a great capital,
with the exception of St Petersburg, could not be found in Europe. On
what is now Tower Hill stood a Celtic fortress, protected by the Thames
on the south, and by forests and fens on the north. This fortress was
admirably placed, protecting the approach from the seaward side of the
river, and guarding against any attack from the land side. The Romans
were evidently of this opinion, for after conquering the woad-stained
Britons, they erected a fortalice, defended by strongly fortified
walls, upon the same site.
This Roman fortress was the origin of the Tower of London.
Roman London, or rather Augusta, for so it was originally termed by the
Romans, began at a fort named the Arx Palatina, overlooking the river a
little to the south of Ludgate, a wall defended by towers, running in a
south-easterly line along the river bank to another fort on the present
site of the Tower, which was also named the Arx Palatina. Thence
the wall took a northerly direction, reaching as far as the present
Bishopsgate; it then turned due west to Cripplegate; then south by
Aldersgate to Newgate, meeting the first wall at Ludgate. Roman London
was indebted to the Emperor Constantine for these defences.[1]
Theodosius is supposed to have restored this wall in the reign of
Valentinian, but we have no further records of any work upon it until
A.D. 886, when Alfred the Great repaired it as a protection against the
Danish invaders.[2]
The late Sir Walter Besant is my authority for saying “that there is a
large piece of the Roman wall, extending 150 feet long, built over by
stores and warehouses immediately north of the Tower, just where the
old postern used to be, and where the wall abutted on the Tower.” It
should be remembered, when judging of the circumference of the Roman
wall, that London covered little more ground in those days than does
Hyde Park at present: from Ludgate to the Tower the Roman wall extended
only about a mile in length, and three and a half miles from the Tower
to Blackfriars.
There are many fragments of this old Roman wall still above ground,
and until 1763 a square Roman tower, built of alternate layers of
large square stones with bands of red tiles, one of the three that
guarded the wall, was still standing in Houndsditch. In 1857 a portion
of the Roman wall was discovered near Aldermanbury postern, whilst a
portion of a Roman bastion is still to be seen at St Giles’s Church,
Cripplegate; another fragment being visible in a street called London
Wall Street. There are more Roman remains at the Old Bailey and near
George Street, Tower Hill. Fragments are also visible near Falcon Lane,
Bush Lane, Scott’s Yard in Cornhill, and in underground warehouses and
cellars near the Tower. In the Minories there are yet more remains of
this ancient Roman wall. In Thames Street, oaken piles, which were the
foundation of the wall, have been discovered. They supported a layer
of chalk and stone courses, upon which rested large slabs of sandstone
cemented with a mixture of lime, sand, and powdered tiles. The upper
part of the wall was coated with flint, and this again was strengthened
by rows of tiles.
The most interesting of these remains, however, is in the Tower
itself—a fragment of the Roman fort or Arx Palatina (the place of
strength), which was laid bare some few years ago when some buildings
abutting on the White Tower were removed. It is built of the same
materials as the fragments of the Roman wall, and shows that William
the Conqueror not only erected the most formidable fortress in his
newly-conquered country upon the site chosen by the Romans, but that
he also incorporated the remains of their handiwork in his building.
Whether Alfred the Great restored the Arx Palatina as well as the wall
we do not know, but even if the fort were ruined, the fragment now
at the base of the White Tower would have shown the Conqueror the
value and importance of its defensive position, protecting as it did
the eastern end of the city, and guarding the seaward entrance of the
Thames. William’s site, however, covered part of the land belonging
to the ancient boundary of the Roman occupation, and to provide the
necessary space he pulled down a large portion of the Roman wall
between the spot where the White Tower now stands and the river front
of the fortress.
In the days of our first Norman kings, a single square tower or keep,
usually situated on a hill surrounded by an artificial ditch or moat,
was considered sufficient protection. One might give a long list of
such towers or keeps both in England and Normandy, for William the
First, not content with overawing the Londoners with his great tower
in their city, built others at Dover and at Exeter, at Nottingham and
at York, at Lincoln and at Durham, at Cambridge and at Huntingdon.
Under Duke Rollo and his immediate successors the Normans built their
fortresses by the side of navigable rivers, on islands, or near the
sea, since these fortresses were not merely destined as defences, but
also for places of safety. They were, in fact, places of refuge for
the people of the surrounding country, who fled to them with all their
possessions, and particularly their live stock, at the approach of an
enemy. By their situation, safety, if necessary, could be obtained by
taking flight on the neighbouring river or sea.
In Normandy—at Fécamp, at Eu, at Bayeux, at Jumiége, and at Oisel, to
name but a few of these Norman keeps—this custom obtained. At Rouen,
as in London, the principal fortress built by the Norman duke stood
by the riverside, and not on the hills at the back of the town. None
of these places mentioned above were stronger or more imposing than
the great Norman keep in London, known for centuries as the White
Tower, receiving that title at first, probably from the whiteness of
its stone, and in later times from the continued coatings of whitewash
which it received. Of the many castles in Normandy and Touraine of the
same period as the White Tower, that of Loches resembles it most nearly
in size and form. Loches is now almost a ruin, as are most of the
Conqueror’s castles, but the great White Tower remains intact despite
the storms, sieges, and fires through which it has passed during eight
centuries. It is still the Arx Palatina of London and of the British
Empire.
Although in situation the Tower cannot compare with such grandly-placed
castles as Dover or Bamborough, Conway or Carnarvon, or vie in beauty
of scenery with Warwick or Windsor, it remains the most historic
building in our land; not even the mausoleum fortress of Hadrian in old
Rome can compete in interest with the Norman fortress—palace—and State
prison of London; Edinburgh Castle alone approaches it as regards its
influence on the history of the capital it defended, for the northern
fortress was also the home of its national sovereigns for centuries,
its country’s chief prison, the store-house of its regalia, and its
city’s strong place of defence; and, like the Tower, it has been
guarded from its foundation up to the present time without a break, by
its country’s armed defenders.
Every part of the Tower of London is pregnant with history and
tradition. The proudest names of England—Howard and Percy, Arundel
and Beauchamp, Stafford and Devereux—gain added interest from their
association with the Tower and its story. Above all, it is for ever
honoured as having been the last home of Eliot, of Russell, and of
Sidney; it has been sanctified by More and Fisher, “Martyrs,” as a
writer on the Tower has well said, “for the ancient, as also was Anne
Askew for the purer faith.” And to Anne Askew’s name I would add that
of Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, one of the first and noblest of
English martyrs.
When William lay dying in the Priory of Saint Gervais, near Rouen, in
the summer of 1087, the Great White Tower which he had built in London
had been in existence for some ten years. Probably only that tower was
then completed, with the great ballium wall between the Keep and the
river. Stowe, the earliest English writer on antiquarian subjects,
writing in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, has told us in his priceless
“Survey of London,” that the White Tower was completed in 1078. Its
architect, Bishop Gundulf of Rochester, was not consecrated until 1077,
and was then occupied in building Rochester Cathedral and a portion
of Rochester Castle; the keep, which still rears its ruined walls
over Rochester and the Medway, was not built until a century later.
In Mr G. J. Clarke’s work on “Mediæval Military Architecture”—a work
as important to students of English architecture of the Middle Ages
as is that of Viollet le Duc to French architecture—we are told that
Gundulf died about the year 1108, at the good old age of eighty-four,
in the reign of the first Henry. Possibly the Palace at the Tower and
even the Wakefield Tower had been commenced by Gundulf, as well as some
buildings of the inner ward, but this is uncertain. These buildings
would include the great curtain wall extending from the Wakefield Tower
to the Broad Arrow Tower, and the cross wall of the Wardrobe Gallery,
and the building known as Coldharbour, these being the buildings which
formed the nucleus of the palace of the Norman kings.
The Wardrobe, the Lanthorn, and Coldharbour Towers have perished; the
Lanthorn Tower has been rebuilt. In 1091, according to Stowe, the White
Tower was, “by tempest and wind sore shaken,” so much so that it had
to be repaired by William Rufus and Henry I. In the same year that
Rufus built the Great Hall at Westminster he surrounded the Tower with
a wall, causing his subjects much discontent thereby, especially as he
forced them to work at these defences.
Sir Walter Besant recommended—and no one spoke with higher authority on
aught appertaining to old London and its history—any one who desires to
make himself acquainted with the appearance of the Tower in the days of
Queen Elizabeth, to study the plan drawn up by Haiward and Gascoigne
in 1597, which they styled “A True and Exact Draught of the Tower
Liberties.” In that plan it will be seen at a glance that the fortress,
palace, armoury, arsenal, and State prison of England’s capital,
had its principal entry towards the west—in fact, that the western
approach was the only entrance by land, the eastern entrance, known as
the Iron Gate, being but seldom used. Supposing that the visitor of
Elizabeth’s day had passed through the no longer existing Bulwark Gate,
he would next pass under another gate, called from its proximity to
the menagerie of wild animals, the Lion Gate, which was connected by a
walled causeway over the moat, about a hundred feet in width, with the
Lion Tower, which has disappeared; from the Lion Gate, which has also
been pulled down, the scarp would be reached.
[Illustration: _Plan of the Tower in 1597_
_by Haiward and Gascoyne._]
The Lion Tower, with its barbicans and _tête-du-pont_, had the honour
of a moat to itself, but all this has disappeared, Lion Gate, tower,
barbican, _tête-du-pont_, have all vanished with the lions and other
wild beasts which were kept here from the days of the Norman kings
until the year 1834, when they were removed to Regent’s Park and formed
the nucleus of the Zoological Gardens.
Henry I. had kept some lions and leopards at his palace of Woodstock,
and on the occasion of Frederic II. of Germany sending three leopards
to Henry III., these animals were sent to the Tower. Besides lions and
leopards, an elephant and a bear were also about that time in the Tower
menagerie. In 1252 the Sheriffs of London were ordered to pay fourpence
a day for the keep of the bear, and also to provide a muzzle and chain
for Bruin while he caught fish in the Thames. During the reign of the
three first Edwards, the lions and other animals had food given them
to the value of sixpence a day, their keeper only receiving three
half-pence per diem. One of the Plantagenet Court officials held the
office, and was styled “The Master of the King’s Bears and Apes.” In
old views of the Tower can be seen the circular pit or pen in which,
down to the days of James I., bear-baiting took place—to watch this
brutal “sport” being one of this not altogether admirable monarch’s
favourite amusements.
In his account of a visit paid to the Tower in the reign of Elizabeth,
the German traveller, Paul Hentzner, writes of the Royal menagerie as
follows:—
“On coming out of the Tower we were led to a small house close by,
where are kept variety of creatures—viz. three lionesses, one lion
of great size, called Edward VI., from his having been born in that
reign; a tyger; a lynx; a wolf excessively old; this is a very scarce
animal in England, so that their sheep and cattle stray about in great
numbers, free from any dangers, though without anybody to keep them;
there is besides, 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.”
Hentzner, who visited England as tutor to a young German nobleman,
gives a vivid account of what was considered most noteworthy in London
in the days of Elizabeth, and in this the Tower looms large. His
Journal was translated into English from the German and published by
Horace Walpole, who had it printed at Strawberry Hill. We shall meet
with Hentzner again in the White Tower.
Early in the eighteenth century there were eleven lions in the Tower,
and in the _Freeholder_ Addison alludes to the Tower menagerie; later
on, Dr Johnson would growlingly inquire of newly-arrived Scotchmen in
the metropolis, “Have you seen the lions?” In the place where formerly
lions roared and bears were baited, the ticket office and visitors’
refreshment rooms now stand. In France or Germany here would probably
be an attractive restaurant or café; but in these matters we English
are woefully behind our neighbours, and it would be as difficult to
find an appetising luncheon in the Tower as it is to understand why the
art of cooking is so neglected in our country.
Near here, in 1843, when the moat of the fortress was drained of its
waters and cleared of its rubbish, many stone cannon shot were
found, shot which had probably been used when the Yorkists besieged the
Tower in 1460 and cannonaded it from the other side of the Thames. In
Elizabeth’s day this portion of the fortress was named the Bulwark or
the Spur-yard—the origin of the latter term is not known.
[Illustration: _The Byward Tower._]
The moat, some hundred feet wide at its widest, was formerly flooded
with the waters of the Thames, and is now used as a parade and
playground for the garrison. It dates back to the Norman Conquest,
and was deepened by William Longchamp, Bishop of Ely in the reign of
Richard I. Death was the penalty for bathing in its waters in the reign
of Edward III.—a severe law, but one may hope that a sentence so severe
for so apparently trivial an offence was not actually enforced; perhaps
death was the result of some one having taken his bath in the Tower
moat in the unsanitary days of Edward III. When the Duke of Wellington
was Constable of the Tower, he had the moat filled up to its present
level, and the river waters which had, daily, during eight centuries
supplied it by their ebb and flow, ceased to encircle the old walls.
Doubtless the fortress gained in healthiness by the change, but from a
picturesque point of view the general effect of the building has been
greatly lessened since the days when the old walls and bastions were
reflected by the waters of the moat, nor can its towers and turrets
appear so effective as when they were mirrored in surrounding water.
Four bridges with their causeways spanned the moat. To the west stood
the Lion Gate bridge; a second was (and still is), that of the Middle
Tower; the third faces the river at Traitor’s Gate under St Thomas’s
Tower; and the fourth is that at the eastern extremity of the fortress,
near to a dam which connected the tower above the Iron Gate with the
tower formerly called Galleyman’s Tower, or “the tower leading to the
Iron Gate.”
Middle Tower, the first by which the present visitor to the Tower
enters the fortress, has been greatly modernised in its upper part.
Since the destruction of the Lion Tower it has become the first gate
of the Citadel, its name having been gained by its original position
between the Lion and Byward Towers, to the latter of which it formed
the outwork: it protects the western and landward approach to the
fortress. Originally the Middle Tower was coated with Portland stone.
It has a double portcullis, which can still be used if required. In
front of this Tower, in mediæval days, stood a drawbridge, of which
however, no trace remains, the moat now being spanned by a bridge of
stone 130 feet in length and 20 feet in width at its narrowest part.
It was in front of this gateway that Elizabeth, on returning a Queen to
the Tower, which she had left five years before a prisoner, alighted
from her horse and kneeling on the ground returned thanks to God, “who
had,” as Bishop Burnet writes in his “History of the Reformation,”
“delivered her from a danger so imminent; and for an escape as
miraculous as that of David.” To the right of the Middle Tower a road
leads to Tower Wharf, from whence one of the most striking views in
the whole of London is seen. Before the spectator stretches the famous
“Pool,” that wide space of ever-shifting water on which rides all the
shipping of the mighty river. It is a view which combines past and
present; all the stir, the toil and traffic of the Thames lies before
one, and for background rise the pinnacles, towers, and embattled
walls of the grim old fortress, looking down on the ever-changing but
time-defying stream.
Returning to the Middle Tower, and passing along the causeway which
spans the moat, the Byward Tower is reached. The Byward Tower forms the
gatehouse of the Outer Ward of the Tower, and dates back to the reign
of Richard II. In form this tower is rectangular, it has three floors,
and rejoices in a portcullis which, like that of the Middle Tower,
could still be worked. In the time of Henry VIII. the Byward Tower
was known by the name of the Warding Gate. Upon the right-hand side of
the entrance there is a fine vaulted chamber, some 15 feet in size,
which is supposed to have been used as an oratory during the Middle
Ages. It is now occupied by the Warders of the Tower, and is called
the Warders’ Parlour; with its loopholed windows and ancient stone
fireplace, it is one of the best preserved interior portions of the
fortress. There is a corresponding chamber on the opposite side of the
gateway. Attached to the Byward Tower, on its south-eastern side, is
a low tower intended to protect the postern bridge which here crosses
the moat towards the river side. It has an old oak door, half hidden
by a sentry box, over which is a vaulted roof dating from the reign
of Richard II., and this, with the narrow tortuous passage, forms a
picturesque corner of the Tower buildings.
[Illustration: _Postern Gate in the Byward Tower._]
To mention the Warders of the Tower necessitates something more
than a passing allusion to that most worthy body of veterans, since
the Warders of the Tower of London belong to the most interesting
of the old fortress’s institutions. Yeomen-Warders is the proper
designation of the forty or so old soldiers who guard the Tower, who
show and describe its different parts to visitors, and whose civility
and patience are matters for the highest encomium. Originally these
guardians were employed by the Lieutenant of the Tower to guard the
prisoners committed to the State prison under his charge. But in the
reign of Edward VI. the Duke of Somerset, after his liberation from the
Tower, caused those warders who had had charge of his person during
his imprisonment to be appointed, as a reward for their attention,
extra Yeomen of the Guard. And from that period dates, with some
modifications, the costume still worn by the Tower Yeomen. The Warders
of the Tower are all picked men, and have all been appointed to their
posts for good service in the Army. In the old days when the State
trials were held at Westminster Hall the “Gentleman-Gaoler”—as that
Warder was named whose affair it was to escort and guard the State
prisoner to and from his trial, and who carried the processional
axe (still kept in the Queen’s House) before the prisoner with the
edge turned away from him on the journey to Westminster, and almost
always with its edge towards him as he returned, as a sign that he was
condemned to die—was the principal of the Tower Warders. The office
is still maintained, inasmuch as he takes the front place on State
occasions of ceremony, when the old axe is taken from its honoured
repose in the Lieutenant’s study in the Queen’s House.
The Warders of the Tower must not, however, be confounded with the
Yeomen of the Guard, the latter of whom are more usually known by
the name of Beefeaters, and who, in their picturesque and striking
uniform, make so effective a display on State occasions, such as the
Levées at St James’s Palace, and State balls and concerts at Buckingham
Palace. Whether the designation “Beefeater” originated from a supposed,
but non-existent French word “buffetier” or not is a matter of no
importance; but what is interesting is the fact that this body of men,
with the exception of the Pope’s Swiss bodyguard, are the only set of
attendants belonging to a European Court who retain a costume similar
to that worn by their predecessors over three centuries ago.
Passing under the Byward Tower the Inner Ward is reached, into which
entrance was gained from the river by Traitor’s Gate, the steps to that
famous portal running below St Thomas’s Tower. Formerly cross walls,
guarded with strong gates, defended the Inner Ward, but these have long
since disappeared, together with the grated walls which shut in the
passage across the Ward from Traitor’s Gate to the Bloody Tower.
As recently as the year 1867 this portion of the Inner Ward was covered
with storehouses, engine-rooms and the lodgings of the warders, and
most of these buildings, according to Lord de Ros, were in a state
of total dilapidation, “the result of many years of neglect on the part
of the former Board of Ordnance.” Since that time a great improvement
has been made here, as well as in other parts of the fortress: of these
improvements a list is given in the Appendix.
[Illustration: _Yeoman Porter of the Tower._]
Bounded by the Bloody and St Thomas’s Towers ran a narrow street called
Mint Street, from the adjoining building occupied by the offices of
the Mint, which consisted of a row of mean houses that hid and defaced
the fine old Ballium wall of the fortress. Regarding this Ballium
wall, Lord de Ros, in his account of the Tower, explains the word
“Ballium” as “a military term,” but wishing for some further knowledge
as to the meaning of the word, I referred to my learned friend Mr
W. Peregrine Propert of St David’s, who informed me that it was
probably derived from the French term “bailler,” meaning “to deliver
possession, to lease, to hold, keep, contain.” The Latin form Ballium
would accordingly mean something that is held, contained, or enclosed.
Castles in ancient times were usually enclosed by several circuits of
walls, fences, or ramparts. Sometimes there was a ditch or moat built
outside these defences, as was the case in the Tower of London. The
space between these walls was called the “Ballium.” On the site of the
prison of Newgate stood a Roman fortress which was no doubt surrounded
by ramparts, and the space so defended has retained its old appellation
Ballium in the present term Old Bailey. “It is quite natural,” adds Mr
Propert, “to suppose that if one wall disappeared the remaining wall
would be called the ballium popularly: in the same manner a wall in
the Tower of London might be called a Ballium, though not correctly
according to its etymology.”
The Ballium wall at its highest is some forty feet high, and dates
probably as far back as the Conquest; it is, therefore, one of the
most ancient parts of the Tower, and coeval with the White Tower. It
commences at the Main Gate of the outer rampart at the Bell Tower, and
forms the angle of the Queen’s or Governor’s House, whence it runs for
some fifty yards to the north-west until it joins the Beauchamp Tower:
this tower forms a bastion near the centre of the Ballium wall. To the
right the restored Tower of St Thomas overlaps the Traitor’s Gate. This
tower dates back to the reign of Henry VIII., and was entirely rebuilt
in 1866 by Salvin, only a portion of the interior retaining the walls
of the original building.
Among a crowd of dingy wine-shops, offices, storehouses, and buildings
which, according to good authority, were mostly “in a condition of ruin
and dilapidation,” stood the old Mint, of which some account must here
be given:
In the twenty-first annual account of the Deputy Master of the Mint for
the year 1890 is the following account of the Mint when it was still
within the Tower walls:—
“Among the old records of the Mint a discoloured parchment has been
discovered, which is described as ‘An exact survey of the ground plot
or plan of His Majesty’s Office of the Mint in the Tower of London.’
It bears the date February 26, 1700, and is of special interest as
having presumably been prepared by order of Sir Isaac Newton, who
was appointed Master of the Mint in 1699, having previously held the
office of Warden.... The Mint buildings were situated between the
rampart, which is bounded by the moat, and the inner ward or ballium
of the fortress, which they entirely surrounded, except on the river
frontage.... There are ample data as to the nature of the machinery and
appliances which filled the various workrooms at the time when the plan
was prepared. The more important machinery would be the rolling mills.
The rolling mills were drawn by horsepower, and the rolls were of
steel and of small dimensions. The coining presses were screw presses,
and must have been the same as were introduced by Blondeau in 1661,
under the direction of Sir W. Parkhurst and Sir Anthony St Ledger,
Wardens of the Mint, at a cost of £1400. Blondeau, who greatly improved
the system of coining, did not, however, invent the screw press, as
Cellini described it accurately in 1568.”
[Illustration: _The Wakefield and Bloody Towers._]
In 1698 Sir Isaac Newton writes from the “Mint Office, October 22nd,”
as follows:—“Sir, Pray let Mr James Roettier have the use of the
great Crown Press in the Long Press Room for coyning of the Medalls,
and let some person whom you can confide in, attend to see that Mr
Roettier make no other use of the said press room than for coyning of
medalls.—To Mr John Braint, Provost of the Moniers.”
Sir Isaac was evidently suspicious of the uses that Roettier might
make of the Crown press, and not overconfident of the honesty of the
old Dutch medallist. We shall have more to say regarding Roettier when
describing the Tower under the Stuart king’s Restoration.
It is uncertain if Sir Isaac Newton occupied the house of the Master
of the Mint in the Tower, although it is recorded in the Conduit MSS.
that Halley once dined with Sir Isaac at the Mint. At the end of the
seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth, Newton had a
house in Jermyn Street, St James’s. The lodgings in the Tower of the
Master of the Mint were immediately to the north of the Byward Tower,
whilst those of the Warden were to the left of the Brass Mount, on the
north of the Jewel or Martin Tower.
The debasement of the coin of the realm, especially during the reigns
of the Tudor Sovereigns, caused great loss to the State, the matter
becoming so serious that Latimer denounced this criminal practice from
St Paul’s Cross, Sir John Yorke being then Master of the Tower Mint.
In 1550–51 it is recorded that there was “great loss, 4000 weight of
silver, by treason of Englishmen, which he (Yorke) bought for provision
for the minters. Also Judd, 1500; also Gresham, 500; so that the whole
came to 4000 pound.” There is a letter to the Treasurer, dated 22nd
August 1550, ordering him “to waie and cause to be molten downe into
wedges all such crosses, images, and church and chapelle plate of Gould
as remains in the Towere.” This letter was accompanied by a warrant
signed by Henry VIII. for “VIJM pounds appointed to be delivered to
Sir John Yorke for such purposes as his Lordship knoweth.” This act of
spoliation of all the Church treasure in the Tower by the rapacious
Henry, accounts for none of the plate in the Chapel of St Peter’s
dating further back than the reign of Charles I.
The famous Traitor’s Gate is perhaps the most historic plot of ground
in England, for here some of the noblest of our race have played the
last scene but one of their lives. More tragic pathos attaches to this
black water-gate than to the Bridge of Sighs in Venice; it is more
deeply dyed with gloom than the glacis of Avignon, the dungeons of St
Angelo, or the Austrian Spilberg. But a few steps had to be traversed
by the prisoners, when landed at these steps, before they entered the
Bloody Tower on the opposite side of the Ward, not to pass thence until
the day of their execution. The Traitor’s Gate was the principal of
the Barbicans or water-gates of the fortress; it commanded the passage
between the Thames and the moat. The stone arch which spans Traitor’s
Gate springs from two octagonal piers, and is 61 feet across. On the
old steps, that can still be traced below the modern stone stairs by
which they are overlaid, many an illustrious victim landed from the
barge, in which the prisoners of State were generally taken to and from
their trial at Westminster.
Within one of the circular turrets over the Gate, on the south-east,
are the remains of an oratory, the piscina being still visible in
the wall. It was before this tower, on the night of St George’s Day
1240, that the gateway with the adjacent wall of St Thomas’s Tower
suddenly fell to the ground. In the following year, on the same
anniversary, the newly-built tower and gate again fell prone. That
such a catastrophe should occur twice on the night of the 23rd of April
was attributed by the Londoners to supernatural causes; and rumour
spread that on that very night (Mathew Paris is the authority) the
spectre of an Archbishop, crozier in hand, had appeared to one of the
Tower priests whilst standing near St Thomas’s Tower. After gazing
sternly at the priest and on the walls of the tower then rebuilding,
the spectre struck the stones with his crozier, exclaiming, “Why build
ye these?” and down fell the newly-erected tower and wall. The spectre
was supposed to be St Thomas of Canterbury, from whom the tower took
its name, but after the building had arisen for the third time, the
restorer has been the only person who has meddled with them.
[Illustration: North, or inside, view of TRAITOR’S GATE.
_being the principal entrance of the Tower of London, from the
River, and through which state prisoners of rank and dignity were
formerly conveyed to the Tower._]
A passage connected this tower with the Wakefield Tower, on the right
of the Bloody Tower, and was restored by Salvin, to enable the Keeper
of the Regalia, who has his quarters in St Thomas’s Tower, to pass into
the Wakefield Tower, where the jewels are kept, without leaving the
building.
The Wakefield Tower and its companion, the Bloody Tower, form one block
of buildings. According to recent authorities this tower is principally
the work of the reigns of Stephen and of Henry III. Formerly it was
called the Record or Hall Tower, and for many centuries contained the
documents relating to the fortress, now kept in the Record Office in
Chancery Lane. Its second name of Hall Tower was probably given to
it because of its proximity to the great hall of the Palace, which
was destroyed by Cromwell, where the courts of justice met in the
Middle Ages. Its present name is no doubt derived from the prisoners
who were taken at the battle of Wakefield in December 1460, when the
Lancastrians, led by Warwick, defeated the Yorkists. The unhappy
Yorkists were interned in a vaulted chamber in the basement of the
tower; and here also another civil war, that of 1745, brought a shoal
of Scottish prisoners into this dismal dungeon when the mortality
amongst them was terrible. Salvin restored the tower, without and
within, in 1867. Some frescoes on the walls of the rooms on the first
floor could still be traced up to that time, but nothing of these most
interesting relics of early English art have been left by the restorers.
The dungeon in the basement, where the Yorkist and Jacobite soldiers
were placed at an interval of nearly three centuries, is octagonal
in form, 23 feet in width, by 10 feet high. Its walls are 13 feet in
thickness, the present beautiful vaulted stone roof being a copy of the
old one. The Government of George II. behaved to the poor Highlanders
brought here after Culloden, much as did the Indian perpetrators of the
Black Hole of Calcutta tragedy, for between sixty and seventy prisoners
were crammed into this single chamber. It is little wonder that half
of them speedily died; the survivors were transported as slaves to the
West Indies. The Regalia is kept in the upper chamber of this tower and
is probably the greatest attraction to the majority of the visitors to
the Tower of London, for gewgaws always attract a crowd.[3]
Of the half-dozen crowns, with the sceptres and orbs, and other
State ornaments kept in this chamber, one or two articles only, date
back earlier than the days of Charles II. The oldest of these is a
silver-gilt “anointing spoon” which belonged to the Ampulla or Golden
Eagle, and was used to anoint the sovereign with the holy oil at his or
her coronation; a salt-cellar which is said to have belonged to Queen
Elizabeth, and which is certainly a handsome specimen of chased silver
of the Renaissance period. The coronation spoon is of pure gold, and
has four pearls placed in the broadest part of the handle, on which
also are remains of some enamelling. An arabesque is engraved on
the bowl; a ridge runs down the centre forming two depressions in the
metal, and into these hollows the Archbishop dipped his finger before
anointing the sovereign. The Ampulla, the vessel which contained the
oil, is also fashioned in gold, in the shape of an eagle, the head,
which served as a lid, being loose. The Imperial crown, a terrible
thing in form, although covered with handsome jewels, was entirely
reconstructed for George IV. at his coronation, and is worthy of that
monarch’s taste.
[Illustration: _The Jewel House_]
[Illustration: _Doorway of the Jewel House_]
In the reign of Henry VIII. the Keeper of these jewels was for a time
Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, who received fifty pounds a year for
the office, besides many perquisites connected with the charge. In
1623, Charles I., starting with the Duke of Buckingham on his quixotic
journey to Spain, is said to have carried with him jewels belonging to
the Crown to the value of sixty thousand pounds.
During the Commonwealth the Crown was broken up and the Crown jewels
dispersed. At the Restoration, Sir Gilbert Talbot was the Keeper of
the Jewels, and it was then, for the first time, that the public were
allowed to see the Regalia. Whilst Talbot was Keeper and Edwards
sub-Keeper, Blood’s almost successful attempt to carry off the Crown
occurred. Far more interesting than the Regalia is the chamber in which
it is placed. It is octagonal in shape, 30 feet in diameter, with bays
opened into the walls. The beautiful carved ceiling is a modern copy
of the original. In the bay on the north-eastern side are two deep
recesses, that under an archway being the original entrance into the
chamber and connecting it with the palace; it is now walled up. The
recess to the south-east was formerly an oratory, and is mentioned in
the Tower records in the year 1238.
Tradition points to this room as being the scene of the murder of
Henry VI. by Richard III., who is supposed to have entered through
the passage from the Palace, and finding Henry praying in the oratory
stabbed him to death, “punching his anointed body full of deadly
holes,” as Shakespeare puts it in “Henry VI.”
Before describing the Inner Ward, which is entered after passing under
the Bloody Tower, of which the black portcullis still shows its jagged
teeth, one would do well to turn and look back from under the curiously
groined roof of the old gateway, with lions’ heads carved in the
spandrels, towards Traitor’s Gate. This is perhaps the most suggestive
view of any within the Tower, the least changed, and full of historical
reminiscences. Through this archway have passed all the State prisoners
that the old fortress has drawn into its grim maw—prelates, queens, and
princes, statesmen, judges, courtiers, and soldiers of all degrees—the
patriot willing to lay down his life for the “old cause,” as Algernon
Sidney called his policy—and the favourite of some fickle royal master,
thrown aside and allowed to perish by a Henry, an Elizabeth, or a
Charles. For five centuries this old Tower has seen pass beneath its
black walls many who have helped to make the history of our race; this
pathway has been their _Via Crucis_.
A very old tradition, dating certainly as far back as the reign of
Elizabeth, gives the epithet of “bloody” to this tower. It has always
been known as the place where the sons of Edward IV. were murdered by
their uncle Richard in 1483. Although there is no historical evidence
to prove that this was the scene of that event, local tradition in a
place like the Tower is not a factor to be despised, for the story of
the crime and its _locale_ cannot have been handed down at an interval
of less than a hundred years from the time of the occurrence. Until the
reign of Elizabeth the Bloody Tower was called the Garden Tower, from
a garden which lay on its western side, belonging to the Constable’s
House or Lodging, to give its old style, the building now known as the
King’s or Governor’s House; this garden has long ceased to exist.
[Illustration: _The Bloody Tower._
_looking towards Traitor’s Gate._]
The Bloody Tower is a building of three storeys, with an elevation
of 47 feet. Worthy of notice is the portcullis which, like that of
the Byward Tower, is still in working order: these two are said to
be the only remaining portcullises in England still capable of being
used. Mrs Hutchinson, the wife of the Parliamentary Colonel, refers to
this portcullis. She shared her husband’s imprisonment here in 1663,
“in a room,” she writes, “where it was said the two young princes,
Edward V. and his brother, were murdered; the room that led to it was
a great dark room with no window, where the portcullis to one of the
inner gates was drawn up and let down.” Among other prisoners who have
lingered in the Bloody Tower were Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, Jane
Grey’s father-in-law, Archbishop Cranmer, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Sir
Thomas Overbury, who was slowly poisoned. It was from the window over
the gateway on the north side that Archbishop Laud, himself a prisoner,
gave Strafford his supreme blessing as the great Earl was led out to
die; and in this tower the brutal Judge Jeffreys died of delirium
caused by drink and despair. The only prisoner here now is a small bird
whose cage hangs from out a window of this gloomy gaol.
Of all the illustrious prisoners who have been immured here Sir Walter
Raleigh is the most interesting. The steps which lead to the first
floor of the prison tower open on an arched door, through which he
must often have passed; they are as old as the Tower itself, which
dates back to Richard III. or Richard II. In the Elizabethan survey
of the Tower a walled garden is shown on the plan, facing the north.
This was the garden which helped to soften the long imprisonment
passed by Sir Walter, and here he whiled away many of the weary hours
of his long captivity tending his flowers, or distilling essences in
a little garden house which he had built himself. These occupations
and the composition of his huge fragment, the famous “History of the
World,” which he wrote in the Tower, must have been Raleigh’s greatest
consolations during the fourteen long years he passed in the fortress.
Raleigh also had the company of his family during one period of his
imprisonment, and he was also allowed to have some of the natives he
had brought back from Guiana to attend upon him. As the years of his
imprisonment increased so did his troubles, and he suffered cruelly
from rheumatism and palsy whilst in the Bloody Tower, and in 1606
it was found necessary, if his life was to be preserved, to change
his prison. For Raleigh’s memory, among other reasons, the interior
of the Bloody Tower is well worth visiting, although the rooms have
been modernised. They are now occupied by one of the warders and his
family. One chamber is pointed out as that in which the little York
princes were smothered. This room has been divided into two, but there
is nothing to show that the walls and the ceiling are not the same as
those which were there when the murderers entered, having presumably
passed through a window at the end of a passage which opens out on to
the terraced wall overlooking the river.
Within the Inner Ward, by the side of the Wakefield Tower, stood, until
the summer of 1899, an ugly building called the Main Guard, and it is
in front of this building that the ceremony of receiving the Tower
keys takes place nightly. Every evening just before midnight the Chief
Warder and the Yeoman Porter meet together and proceed to the main
guard-room. The Yeoman Porter carries in his hand his bunch of great
keys, and on arriving at the guard-room he asks for “The escort of the
keys.” This escort consists of a Beefeater (a sergeant) and six private
soldiers. The sergeant carries a lantern, and the whole party then
proceeds to the outer gate, where the soldiers assist the Yeoman Porter
to close it. The latter then takes his keys and locks the gate, after
which the procession is reformed for the return. As the party passes
the sentinels on its way back, the latter challenges it with, “Who goes
there?” The Yeoman Porter makes answer “The keys!” To this the sentry
calls out “Advance King Edward’s Keys!” and the escort proceeds
onward to the Main Guard. When this is reached the same ceremony is
gone through, at the conclusion of which the officer of the guard and
the escort salute the keys by presenting arms, after which the Yeoman
Porter cries “God preserve King Edward!” The keys are then carried by
the same guardian to the King’s House, or, as it is sometimes called,
the Governor’s House, and placed for the night in the Constable’s
office. Probably few know that, with the exception of the Sovereign and
the Constable of the Tower, the password of the fortress is known only
to the Lord Mayor of London, the word being sent to the Mansion House,
quarterly, signed by the monarch. This is a survival of an ancient
custom.
[Illustration: _Groining in Ceiling of the Bloody Tower._]
In early days a building, with towers attached, stood between the
Main Guard and the White Tower, which is called in the old plans of
the fortress “Cold or Cole Harbour.” When in 1899 the Main Guard was
pulled down the old wall of Cold Harbour was laid bare, and at the same
time a well with a stone lining to it, and a subterranean passage were
discovered. The subterranean passage ran to the east of the Wakefield
Tower and opened out towards the river front at the eastern side of St
Thomas’s Tower, at a depth of five feet below the actual surface of the
ground; it was six feet high, and so narrow that only one person could
pass along it.
In Gascoyne’s plan of the Tower, Cold Harbour is shown with two tall
circular towers, with a gateway between them, and stands at the
south-western side of the White Tower. But as far back as the reign of
James II. this building had disappeared. The origin of the name “Cold
Harbour or Cole Harbour” has been a puzzle to antiquarians. The name is
found in many localities throughout the south of England, and is always
found in places near the Roman Road, a circumstance which has given
the possible derivation of the name from _Collis Arboris_ or _Colles
Aborum_. And the site of Cold Harbour in the Tower might, with every
probability, have been a wooded knoll or hillock by the side of the
river when the Romans ruled in Britain. That Cold Harbour, or rather
its two towers, were of some height is shown by the complaint made in
1572 against the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Owen Hopton, for allowing
his prisoners to meet and walk on the “leads of Cole Harbour.” About
the same time Lord Southampton, Shakespeare’s friend, when a prisoner
in the Tower, was once seen “leaping upon the tower, his wife being on
the opposite side of the ditch,” or the moat as we should call it.
To the left, and facing the Main Guard, lies the Tower Green, known
also as the Parade. It has buildings upon its three sides. On the
southern side the King’s House,[4] formerly called the Lieutenant’s
Lodging, with its old gables, is a conspicuous feature. This building
is carried on to the western side of the Green by a row of houses whose
fronts have been modernised out of all semblance to their respectable
antiquity; the northern end of the Green is closed by the walls of
the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula. Homely as is the appearance of the
King’s House, it is here that, should the reigning monarch of England
ever return to lodge in the fortress, he or she would dwell, for it
is the largest of the dwelling-houses within the Tower since the old
Palace was pulled down. To those who have had the privilege of being
taken over this house by its present occupier, General George Milman,
the memory of its quaint old rooms, some panelled with wainscotting,
and all made interesting by a collection of prints, and views, and
portraits of places and people connected with the history of the
fortress, will be a lasting and a pleasant one. No worthier guardian
has held the honoured post of Lieutenant of the Tower, or taken a
deeper interest in the venerable monument over which his Sovereign
placed him, than the present occupant of the post.
The Lieutenant of the Tower ranks next to the Constable of the
fortress. In the reign of Richard II. the Lieutenant received twenty
pounds a year, and was entitled to the following perquisites. From
every prisoner committed to the Tower having property of a hundred
marks a year he received, “for the sute of his yrons” forty shillings,
and from poorer or richer prisoners in proportion. From every galley
coming up the river he received a “roundlett of wine” and of “daynties
a certain quantity.” In the time of Elizabeth the Lieutenant received
two hundred marks a year; in the eighteenth century this sum was
increased to seven hundred pounds a year, besides valuable perquisites.
The office of Constable of the Tower ranks high amongst military
honours. Its roll of names include, since the death of the Iron Duke
in 1852, those of Lord Combermere, Sir John Burgoyne, Sir Fenwick
Williams, Lord Napier of Magdala, and Sir Daniel Lysons.
With its many gables, the old flagged court before it, bordered by
sycamores, the King’s House forms a pleasing contrast to the blackened
walls and towers which are round about it. The building looks a place
of ancient peace, and seems rather to be a portion of some venerable
college than of a mediæval fortress. The Green, formerly divided into
three portions, of which one was a garden, the second a parade ground,
and the third (that nearest to St Peter’s Chapel) a burying-ground, is
now a single space in which seats are placed for the weary sightseer.
It is a pleasant place wherein to pass a few moments day-dreaming
on the scene around, and its strange contrast between the past and
the present. On the ground floor of the King’s House is kept that
interesting relic of the Tower and its story, the processional axe.
This is the famous weapon which was carried to and from State trials
by the Gentleman Warder. The axe’s head is peculiar in form, 1 foot 8
inches high by 10 inches wide, and is fastened into a wooden handle 5
feet 4 inches long. The handle is ornamented by four rows of burnished
brass nails running perpendicularly down the sides, giving the weapon
a strong resemblance to the decorated boat-hooks used in Venice for
holding the gondolas at the landing-stages.
In the photograph which, by the kindness of General Milman, I was
permitted to have taken of the axe, the background is formed by the
masonry of the Bloody Tower, which has the appearance of a grisly
pile of human skulls, a not inappropriate circumstance. Although the
processional axe was only used as an emblem of law and justice, it is
closely connected with many a Tower tragedy. It is not known when this
axe was first used in those solemn processions when it preceded the
prisoner to and from trial, nor is its age certain. It was last used
at the State trials of the Jacobite lords in the years 1746 and 1747.
It is now kept in the study of the Lieutenant of the Tower, whence it
is only removed on such State occasions as the installation of a new
Constable.
On the first floor of the King’s House, overlooking the Thames, is the
Council Room in which Guy Fawkes was examined before Cecil and the
Council of State. It was on this occasion that Cecil wrote to James
I. that Guy Fawkes “was no more dismayed than if he were taken for a
poor robbery in the highway.” Fawkes was not, as is sometimes stated,
tortured in this room, for torture was only applied in the dungeons
below the White Tower, which fact should disprove the legend that the
cries of the tortured conspirator are heard on stormy nights proceeding
from the Council Chamber. But there is another legend connected with
this part of the Tower, to the effect that the shadow of an axe is
sometimes seen spreading its form on Tower Green, and appearing on
the walls of the White Tower. Indeed, a likelier or a more proper
place for ghostly visitations of all kinds than the Tower can hardly
be found anywhere in the world, if it be true that ghosts “do walk.”
For this reason it is disappointing that there are so few legends of
apparitions to chronicle, and of these few the following have the
best authentication. In _Notes and Queries_ for September 1860, some
letters appeared relating to Tower ghosts, and amongst them Mr E. Le
Swifte (the same individual, I believe, who so courageously saved the
Regalia during the great fire in the Tower in 1841, when the Armoury
was destroyed) writes an account of a ghostly visitant which appeared
to his wife and himself in the Martin Tower, where the Regalia, of
which he had charge, were then placed. Swifte was appointed to the
post of Keeper of the Crown Jewels in 1814, which he held until 1852,
living with his family in the Martin Tower. One evening in the month of
October 1817, whilst at supper, his little son and his wife’s sister
were startled at seeing an apparition, “like a glass tube” of the
thickness of Mrs Swifte’s arm, which hovered between the ceiling and
the supper table. It seemed to contain, adds Swifte, “a clear fluid.”
This spectral shape appeared for a few moments, causing the family the
greatest alarm. Shortly afterwards, one of the sentinels outside the
Martin Tower saw a “huge bear issuing from underneath the door of the
Tower.” The man fell down in a swoon and was taken to the guard-house
room. The poor fellow actually died of the fright.
[Illustration: _The Council Chamber in the Governor’s House._]
Above the chimney-piece of the Council Chamber is a life-size coloured
alto-relievo head of James the First; between this and the window, on
the same wall, is a highly ornate stone tablet in the style of an altar
tomb of the period, adorned with a row of heraldic shields bearing the
coat-of-arms of the members of the Council who examined Guy Fawkes,
amongst whom are those of Sir Edward Coke, the Attorney-General, and
of Sir William Wade or Waad, the Lieutenant of the Tower, by whom the
tablet was erected in honour of King James. Wade was the Lieutenant who
was so cordially disliked by Sir Walter Raleigh, who called him “that
beast Waad.” Below the shields is a fulsome inscription in English,
Latin, and Hebrew, describing the Gunpowder Plot and its discovery.
Adjoining the Council Chamber is the room from which Lady Nithsdale
succeeded in helping her husband to escape from the Tower, where he
had been in prison for the part he had taken in the rebellion of 1715.
The escape, which is described in the chapter dealing with the Tower
under the Georges, was effected on the day before that on which Lord
Nithsdale was to be executed. The unfortunate Duke of Monmouth was a
prisoner in this building in 1685, between his capture after the Battle
of Sedgemoor and his death on Tower Hill. Here also, during the days
when the Stuarts reigned, and even earlier, it was customary to send to
the care of the Lieutenant those prisoners of State whose position and
importance made it desirable that they should be under the eye of the
chief officer in the fortress, who was made personally responsible for
their safe keeping. To this class of prisoner belonged Lady Margaret
Douglas, Countess of Lennox, and mother of Henry Darnley. In an upper
chamber of the King’s House is an inscription on a stone let into the
wall above the fireplace, on which it is written that the Countess
was “Commyedede prysner to this Lodgynge for the marege of her sonne,
my Lord Henry Darnle and the Queene of Scotlande,” a list of servants
“that doe wayte upon her noble grace in thys place” is also given upon
the stone. This unlucky lady was a prisoner in 1565 for no fault, save
that she was the mother of Queen Mary of Scotland’s husband. After
passing many years in captivity, her cousin Elizabeth allowed her,
after her release from the Tower, to die in poverty. Lady Lennox is
commemorated by a stately monument in Henry the Seventh’s chapel in
Westminster Abbey, for Elizabeth, with that strange inconsistency for
which she was remarkable, after imprisoning the poor lady, and allowing
her to die in misery after her release, erected a costly tomb to her
memory. It was, indeed, a case of being asked for bread and according a
stone.
At the south-western corner of the King’s House is the Bell Tower,
a passage leading into it from the first floor of that building. A
bell which formerly hung in a wooden turret on this tower gave it
its name—the turret still remains, but the bell is kept in the upper
storey. In the Tower regulations of 1607 it is ordered that: “When the
Tower bell doth ring at nights for the shutting in of the gates, all
the prisoners, with their servants, are to withdraw themselves into
their chambers, and not to goe forth that night.” This bell was also
the alarm bell of the fortress.
[Illustration: _Prison in the Governor’s House._]
The Bell Tower, which dates from the time of Richard I. or Henry III.,
is an irregular octagon, being 60 feet in height and 30 in diameter.
The lower portion is of solid masonry, the walls varying from 9 to 13
feet in thickness. There are only two floors or storeys in the Tower,
the lower with a fine vaulted ceiling. The room in the upper storey is
a circular chamber, 18 feet across, with walls 8 feet in thickness.
This prison is reached by a narrow staircase from the King’s House, and
is lighted by four windows. Bishop Fisher was imprisoned in the upper
chamber in the reign of Henry VIII., Sir Thomas More being confined
in the one below. Both were harshly treated, and the poor old bishop
suffered terribly from the cold. In the lower chamber, where More
passed many solitary hours, even debarred from the consolation of his
books, there now stands a large model of the Tower. Near the door of
the upper prison a much defaced inscription can be seen on the wall,
cut by the Bishop of Ross, who was a prisoner here in the time of
Elizabeth. Felton, the murderer of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham,
is also believed to have been a prisoner in the Bell Tower.
Between the King’s House and the Beauchamp Tower, and facing Tower
Green, is a row of modernised houses occupied by the Yeomen of the
Guard, the Yeoman Jailor, and other officials connected with the
fortress. All these houses have been refaced, and one regrets the bad
taste which, in former years, allowed every appearance of age to be
ruthlessly swept away from these buildings; and this is a regret that
is ever present when visiting the Tower. The most glaring instance is
the Beauchamp Tower, which, next to the White Tower, would have been
the most interesting of the many interesting buildings here, had it not
undergone what architects call “a thorough restoration” half-a-century
ago. But the interior walls bear the record of many notable captives
who, while waiting their fate, carved their name, their escutcheon,
or some pious prayer upon the stones. Nearly all the most important
prisoners of State during the reigns of the Tudors were imprisoned
here, as the walls of the large prison room on the first floor still
show. They are literally covered with inscriptions and devices. Some of
these, however, have been brought from other places in the fortress,
and therefore do not properly belong to the Beauchamp Tower, which
is to be regretted, since they lose their interest by being removed
from their original sites. Outwardly the Beauchamp Tower has now as
modern an appearance as either the Norman or Winchester Towers at
Windsor—spick, span, and spruce looking, more like a modern imitation
of some mediæval tower than the actuality; the glamour of the old walls
has been entirely destroyed.
For many years the prison room on the first floor of the Beauchamp
Tower was the mess room for the officers of the garrison, and General
Milman remembers dining there frequently when on duty at the Tower, the
walls and inscriptions being covered by cupboards and furniture.
This tower takes its name from Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick,
who was confined here in 1397. It was also known by the name of the
Cobham Tower, from Lord Cobham and his sons having been imprisoned
in it in Queen Mary’s reign for the part they had taken in Wyatt’s
rebellion. The tower forms a semicircle and has three floors, the well
staircase by which it is entered from the Green communicating with
each floor and rising to the roof, which is battlemented. The large
window facing the Green is modern, dating from the “restoration” of
the building in 1854 by Salvin, but the cross window is of the time
of Edward III., and is contemporary with the original structure.
The principal prison chamber was the one on the second floor, and
this contains the most noteworthy inscriptions. Close to the entrance
door the name “Marmaduke Neville” is cut in the wall: this Neville is
believed to have been imprisoned here in the reign of Elizabeth for
having plotted for Queen Mary of Scotland. On the right of Neville’s
signature appears the name of “Peverel,” with an elaborate device of a
crucifix with a bleeding heart in the centre, and the Peverel shield.
Nothing is known regarding this Peverel, but one sees the name with
interest, associated as it is with Sir Walter Scott’s romance. Sir
Walter made a careful study of this inscription, and the picturesque
name doubtless attracted him and led to its forming part of the title
of one of his immortal novels. Within the prison room on the ground
floor, the first name of historical importance to arrest attention is
that of Robert Dudley, carved on the left-hand side of the entrance.
This sign manual of Elizabeth’s favourite, the unscrupulous Earl of
Leicester, was probably cut by him when he was in this tower in 1554.
Four of his brothers were also imprisoned with him, all of whom were
released on Mary’s accession to the throne. In the prison chamber
on the floor above there is another record of Robert Dudley and his
brothers. This is an elaborately carved “rebus,” representing an oak
tree for Robert (Robur), on which are acorns, with the initials R. D.
carved beneath. Above the fireplace, which is, I fear, a restoration,
appears an inscription of great interest, a pious Latin prayer with the
illustrious name of Arundell cut in large letters, and dated June 22nd,
1587. This was the handiwork of the unfortunate Philip Howard, Earl
of Arundel, the son of that Duke of Norfolk who was beheaded in 1573
for his wish to marry the Queen of Scots. The fate of Philip Howard’s
father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, who were all beheaded,
weighed, not unnaturally, upon their descendant, and, being a zealous
Roman Catholic, his position was one of great danger after the death
of Tudor Mary. On Elizabeth’s accession Arundel made an ineffectual
attempt to seek safety abroad, but was captured and placed in prison,
where he remained until his death in 1595. Another inscription cut by
him in this tower appears above some steps leading to the third storey:
it is in Latin, and rendered into English, runs: “It is a reproach to
be bound in the cause of sin; but to sustain the bonds of prison for
the sake of Christ is the greatest of glory. Arundell, 26th May 1587.”
[Illustration: _The Beauchamp Tower._]
The late Duke of Norfolk printed, from the original MSS. kept at
Arundel Castle, in 1857, a record entitled “The Lives of Philip Howard,
Earl of Arundel, and of Anne Dacres his wife.” At the close of the
book we read that “Whilst he (Arundel) was prisoner he was not only an
example, but a singular comfort to all Catholicks. No one ever heard
him complain either of the loss of his goods, or of the incommodities
of the prison, or the being bereaved of his liberty; and such as he
heard complain or understood to be aggrieved, he endeavoured by his
words and courteous usage to comfort, strengthen, and confirm. His
delight was in nothing but in God, and the contemplation of heavenly
things; much of the money which the Queen did allow him for his
maintenance (for to every prisoner in the Tower something is assigned,
more or less according to each man’s degree) he gave to the poor,
contenting himself with a spare and slender diet.” Lord Arundel rests
in that most beautiful of England’s mausoleums, the chapel at Arundel.
In this chamber are more memorials of the family of Dudley—one an
elaborate carving commemorating the magnificent Leicester and his four
brothers, John, Ambrose, Guildford, and Henry. Within a frame formed
by a garland of roses, geraniums, honeysuckles, and oak sprigs, are a
bear and a lion supporting a ragged staff, the Dudley crest, with these
lines beneath—
“You that these beasts do wel behold and se,
May deme with ease therefore here made they be,
With borders eke wherein four brothers names who list to serche the
ground.”
One line is missing, but the Rev. R. Dick, in his interesting work on
the Beauchamp Tower, thus completes the verse with the words, “these
may be found.”
[Illustration: _Prison in the Beauchamp Tower._]
Of these four Dudley brothers, John was the eldest of the Duke of
Northumberland’s sons, and became Earl of Warwick. It was he who helped
his father in his attempt to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne, and
was imprisoned here until his death in 1554 in consequence. He was
succeeded in the earldom of Warwick by his brother Ambrose, who is
represented by the acorn in the garland on the wall; the rose stands
for Robert, the geranium for Guildford, and the honeysuckle for Henry.
All these suppositions are from Mr Dick’s work on the inscriptions, and
whether correct or not, they are at any rate ingenious, and explain the
lines.
On the left of the second recess in this room is written in the
stone “I.W.S. 1571. Die Aprilis. Wise men ought circumspectly to
see what they do—to examine before they speake—to prove before they
take in hand—to beware whose company they use, and above all things,
to whom they truste—Charles Bailly.” Bailly was a young Fleming who
had been involved in one of the many plots to free Mary Stuart from
her captivity; to judge from the above inscription he had reason to
regret the company he had kept, and those in whom he had trusted. Near
Bailly’s inscription, but outside the recess, is the name of John
Store, Doctor. Store was one of the few of those who suffered death
after imprisonment in the Tower, whose fate was merited. He was a
bigoted Roman Catholic priest, whose intolerance and severity towards
the Reformers procured him the office of Chancellor to the University
of Oxford under Mary Tudor. He is said to have out-Bonnered Bonner
in his persecutions of those of the Reformed faith who fell into his
hands. When Elizabeth came to the throne Store fled to the Netherlands.
But he was brought back, imprisoned in the Beauchamp Tower in 1571, and
ended his career on the gallows at Tyburn.
There are several inscriptions in this chamber relating to the family
of Pole, or, as the name is spelt on the walls, Poole. One of these
is in the third recess in a loophole—E. Poole. This is Edmund Pole, a
great-grandson of the murdered Duke of Clarence; he and his brother
Arthur were here in 1562, being both involved in one of the real or
imaginary plots against Elizabeth. Edmund Pole has engraved here that
most consolatory of the Psalms, the cxxvi.—“Die semini in lachrimis in
exilititiane meter.” In another recess is “A. Pole, 1564. I.H.S. To
serve God. To endure penance. To obey fate is to reign.” Both brothers
ended their sad lives in this prison. One name carved in this chamber
has a deeper pathos than any inscription could convey; it is that of
“Jane,” and it appears in two places in the Beauchamp Tower. One would
like to think it inscribed by that peerless Jane Grey herself, but,
as she was not imprisoned here, it was probably the handiwork of her
husband, Guildford Dudley, or some adherent to her cause and sharer in
her misfortune.
The name of Thomas Fitzgerald in one of the recesses records that it
was here that the ninth Earl of Kildare with five of his uncles was
imprisoned, having been inveigled from Ireland by Henry VIII. They were
executed at Tyburn in 1538 for being concerned in a series of wild
deeds in Ireland, amongst which the murder of the Archbishop of Armagh
was the chief. Here, too, is the name of Thomas Cobham, with the date
1555, he being one of three brothers of that name who were placed in
the Beauchamp for taking part in Sir Thomas Wyatt’s rebellion.
The earliest date in this tower is 1462, which is cut by the side of
the name of Thomas Talbot. In all there are ninety-one names on the
walls, of which I have noted the most important only.
To the north, and attached to the Beauchamp Tower, is the Chaplain’s
house, with an uninteresting modernised front facing the Green, and
but a few paces distant is a small paved plot of ground railed in
by order of Queen Victoria. This little plot marks the site of the
scaffold, and, above all things, it is sanctified by the memory of
Lady Jane Grey. The first victim to suffer death on this spot was
Anne Boleyn in 1538, and the last, Essex, the favourite of Elizabeth,
in 1601. Here, too, in 1541, the venerable Countess of Salisbury
was literally butchered; in the following year Catherine Howard was
beheaded with her companion in misfortune, if not in guilt, Lady
Rochford. Lord Hastings, Richard III.’s victim, was, I imagine,
beheaded immediately beneath the walls of the White Tower, for the
description of his sudden end shows that the site of Jane Grey’s
scaffold was too distant for Richard Crookback to have glutted his eyes
with Hastings’s death.
[Illustration: _Prison Chamber in the Beauchamp Tower._]
In former times the ground around the site of the scaffold on the
Green was a place of burial, being the churchyard of the Chapel which
faces it. “With the exception of the Abbey Church of St Peter’s at
Westminster,” writes Mr Doyne Bell in his interesting monograph on the
Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower (a most appropriate title
for a building of such tragic memories), “there is no ecclesiastical
edifice in the United Kingdom in which (so far as it has been used as
a place of sepulture) is contained so much historical interest as the
Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London. Within its walls
have been received the mortal remains of many, whose names, though not
recorded on the stones of the pavement, must yet ever live in the pages
of English history.” Macaulay in a well-known passage has called this
chapel “the saddest spot on earth,” and in a less well-known passage
has expressed his disgust at the vandalism which had “transformed this
interesting little church into the likeness of a meeting-house in a
manufacturing town.” Since the historian expressed this well-merited
indignation at the treatment accorded to St Peter’s Chapel, the fabric
has undergone a much needed restoration, happily not in the bad sense
of that term, since it has been restored as much as possible to its
condition in the middle of the sixteenth century. This restoration has
been mercifully undertaken and skilfully executed, externally as well
as internally, in every detail.
As far back as the reign of John, or even that of Henry I., a church
stood on the site of St Peter’s Chapel. In the reign of Henry III.,
a Royal warrant, of the year 1241, was issued by that monarch at
Windsor, directing that the Royal pew in St Peter’s should be repaired
for the use of the King and Queen, and instructions were given for
the refurbishing of a tabernacle with carved figures of St Peter, St
Michael, and St Katherine. Of this church only a few vestiges remain in
the crypt of the present chapel, which was built by Edward III. In a
warrant dated from Fotheringay in July 1305–6, that King orders Ralph
de Sandwich, Constable of the Tower, “to be reimbursed for various
expenses incurred by him in the construction of our new chapel within
the Tower.”
St Peter’s consists of a nave and a single aisle on its northern side;
in length it is 66 feet, in width 54, and in height 25.
As Mr Doyne Bell points out, the peculiar dedication of the church to
St Peter in Chains shows that it has been used since its foundation as
a church more for the use of the prisoners in the fortress than for the
sovereigns and their courts, whose place of devotion was the chapel of
St John in the White Tower. With the exception of the church in Rome
dedicated to St Peter ad Vincula, there is no other church besides
this one in the Tower, so named. To those who see this building for
the first time its general aspect must cause disappointment, so small
and almost mean does it appear, and like a hundred similar churches
scattered all over the country. But St Peter’s has undergone endless
changes and alterations, and comparatively little is left of the
building of Edward III. The exterior of the building belongs to the
Tudor period. Before the last restoration, in 1867, Lord De Ros
wrote, “It is inconceivable what pains have been taken in comparatively
modern times to disfigure this interesting chapel.” But this reproach
cannot be applied to the latest restoration, which was done with
extreme care and good taste.
[Illustration: _Interior of Sᵗ. Peter’s Chapel._]
The larger portion of the present building dates from the reign of
Henry VIII., when many alterations were made, the windows, with the
exception of the one over the west door, the arches in the interior,
and the timbered roof, being then placed as we see them now.
The list of interments in this chapel commences with the reign of Henry
VIII. This list is one of the most interesting things in connection
with the chapel.
When the Reformed Faith ousted Popery the jurisdiction of the Bishop
of London over this chapel ceased, and it has ever since remained a
benefice donative over which the Bishop has no power of visitation
or deprivation, since the Tower itself is extra-parochial. Private
marriages could be solemnised at St Peter’s, and in Ben Jonson’s “Every
Man in his Humour,” this privilege is alluded to. One unlucky curate
of the chapel, however, was sent to prison in James the First’s reign
for having performed marriages and christenings in the chapel, and only
secured his liberty through the influence of Sir William Waad, the
Lieutenant of the Tower. Another clergyman named Hubbock and his son
were excommunicated in 1620 by Laud for committing the same offence.
Later on, however, the right of solemnising marriages and christenings
in this chapel was allowed, and still continues.
Samuel Pepys has described in one of his vivid word pictures a visit he
paid to the chapel after the Restoration, when he occupied one of the
hideous pews that then choked the floor, and which were only removed a
few years ago. “February 28, 1663–4. Lord’s Day. The Lieutenant of the
Tower, Sir J. Robinson, would needs have me by coach home with him;
where the officers of his regiment dined with him. I did go and dine
with him, his ordinary table being very good, and his lady a very
high carried, but a comely big woman, I was mightily pleased with her.
After dinner to chapel in the Tower with the Lieutenant, with the keys
carried before us; and I sat with the Lieutenant in his pew in great
state. None it seems of the prisoners in the Tower that are there now,
though they may, will come to prayers there.” With a monstrous gallery
built in the reign of George II. for the use of the troops of the
garrison, with the ugly square wooden pews, in one of which Pepys sat
“in great state”; with the pavement all broken and defaced, with walls
and columns whitewashed, and with the handsome carved Tudor ceiling
coated with lath and plaster, it is no wonder that to any one with a
respect for antiquity or love of beauty, St Peter’s in the Tower must
have presented a sad spectacle before its restoration. And it was not
until 1862 that any steps were taken to remove what was nothing less
than a public disgrace. The improvements were commenced by re-opening
the old doorway at the west end, which had been bricked up, the window
of Edward I.’s time was also restored, the broken fragments having been
collected and replaced in their original position. The lath and plaster
which for a century or more had disfigured the ceiling were removed,
and the finely carved old chestnut beams once more uncovered.
Further improvements were carried out during the time that Sir Charles
Yorke was Constable, in the year 1876. Sir John Taylor, the head of the
Office of Works, drew up the plans of this restoration, and, aided by
Mr Salvin, the work of renovation commenced. There was much to be done,
and it was certainly done well. The pews were the first excrescence to
be removed, and the pavement, which was as uneven as that of St Mark’s
at Venice, was taken up and a new one laid down. During this operation
it was discovered that the ground had been used as a general place of
burial, for besides those whose mutilated bodies had been placed under
the pavement after execution, large numbers of other individuals had
been interred here, and at a very shallow depth below the pavement.
It was deemed necessary to remove these remains to the crypt before
the new floor could be placed. Great care was taken to identify any
remains of the illustrious dead, but in most cases it was impossible to
do so owing to the ground having been so much disturbed and the bones
scattered. Even greater care was taken when the floor of the chancel
was reached, for it was known that the bodies of Anne Boleyn and
Catherine Howard, and of the Dukes of Northumberland and Somerset had
been buried there. In 1877 the restoration of the Chapel was completed.
Many interesting discoveries had been made, and needless to say, but
for its state of decay, none of the poor fragments of mortality of the
victims of their own ambition or the tyranny of monarchs, would have
been disturbed. It was necessary to identify what remained of poor
Anne Boleyn in order that above her bones the tombstone should bear
its record of what lay below. “The forehead,” writes Mr Doyne Bell,
“and lower jaw were small and especially well formed. The vertebrae
were particularly small, especially one joint (the axlas), which was
that next to the skull, and they bore witness to the queen’s ‘lyttel
neck.’” The remains of another of Henry’s victims were found lying in
the chancel, and belonged to the old Countess of Salisbury, Margaret
Clarence. Near these some bones were found which were believed to have
been those of Queen Catherine Howard, but her body, having been placed
in quicklime, few traces of it remained. In this “dread abode” were
also laid bare the bones of the Duke of Northumberland, and a portion
of the Duke of Monmouth’s skeleton.
Near the entrance door is a memorial tablet on which a list of the
most notable persons buried within the chapel is engraved—a list
of thirty-four persons, commencing with Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of
Kildare, buried here in 1534, and ending with Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat,
in 1747. The old antiquarian, John Stowe, thus sums up with brief
simplicity the illustrious dead that lie under the pavement of the
chapel. “Here lieth before the high altar in St Peter’s Church, two
Dukes between two Queens, to wit, the Duke of Somerset and the Duke
of Northumberland, between Queen Anne and Queen Katherine, all four
beheaded.” No record that Lady Jane Grey and her husband were interred
in St Peter’s exists. It would not be easy to find a place in which
so many remarkable dead are grouped together as in this little spot
of English ground. Beneath our feet lies all that was mortal of what
was once Northumberland and Somerset, Arundel and Norfolk; gentle
Anne Boleyn and saint-like Jane Grey’s calm presence seem to linger
near their graves: here, too, the once brilliant Monmouth moulders
before the high altar; and hard by rest the faithful little band of
Jacobites—Kilmarnock and brave Balmerino, and the wily old fox, Simon
Fraser of Lovat.
One of the earliest and handsomest monuments in St Peter’s is that to
Sir Richard Cholmondeley and his wife Elizabeth. The knight and his
lady are lying side by side, sculptured in alabaster. Sir Richard,
who was Lieutenant of the Tower in the reign of Henry VII., wears
plate armour, his hand rests on his helmet, his feet on a lion; round
his neck he wears the collar of SS. As was then the custom, this
monument has been painted and gilded, traces of its decoration still
remaining. This tomb was opened in 1876, but was found to contain only
some fragments of the stone font of the chapel of Edward the Third’s
time. Sir Richard had been knighted for his conduct on the field of
Flodden. During his Lieutenancy of the Tower a riot broke out between
the Londoners and some of the Lombard merchants, and Sir Richard, who
seems to have been cursed with a bad temper, by way of quietening
the brawlers, discharged the guns of the fortress against the city.
Hall, in his chronicle, quaintly notices this act of the Lieutenant as
follows:—
“Whilst this ruffling continued, Syr Richard Cholmly Knight,
Lieutenant of the Tower, no great friende of the citie, in a frantyke
fury losed certayn pieces of ordinance, and shot into the citie; whiche
did little harme, howbeit his good will apeered.” This choleric knight
died in 1544.
[Illustration: _Monument of Sir Richard Cholmondeley and his Wife in
Sᵗ. Peter’s Chapel._]
On the north side of the chancel is a handsome double monument to the
memory of Sir Richard Blount and to his son Sir Michael; both these
Blounts were Lieutenants of the Tower. Sir Richard, clothed in armour,
is represented as praying; behind him kneel his two sons, whilst facing
him, upon their knees, are Lady Blount and two daughters. Sir Richard
died in 1564. Sir Michael, whose effigy, also clad in armour, was
placed near that of his father thirty-two years later, and his family,
consisting of his wife, three sons and one daughter, are also devoutly
kneeling. Below the Blount monument is a little inscription to the
memory of Lyster Blount, a child of two years old: it ends with these
hopeful words, “Here they all lye to expect ye coming of our sweet
Saviour Jesu. Amen, Amen.”
Against the south wall is a black marble tablet inscribed to the memory
of Sir Allen Apsley,[5] who was Lieutenant of the Tower in the time
of James and Charles the First. His daughter was that Mrs Hutchinson
whose name will be remembered by her admirable memoirs of her husband
Colonel Hutchinson, who was imprisoned in the Bloody Tower, where
she shared his imprisonment. Sir Allen died in 1630. The first Earl
Bathurst (Lord Chancellor) was descended from him, and it was he who
built Apsley House. On the same wall are mural tablets to the memory
of Sir John Burgoyne, Field Marshal and Constable of the Tower, who
died in 1871, and is buried in the crypt of the chapel; also to Lord
De Ros, the last Deputy-Lieutenant of the Tower, who died in 1874, and
to whose book on the fortress allusion has often been made in these
pages. Among other good work done by Lord de Ros was to replace the
tombstone of brave old Talbot Edwards, who so nearly lost his life in
defending the Crown jewels when they were seized by Blood. This stone,
which had been cast aside and lay among a heap of rubbish in front of
the Beauchamp Tower, after being used as a paving-stone up to the year
1852 in front of the houses which up to that time had almost hidden
that tower from the Green, was replaced in the chapel. It bears the
following inscription: “Here lieth ye body of Talbot Edwards, Gent.:
late Keeper of his Ma’ᵗˢ Regalia who dyed ye 30 of September 1674, aged
80 years and 9 moneths.” Neither in life nor in death was this brave
old Keeper of the Crown well treated. Charles the Second settled a
handsome pension on the scoundrel Blood—hush-money probably, for it is
within the bounds of possibility that Charles was a party to Blood’s
attempt—whilst the sole reward of honest old Talbot Edwards, who was
half-killed in guarding the treasures of which he had charge, was
the consciousness of having done his duty. The Communion plate dates
from the reign of Charles the First and Charles the Second, and it is
singular to find that instead of the sacred initials being engraved
on these vessels only the Royal monogram of C. R. with a crown appear
upon them. Severely simple in shape and devoid of any ornament,
this Sacramental plate is historically interesting, for these cups and
plates have been used at the solemn hour when the Blessed Sacrament
was administered to more than one illustrious prisoner on the eve of
his execution. There is good reason for believing that Monmouth and
William, Lord Russell used these sacred vessels shortly before mounting
the scaffold.
[Illustration: _Tomb of the Blount Family in Sᵗ. Peter’s Chapel._]
At the back of the chapel of St Peter, and at the north-western angle
of the Inner Ward, stands the Devereux Tower, which contains two
storeys, the lower one being of massive masonry. This tower dates
from the reign of Richard the First. In the Elizabethan survey of the
fortress it is named Robyn the Devylls Tower, and in later times it
was known as the Develin Tower, and as such it appears in Haiward’s
plan. No record has come down as to the meaning of these names, but
the present appellation dates from the reign of Elizabeth, when Robert
Devereux, Earl of Essex, was a prisoner there. The upper part of the
tower is modern, and modern windows have taken the place of the old
loopholes in the 11 feet thick walls, a change which has destroyed the
character of the building; formerly it was most gloomy and forbidding.
A small winding staircase within the tower leads to a couple of prisons
constructed in the thickness of the Ballium wall. A secret passage
is supposed to have led thence, to the Flint Tower which stands to
the east of the Devereux Tower, communicating also with the vaults
under St Peter’s Chapel. Nothing remains, however, in the present
modernised state of these passages and prisons to indicate their former
appearance. Early in the nineteenth century the lower floor of the
Devereux Tower was used as a kitchen and other offices connected with
the ordnance; the upper portion was occupied by the Master Furbisher of
the Small Arms. The old kitchen, beneath which is a dungeon, has a fine
vaulted ceiling.
The Flint Tower lies due east, at a distance of 90 feet from the
Devereux Tower, but as it was found to be in an entirely ruinous
state in 1796, the old fabric was pulled down and the present ugly
brick tower rose in its place. The old tower had been known by the
unflattering name of “Little Hell,” probably from the noisomeness
of its dungeons, and it had the evil reputation of having the worst
prisons in the fortress. Another 90 feet from the Flint Tower stands
the Bowyer Tower, of which only the base is ancient, the remainder of
the building being modern; this tower dates from the reign of Edward
the Third, and it was here that the Duke of Clarence is traditionally
said to have been drowned in a butt of Malmsey (Malvoisie) wine.
According to those learned historians of the Tower, Britton and
Brayley, who wrote in the early part of the nineteenth century, there
was a vault in a dungeon in this tower closed by a trap door, which
opened on a flight of steps; from these steps a narrow cell led into
a secret passage made in the thickness of the Ballium wall. This was
one of the many secret passages which ran below ground, and of which,
as has already been noticed, an important one was discovered when the
Main Guard building was demolished in 1899. Mr G. J. Clark, a great
authority in these matters, has stated his belief that there were
several of these secret passages in the fortress. One of these, he
thinks, ran between the White Tower and the King’s House, and Father
Gerard’s account of the way he was led to and from the White Tower and
the Governor’s or King’s House points to an underground passage between
those buildings. It has been surmised that a subterranean passage led
from out the Tower below the Thames to the Southwark side of London; in
the Beauchamp Tower a secret passage was discovered in the thickness
of the Ballium wall, where persons might have been placed to watch and
overhear all that went on within the tower.[6]
The Bowyer Tower was so named because it was the dwelling of the royal
maker of bows, and the place where he turned out the Long Bow, as well
as the Cross Bow, and many other mediæval weapons of destruction,
such as the Balistar, the Scorpion, and the Catapult. In 1223 one
Grillot made here the “balistar corneas,” as that mysterious weapon is
described in an old record, and for his labour he was rewarded by the
gift of a new gown for his wife.
Next to the Bowyer Tower stands the Brick Tower, but it has been
modernised. In shape this tower resembles a horse shoe; it is 40 feet
in diameter. Between this tower and the Martin Tower the curtain wall
extends some 60 feet, the sally-port stairs being passed between the
two towers. As has been the general fate of most of the towers, the
Martin Tower is externally entirely modern, whilst the interior has
been casemated. At one time the Regalia was kept here, having been
brought in 1644 from their former resting-place in a small building on
the south side, and close to, the White Tower, called the Jewel House,
where they had been kept, when not in pawn, from the time of Henry III.
In the reign of Edward III. these jewels are referred to as being in
“la Tour Blanche,” and in the same reign there is also a reference to
the “Tresorie deinz la haute Toure de Londres.” It was from the Martin
Tower that Blood attempted to steal the Regalia.
The Martin Tower forms the north-east angle of the Inner Ward, and its
basement floor, where the Crown jewels were formerly kept, now serves
as a kitchen for the warder and his family, who occupy the tower. The
most ancient part of the Martin Tower dates from the reign of Henry
III., but Sir Christopher Wren, who spoilt the ancient appearance of
many parts of the Tower, played especial havoc here. The old windows
were removed and replaced by ugly stone-faced ones, which was also done
in the White Tower, where, with scarcely one exception, the original
Norman windows have been destroyed and Wren’s incongruities substituted
for them.
Placed on the ground at the base of the Martin Tower is a handsome
architrave of stone, in alto-relievo, representing the Royal
coat-of-arms in the time of William III., blended with military
trophies such as helmets, kettledrums, and cannon—
“The shrill trump, the spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war.”
This is one of Grinling Gibbons’s most spirited designs, graceful in
its lines, sharp and refined in its moulding. This sculpture is all
that remains of the great Store House, built in the reign of William
III. and destroyed by fire in 1841.
Beyond the Martin Tower, the Ballium wall takes a slanting course to
the south and river side of the fortress, to where, about 100 feet
south of the Martin Tower, stands the Constable Tower, modern from
roof to base. It was so named in the reign of Henry VIII. because
it was occupied by the Constable of the Tower. During the reign of
Charles I. it was used as a prison. “In form,” writes Brayley, “it
closely corresponds with the Beauchamp Tower, but it is of rather
smaller dimensions; the interior has been modernised, and the windows
greatly enlarged.” South of the Constable Tower, and next to it, is
the Broad Arrow Tower, which in Tudor times was known as “the tower
at the east end of the Wardrobe.” Until some thirty years ago this
tower was entirely hidden by an ugly row of barracks. It was used as a
prison throughout the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth, and there are a few
signatures still to be seen on the walls of a room on the first floor.
Unfortunately, repeated coats of whitewash have almost obliterated all
the inscriptions. A list, however, of these as they appeared in 1830
is given by Britton and Brayley. Amongst them are the names of “John
Daniell, 1556”; “Giovani Battista, 1556”; “Thomas Forde, 1582”; “John
Stoughton, 1586”; and “J. Gage, January 1591.” Little is known of any
of the above men except that Daniell was mixed up in a plot against
the Queen, and to rob the Exchequer, in the reign of Mary, and was
hanged on Tower Hill. Forde was a priest, and was executed for denying
Elizabeth’s supremacy in the Church; and Stoughton and Gage are also
supposed to have been priests. Of the Italian, Battista, no record has
come to us. Near the top of this tower a small doorway opens on to the
platform that runs along the Ballium wall. Close to this doorway is a
narrow cell 6 feet deep and 3½ feet wide, with only one small loophole
to admit air and light.
The building known by the name of the King’s Private Wardrobe stood
close to this tower, as well as another tower called the Wardrobe.
Both these buildings were cleared away before the reign of James II.,
their sites being now covered with offices or stores. The Royal robes,
armour, and probably the Royal upholstery, such as tapestry, hangings,
etc., were kept in the Wardrobe buildings, which were connected with
the Palace.
The Salt Tower forms the south-east angle of the Inner Ward. In the
reign of Henry VIII. it was called Julius Cæsar’s Tower, although it
had no more connection with Julius Cæsar than with Sardanapalus. It
is circular in shape, and has three floors, which are connected by a
small winding staircase. Upon the first floor is a fine chimney-piece
decorated with scroll mouldings. The upper storey was used as a powder
store; but, having fallen into decay, it was restored in 1876. The Salt
Tower is probably one of the oldest buildings in the Tower, dating
as far back as the reign of William Rufus. It possesses a vaulted
dungeon with deep recesses in the walls. In a prison on the first floor
are some inscriptions cut into the wall, and amongst them is a very
elaborate device representing a sphere intersected by lines radiating
from the signs of the Zodiac. Above the sphere is this inscription,
“Hew: Draper : of Brystow: made : thys : Spheer : the : 30 : day : of
: Maye : Anno : 1561.” Draper was imprisoned on a charge of sorcery and
magic.
One of the most interesting escapes from the Tower is closely connected
with this place, and although the story of adventures that befell a
poor Jesuit priest named Father Gerard, in the reign of Elizabeth,
is a long one, it deserves being told in some detail, for the manner
of his escape from the fortress is one of the most curious records
of prison-breaking. Father Gerard, together with many other Roman
Catholic priests, was hunted down as a criminal of the deepest dye,
and being captured, was clapped into the Salt Tower, in a prison on
its upper floor, the charge against him being that he was concerned in
a plot against the life of the Queen. He was examined on the day of
his arrival in the Tower by the Lords of the Council in the Governor’s
Lodging—now the King’s House, and in the same room in which Guy Fawkes
was afterwards interrogated. Amongst Father Gerard’s judges were the
Attorney-General, Sir Edward Coke, Sir Francis Bacon, and Sir William
Waad. Questioned as to the plot, in which another priest, Father
Garnet, was involved, Gerard refused to give any information. He was
told that if he persisted in his silence he would be tortured, and an
order was produced by which they were given permission (for torture has
always been illegal in England) if necessary “to prolong the torture
from day to day as long as life lasted.” The threat failing in its
effect Gerard was taken to “the place appointed for the torture,” and,
to quote his own words, “We went in a sort of solemn procession, the
attendants preceding us with lighted candles because the place was
underground (the subterranean passage under the White Tower) and very
dark, especially about the entrance. It was a place of immense extent,
and in it were ranged divers sorts of racks, and other instruments
of torture. Some of these they displayed before me, and told me that
I should have to taste them. They led me to a great upright beam or
pillar of wood, which was one of the supports of this vast crypt.”
Father Gerard was then hung up by his hands, these having first been
placed in iron gauntlets which were attached to an iron rod fixed in
the pillar. A stool upon which he stood was taken from under him, and
he hung by his wrists, the whole weight of his body depending from
them. He was a heavy man, and his sufferings were acute. Whilst in this
position the Commissioners looked on, pressing the suffering man with
questions, but receiving no reply they left him, and for the next hour
the wretched priest hung suspended by his tortured wrists. He fainted
several times from the anguish; later in the afternoon Sir William
Waad returned and again tried to obtain some confession from Gerard,
but when nothing could be wrung from him, Waad turned on his heel in
a rage, crying, “Hang thou then, till you rot.” Raleigh’s description
of the Lieutenant of the Tower as “that beast Waad” had certainly some
justification. When the tolling of the bell in the Bell Tower gave
the signal that the fortress would be closed, the Commissioners were
obliged to leave the Tower, and the poor, tortured, half-dead priest
was taken down, and, scarcely able to crawl, was led back to his prison
in the Salt Tower. On the following day Gerard was again taken to the
Lieutenant’s Lodging, where Waad informed him that he had been with
“Master Secretary Cecil,” who knew for a fact that Father Gerard had
been mixed up with other plotters in schemes against Elizabeth’s life,
and that more details would have to be given by him on this matter.
Again Gerard refused to say anything that could compromise others, upon
which Waad summoned a terrible personage, the chief superintendent
of the torturers of the prison, to whom Sir William said, “I deliver
this man into your hands. You are to wrack him twice a day until such
time as he chooses to confess.” Thereupon, says Father Gerard, they
went down again to the torture chamber with the same solemnity as on
the previous day, and he was again subjected to the torture of the
gauntlets, made additionally painful from the swollen state of his
hands and wrists. He swooned repeatedly, and was revived with some
difficulty. All through these hours of agony he refused to give one
name, or to make any kind of confession of guilt, and Waad swore and
raged in vain. As long, Gerard declared, as he lived he would say
nothing. For the third time he was tortured and hung up by the wrists.
But when Waad at length saw the futility of torturing him to death he
ordered him to be taken back to his prison, whence, as we shall see, he
effected his escape.
Another Roman Catholic, named John Arden, who was a fellow-prisoner
of Gerard’s at this time, was confined in the Cradle Tower, a small
tower in the Outer Ward standing on the Ballium wall some 100 feet
south of the Salt Tower and facing the Thames. The two prisoners were
sufficiently near to see each other from their respective prison
windows, the space between the two towers being then occupied by the
Privy garden of the Palace. Father Gerard persuaded his gaoler to allow
him to pay Arden a visit in his prison, and the two men, laying their
heads together, concocted the following plan. By writing to their
friends outside the tower in orange juice, which caused the letters to
be invisible unless subjected to a treatment known to the initiated,
Father Gerard succeeded in getting a thin cord with a leaden weight
attached to one end. It was further planned that upon a certain night
a boat should be brought to a certain place by the river bank opposite
the Cradle Tower. On this particular evening Father Gerard lingered
late in Arden’s prison, and when the pre-arranged hour came they slung
the lead at the end of the line across the moat. This was caught by
their friends in the boat, and a stout rope having been fastened to the
line, the two prisoners hauled it over the roof of the Cradle Tower
from the boat, and made it fast. Gerard was the first to descend from
the roof, swarming along the rope in the darkness; and he reached the
boat in safety. For three weeks after the torture of the gauntlets, his
hands were paralysed, and it was five months before the sense of touch
returned to them.
Next to the Salt Tower in the Inner Ward stands the Lanthorn Tower,
which has been entirely rebuilt. In former days this tower communicated
with the exterior rampart by an embattled gateway; it faces the river
and stands half-way between the Salt and the Wakefield Towers. In Henry
VIII.’s time the Lanthorn Tower was called the New Tower, and then
formed the end of the Queen’s Gallery in the Palace, “over the Kyng’s
bede-chamber and prevy closet,” as the survey taken in that reign
describes it. This tower had been almost destroyed in a fire in 1788,
and what remained was removed, only the basement vault being left. This
basement was used as a cellar by the keeper of the soldiers’ canteen,
which stood on the opposite side of the way: to such base uses had the
old tower of the Palace adorned by Henry III. fallen. Henry III. built
the Ballium wall and fortified it with this tower, which he fitted up
splendidly for his own habitation, and whose chambers he decorated with
frescoes; the subject of one of these was the story of Antiochus. The
tower was circular in shape, and surmounted by a small turret, as can
be seen by referring to Haiward and Gascoyne’s plan. After the fire of
1788 a huge unsightly warehouse was built on its site, blocking out
the fortress from the river front. This monstrosity was only removed
some five-and-twenty years ago. The present building is as nearly as
possible a reproduction of the original tower of Henry the Third, by
Salvin, who also carried out the building of the handsome curtain wall
of the Inner Ward, commencing at the Salt Tower and terminating at the
Wakefield Tower.
In an interesting article in the _Nineteenth Century_, Mr A. B. Mitford
says that, although it was impossible to give back the stones that
prated of the wars of the Roses, “the old towers and walls rose again
as nearly as possible similar to their predecessors as the skill of man
could make them,” under Salvin’s superintendence. There is a view of
the old Lanthorn Tower before its destruction in 1788, in a rare print
of the early part of the eighteenth century, which is here reproduced.
THE OUTER WARD
The Outer Ward forms a strip of ground varying in breadth from 20
to 100 feet, its wall forming the scarp of the moat. It is defended
by bastions to the north-east and north-west, which are 80 feet in
diameter, that to the north-east being called the Brass Mount Battery,
that to the north-west, Legge’s Mount, so named from George Legge,
first Earl of Dartmouth, who was Master-General of Ordnance in the
reign of Charles II. The Brass Mount probably derived its name from
the cannon with which it was mounted. Between these bastions is a more
modern one, called the North Bastion. These three bastions defend the
north side of the fortress. Of the five towers which protected the
Palace on the river front, the Byward and St Thomas’s Towers have
already been described. There remain the Cradle, the Well, and the
Develin Towers to notice.
The Cradle Tower stands parallel with the Well Tower on the outer or
curtain wall. It was through an archway in the Cradle Tower that the
principal entrance from the river lay in former times. From the top
of the tower a square-shaped turret rises on the western side. The
Cradle Tower dates from the reign of Henry III., and prisoners were
landed here as well as at Traitor’s Gate, entering the fortress over a
drawbridge. Its upper chambers, which were in the form of the letter ⏉,
are believed to have formed part of the Palace. The present tower is
altogether modern, having been rebuilt from the foundations in 1878.
The next tower on the curtain wall is the Well Tower, also entirely
rebuilt. It is rectangular, and forms a portion of the curtain wall.
Its basement lies below the level of the Inner Ward, and within it
is a vaulted chamber 11 feet high by 14 feet wide, from which a well
staircase leads to an upper room, and thence on to the rampart.
The last of these towers at the eastern end of the fortress is the
Develin Tower. In 1549 it was known as Galligman’s Tower, and in the
plan of the Tower in 1597 it is called the “tower leading to the Inner
Gate.” Formerly, it was used as a powder magazine.
THE WHITE TOWER
In the days of the Plantagenets, “La Tour Blanche” owed that
appellation to its having been frequently whitewashed. The earliest
of these whitewashings took place in the reign of Edward III., since
whose reign it is impossible to guess how often the grim old building
has been externally whitened. In an illumination taken from an old
French MS. made in the reign of Henry V., and preserved in the Harleian
collection in the British Museum, of the poems of Charles of Orleans,
the vivid whiteness of the old Norman White Tower stands out in bold
relief surrounded by the dark towers and walls of the fortress. And
after half-a-thousand years of London grime and smoke, the White Tower
remains the same “Tour Blanche” of the days of the Plantagenets.
The old Norman keep of the Tower has changed but little in outward
aspect since it was limned in the old illumination of the MS. of
Charles of Orleans, some six centuries ago. The general features are
the same, and even the little leaden roofs of the four turrets at
the angles, appeared then much as they do to-day. No one has been
able to inform me as to the period when the leaden tops first capped
the masonry of this tower. Two great authorities on the history of
the Tower—Professor Freeman and Mr Clark—have told us how Norman
William, on crossing the Thames, found that London was protected on
its landward side by a Roman wall—the defences of ancient Augusta—a
wall strengthened by mural towers, and an external moat. Of these
relics of ancient Augusta, a fragment is to be seen at the eastern end
of the White Tower. According to both historians, the building of the
White Tower was commenced in 1078. When a tramway was run from the
river wharf, some years ago, to the base of the White Tower for the
shipment of stores, the engineers had to excavate some 20 feet of solid
masonry into the Norman keep, such was its huge strength and solidity.
Freeman always writes with enthusiasm of the Tower—“the mighty Tower
of London,” he loves to call it; and when he wrote of the Tower, he
had the White Tower in his mind. Regarding the builders of the White
Tower, Freeman quotes the following Latin text from Hearner’s “Textus
Roffensis”—“Dum idem Gundulfus, ex praecepto Regis Wilhelmi Magni,
prœesset operi magnae turris Londoniae, et hospitatus fuisset apud
ipsum Ædmerum.” The name Tower, and not Castle, adds Freeman, belonged
to the fortress of Gundulfus from the first.
It will be necessary here to give some figures and proportions of
this ancient keep. Its height is 90 feet from ground to battlements.
The Keep has four turrets, three being circular, and one square. The
windows were much modernised by Sir Christopher Wren, but those in the
upper storey are the least altered; only one pair of these, however,
have been left in their original state. It was from this window that
Bishop Flambard is said to have made his escape. A stone staircase,
11 feet wide, and built in the circular turret on the north-east of
the Keep, communicates with all the floors and leads to the roof.
The basement of the Keep is a little below the level of the soil on
the north side, and is flush with it on the south side. The walls
are from 12 to 15 feet thick, the internal area being 91 feet by 73
feet. The large chambers have timbered ceilings, and the smaller
are stone-vaulted. Formerly, the basement and the prison within it
could only be reached from above, by the staircase running through the
circular turret. The great western chamber is 91 feet long by 35 feet
in width. In the vault or sub-crypt under the Chapel of St John there
is a prison called “Little Ease,” and here Guy Fawkes is supposed to
have passed his last fifty days on earth. It opens into a great dungeon
which is 47 feet long by 15 feet broad. Formerly, this place was in
total darkness, and could have had but little air; at its eastern end
it terminates in a semicircle. It was here that in the reign of King
John some hundreds of Jews were imprisoned with their families. In
later times it was fitted up into a powder magazine, and it is not many
years since it was cleared of “villainous” saltpetre. Its walls have
been coated with brick, and the ceiling refaced and vaulted, whilst
passages have been pierced through its eastern and western extremities.
A well 6 feet wide, its sides lined with ashlar stone, which may be
of Roman origin, has been found in the floor of this vault, near its
south-western angle.
[Illustration: _Stone Staircase in the White Tower._]
On the second floor of the White Tower the walls are 13 feet in
thickness, the cross walls being 8 feet. On this floor are five
openings communicating between the eastern and the western chambers.
The latter is 92 feet long by 37 broad; a vaulted passage 2 feet
10 inches wide being constructed in the thickness of the wall. The
eastern chamber is 68 feet long and 30 wide. There is a recess in the
north wall which communicates with the exterior of the tower by a
double flight of stone stairs facing the river front. And it was at
the foot of these steps that the bones, supposed to be those of the
little Princes, were discovered in the reign of Charles II. They were
subsequently taken to Westminster Abbey. The present stairs are modern.
An ancient door, 3 feet in width, opens from this chamber on to a short
passage, 5 feet in width, cut in the thickness of the wall, which leads
to the well staircase communicating with all the floors. Another door
in the south wall leads into the crypt of St John’s Chapel, which is
13 feet 6 inches broad by 39 feet in height; at the east end it is
apsidal. Near the apse is a passage 2 feet wide which leads into a
vaulted cell 8 feet long by 10 wide. This cell has no windows, and
when, in former times, the door, which has been removed, was closed,
this dismal prison was plunged in total darkness. It has been asserted,
without any foundation, that this cell was that in which Raleigh passed
his first imprisonment in the Tower. There is not a shadow of proof
to corroborate this. It was probably used in the early years of the
fortress as a strong-room for the safekeeping of the church treasure.
Although no proof exists as to the imprisonment of Raleigh in this
black hole, prisoners were confined here in the days of the sanguinary
Queen Mary, as is shown by some half-obliterated inscriptions which
can still be seen on the sides of the doorway leading from the crypt
to the cell. In one of these the following words have been traced—“He
that endureth to the ende shall be saved. M. 10. R. Rudston. Dar. Kent.
Ano. 1553.” “Be faithful unto deth, and I wil give the a crowne of
life.—J. Fane. 1554.” Also the following:—“T. Culpeper of Darford.”
These persons were implicated in the Wyatt insurrection. Lord de Ros
mentions rather vaguely in his book on the Tower, an inscription which
was discovered about 1867 “in the vault of the White Tower,” of which
the following is a copy:—“Sacris vestibus indutus dum sacra mysteria
servans, captus et in hoc augusto carcere indusus.—R. Fisher.”
Until some thirty years ago this crypt was used as an armoury, and here
many may remember having seen a figure of Queen Elizabeth, mounted on
a wooden steed, in a dress supposed to have been worn by her when she
returned thanks at St Paul’s for the destruction of the Armada. (This
is now in the lower gallery of the White Tower.)
The rooms on this floor of the tower are 15 feet high, with wooden
ceilings, which are supported by massive wooden pillars placed in
double rows. These wooden columns are comparatively modern, and were
probably placed here when the rooms were converted into an armoury,
store rooms, and record offices. They are now filled with small-arms,
and the roofs are supported by beams strengthened with iron girders.
The ancient fireplaces still remain in the eastern wall.
On the second floor of the White Tower are three great chambers. That
to the west is 95 feet by 32; that to the east 64 feet by 32; they are
15 feet high. St John’s Chapel, which is on the second floor, forms
its cross chamber, and rises through the roof to the top of the tower.
A mural passage at the extremity of the western chamber leads to the
west end of the south aisle. Mr Clark believes that this was formerly
a private entrance from the Palace into the Chapel, being connected
with the State rooms of the Tower, one of which is still called the
Banqueting Hall.
The fourth floor of the Keep is called the State Floor, and is divided
into three chambers 28 feet in height. The room to the west, which
is called the Council Chamber, was the scene of that episode at the
commencement of the reign of Richard III., immortalised by Shakespeare,
when that monarch accused Lord Hastings of treason and had him taken
out to instant execution (_Richard III._ Act iii. Scene 4). This
chamber is 95 feet long by 46 wide. Within the exterior walls runs a
vaulted passage communicating with the stairs in the north-eastern
turret. It was in this passage, which is only 3 feet in width, that the
soldiers were concealed when Richard had planned Hastings’s death. In
Norman times this chamber was used as a State prison, and it was from
one of its windows that Bishop Flambard let himself down by a rope. It
was also the prison of Charles of Orleans in the reign of Henry V., and
had probably served the same purpose in the reign of Edward III., and
may have held in its walls both King John of France and David, King of
Scotland; here, too, the brothers Mortimer were probably imprisoned in
1324.
It is not easy to picture in one’s mind the appearance of this place
when used as a State prison, or as a Council Chamber, for the only view
of the interior of the Tower that has come down to us from the Middle
Ages is the little illumination in the Harleian MSS., which has been
reproduced in this work, in which Charles of Orleans is seen writing in
this chamber surrounded by his guards.
The earliest account of the interior of the Tower occurs in Paul
Hentzner’s description of his visit in the reign of Elizabeth. “Upon
entering the Tower,” he writes, “we were obliged to quit our swords
at the gate and deliver them to the guard. When we were introduced,
we were shown above a hundred pieces of arras belonging to the Crown,
made of gold, silver, and silk; several saddles covered with velvet
of different colours; an immense quantity of bed furniture, such as
canopies, and the like, some of them most richly ornamented with
pearl; some royal dresses, so extremely magnificent as to raise one’s
admiration at the sums they must have cost. We were then led into the
armoury.” But I will reserve what Hentzner said about the arms and
the armour until later. This intelligent German traveller pertinently
remarks: “It is to be noted, that when any of the nobility are sent
hither on the charge of high crimes punishable with death, such as
treason, etc., they seldom or never recover their liberty.”
With the exception of the Lady Chapel at Durham Cathedral, St John’s
Chapel in the White Tower is the most beautiful of the Norman chapels
in England, and it was owing to the excellent advice given by the
Prince Consort that this splendid relic of Norman times has received,
if not its former splendour, something of its pristine condition.
Although no attempt has been made to re-decorate its walls and
interior, it is now cleansed of the rubbish which covered its floor,
until the Prince called attention to the desecration with which it was
treated until the middle of the nineteenth century.
[Illustration: _Interior of Sᵗ. John’s Chapel._]
Inclusive of the semicircular apse at its east end, the Chapel is 55
feet 6 inches long by 31 feet wide. It is divided into a nave and two
aisles, which have four massive pillars on either side with varied
capitals, supporting thirteen arches. The pillars are 2 feet 6 inches
in diameter and 6 feet 6 inches high, not inclusive of their bases,
which are 20 inches high, giving the pillars from the floor to the
top of the capitals a height of 10 feet. Each capital is cut out of a
solid block of stone. The stone ceiling of the nave is barrel shaped.
The triforium is 7 feet 6 inches in diameter. The upper gallery was
formerly used by the royal family, and communicated with the State
rooms of the Palace. It is probable that the walls of this chapel were
decorated with mural paintings and hung with tapestry, the windows
to the east glowing with figures of saints and angels. Henry III.,
in 1240, ordered three stained glass windows for the chapel, and in
one of these, that looking to the north, was pictured “a little Mary
holding her child.” In the two others, looking to the south, “the Holy
Trinity, with St John, Apostle and Evangelist.” The rood screen and
Cross were also ordered by this King, and “two fair images” to be set
up and painted, “et fieri faciatis et depingi duas ymagynes centius
fieri possint in capella.” The latter were probably representations of
St Edward holding a ring which he presents to the Patron of the Royal
Chapel.
When the Reformation came in 1550, St John’s Chapel was despoiled of
all its artistic treasures by order of the Government. Its frescoes
were coated over with whitewash, its stained glass windows were
destroyed, and all its ecclesiastical ornaments were removed; in
later times the Chapel became a repository for the Tower records. It
was during Lord de Ros’s Governorship in 1857 that the accumulated
lumber of centuries was, as has already been said, in consequence of
Prince Albert’s wish, cleared away from the Chapel. It had actually
been proposed to turn this beautiful building into a military tailor’s
warehouse. Such was the honour bestowed on this sacred and beautiful
English building comparatively only a few years ago. But in recent
years it must be admitted that we have shown a more enlightened regard
towards the relics connected with the history of our country, none of
which is of greater interest, or more worthy of regard and veneration,
than the old Norman Chapel of St John’s in the Tower.
Royal scenes of pomp and mourning this ancient building has beheld
within its mighty walls. All our Norman and Plantagenet kings here
worshipped a God whose laws they seldom obeyed. Here lay in state the
corpse of the White Rose of York, Elizabeth, the Queen of Henry VII.;
and here, those upon whom the honour of knighthood was to be conferred,
passed their solemn all-night vigil, watching their armour.
The summit of the White Tower covers a space of 100 feet on the eastern
side, by 113 on the north and south. The four turrets, the most
conspicuous points in any view of the Tower, rise 16 feet above this
leaden field, and each is crowned with pepper-box-shaped roofs made of
lead. The turret crowning the south-eastern angle contains a chamber
traditionally known as the prison of Joan of Kent. In the early years
of the eighteenth century it was used as an observatory by Flambard,
the Astronomer-Royal, and a contemporary of Isaac Newton, some years
before the great Observatory was built at Greenwich.
Although cannon were mounted on the roof in Tudor days, the platform
could not have supported very heavy artillery, as it was only built of
shingle. As I have said elsewhere, no record has come down to us of the
time when the turrets with their little pepper-castor tops were first
placed there, but the Harleian MSS. prove that similar ones existed as
far back as the reign of Henry V.
There is much difference of opinion as to the original mode of entrance
into the White Tower. Probably the principal entrance lay on the south
and river side of the Keep, near its western angle, for on the second
floor there is a large opening on the exterior of the masonry which has
parallel sides, and was doubtless formerly used as a doorway. Near this
opening, and on the eastern side of the Keep, is a small door opening
into the base of the well staircase. Both Mr Clark and Mr Birch believe
that these doors formerly communicated with a building which stood on
the south of the White Tower, having its outer entrance at the east
end. This building would probably date back to the days of the Normans.
The main entrance of the White Tower opened out on the first floor
of the Keep, whence a turnpike staircase led up to the second floor,
and downwards to the basement with its dungeons. The mural corridors
or passages in the thickness of the walls which encircle the State
rooms, are so narrow that only one person could pass along them at a
time, which would have been of great advantage in case of an attack on
the building, for a small number of men could have defended the White
Tower against a host of besiegers. The Normans showed a rare skill
in the strategic construction of their strongholds. For instance, in
the ruined Castle of Arques near Dieppe, a contemporary building,
the plan of its Keep resembles in structure that of the White Tower.
These Normans were master builders, and the skilful manner in which
they concealed the entrances to their fortresses is well worth study.
Their keeps were generally rectangular, and in no instance is the
entrance of these towers on the ground floor, or in a conspicuous part
of the building. At the Castle of Arques the entrance to the Keep is
carefully concealed, as was the case with the White Tower, and is
fully 30 feet above the level of the ground, besides being hidden and
protected by a massive and lofty wall which forms a part of the Keep.
A tortuous passage leads into the heart of the building, but before
it could be entered, a very long and almost perpendicular staircase
had to be mounted. This staircase commenced in the thickness of the
wall of one of the outer counter-forts, placed at the northern angle
of the fortress, which wound along the inner face of the Keep, giving
access to a landing, beyond which was the passage that led into the
fortress. Before the kernel of the Keep could be reached, another
narrow passage, cut out of the thickness of the wall, had to be
passed; this passage was on the level of the first floor. This style
of defensive construction was introduced by the Conqueror and his
clerical architect, the quondam monk of the Abbey of Bec in Normandy,
who ended his life as Bishop of Rochester; and to these two men we owe
the solidity and time-defying strength of the great Norman White Tower.
In order to complete this Norman system of defensive architecture it
was necessary to suppress all unnecessary openings, such as windows,
in the lower stages of the massive square towers. Consequently, the
Norman windows, which were only narrow slits in the masonry, called by
the significant name of _meurtrières_, from the use made of them by the
besieged to hurl missiles or pour boiling oil, or lead, upon the enemy
beneath, were always restricted in numbers, and were always placed in
the upper parts of the Keep. For this reason Sir Christopher Wren, by
placing the large windows with their stone facings, now in the White
Tower, completely destroyed one of the most characteristic features
of its Norman workmanship, an extraordinary act of vandalism for so
great an architect. In our day Salvin restored some of the Norman
windows on the western side of the White Tower—those belonging to St
John’s Chapel—and one regrets that he did not carry out the restoration
throughout the building, for in looking at any representation of the
White Tower taken before the Great Fire, one sees how much the old
Norman Keep has lost in character by Wren’s tasteless substitution of
Carolean for Norman windows.
Of the prisoners of State who passed weary years within the White
Tower, mention has already been made of Charles of Orleans. Stevenson’s
description in his “Familiar Studies of Men and Books,” relating
to the imprisonment of the Duke, gives a perfect word-picture: “In
the magnificent copy of Charles’s poems, given by our Henry VII.
to Elizabeth of York on the occasion of their marriage, a large
illumination figures at the head of one of the pages which, in
chronological perspective, is almost a history of his imprisonment. It
gives a view of London with all its spires, the river passing through
the old bridge, and busy with boats. One side of the White Tower has
been taken out, and we can see, as under a sort of shrine, the paved
room where the Duke sits writing. He occupies a high-backed bench in
front of a great chimney: red and black ink are before him, and the
upper end of the apartment is guarded by many halberdiers, with the
red cross of England on their breasts. On the next side of the tower
he appears again, leaning out of the window and gazing on the river.
Doubtless, there blows just then ‘a pleasant wind from out the land of
France,’ and some ships come up the river, ‘the ship of good news.’ At
the door we find him yet again, this time embracing a messenger, while
a groom stands by holding two saddled horses. And yet further to the
left, a cavalcade defiles out of the Tower; the Duke is on his way at
last towards ‘the sunshine of France.’”
Referring to his imprisonment in England at the trial of the Duke
d’Alençon, the Duke said, “I have had experience myself, and in my
prison of England, for the weariness, danger, and displeasure in which
I then lay, I have many a time wished I had been slain at the battle
where they took me.”
It was one of Joan of Arc’s hallucinations that could Charles of
Orleans be delivered from his captivity in England and restored to
France, that country would be delivered from its conquerors. She
declared that he was specially favoured by the Almighty, and longed
with all the strength of her great heart to restore him to her native
land, and said that if there was no other way of freeing him, she would
herself cross the sea and bring him back with her. When, after many
years, Charles of Orleans was released, the heroic girl had met her
martyrdom nine years before. It is a strange coincidence that whilst
the Keep of the Tower held the French poet prince within its walls,
another Royal captive, James the First of Scotland, was whiling away
the days of his imprisonment by writing verses in the Keep of Windsor
Castle.
Until quite recently, the collection of arms and armour stored in the
White Tower and the adjacent galleries was in a disgraceful state of
neglect, and even in a worse condition than that of mere neglect, for
the custodians, in their ignorance, gave names and titles to the arms
and armour which must have caused infinite amusement to visitors who
possessed any knowledge of the subject. The middle-aged may recall the
rows of so-called English kings, beginning with the Plantagenets and
ending with the Stuarts, seated on wooden horses. If I mistake not, one
of these was dubbed Edward I., and yet another mythical gentleman on
his wooden steed played the _rôle_ of a “Royal Crusader.” These things
were as genuine as Mrs Jarley’s Waxworks. “Previous to the year 1826,”
write Britton and Brayley in their history of the Tower, “nothing could
present a more incongruous mass of discordant materials than the Horse
Armoury of the Tower of London. Armour of the time of Edward the Sixth
was ignorantly appropriated to that of William the Conqueror: foot
soldiers were ranged between the horsemen, and those humble ciceroni,
the warders, ascribed to the various implements of war names and uses,
alike unknown, either in ancient or modern warfare.” But better times
were at hand, and a great authority on ancient armour, and the owner
of the finest collection of it in England, Dr S. R. Meyrick, undertook
to arrange the armour in the Tower. Another expert in armour, J. R.
Planché, Somerset Herald, and author of an able history of British
costume, as well as of many clever burlesques and extravaganzas, drew
up a catalogue. But a huge mass of rubbish and spurious armour were
allowed even then to remain amongst the historic and genuine specimens.
It is only since Lord Dillon undertook the great task, on which he
is still engaged, of entirely re-arranging and re-cataloguing the
arms and armour in the White Tower, that it can be properly studied
and appreciated. The new catalogue, which will be a work of historic
importance, is still unpublished, but from the accounts Lord Dillon
has written of the collection, and which is published in the excellent
“Authorised Guide” to the Tower and its contents, I am indebted for
much of the following information.
[Illustration: _Horse and Foot Armour (XVIᵗʰ. Century)_]
Although not to compare in extent or importance with the great
collections of Madrid, Vienna, or Turin, the armour in the White Tower
must be, to an Englishman, of great interest, for, although none of the
suits of armour date further back than the fifteenth century, and but
very few single pieces are of an earlier epoch, there are among the
former, suits of great beauty and of high historic value, and it is the
only national collection of armour that England possesses. As far back
as the year 1213 arms and military stores were kept in the White Tower.
In that year Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, was commanded to
surrender with the fortress “the arms and other stores within”; in the
second year of Henry the Third’s reign, a mandate was issued to the
Archdeacon of Durham to send to the Tower “twenty-six suits of armour,
five iron cuirasses, one iron collar, three pair of iron fetters, and
nine iron helmets.” In the reign of Edward II. we find that a certain
“John de Flete, Keeper of the Wardrobe in the Tower,” was ordered to
deliver up all the armour therein to John de Montgomery. This armour
had belonged to Montgomery’s father.
Various documents are extant relating to armour in the Tower during
the reign of Richard II., and in those of the fourth, fifth, and sixth
Henrys. There is, in the library of the Society of Antiquaries, an
inventory in MSS. of the arms and ammunition kept in different castles
in the kingdom, written in the first year of the reign of Edward the
Sixth. In this work particular mention is made of some “brigandines”
in the Tower. These were military jackets. Other offensive and
defensive weapons are enumerated, such as targets, pole-axes, “great
holy water sprinklers” (a kind of stave with a cylindrical-shaped end,
“and with a spear-point at the top,” according to Meyrick). In the
reign of Elizabeth, we hear of cross-bows and arrows in the Tower, of
“bow-stones” and of “slurbowes,” as well as half-a-dozen different
kinds of armour.
At the beginning of this notice of the White Tower, I mentioned Paul
Hentzner’s description of the armour he saw. He writes as follows:—“We
were next led into the armoury, in which are these peculiarities:
spears, out of which you may shoot; shields, that will give fire
four times; a great many rich halberds, commonly called partuisans,
with which the guard defend the royal person in battle; some lances,
covered with red and green velvet, and the body-armour of Henry VIII.
Many and very beautiful arms, as well for men as for horses in horse
fights—(Hentzner probably means tournaments);—the lance of Charles
Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, three spans thick; two pieces of cannon—the
one fires three, the other seven balls at a time; two others made
of wood, which the English had at the siege of Boulogne, in France.
And by this stratagem, without which they could not have succeeded,
they struck a terror into the inhabitants, as at the appearance of
artillery, and the town was surrendered upon articles; nineteen cannons
of a thicker make than ordinary, and in a room apart, thirty-six of a
smaller; other cannon for chain shot, and balls proper to bring down
masts of ships; cross-bows, bows and arrows, of which to this day the
English make great use in their exercises; but who can relate all that
is to be seen here. Eight or nine men, employed by the year, are scarce
sufficient to keep all the arms bright.”
[Illustration: _German Armour (XVIᵗʰ. Century.)_]
One cannot help wishing that Hentzner had told us more about the Tower
itself as it looked in Elizabeth’s days, and less about the armour.
Charles the First had a survey written of the arms and armour in
the Tower when he succeeded to the Throne, but during the Civil War
much of it disappeared, in common with most of the Royal possessions
in that troubled time. After the Restoration, William Legge, Lord
Dartmouth, who had been deprived by the Commonwealth of his post of
“Master of the Armouries,” was reinstated, and he had an inventory of
the armour in the Tower drawn up in 1660. There is an interesting list
in Britton and Brayley’s Tower book of the different officers to whom
the making of the military stores in the Tower had been entrusted,
up to the time of Charles II., when the employment of the following
ceased:—There was first the “Balistarius,” who lodged in the Bowyer
Tower, and who provided the cross-bows. In the reign of Henry III. this
officer received a shilling a day and “a doublet and surcoat furred
with lambskin” once a year. The “Attiliator Balistarum” provided the
harness and accoutrements for the cross-bows: and received “seven pence
halfpenny per diem and a suitable robe every year.” Then came the
“Bowyer,” an inferior Balistarius; he also received a robe annually.
After him came the “Fletcher,” or maker of the flêches or arrows.
This craftsman supplied arrows to the whole army. To him succeeded
the “Galeator,” the maker of helmets and head-pieces, and after him
the Armourer, who made and supervised all the armour and military
accoutrements in the Tower. But the greatest of these was the Master
of the King’s Ordnance, who, as far back as the reign of Edward the
Fourth, provided all warlike stores for the Army and also the Navy.
He received eleven shillings per diem, and his clerk and valet were
each paid sixpence per diem, which, according to the present value
of money, would be about five pounds a day for the master, and five
shillings for the two men. At the close of the reign of George the
Third the following officers formed the Board of Ordnance:—First came
the Master-General, chosen from among the Generals of the Army, “who
by virtue of his office was Colonel-in-Chief of the Artillery and
Engineers.” Next to him came the Surveyor-General, the head of all the
store departments. Beneath him ranked the Clerk of the Ordnance; then
the Store-keeper, the Clerk of the Deliveries; and, closing the list, a
Treasurer and a Paymaster, both attached to the Ordnance Office.
Returning to the White Tower and its memories, the changes and
revolutions that its massive walls have witnessed, rise before the
mind. Merely glancing at the changes of fashion, as seen in the suits
of armour in its armoury, one is carried back to the Middle Ages. And
although the armour is all of a later time, the Norman barons in their
steel-ringed surcoats and pointed helmets, as they are pourtrayed on
the Bayeux tapestry, have been seen here. All the chivalry of England,
from the time of the Normans down to our present Guardsmen with their
bearskin head-dresses, are closely bound up with the old Norman
fortress, and it should be remembered that from the end of the eleventh
century up to the present day the Tower has always retained the rank
and position of chief fortress and depository of arms in the realm, and
so may still be regarded as the “Arx Palatina” of the British Empire.
The oldest armour in the Tower are some “bassinets” of the second half
of the fourteenth century. Until the death of Henry VIII., the royal
collection of armour was kept in the Palace at Greenwich, and the
possessions of that monarch now form by far the finest portion of the
Tower Armoury, consisting of several splendid suits of armour given
him by the Emperor Maximilian. The best armour was made in Italy and
Germany, and Henry, who loved a fine suit of armour almost as much as
a handsome woman, had a number of skilled armourers sent to England
to work for him. As we see by Hentzner’s narrative, foreigners of
distinction were shown the collection of armour in the Tower as one of
the principal sights of London. During the Civil War a great deal of
the armour was carried away from the Tower, and but little of it was
returned, even when the Restoration had become an accomplished fact.
[Illustration: _Nurembery Armour (XVIᵗʰ. Century.)_]
The collection now occupies the two upper floors of the White Tower.
On the lower floor are kept the more modern weapons and the Oriental
armour, of which there is a great quantity. On the upper floor the far
more interesting of the earlier weapons, and all the suits of foot and
horse armour, are ranged along the walls and in rows down the middle of
the hall, making an imposing show of mounted and unmounted mail-clad
figures of men and horses.
In the lower floor we will only take a glance at the Indian and
Oriental arms and at the modern European weapons, as these are of
little historical interest. There are, however, amongst them some
relics of the so-called “good old days” worthy of inspection. These
consist of a grim collection of instruments of death and torture. Here,
for instance, are the thumbscrews, the bilboes, and the Scavenger’s
Daughter—in the last the victim was almost bent double in its iron
embrace. Here, too, is an iron collar, very massive, with a row of
iron spikes within its ring, which, when fastened round the sufferer’s
neck, must speedily have caused death. This horrible instrument is
incorrectly stated to have been taken in one of the ships of the
Armada, but Lord Dillon vouches for its having been used in the Tower
long before the Spanish ships were seen in the Channel. Here, too, is
a small model of the rack, the most general form of torture employed
in the Tower during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when even
women were cruelly torn almost limb from limb by its cords and pulleys.
This toy rack does not give so vivid an impression of the torture as
does a small wood-cut from Fox’s “Book of Martyrs.” Here is also the
block, with the axe. The latter was kept here as far back as the year
1687, so it is uncertain whether it is the axe that was used for the
execution of the Duke of Monmouth and William, Lord Russell, but it is
probable that it was the one used for beheading the rebel lords after
the two Jacobite risings in Scotland, and it was undoubtedly used for
decapitating Lord Lovat in 1747.
As regards the block, it appears to have been the custom for a new one
to be made for each State execution, and although there is more than
one mark made by the axe on the top of this block, it does not follow
that it was used for more than one execution.
The upper floor is reached by a staircase in the south-eastern corner
of the Tower. On reaching this upper floor a collection of spears
of all sorts and sizes is seen. Among these is a formidable-looking
weapon called a “holy water sprinkler,” which consists of a staff
with a wooden ball at the top, covered with long iron spikes. Another
sinister-looking weapon is the “Morning Star,” so named by the Germans,
and certainly calculated to raise up many a star before the eyes of
anyone who had the misfortune to be struck by it. Besides these there
is a goodly array of partisans, halberds, and pole-axes. In the centre
of this gallery is an equestrian figure clad in sixteenth-century
armour which was made at Nuremberg, where the best armour in Germany
was manufactured. The whole of the knight’s armour, as well as the
panoply of the horse, is ornamented with that quaint device, the
Burgundian cross “ragule,” and also the flint and steel pattern, the
same that appears on the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece: from
these ornaments and devices it follows that this armour was made for
one of the Burgundian princes, perhaps for the Emperor Maximilian, it
having been given to Henry VIII. by that monarch.
There are many suits of armour which, until Lord Dillon re-arranged
and classified the collection, passed as genuine, and among them is
a sham suit of armour worn by Lord Waterford at the famous Eglinton
tournament—a tourney which ended by the competing knights taking
shelter from the rain under their umbrellas. Another splendid specimen
of the German armourers’ work is the fluted suit for man and horse
belonging to the early part of the sixteenth century. Two other suits
of armour which are placed in the centre of the gallery belonged to
Henry VIII.; they are of prodigious weight, and as they were intended
for fighting on foot, it must have required considerable physical
strength to walk when clad in this ponderous habiliment: it certainly
would have been impossible for its wearer to run away with it upon his
back. Lord Dillon believes that both these suits are of Italian or
Spanish workmanship; one of them is made up of 235 separate pieces.
Besides these, two other suits of Henry VIII.’s armour are in the
collection; one of them still retains traces of gilding, and must have
shone resplendently when worn by the bluff king.
[Illustration: _Horse and Foot Armour (XVIIᵗʰ. Century.)_]
Regarding the equestrian suit of armour in the centre of the gallery,
Lord Dillon thinks “that it is one of the finest in existence.” It was
made at Augsburg by the famous German armourer Conrad Sensenhofer, and
was given to Henry by the Emperor Maximilian in 1515. It is covered
with devices, such as roses, pomegranates, and portcullises—the badges
of Henry and Catharine of Arragon—the letters H and K stand out in bold
relief on the horse armour. Engraved within panels are representations
of scenes from the lives of St George and St Barbara. No finer example
of the great German’s art workmanship than this truly Imperial suit can
be seen, not even in the great German, Spanish, and Italian collections.
Close to this stands a curious shield, one of eighty similar ones
made for Henry VIII., with a pistol in the middle. Worthy of note is
a helmet with a mask attached, also a gift to Henry from Maximilian.
It was formerly known as Will Somers’s mask (the King’s Jester), but
recent research does not show that Somers ever used this ugly vizor.
Here, also, is a very gorgeous suit of gilt armour which belonged
to the Earl of Cumberland, one of Elizabeth’s smartest courtiers,
who fitted out at his own expense no less than eleven expeditions
against the Spaniards. Noticeable, too, are the quaint double
weapons—staves with pole-axes and gun-barrels attached; one of these
has three barrels, a kind of gigantic early revolver which was called
King Harry’s Walking-Stick. Here are also ancient saddles used for
tournaments. One of these belonged, and was probably used by Charles
Brandon, Henry VIII.’s brother-in-law: much horse armour besides these
tilting saddles is to be seen here,—“chaufons” and “bards” made of
leather, known by the name of “cuir bouall,” and “vamplates,” worn
when tilting to protect the hand, and into which the tilting spear
was fastened. More suits of armour for men and horses are those which
belonged to the Earl of Worcester in Elizabeth’s time, and a still
richer one, once worn by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, bearing
all over it the badge of the rugged staff, and the double collars of
the English order of the Garter and the French one of St Michael. The
armour of another of Elizabeth’s favourites is here, a suit which is
believed to have belonged to Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. To come
to later times, and the House of Stuart, the most conspicuous of the
armour of that period is a gilt suit which belonged to Charles I., but
very inferior in workmanship and artistic excellence to the earlier
work of the German armourers. There is also a small suit of armour made
for Charles I., when a child. Here, too, are models of cannon made for
Charles II., when he was Prince of Wales, and a richly decorated suit
of armour given to Henry, Prince of Wales, by the Prince de Joinville.
Of all this display of arms and armour in the Tower, of which I have
but touched upon the chief objects of historical and artistic interest,
the “processional” axe is, to my mind, by far the most interesting
in regard to the Tower and its history, for it is the outward and
visible sign of the part the “great axe,” as Shakespeare called it, has
played in our country’s history, the symbol of its highest justice,
whether it appeared with its edge turned towards or turned away from
the prisoner: and what scenes in English history has not that steel
reflected in its impassive surface. This axe is in itself an epitome of
the history of the Tower, and consequently of England.
[Illustration: _Horse and Foot Armour (XVIIᵗʰ. Century.)_]
Beneath the western wall of the White Tower is a varied park of
artillery. Here, placed side by side, are cannon taken from out the
wreck the _Mary Rose_, a warship lost off Spithead in 1545, with others
from the _Royal George_, which sank in the same place in 1782. Here is
a Portuguese cannon made in 1594 and taken at the siege of Hyderabad
in 1843; and guns made for Napoleon at Avignon, with the crowned N
engraved upon them. What is curious amongst the old English cannon of
the sixteenth century, is their being made of iron bars welded together
and bound round with iron hoops. One of these belonged to the _Mary
Rose_, and still holds within its barrel a stone shot. Here is also
a breech-loading cannon made early in the sixteenth century, and two
triple brass guns made for Louis XIV. bearing his device of the sun and
the motto, “Ultima ratio regum.” The old French and English mortars
are also of interest, the earliest of the latter being dated 1686; one
was used by William III. at the siege of Namur in 1695. There is a
French mortar made by Keller, Louis’s gun-founder at Douai, in 1683.
In 1708 there were sixty-two guns on Tower Green and the river wharf:
the latter were fired on festivals; they are now used for saluting from
“Salutation Battery,” which faces Tower Hill. Amongst these weapons of
destruction one is almost certain to find a pair of venerable ravens
hopping about; they are a pair of weird and eerie fowls, and one might
imagine the spirit of some guilty wretch had been re-incarnated under
their black feathers.
In Mr W.H. Hudson’s book, entitled “Birds of London,” these and
other birds are described as follows:—“At the Tower of London robins
occasionally appear in autumn, but soon go away. The last one that
came, settled down and was a great favourite with the people there
for about two months, being very friendly, coming to window-sills
for crumbs, and singing every day very beautifully. Then one day he
was seen in the General’s garden wildly dashing about, hotly pursued
by seven or eight sparrows, and, as he was never seen again, it was
conjectured that the sparrows had succeeded in killing him. The robin
is a high-spirited creature, braver than most birds, and a fair
fighter, but against such a gang of feathered murderous ruffians, bent
on his destruction, he would stand no chance.
“The Tower sparrows, it may be added, appear to be about the worst
specimens of their class in London. They are always at war with the
pigeons and starlings, and would gladly drive them out if they could.
It is a common thing for some foreign bird to escape from its cage on
board ship and to take refuge in the trees and gardens of the Tower,
but woe to the escaped captive and stranger in a strange land who seeks
safety in such a place! Immediately on his arrival the sparrows are
all up against him, not to ‘heave half a brick at him,’ since they are
not made that way, but to hunt him from place to place until they have
driven him, weak with fatigue and terror, into a corner where they can
finish him with their bludgeon beaks.”
It is worthy of notice that no mention is made of the Tower in Domesday
Book, London being altogether omitted from that work. Of all the Norman
strongholds and castles which rose in London along the river-side, of
Montfichet, Baynard’s Castle, the old Palace at Blackfriars, or of
Tower Royal, Stephen’s palace in Vintry Ward, no trace remains, and of
them all the great Norman keep of the Conqueror remains little altered
in outward form from what it was eight centuries ago.
[Illustration: _Horse and Foot Armour (XVIIᵗʰ. Century.)_]
TOWER HILL
Tower Hill, which lies to the north-west of the Tower, is more closely
allied with the history of the fortress than any other spot within
the City boundaries, and the short space intervening between it and
the entrance gate of the Tower was, in most cases, the final journey
of the State prisoners condemned to death. Writing of Tower Hill,
Stow, the antiquary, says it was “sometime a large plot of ground, now
greatly straightened by encroachments (unlawfully made and suffered)
for gardens and houses. Upon the hill is always readily prepared at the
charge of the City, a large scaffold and gallows of timber, for the
execution of such traitors or transgressors are as delivered out of the
Tower, or otherwise, to the Sheriffs of London, by writ, there to be
executed.”
Hatton, however, describes Tower Hill in the reign of Queen Anne as “a
spacious place extending round the west and north parts of the Tower,
where there are many good new buildings, mostly inhabited by gentry and
merchants.”
The Sheriffs of London and Middlesex were responsible for State
prisoners so long as they were within the City and county boundaries,
and when such prisoners were taken through the streets of London from
the Tower, the Sheriffs received them from the Lieutenant of the Tower
at the entrance to the City, and gave a receipt for their persons.
The City officials, too, were responsible for the scaffold on Tower
Hill, but in the reign of Edward IV. this scaffold was erected at
the charge of the King’s officers. Constant quarrels and disputes,
however, arose on the subject of the boundaries between the City and
the Lieutenant of the Tower, until the charge of Tower Hill was finally
vested in the City. In the view of the Tower and its surroundings, to
which I have so often referred, made by Haiward and Gascoyne in 1597,
the scaffold is shown standing some distance to the north of Tower
Street: its site is now a pleasant garden, the place of execution being
recorded by an inscription on a tablet placed on the grass plot within
the railings.
Tower Hill is almost entirely associated with the shedding of blood,
with the masked executioner, his block and axe, and has little
historical interest besides, save that Lady Raleigh lodged in a house
on the Hill with the child born to her in the Tower, after James I.
refused to allow her to share her husband’s imprisonment. William Penn,
the Quaker, and founder of Pennsylvania—which he mortgaged for £6600
in his old age—was born on Tower Hill in 1644; Otway the poet died at
the Bull public-house, it is supposed of starvation; and it was at a
cutler’s shop on Tower Hill that Felton bought the knife with which he
mortally stabbed George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, at Portsmouth.
STAINED GLASS IN THE TOWER
Of all the richly coloured windows placed in the chapel of St John in
the White Tower by Henry III. and the brilliant glass in the church of
St Peter ad Vincula, very little now remains, and the only coloured
glass to be found in the Tower at the present day, as it was originally
placed, is in the window of a little room used as the library for
the Tower warders close to the Byward Tower—this room in one respect
resembles the most famous library in the world, that of the Vatican,
from the fact that no books are visible, they being all put away in
cupboards—and this consists only of two royal badges in coloured glass.
These royal arms appear to be of the time of James I., and although
they have been much restored, that containing the three feathers of the
Prince of Wales retains much of its old glaze and is a good example of
emblazoned glass of the period. It may possibly have been intended for
the cognisance of Prince Henry, or Charles I., when Prince of Wales.
A quantity of stained glass panels were found in the crypt of St John’s
Chapel, in which some interesting and valuable fragments, mostly
incomplete in themselves, of heraldic glass of the sixteenth century
and of small pictorial subjects, were mixed with modern and valueless
glass of subordinate design. The whole was carefully examined by Messrs
John Hardman, who separated the ancient from the modern glass, and
using delicate leads to repair the numerous fractures of the former,
and setting the various fragments in lozenges of plain glass, filled
the right windows of the chapel with the following subjects:—
The first window in the south front, entering from the west, a coat of
arms, with the words “Honi soit qui mal y pense” around it on the upper
portion; a sepia painting in the centre, representing the Deity and two
angels appearing to a priest, with flames rising from an altar. In the
lower portion is another sepia painting with the Deity depicted with
outstretched arms, one hand on the sun, the other on the moon, and the
earth rolling in clouds at the feet. This is generally supposed to be
emblematical of the Creation, but has been suggested as representative
of the Saviour as the Light of the World.
The second window has a head and bust near the top, with a peculiar cap
and crown. The centre is a sepia representing the expulsion of Adam
and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and the guardian angel. At the bottom
there is another sepia, depicting a village upon a hill, probably a
distant view of Harrow.
The third window has at the top a figure of Charles I. in sepia; in the
centre a knight in armour, skirmishing, and at the bottom what appears
to be a holly-bush with the letters H. R.
The fourth window has a negro’s head with a turban in the upper
portion; in the centre a sepia of Esau returning from the hunt to seek
Isaac’s blessing, Rebecca and Jacob being in the background. Near the
bottom is another sepia of the exterior of a church, probably Dutch.
The fifth window, and the last of the series facing south, has a coat
of arms and motto like those in the first window; in the centre, a
sepia of the anointing of David by Samuel, and near the bottom Jehovah
in clouds, with the earth and shrubs bursting forth. This is probably
emblematical of the Creation.
The south-east apsidal window has the coat of arms and royal motto as
before, with two smaller coats of arms and the same motto below, a
royal crown and large Tudor rose being near the bottom.
The eastern window (in the centre of the apse) has a crown with
fleur-de-lys and leopards at the top, and in the centre the small
portcullis of John of Gaunt and the wheat-sheaf of Chester. These are
by far the best heraldic devices in the whole series of windows.
The north-east window has a very imperfect coat of arms with
fleur-de-lys and leopards, as well as two other coats with the royal
motto. There is also a device which might be taken to represent the
letter M, but which is probably the inverted water-bottles of the
Hastings family. Daggers are quartered upon the other coats of arms.
At the bottom of this window is a Tudor rose and several fragments of
glass much confused.
The glass has been placed in the windows with great care, the subjects
being made as complete as the broken fragments permitted. Each of the
eight windows is ornamented with leaded borders.
CHAPTER II
THE NORMAN AND PLANTAGENET KINGS
Henry the First was the earliest of our kings to make use of the
Tower as a State prison—Randulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham, having
the distinction of being its first prisoner. Henry, it appears, in
order to curry popularity at the beginning of his reign, had Flambard
arrested, the Bishop—hated by the people for his rapacity—being accused
of illegally raising the funds needed for the building of the fortress
which was destined to become his prison. He was imprisoned with the
King’s sanction, but nominally by the will of the House of Commons,
and thus inaugurated the long line of prisoners of State which, from
the reign of Henry the First until the early years of the nineteenth
century, the Tower never lacked.
Flambard had been the principal minister of Henry’s predecessor,
William Rufus. The Saxon chronicler, Vitalis, recounts that the Bishop
was allowed while in the Tower, to keep a sumptuous table for himself
and his servants, a privilege which enabled him to escape from his
prison in the following manner. He obtained a rope which had been
hidden in a wine cask, and after liberally regaling his keepers, whom
he succeeded in fuddling with much wine, he made fast the rope to a
pillar of a chamber in the White Tower, or to the bar of a window,
and let himself slide down, reaching the ground in safety. It was a
wonderful feat Flambard performed, for he held his pastoral staff in
his hand as he descended the side of the Tower. The rope proved too
short and the Bishop had a fall of several feet, but apparently without
being the worse for it. A swift horse, provided by his friends, took
him to the coast, whence he succeeded in reaching Normandy. Some years
after his escape he returned to his see at Durham, where he completed
that splendid cathedral, also building many other churches and castles,
amongst the latter being Norham Castle, whose stately ruins have been
sung by Sir Walter Scott.
It is uncertain whether any of the Norman kings before Stephen made the
Tower a place of residence. But in 1140 that monarch, during a gloomy
period of private and public affairs, retired to the Tower with a large
retinue and kept his court there during Whitsuntide.
“Early in the year,” writes Freeman in his “History of the Norman
Conquest,” “after Matilda’s landing, an attempt had been made to make
peace. At Pentecost the King held, or tried to hold, the usual festival
in London; but this time his court was held to the east and not to the
west of the city, not in the hall of Rufus, but in the fortress of his
father.”
The custody of the Tower appears, soon after its completion, to have
been made an hereditary office, granted by the sovereign to the family
of Mandeville. In this year of 1140 the Tower was in the keeping of
Geoffrey, grandson of that great Geoffrey de Mandeville, who had
accompanied the Conqueror to England, and who had greatly distinguished
himself at the Battle of Hastings. Stephen created the grandson Earl
of Essex, but being himself taken prisoner soon afterwards at the
Battle of Lincoln, the Empress Matilda gained de Mandeville over to her
party, during Stephen’s captivity. By a charter, dated from Oxford in
1141, Matilda confirmed the Earl in all the possessions which he had
inherited, whether in lands or fortresses, the custody of the Tower
being included therein, Essex being given a free hand to strengthen and
fortify it. A subsequent charter of the same year gave him the special
charge of the Tower, “with all lands, liveries, and customs thereto
appertaining” (Dugdale’s Baronage). According to Leland, de Mandeville
constantly added to the fortifications of the Tower, but when he was
defeated and taken prisoner at the Battle of St Albans he was obliged
to surrender the Constableship into the hands of Stephen.
In 1153 the Tower was held for the Crown by Richard de Lucy, Chief
Justiciary of England, in trust for Henry, Duke of Normandy, to whom,
after Stephen’s death, it reverted.
Matilda had offended the Londoners by refusing to abolish her father’s
laws, and by also refusing to restore those granted by Edward the
Confessor, and, rising in arms, they drove the Empress from the city.
Stephen having recovered his liberty, Matilda’s power ceased shortly
afterwards. After her flight the Londoners laid siege to the Tower, but
it had been so strongly fortified by de Mandeville that he was not only
able to defy the besiegers’ uttermost efforts to effect its capture,
but was able to make a sortie as far as Fulham, where he took the
Bishop of London prisoner, “as then lodged there, being of the contrary
faction” (Holinshed).
It is doubtful whether Henry the First ever lived in the Tower, or
whether he added to its fortifications. Thomas à Becket is supposed to
have wished to have been made Constable of the fortress as well as of
Rochester Castle, which latter he is known to have held.
FitzStephen, in the reign of Henry the Second, describes the “Arx
Palatina” as being then, “great and strong with encircling walls rising
from a deep foundation, and built with mortar tempered with the blood
of beasts.” Probably the sanguinary aspect of the mortar used in the
Tower buildings was owing to the use of pulverised Roman red tiles and
bricks, of which a large quantity were most likely pounded into mortar.
When Richard Cœur de Lion left England for the Holy Land he entrusted
the charge of guarding the Tower to Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, who was
his Chancellor. This Bishop strengthened the fortress and deepened the
moat. He had good reason for his work upon the fortress, for John,
taking advantage of his brother’s absence, besieged the Tower; but the
Bishop, thinking discretion the better part of valour, yielded up his
trust without attempting to defend it, and fled for safety to Dover
Castle. John made over the Tower to the confederated nobles under the
Archbishop of Rouen, who occupied it until Richard’s return from the
Holy Land.
In 1215, the Barons, who were then up in arms, aided by the London
citizens, besieged the Tower, but although it was poorly garrisoned,
their attacks were repelled. A year later, whilst the civil war was
waging between John and his barons, the Tower was handed over to the
French prince Louis by the rebellious nobles, who had invited him
to take John’s place as King of England, but Louis does not seem to
have taken kindly to the position, and speedily returned to his own
land. In 1217, Henry III. was reigning in undisputed possession of the
realm, and to him belongs the credit of having done more towards making
the Tower worthy of a royal abode, than any of his predecessors or
successors upon the English throne. The most stately of its buildings,
after the Great Keep, are due to his love of art and architecture.
The Royal Chapel, the Great Hall, and the Palace chambers, which he
either built or decorated, are frequently mentioned in the chronicles
of Henry’s reign, and were the outcome of his taste and love of
magnificence.
In 1232 the Tower was given into the custody for life to the famous
Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent. His constableship, however, was brief,
he being supplanted by Peter de Roches, Bishop of Winchester, and
imprisoned in the fortress he had formerly governed.
It was during the reign of Henry III. that the newly-built tower
over the Traitor’s Gate twice fell. The first time this happened was
on the night of St George’s Day (23rd April) in 1240, and on the same
anniversary in the following year the structure again sank into the
moat. According to the historian Mathew Paris, the spirit of St Thomas
à Becket was the cause of both these mishaps, the Saint returning from
the home of the Blessed to the rescue of his beloved and persecuted
London citizens, who had looked on the ever-increasing fortifications
and massive walls of the royal stronghold, with much the same distrust
and irritation as the fortress of the Bastille caused the Parisians.
Four years later, the son of the great Welsh chieftain and patriot,
Llewellyn, was killed whilst attempting to escape from the White Tower
in a similar manner as that by which Bishop Flambard had succeeded
in ending his captivity. Mathew Paris relates that the unlucky Welsh
prince was discovered at the foot of the White Tower with “his head
thrust in between his shoulders.” The rope by which he had hoped to
escape had broken, and he had been dashed to death in the fall.
During his long and agitated reign Henry III. was frequently obliged
to take shelter within the Tower from his rebellious subjects. When
Simon de Montfort and the Barons rose against his rule and encamped
themselves near Richmond, Henry took refuge in the Tower with his
eldest son Edward’s wife, Eleanor of Provence. Edward had been fighting
Llewellyn in Wales, and hearing of the dangerous situation of his wife
and father, hurried back to London, throwing himself into Windsor
Castle. Eleanor of Provence made an attempt to join her husband at
Windsor, but the London citizens were strongly on the side of the
rebels, and when the Princess’s barge reached London Bridge on its way
down the river it was stopped by a rabble who pelted it with stones,
mud, and rotten eggs, and heaped the foulest abuse upon its royal
occupant, who was forced to take shelter once more in the Tower.
Edward is believed never to have forgiven the Londoners for this
treatment of his wife, and his harshness to the city during his reign
was probably due to this incident.
Two years afterwards the mutinous Barons seized the Tower, which they
occupied until the Battle of Evesham, in 1264, enabled Henry to return
to his favourite stronghold. Once again the King was driven into
war by Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, who summoned Otho, the
Papal Legate, then within the Tower, to surrender it into his hands,
declaring that the Tower “was not a post to be trusted in the hands
of a foreigner, much less of an ecclesiastic.” The Legate defied the
Earl to do his worst, and refused to surrender either the fortress or
himself into Gloucester’s keeping. This priest appears to have been not
only brave, but somewhat rash, for although the city was at that time
in the power of de Clare, he left the Tower when a siege was imminent,
and preached a sermon at St Paul’s, inveighing against the Earl. A
siege ensued, during which, according to Matthew of Westminster, a
number of Jews, then within the Tower, defended one of its wards with
great courage, and the King’s army arriving opportunely, the fortress
was saved from falling into the hands of the Earl.
CHAPTER III
THE EDWARDS
At the close of Henry’s troubled reign we find the Tower in the keeping
of the Archbishop of York, a post he held while the young King, Edward
the First, was absent upon an expedition in Palestine. Although this
monarch was not often at the Tower, he added to its buildings, and
strengthened its fortifications, which, after the two sieges they had
lately undergone, no doubt stood much in need of repair, and it was
during his reign that the fortress became the recognised place of
incarceration for State prisoners, and the principal prison in the
realm. The dungeons beneath the White Tower were crowded with hundreds
of unfortunate Jews in 1278,—a strange way, it seems, of repaying
these people for the courage and loyalty some of their brethren had
so recently displayed in the reign of the King’s father, in defending
the same fortress against the King’s enemies. These Jews—there were
some six hundred of them—were imprisoned in the Tower on the charge of
clipping and defacing the coin of the realm.
The prisons were often filled after Edward’s campaigns, many captives
being brought from Wales and from Scotland. Amongst the latter, after
the defeat of the Scottish army at Dunbar in 1296, was King Baliol,
with the Earls of Athol, Sutherland, Menteith, Ross, and others,
Baliol’s son, Prince Edward, with other Scottish chiefs and knights,
being added to the former batch of State prisoners in the following
year.
It was in 1305 that one of the greatest heroes of that or any other
period was brought a prisoner to London, and one would give much to
know with any certainty whether William Wallace was imprisoned or not
in the Tower, and where he spent the last days of his glorious life.
But it is a matter of uncertainty whether he ever entered the walls of
that fortress. He appears, when brought to London, to have been lodged
in a citizen’s house in Fenchurch Street, whence he was taken to his
trial at Westminster Hall; there he was impeached, and, as Holinshed
has it, “condemned and thereupon hanged at Smithfield.” Had Wallace
been imprisoned in the Tower, Holinshed would probably have recorded
the fact. The manner of the hero’s death will ever remain a stain upon
England and upon the memory of his judges. He was treated worse than
a common felon; dragged in chains to the gallows, and killed with
every detail of barbarous cruelty. Three other distinguished Scottish
prisoners were imprisoned in the Tower in 1306, after the battle of St
John’s Town, before their execution. These were the Earl of Athol, Sir
Simon Fraser, and Sir Christopher Seton. Their heads were placed on the
turrets of the White Tower.
Not only did the dungeons of the Tower hold the King’s enemies in this
reign, but also many of his clergy and judges. Of the former was the
Abbot of Westminster, with a following of eight of his monks, who were
imprisoned upon the charge of having robbed the King’s Treasury to the
amount of one hundred thousand pounds—a prodigious sum in those days.
Among the judges imprisoned in the Tower at this time (1289) were Ralph
de Hengham, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, and the Master of the
Rolls, Robert Lithbuy, with others, charged “with criminal partiality
in the discharge of their offices”; they were only released after
paying heavy fines.
The succeeding monarch Edward II., frequently occupied the Tower,
leaving his queen and children within the fortress for safety in 1322,
whilst he invaded Wales; and it was in the Tower that his eldest
daughter was born—Jane of the Tower, as she was styled on account of
the place of her birth. She lived to marry David Bruce and to become
Queen of Scotland in 1327. During this reign the once powerful order
of the Knights Templar fell into unspeakable ruin, the Tower becoming
the prison of all the knights of the order who had been arrested south
of the Tweed, their Grand Master dying there. Besides these there
were many prisoners of note taken in Scotland and Wales, and mention
is made of a woman having been imprisoned there for the first time.
The lady who gained this unpleasant celebrity appears to have richly
deserved her incarceration. On the occasion of a visit made to the
shrine of St Thomas at Canterbury by Queen Isabella and her retinue,
the royal pilgrim, on her return journey to London, was obliged to
crave the hospitality of the _châtelaine_ of Leeds Castle in Kent.
Lady Badlesmere, for such was the name of the lady of the Castle, not
only refused to admit the royal party, but gave orders for it to be
attacked, and several of the Queen’s servants were killed. As a result
of this conduct upon the part of the strong-minded Lady Badlesmere,
Leeds Castle was taken, its governor hanged, and the inhospitable lady
herself was conveyed to London, and occupied a prison in the Tower.
Amongst the Welsh prisoners in the Tower towards the close of Edward’s
reign were the two Lords Mortimer of Wigmore and of Chirk, the former
of whom, making his escape and gaining France in safety, returned
at the head of an army. Edward had thrown himself into the Tower,
but fled to Wales when he heard that Mortimer and the Queen—his most
implacable enemy—were in arms against him. The King was captured, and
soon afterwards murdered at Berkeley Castle. Meanwhile Mortimer had
seized the Tower and beheaded the Bishop of Exeter, whom Edward had
left in charge, had taken the keys from the Constable, Sir John Weston,
and, releasing the prisoners, gave the Tower into the keeping of the
citizens of London. After Edward the Second’s murder, his son, the
young King Edward the Third, was kept in a state of semi-captivity in
the Tower by his mother, Queen Isabella, and her paramour Mortimer.
Edward, however, soon showed the strength of his character, and, after
capturing Roger Mortimer and his sons at Nottingham in 1330, carried
them to the Tower, where they were promptly hanged.
The French and Scottish wars waged by the third Edward brought many
State prisoners to the Tower. From France came the Counts of Eu and
Tankerville, taken at the close of the siege of Caen in 1346, together
with three hundred burghers of that town. From Scotland came David
Bruce, with a large following of his nobles, Sutherland, Carrick, Fife,
Menteith, Wigton, and Douglas, captured by Percy at the Battle of
Neville’s Cross in 1346. Froissart and Rymer describe the huge escort
of twenty thousand armed men which guarded the captive Scottish King,
mounted on a black charger, on his arrival at the Tower on 2nd January
1347, how the streets were crowded with eager sightseers, the City
companies drawn up clad in their richest liveries, and Sir John Darcy,
the Constable, receiving the King at the Tower gate. Bruce remained
a prisoner in the fortress until he was liberated on the payment of
an immense ransom, the companions of his imprisonment being the brave
defender of Calais, Jean de Vienne, with twelve of its principal
citizens, after the siege and capture of that city. Eleven years later,
in 1358, another sovereign was a prisoner in the Tower, John, King of
France, with his son Philip, remaining there for two years after the
Battle of Poitiers, until the Treaty of Bretigny set them free in 1360.
A minute survey of the Tower had been made in 1336, and in the
following year orders were given by Edward for repairs therein, “on
account,” the King said, “of certain news which had lately come to
his ears, and which sat heavy at his heart; the gates, walls, and
bulwarks shall be kept with all diligence, lest they be surprised by
his enemies.” He ordained that the gates of the fortress should be
closed “from the setting till the rising of the sun.” But in spite of
these royal commands, it appears that the Tower was allowed at this
period to fall into disrepair; for, three years after these orders had
been issued by Edward, we find him, on his second return from warring
in France, landing secretly one November night at the Tower, and
finding the place so ill-guarded that he had the Governor and some of
the other officers imprisoned, amongst them being the Lord Chancellor,
who combined that office with the Bishopric of Chichester. About this
time Edward’s Queen, Philippa, was brought to bed of a daughter in the
Tower, but the little Princess, who was named Blanche, died in her
infancy, and was buried in the Abbey Church of Westminster.
CHAPTER IV
RICHARD II.
As I have pointed out in the Introduction to this book, reliable
historical details regarding the Tower are very meagre up to the date
of the reign of Edward III., but with the reign of Richard II. the
story of the Tower becomes of interest. Holinshed describes at some
length the splendours of the new King’s coronation. How the youthful
monarch, who was “as beautiful as an archangel”—as the life-size
portrait of Richard in Westminster Abbey proves—clad in white robes,
issued from the Tower surrounded by a vast retinue of knights and
nobles. He tells us of the streets through which the royal cortege took
its way to the Abbey, all adorned with tapestry, the conduits running
with wine, and the pageants performed in the principal thoroughfares.
Shortly after this Wat Tyler’s Rebellion broke out, and the young King
with his mother sought refuge in the Tower. How the revolt ended is
too well known to require telling here at length—how the mob surged
angrily round the fortress, “at times,” as Froissart writes, “hooting
as loud as if the devils were in them,” how Lord Mayor William Walworth
advised Richard to sally forth and himself attack the rebel rout while
they were asleep and drunk, and how the young sovereign decided to meet
them at Mile End. How during his absence some of the rioters broke into
the Tower, massacred the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon of Sudbury,
who, with Sir Robert Hales and some of the courtiers, had taken refuge
in the Chapel in the White Tower, and how these were butchered; of
the pillage of the royal apartments and the insults which the King’s
mother, the widow of the Black Prince, was compelled to endure—all this
has been told scores of times since old Froissart wrote his veracious
account of these violences which read like a page from the French
Revolution of 1789.
Yet, often as this tale has been told, it has never been more vividly
described than by the pen of George Macaulay Trevelyan, who in this,
his first work, “England in the Age of Wycliffe,” has given grounds
for believing that the literary mantle of his father and of his famous
great-uncle has descended upon him. In this book are the following
passages relating to the peasant rebellion in 1381. Of those who had
taken shelter in the Tower in those days of terror, Trevelyan writes:
“There was but one ark of safety, where many whose blood was sought
had already taken refuge. Gower compares the Tower of London during
this terrible crisis to a ship in which all those had climbed who could
not live in the raging sea. It had been the King’s headquarters for
the last two days. It was from the Tower steps that he had been rowed
across to the conference at Rotherhithe. His mother was with him in
the famous fortress, as were Treasurer Hales and Chancellor Sudbury,
for whose heads the rebels clamoured; his uncle Buckingham and his
young cousin Henry, who was destined to depose him; the Earls of Kent,
Suffolk, and Warwick; Leg, the author of the poll-tax commission, now
trembling for his life; and, last but not least, the Mayor Walworth.
But the noblest among them all was the tried and faithful servant of
Edward III., the Earl of Salisbury, a soldier who had shared in the
early glories of the Black Prince, a diplomatist who had dictated the
terms of Bretigny to the Court of France; he seems to have held aloof
in his old age from the intrigues of home politics, but in the imminent
danger that now threatened his country he acted a part not unworthy of
the name he bore. One man was absent from this assembly of notables,
who, if he had been present, would assuredly never have left the Tower
alive. John of Gaunt had good reason to be thankful that, during the
month when England was in the hands of those who sought his life, he
was across the Border arranging a truce with the Scots.
“By the evening of Thursday, a great mob was encamped on St Catherine’s
Hill, over against the Tower, clamouring for the death of the ministers
who had there taken refuge. Sudbury was the principal victim whom they
demanded. The most horrible of all sounds, the roar of a mob howling
for blood, ever and again penetrated into the chambers of the Tower,
where prelates and nobles ‘sat still with awful eye’ (Froissart). The
young King, from a high turret window, watched the conflagrations
reddening the heavens. In all parts of the city and suburbs, the flames
shot up from the mansions of those who had displeased the people. Far
away to the west, beyond the burning Savoy, fire ascended from mansions
in Westminster; away to the north blazed the Treasurer’s manor at
Highbury. Close beneath him lay the rebel camp, whence ominous voices
now and again rose. Returning pensive and sad from these unwonted
sights and sounds, the boy held counsel with the wisest of his kingdom,
shut up within the same wall.”
Then follows the account of the attempted escape from the Tower of the
Archbishop during the following night, or rather in the early dawn
of the next day. Sudbury had resigned the Great Seal into Richard’s
keeping; but this had no effect in calming the rage of the mob. In vain
did the Archbishop attempt to break from his prison; but as he appeared
on the Tower stairs, he was seen by the rebels from St Catherine’s
Hill, and obliged to return. Trevelyan then goes on to describe the
interview between Richard and his rebellious subjects at Mile End,
when the young monarch conceded their demands, and granted them a
general pardon. But meanwhile a great tragedy had taken place within
the fortress. “The rebels,” continues Trevelyan, “broke into the
Tower. Authorities differ as to the exact moment; some place it during,
and some after, the conference at Mile End. But it is, unfortunately,
certain that no resistance was made by the very formidable body of
well-armed soldiers, who might have defended such a stronghold for
many days even against a picked army. These troops were ordered, or at
least permitted, by the King to let in the mob. It appears that part of
the agreement with the rebels was that the Tower and the refugees it
contained were to be delivered over to their wrath. The dark passages
and inmost chambers of that ancient fortress were choked with the
throng of ruffians, while the soldiers stood back along the walls to
let them pass, and looked on helplessly at the outrages that followed.
Murderers broke into strong room and bower; even the King’s bed was
torn up, lest someone should be lurking in it. The unfortunate Leg, the
farmer of the poll-tax, paid with his life-blood for that unprofitable
speculation. A learned friar, the friend and adviser of John of Gaunt,
was torn to pieces as a substitute for his patron. Though the hunt
roared through every chamber, it was in the Chapel that the noblest
hart lay harboured. Archbishop Sudbury had realised that he was to be
sacrificed. He had been engaged, since the King started for Mile End,
in preparing the Treasurer and himself for death. He had confessed
Hales, and both had taken the Sacrament. He was still performing the
service of the Mass, when the mob burst into the Chapel, seized him
at the altar, hurried him across the moat to Tower Hill, where a vast
multitude of those who had been unable to press into the fortress
greeted his appearance with a savage yell. His head was struck off
on the spot where so many famous men have since perished with more
seemly circumstance. The Treasurer Hales suffered with him, and their
two heads, mounted over London Bridge, grinned down on the bands of
peasants who were still flocking into the capital from far-distant
parts.”
Richard was again forced to take refuge in the Tower in 1387, in
consequence of a revolt led by his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester,
and other disaffected nobles, who, out of patience with the King’s
misgovernment, and detesting his ministers, who had alienated Richard
from the more respectable of his subjects, succeeded in depriving him
of legislative power. The government of the country was placed in the
hands of a commission appointed by Gloucester, whereupon Richard flew
to arms and summoned a Parliament which met at Nottingham. Gloucester
and his adherents took the field with an army forty thousand strong,
and in an action fought between them and the King’s army at Radcot
Bridge, the latter was defeated. Richard once more took shelter with
his family in the Tower, the fortress being besieged soon afterwards.
A truce, however, was called by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and
negotiations were arranged for a meeting between the King and his
nobles, of whom, after Gloucester, the Earls of Derby and Nottingham
were the principal leaders. A conference was held in the Council
Chamber of the White Tower, and some kind of agreement was arrived
at, Richard returning to his palace at Westminster as soon as the
proceedings terminated.
The King’s most unpopular ministers were impeached, some of them being
executed, one of them being his greatest friend, Sir Simon Burley,
a valiant soldier who had been appointed Richard’s governor by the
Black Prince. Despite the tears and entreaties of Queen Anne, Burley
was beheaded on Tower Hill. His death was never forgiven by the King;
he had been a loyal and devoted friend and subject both to Richard’s
father and to himself, and he had served with great distinction
throughout the wars of Edward the Third’s reign. His execution was
terribly revenged by Richard when he was able, once more, to act for
himself.
Three years later, the Tower witnessed brighter scenes. Froissart
tells us in his inimitable manner of a splendid tournament held in
Smithfield, and commencing with a State procession which left the
Tower, and in which the King, his Queen, and the whole Court presented
an imposing sight. But Richard was biding his time to avenge the
death of his old friend Burley, and these brave shows and festivities
were only used as a cloak for designs he had meditated carrying out
from the day of Burley’s execution by his rebel subjects. The time
at length arrived—in 1396. His “good Queen,” Anne of Bavaria, was
dead, and Richard had taken as his second wife and Queen, Isabel of
France—daughter of the mad King Charles—who was lodged in the palace at
the Tower until her coronation. In the following year (1397) Richard
obtained his revenge.
This was a _coup d’état_—I have the authority of Mr Gardiner for using
the French term—by which he summarily arrested his uncle Gloucester,
with the Earls of Warwick and Arundel. The shrift of these enemies of
the King was a short one. The Duke of Gloucester[7] was taken to the
Castle of Calais, and there he died, probably by the King’s orders; the
Earl of Warwick had received an invitation to meet the King at dinner
at the palace of the Lord Chancellor, Edmund de Strafford, who was
also Bishop of Exeter, which was in the Strand, near Temple Bar, with
gardens running down to the river. When the dinner was ended, Warwick,
on rising to take leave, was arrested, hurried to a barge, rowed up to
the fortress, and placed in the tower which bore his family name. After
a time, he was removed from the Beauchamp Tower to the castle rock of
Tintagel in Cornwall, and thence to the Isle of Man, the King sparing
his life, probably because of the public indignation that would have
been roused by the execution of one who had, more than any other of the
great nobles of his day, distinguished himself so highly in the French
wars.
Arundel was brought to trial, pleading not guilty, and offering to
prove his innocence of the charges brought against him by the ordeal
of battle. No mercy, however, was shown him, and he was beheaded the
same day that his sentence was pronounced. His death was lamented by
many who knew his worth; he was a gallant soldier, and ten years before
this fate befell him had commanded an English fleet which had defeated
a French one. He was one of the greatest sons of the most illustrious
house in the kingdom, and his prowess on land was as renowned as his
success upon the sea.
On his way from the Tower to the scaffold on Tower Hill, Arundel asked
that the cords with which his hands were tied might be loosened, in
order that he might bestow the money he carried about him upon the
people through whom he passed on his way to death. He was accompanied
to the scaffold by the Earl of Nottingham, who was his son-in-law, and
by Thomas Holland, the young Earl of Kent, his nephew, who apparently
came to triumph over his downfall rather than to sympathise in the
tragedy, for he is reported to have said to them, “It would have been
more seemly of you to have absented yourselves from this scene. The
time will come when as many shall marvel at your misfortunes as you do
at mine,” a prophecy soon afterwards fulfilled.
Arundel’s body was buried in the Church of the Austin Friars in Broad
Street in the City, a building once filled with splendid monuments to
the illustrious dead, but of which no single one now remains. Among
these monuments were those of Hubert de Burgh, of Edward Plantagenet,
Richard the Second’s half-brother, and many others, but none more
illustrious, both by birth and renown, than Richard Fitzalan, Earl of
Arundel. Whatever his relatives may have felt concerning the Earl’s
death, the great body of the people lamented and mourned him bitterly,
regarding him as a martyr; and so much so, that they flocked in crowds
to the church of Austin Friars expecting miracles to be performed
at his tomb. Richard, although outwardly rejoicing at the great Earl’s
death, is said to have had his nights disturbed ever after by fearful
dreams, and his mind haunted by the wraith of Fitzalan.
[Illustration: _Side of the Scaffold on Tower Hill._]
After this sanguinary act of vengeance Richard seems to have lost all
self-control. Mr Gardiner writes that, “It is most probable that,
without being actually insane, his mind had to some extent given way.”
However that may be, it is certain that after the deaths of Gloucester
and Arundel, Richard knew no peace; and in three short years he, too,
lay in a bloody grave.
Richard dissolved Parliament the year after the murder of Gloucester
and the execution of Arundel, appointing a Committee of twelve peers
and six commoners, his personal adherents, to carry on the government
of the country with himself. Like the first Charles he attempted to
rule the realm without a Parliament, and by this act of autocracy
destroyed himself. The Duke of Norfolk and Henry of Hereford had
been banished during that memorable tournament at Coventry, which
Shakespeare has immortalised in his great tragedy, and during the two
succeeding years Richard ruled the land, a half-crazed despot.
In 1399 Hereford, who by his father’s death, “old John of Gaunt,
time-honoured Lancaster,” had become Duke of Lancaster, returned to
England from his banishment, having heard that the King had seized all
his father’s lands; and, in returning to claim his own, it chanced that
he obtained the realm of England from his cousin Richard.
When Lancaster landed at Ravenspur in Yorkshire, Richard had betaken
himself to Ireland, whence he returned in hot haste to England: he
found his situation already desperate. Events moved swiftly, and on
the 2nd of September 1399, Richard was taken a prisoner to London and
placed in the Tower.
“Men’s eyes
Did scowl on Richard; no man cried God save him;
No joyful tongue gave him his welcome home;
But dust was thrown upon his sacred head:
Which with such gentle sorrow he shook off,
His face still combating with tears and smiles,
The badges of his grief and patience,
That had not God, for some strange purpose steel’d
The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted,
And barbarism itself have pitied him.”
The day after the gates of the fortress closed upon him, Richard’s
deposition was read in Parliament. Twenty-two years had passed since he
had left the Tower for his coronation, surrounded by all the pomp of
this world—himself the brightest figure in a brilliant pageant; he was
now throneless, a prisoner in the power of his cousin; a broken-down
and prematurely aged man, although still in the prime of life.
“On St Michael’s Day (September 29) a deputation of prelates, barons,
knights, and lawyers proceeded on horseback to the Tower, where they
alighted; King Richard came to them in the hall (probably the Council
Chamber in the White Tower) when they were assembled. He was apparelled
in his robes, the crown on his head, the sceptre in his hand. Standing
there alone, he then spoke: ‘I have been King of England, Duke of
Aquitaine, and Lord of Ireland about twenty-two years, which royalty,
lordship, sceptre, and crown I resign here to my cousin, Henry of
Lancaster, and I entreat him here in presence of you all to accept this
sceptre.’ He then tendered the sceptre to the Duke, who, on receiving
it, handed it to the Archbishop of Canterbury. King Richard next raised
the crown from off his head, and said: ‘Henry, fair cousin, and Duke
of Lancaster, I present and give to you this crown and all the rights
dependent on it,’ and the Duke, accepting it, delivered it also to the
Archbishop.” (From “The Story of the House of Lancaster,” by G. H.
Hartwright.)
After the final tragedy in Richard’s dungeon at Pomfret Castle, his
corpse rested one night in the Tower, with the still beautiful face
exposed, until the following day, when it was placed in St Paul’s.
Shakespeare has dealt leniently with the character of Richard of
Bordeaux. Doubtless the tragedy of his life made Shakespeare kinder to
his memory than was warranted by sober history, for Richard was one
of the worst of our English kings. The son of the heroic Black Prince
and the grandson of Edward the Third, with the blood and traditions
of Richard the Lion-Hearted, Richard inherited none of their great
qualities, and was content to fritter away his life in petty acts of
tyranny and oppression. England had been used to victory during the
great reigns of the first and third Edwards; under Richard, the only
success of the national arms was the defeat of the French fleet by
Arundel, and Arundel was put to death by Richard. Proud, passionate,
and tyrannical, the Black Prince’s son threw away the love, respect,
and loyalty which, for the sake of his father’s memory, he had
possessed to the fullest upon his ascent to the throne. And although
he was only thirty-four at the time of his death, he had lived long
enough to see the heartfelt affection of his people turn to dislike
and contempt. But the glamour of his personal beauty, combined with
the tragedy of his fall, inspired the greatest of our dramatists to
perpetuate his memory in a manner which will ever touch the human heart.
“Sunt lacrymae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt.”
CHAPTER V
THE LANCASTRIANS
Neither of the succeeding reigns—those of Henry IV. and of Henry
V.—have left many traces upon the history of the Tower, although both
these sovereigns occasionally lived within its walls, but in those days
the fortress had become less of a Palace and more of a State prison.
There was a picturesque ceremony, however, in the Tower on the eve of
Henry the Fourth’s coronation, when forty-six new knights of the Order
of the Bath “watched their arms” throughout the night of the 11th of
October (1399) in the Chapel of the White Tower.
With Henry of Lancaster the list of State prisoners recommences;
Llewellyn, a relation of Owen Glendower’s, coming there in 1402,
being followed three years later by Owen’s son Griffin, and other
leaders of the Welsh, taken at the battle of Usk. Nor did Henry fail
to visit his wrath upon offending priests, for in 1403 the Abbot of
the Friar Preachers at Winchelsea, was interned in the Tower, with
other ecclesiastics, charged with intending to incite the people to
rebellion, and with having written “railing rimes, malicious meters,
and tauntyng verses against the King”; their literary ability brought
these unlucky priests to the gallows at Tyburn. But the most important
prisoner of State whom we find in the Tower in Henry’s reign, was
Prince James of Scotland, the son and heir of Robert III. The young
Prince, who was only nine years of age, was being sent to France
to be educated, and, encountering heavy weather, was driven ashore
at Flamborough Head in Yorkshire. Notwithstanding the fact that
England and Scotland were then at peace, Henry seized the prince and
his attendants, contrary to all the laws of justice and hospitality,
imprisoning him within the Tower, together with the Earl of Orkney,
who was accompanying him as his guardian. When the news reached King
Robert of Scotland in 1406, he is said to have died of a broken heart,
the young prince becoming _de facto_ king of that country, but Henry
still kept him a prisoner. After remaining for two years at the Tower,
he was taken to Nottingham Castle, and it was not until the accession
of Henry the Sixth that he regained his liberty, having been a prisoner
for eighteen years.
Henry V. became King in 1412, and in the “Chronicles of London” is an
account of the goodly array which accompanied the new monarch to the
Tower, “and ayens hym was a gret rydynge of men of London, and brought
hym to the Tower upon the Fryday, and on the morowe he rood through
Chepe with a gret rought of lordes and knyghtes, the whiche he hadde
newe made in the Towre on the night before, unto Westᵐʳ.”
An infamous law had been enacted against the followers of Wyckliffe
in 1401, and during the hero of Agincourt’s reign the Tower was full
of these persecuted people; indeed, the one great blot upon Henry’s
memory is the barbarous treatment of the Lollards by the Church. Of
these reformers Sir John Oldcastle (afterwards he bore the title of
Lord Cobham in right of his wife) was the most distinguished. He had
been one of the foremost warriors in the French campaigns, and appears
in every way to have been an honour to his class. By the provisions
of the iniquitous clerical decree of 1401, the Bishops were allowed a
free hand in persecuting, to the death, all those who were suspected
of following Wyckliffe’s teaching; all preachers of his doctrine were
liable to be arrested, as well as owners of heretical books. If the
doctrines were not abjured, the Church had the power of handing the
culprits over to the officers of the Crown, and these, according to
the legal enactment of this religious persecution, the “first legal
enactment,” as J. R. Green calls it in his history, “of religious
bloodshed which defiled our Statute Book,” could burn the offender
alive, “on a high place before the people.”
The first martyr to suffer for the purer faith in England was a priest
of Lynn, William Sautre. Oldcastle was the head of these reformers,
and although a personal friend of the young King, the Bishops allowed
no ties of friendship, no valiant services for his country, to weigh
in his favour, or to stand between them and their prey. They demanded
the body of Oldcastle, alive or dead, and Henry reluctantly, but
weakly, gave up his old friend into the power of the bloodthirsty
prelates, Oldcastle being taken by force in his castle of Cowling. He
was brought to the Tower but succeeded in making his escape, whereupon
the Lollards, encouraged by once more having their chief at their head,
rose in arms. They, however, were speedily defeated and a wholesale
butchery ensued, thirty-nine of the more prominent amongst them being
burnt or hanged. Oldcastle was brought a second time to the Tower
and did not again escape from the clutches of the priests; they had
their way, and burnt the gallant old knight, hung in chains over a
slow fire, on Christmas Day 1417, at Smithfield, in front of his own
house. “Oldcastle died a martyr,” as Shakespeare pithily says. His
life and death inspired Tennyson to write a noble poem on this heroic
warrior-martyr.
It is almost as if Henry’s early death, at the age of thirty-four, came
as a judgment for allowing Oldcastle to fall into the hands of the
priests; and the memory of the subduer of France will ever bear the
dark shadow of Oldcastle’s cruel murder. Although it would not be fair
to the English clergy to compare them with their Spanish and French
brothers in the matter of cruelty, they were not far behind them in
their remorseless persecution of all who dared to differ from their
doctrines. Until the rule of the priest was forcibly extinguished by
Elizabeth’s adoption of the Reformed faith, executions and tortures
which would have disgraced savages, formed part of the English Code.
But in spite of the priests, the torture chamber, and the stake, the
spirit of Wyckliffe and his followers was not quenched in the country;
it always existed most strongly in the country towns, and when the
persecution of Queen Mary and Bishop Bonner outraged the great bulk of
the nation, the fires of reform, which had only smouldered, but which
had never been extinguished, burst out into flame, and the hateful
reign of the persecuting priest was finally and for ever overthrown.
The campaigns in France, like those in Wales and Scotland, added to the
distinguished prisoners of State placed within the durance of the Tower
walls by the fortune of war. Of the French came the Dukes of Bourbon
and Orleans, with the Counts of Eu, Vendome, the Marshal Boucicourt,
and many other knights after the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. I have
made mention elsewhere of the famous imprisonment of the Duke of
Orleans in the White Tower. He was released in 1440, on the payment of
a ransom of fifty thousand pounds, a sum approximately ten times that
of our present money value; but many of these French captives died in
the Tower, among them the Duke of Bourbon and the Marshal Boucicourt.
After the death of Henry V., and during the Protectorate which governed
the country during the minority of Henry VI., the young King’s
guardian, the Bishop of Winchester, taking advantage of the absence
of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the actual Protector, reinforced the
garrison of the Tower, and on the Duke’s return from France refused to
admit him to the fortress, with the result that the aid of Parliament
had to be invoked to arrange matters between the Duke and the Bishop.
Throughout Henry’s troubled reign the Tower was full of prisoners, some
of them French and Scotch taken in the wars, and amongst others Owen
Tudor, the father of the future Henry VII. The Duchess of Gloucester,
an aunt by marriage of the King, was also imprisoned in the fortress
upon the charge of witchcraft and sorcery, a circumstance of which
Shakespeare made signal use in his tragedy dealing with the unfortunate
Henry’s life.
In 1450, the Tower was again the scene of civil strife. In that year
Jack Cade’s insurrection took place, and with that insurrection the
name of one of England’s greatest nobles was connected, William de la
Pole, Duke of Suffolk. The history of his family was distinguished. His
father had fallen at the siege of Harfleur; his eldest brother had died
on the field of Agincourt, and two others had perished in the Battle of
Jargeau. The Duke himself had willingly given himself up as a hostage
for his youngest brother, who had been taken prisoner in France,
where, however, he had died before his ransom could be collected.
Suffolk had been a Knight of the Garter for thirty years at the time
of the Cade rebellion, and throughout those three decades had served
the King faithfully, both at home and abroad, as he told his accusers
when he was brought before the Parliament at Westminster on a charge
of high treason. But he had many enemies, and these vamped up the
charge of treason against him on the ridiculous ground of his having
laid up provisions and military stores at Wallingford Castle, with
the intention of sending them to the French. Upon this absurd charge
Suffolk was committed to the Tower, but as nothing could be proved
against him he was shortly afterwards released, but sentenced to be
banished the country. For some unexplained reason Suffolk was intensely
disliked by the people, and all the misfortunes of the time—the English
defeats in France and the unpopularity of the government of the
day—were laid to his account by the populace. His end was pitiful. He
had taken ship at Dover to cross to Calais, but was seized on board by
the captain of another vessel named _Nicholas of the Tower_. On hearing
the name of the ship Suffolk is said to have lost all his fortitude,
for it had been prophesied to him that if he “could avoid water and
escape the danger of the Tower, he would be safe, and so his heart
failed him.” The old prophecy came true, for shortly after his capture
his head was hacked off by several strokes of a rusty sword, and his
body was cast upon the beach at Dover. Thus miserably perished William
de la Pole, Duke, Marquis, and Earl of Suffolk, Duke of Dreux, Earl of
Pembroke, Baron de la Pole of Wingfield, and other titles and dignities.
[Illustration: _St. Thomas’s Tower, from the Wharf._]
Jack Cade’s insurrection was the beginning of a long series of civil
strifes which at last broke out into the civil war that raged from 1450
to 1471; this was the War of the Roses, so called from the badges worn
by the opposing factions, the Lancastrians wearing the Red, and the
Yorkists the White Rose.
At the outset of the war, London was at the mercy of a riotous mob,
headed by the redoubtable Cade, who had assumed the name of Mortimer.
The charge of the Tower had been confided to Lord Scales and Sir Mathew
Gough. Lord Saye, who was at this time Lord High Treasurer, was a
prisoner in the Tower, an Order in Council having placed him there, as
a means, it was hoped, of pacifying the rioters, who, however, attacked
the fortress from the Southwark side of the river, aided by Cade
and his followers, but retreated at nightfall across London Bridge.
Scales, with the help of the Lord Mayor, made a sortie from the Tower,
barricading the bridge, whilst Gough commanded the rebels’ position
across the water from the battlements of the fortress. At this juncture
the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had taken shelter within the Tower,
called for a general amnesty, and this being granted, the rebellion
died out of its own accord, Cade being captured and killed by the
Sheriff of Kent, and his followers dispersed to their homes. Meanwhile
the King had sunk into a state of semi-idiocy, his mind, never a strong
one, having doubtless been affected by the unceasing trouble around
him; besides, he was the grandson of Charles VI. of France, so that
his mental condition is easily accounted for. The Duke of Somerset,
grandson of John of Gaunt, now took the foremost place in the Council,
but after a short period of seclusion, Henry was again able to act as
King.
CHAPTER VI
THE WARS OF THE ROSES
There is much that is tedious in the accounts of the Wars of the Roses.
One battle is gained by the Lancastrians, and the next by the Yorkists,
this continuing for years in a see-saw fashion. At first the war was
not marked by much bloodthirstiness, but after the Battle of Towton no
quarter was given on either side, the prisoners being murdered in cold
blood, the most conspicuous amongst them being beheaded. This summary
method of disposing of the captives accounts for the small number of
State prisoners in the Tower during the twenty years of internecine
warfare which almost annihilated the peerage. Here are a few of the
principal battles fought throughout the length and breadth of England
between 1455 and 1461. In 1458 was fought the battle of St Albans, in
which Somerset was defeated and slain. In 1459 Lord Audley was slain by
Salisbury, who gained the Battle of Blore Heath; in 1460 the Yorkists,
led by Salisbury, Warwick, and March (afterwards Edward IV.), defeated
the King at Northampton and took him prisoner; in the same year
Margaret’s army routed the Yorkists at Wakefield, where the Duke of
York was killed, and Salisbury was beheaded at Pontefract. In 1461 the
Lancastrians were defeated at the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross by Edward,
the son of the Duke of York, and the future King; and in that same year
the decisive Battle of Towton was also gained by him, the Lancastrian
cause receiving its death-blow. Three months later, Edward was crowned
by the style of Edward the Fourth, and his brothers George and Richard
were made Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester respectively, whilst poor,
harmless, half-witted Henry was proclaimed a traitor.
When Henry was told that he had no right to the style of King, he
replied: “My father was King; his father also was King; I myself have
worn the crown forty years from my cradle; you have all sworn fealty to
me as your sovereign, and your fathers have done the like to mine. How,
then, can my right be disputed?” “By force,” they might have replied.
Queen Margaret, an infinitely more masculine being than the poor weak
King, her husband, would not give up the struggle, and even after the
Battle of Towton had destroyed the cause of her house, she raised
its standard in the North. Warwick crushed her army, and after the
Battle of Hexham in 1471, Margaret was forced to flee with her son.
She is traditionally said to have owed her escape to a robber, on
whose generosity she had thrown herself. Henry, meanwhile, was led a
prisoner to the Tower, being treated, by Warwick’s orders, with every
indignity. His gilt spurs were struck off when he reached the fortress,
and his legs tied to the stirrups of his horse, which was led round a
tree in front of the Tower which then served the purpose of a pillory.
Once inside his prison the fallen monarch appears to have been treated
with some kind of humanity, being allowed to see some of his friends,
the use of his breviary, and the company of a favourite bird and dog.
His prison was in the Wakefield Tower, and in one of the chambers—now
containing the Regalia—was the oratory in which tradition has it that
he was murdered by Gloucester.
Later on Queen Margaret and her daughter-in-law, Lady Anne Neville,
were also imprisoned in the Tower, but the Queen never saw her husband
again, for although they were in the same building they were rigorously
kept apart. After an imprisonment of five years, part of which was
passed at Windsor, Margaret was allowed to return to her own country,
on the payment of a heavy ransom, where she died in 1482.
All through the Wars of the Roses the Tower had been the scene of some
important events. When in 1460 the Earls of Warwick, Salisbury, and
March arrived in London from Calais, Lord Scales was in command of
the Tower. Scales was Lancastrian in his politics and sympathies, and
after vainly attempting to keep the three Earls from entering the city,
blockaded himself within the fortress; and it was only when the news of
King Henry’s having been taken prisoner came to his knowledge that Lord
Scales surrendered his trust into the hands of the Yorkists.
The new King’s coronation took place on St Peter’s Day, the 29th June
1461. Edward arrived from the Palace of Sheen at Richmond three days
before the ceremony, and took up his quarters in the Tower, being
received at the gates of the fortress with much pomp and state. On
the eve of his coronation he gave a great feast to his adherents,
knighting thirty-two of them. According to the chronicler Fabyan’s
account, the new Knights of the Bath “were arrayed in blue gowns with
hoods and tokens of white silk upon their shoulders,” and they rode
before the King in the procession which took its course from the
Tower to the Abbey at Westminster. Edward soon showed his vindictive
nature by imprisoning, within the Tower, as soon as he felt himself
secure upon the throne, Henry Percy, the son and heir of the Duke of
Northumberland. Besides Percy, Aubrey de Vere, Earl of Oxford, with his
heir, were also placed in the Tower in 1462, with some other nobles and
knights who had fought upon the Lancastrian side; of these Sir Thomas
Tudenham and Sir William Tyrell were beheaded on Tower Hill.
King Edward’s wife, Elizabeth Woodville, passed a few days in the
Tower previous to her coronation in 1465, and both the King and Queen
frequently lived in the Palace of the fortress, the Queen passing the
time there when Edward was occupied in putting down an insurrection in
the North.
When the whirligig of events and Warwick, the “King-maker,” brought
back King Henry for a brief space of power, Elizabeth Woodville fled
with her children to the Sanctuary at Westminster. The “King-maker” was
defeated at the Battle of Barnet in 1471, and King Henry was brought
back to the Tower once more a prisoner.
It was on Easter Sunday, in the year 1471, that Henry VI. re-entered
the fortress for the last time. The fatal day of Tewkesbury was his
doom, and Queen Margaret must be regarded as the cause of her luckless
husband’s death. Could they have changed their _rôles_ in life, Henry
would probably have died on the throne and have left sons to succeed
him. At Tewkesbury, Edward, who had left the Tower in charge of
Earl Rivers, his Queen’s brother, again met Queen Margaret in arms,
defeating her and taking her son prisoner. The death of this her only
son, slain, it is said in cold blood, by the Duke of Gloucester, for
whom she had waged unceasing war against the Yorkists, destroyed her
last hopes. And on the 22nd of May 1471, the day after the triumphant
Edward’s return to London, her husband lay dead in the Wakefield Tower.
The manner of his death will never be known, but the crime has always
been charged to Gloucester. A great authority (S. R. Gardiner) thus
writes of the death of the sixth Henry: “There can be no reasonable
doubt that he was murdered, and that, too, by Edward’s directions.” Of
the earliest histories relating to Henry’s death there are many and
contradictory accounts. According to Polydore Vergil, Hall, Fabyan,
Grafton, Holinshed, the Warkworth Chronicle, de Commines, and Sandford,
King Henry was murdered by Gloucester himself. Hume alone avers that
“he (the King) expired in confinement, but whether he died a natural
death or a violent one is uncertain.”
Thus at length the much-tried and weary King Henry of Windsor was at
rest after so many sore buffetings, defeats, perils, and misfortunes;
his life’s pilgrimage was at an end.
“Good night, sweet Prince;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”
Henry’s corpse was taken, according to Holinshed, “unreverently from
the Tower” to St Paul’s, where it remained one night, and was next day
buried at Chertsey, “without priest or clerke, torch or taper, singing
or saying.” In later times Henry’s remains were re-interred at St
George’s, Windsor. On the pavement to the right of the choir in that
burying-place of our English kings, a flagstone bears written upon it
in large letters, “King Henry VI.”
We have now arrived at the most dramatic point in the history of the
Tower. After Henry’s death a very host of bloody deeds took place
within the walls of the gloomy old fortress; murder succeeds to murder;
and the blood of princes seems to ooze from beneath its prison doors.
The next royal victim was the King’s brother, George, Duke of Clarence,
“false, perjured Clarence.” For him, however, one feels little pity,
since he well merited to be called both “false” and “perjured.” The
old tale of his having been drowned in a barrel of Malmsey wine has
been believed these four hundred years, and, as it cannot be disproved,
it will serve as well as any other. It is the mystery which surrounds
these murders committed in the dark towers of the old fortress, which
adds not a little to their horror. An execution in broad daylight
seems, compared with the unknown manner in which a prisoner was killed
in some hole and corner of a dungeon, quite a cheerful event. One
shudders at the thought of the helpless victim struggling in his death
agony in the arms of his murderers.
Clarence’s death took place on the 18th of February 1478, but even the
place of his imprisonment is unknown. By some he is said to have been
confined in the Bowyer Tower; but in Mrs Hutchinson’s Memoir she has
left on record that the Bloody Tower was the scene of his murder, and
as she was the daughter of Sir Allen Apsley, the Lieutenant of the
Tower in Charles the First’s reign, her authority on the matter is a
good one. The only contemporary, or nearly contemporary writers, in
favour of the story of the Malmsey butt are Fabyan and de Commines. The
former, a London citizen, writes: “The Duke of Clarence was secretly
put to death and drowned in a butt of Malmsay within the Tower.” Philip
de Commines considered this to be a true version of the manner of the
Duke’s death. It has been suggested that Clarence was poisoned.
Edward IV., as has been said, lived a great deal in the Tower; he also
increased its fortifications, and, according to Stowe’s “Survey of
London,” built “a brick wall around a piece of ground on Tower Hill
west from the Lion’s Tower, now called the Bulwark.” This fortification
has long ago disappeared. Edward likewise, according to the same
excellent authority, renewed the moat and made considerable general
repairs to the buildings. He was the last of our Kings who added
materially to the Tower.
With the appointment of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to the office of
Protector, after the death of Edward the Fourth, on 9th April 1483,
the Tower plays a conspicuous part in the events which the next few
years produced. Edward had left two sons; the elder, now Edward V.,
being twelve years old, his brother, Richard, Duke of York, being
a year or two younger. Gloucester had the reputation of being an
excellent soldier, and had not, as was the case with his brother
Clarence, been disloyal to the late King. Whether he was hump-backed
or whether, as some writers aver, he was scarcely less handsome than
his handsome brothers, or whether one of his shoulders was higher
than the other, is not of much consequence; for whether he was crooked
or not in person, Gloucester was certainly crooked in character. If
any faith can be put in the lineaments and expression of the human
face, that of Richard, to judge by the portraits that have come down
to us, was most evil. His face can be studied in the National Portrait
Gallery. The close-set cruel eyes, the heavy nose, the thin white
lips, the protruding jaw, are not inviting; but the expression is even
more remarkable—a mixture of cunning, boundless determination, and
remorseless cruelty. Gloucester possessed, writes Mr Gardiner, “a rare
power of winning popular sympathy, and was most liked in Yorkshire,
where he was best known. He had, however, grown up in a cruel and
unscrupulous age, and had no more hesitation in clearing his way by
slaughter than Edward IV. or Margaret of Anjou.” Mr Gardiner is almost
apologetic for Richard’s memory; but there is a great difference, it
seems to me, between being revengeful and even merciless in war, and in
murdering either with one’s own hands or by those of hired assassins,
one’s brother and one’s nephews. It was by shedding their blood that
Richard was enabled to mount the throne which he usurped: of that there
is no room for any reasonable doubt. That Shakespeare, in giving the
worst character of any in his great series of historical plays to this
monarch, is responsible for the popular opinion of King Richard is also
indisputable, for we English take our history from these plays, and
“crook-back’d” Richard will ever remain the deepest-dyed villain that
ever wore the English crown. The great Duke of Marlborough confessed
that all that he knew of English history had been learnt through
Shakespeare’s plays, and with all truth the majority of his countrymen
might say the same. It has also been said, “The youth of England take
their theology from Milton and their history from Shakespeare”; and
surely they might go further and fare worse.
[Illustration: _View in the Inner Ward_]
It should, however, in fairness both to Richard and to Shakespeare,
be remembered that the character of the Royal villain in the play
was drawn by one who wrote in the days of the Tudors, and at a time
when the house of Plantagenet was not in good odour with the reigning
Sovereign. Richard appears in three of the dramas—in the second and
third parts of _King Henry VI._, and as the hero or chief villain in
that which bears his name when King: the important part played by the
Tower in the usurper’s reign is strongly marked by the poet placing
four scenes of _Richard III._ within or near the fortress—twice as many
as occur in any other of his historical dramas.
On the 13th of June 1483, Richard had the Archbishop of York, and
Morton, the Bishop of Ely, together with Lord Stanley and Lord
Hastings, arrested during a Council which he had summoned in the White
Tower. Without any pretence of a trial, Hastings was led out of the
Council Room by the soldiery whom Richard had concealed behind the
arras, and, according to Fabyan, his head was struck off on a piece of
timber which lay near St Peter’s Chapel. “I will not dine till they
have brought me your head,” said Richard to Hastings, as he was being
led away. The three other prisoners were placed in separate dungeons,
the Archbishop and Stanley being released in the following July.
Another victim was required by Richard. Lord Rivers, the late King’s
brother-in-law, like Hastings, had been a check upon Richard’s designs
for seizing the crown, therefore Rivers was executed, as was also Sir
Richard Grey. There only now remained Gloucester’s two nephews between
him and the throne. At this particular time they were living with their
mother, the Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, at Westminster, and it was only
by the strongest persuasion, followed by threats, that the unfortunate
Queen was induced to allow their uncle to take charge of them.
Gloucester, having first placed the Princes in the Tower, declared them
to be bastards, and as Clarence’s children were prevented by their
father’s attainder from coming into the succession, Richard openly
declared himself the rightful King. He even went to the length of
getting a preacher named Shaw to declare to the people that he alone
was the legitimate son of the Duke of York, and that his brothers, the
late King and the Duke of Clarence, were not his father’s sons. Perhaps
this attack on his mother’s good name was the most odious of the many
infamous acts of which Richard III. was guilty. On the 25th of June
1483 Parliament declared Gloucester the lawful heir to the throne,
and on the 6th of July he was crowned as Richard III. But during that
summer rumours as to the death of the sons of Edward IV. began to be
spread abroad, and the King’s name was linked with the report that they
had met a violent death in the Bloody Tower.
In a wardrobe account for the year 1483 there is a long list of
articles of dress delivered at the Tower for Richard’s coronation.
Among the dresses mentioned, we find that Richard had ordered the
following elaborate costume:—“To our said Soverayne Lord the King for
his apparail the vigil afore the day of his most noble coronation,
for to ride from his Towre of London, unto his Palays of Westminster,
a doublet made of two yerds and a quarter and a half of blue clothe
of gold, wrought with netts and pyne-apples, with a stomacher of the
same, lined oon ell of Holland clothe, and oon ell of busk, instede of
green cloth of gold, and a longe gown for to ryde in, made of eight
yerds of p’pul velvet, furred with eight tymbres and a half and 13
bakks of ermyn, and 4 tymbres, 17 coombes of ermyns powdered with 3300
of powderings made of boggy shanks, and a payre of short spurs with
gilt.” To describe these queerly named habits of “apparail,” such as
“tymbres,” and “bakks of ermyn,” and “boggy shanks,” would require the
knowledge of an antiquarian deeply versed in the costume of the Middle
Ages, but this account of Richard III.’s coronation outfit proves that
he, at any rate, spared no expense in the decoration of his person,
whether that was deformed or not.
His coronation was one of the most splendid on record up to that
period in the annals of the English sovereignty. From the Tower to the
Abbey he was followed by a cortege in which rode three dukes, nine
earls, and twenty-two barons, besides a host of knights and esquires,
all gorgeously arrayed. After the coronation festivities were ended,
Richard went to Warwick, leaving the Tower of London in the charge of
Sir Robert Brackenbury. Richard is supposed to have sent Sir Robert a
message, which he received whilst attending mass in the chapel of the
White Tower, asking him whether he would be willing to rid the King
of the Princes. Brackenbury indignantly refused to have anything to
do with such villainy, whereupon Richard relieved him of his charge
of the Tower, and handed it over to James Tyrell, who hired the three
murderers—Dighton, Green, and Forrest—these being admitted into the
prison of the Princes in the Bloody Tower at night, when the double
murder was accomplished. In describing the Bloody Tower, I have given
an account of the place where this deed was done and the passage
through which the murderers entered the prison.
The murderers were well rewarded—Richard Tyrell being appointed
Governor of the town of Guisnes near Calais, also being given lands in
Wales; Green obtained the Receivership of the Isle of Wight; Forrest’s
widow (so probably Forrest died soon after the crime) received a
pension. Further, in order to protect all those who were concerned in
the affair, Richard issued under his royal hand and seal a general
pardon for all their former offences.
The innocent blood was, however, avenged in the following reign. In
1502 Tyrell was beheaded, not on the charge of murdering the Princes,
but for aiding John de la Pole to make his escape; this John de la
Pole was Richard’s nephew, upon whom he had settled the succession
after his own death. Tyrell, it is said, confessed to the murder of
the little Princes shortly before his execution. Dighton, who was
hanged at Calais shortly after Tyrell’s execution, also confessed his
share in the murder, and his knowledge of the bodies of the children
having first been buried by a priest near the Wakefield Tower, and
subsequently in some other place unknown to him.
[Illustration: _The Wakefield Tower, time of George III._]
The earliest historian who wrote an account of this double murder was
the French chronicler, Philip de Commines, a contemporary of Richard
III. In his Chronicles occurs this passage relating to the King: “il
fist mourir ses deux nepheux, et se fist roy appellé Richard III.” Two
contemporary English authors have also written to the same effect. The
first of these is a Londoner named Arnold, who, in his “Chronicles of
the Customs of London,” states that in the year 1484 “the two sons of
Kynge Edward were put to silence.” The second is Fabyan, from whom I
have already quoted in these pages. He writes, “Kynge Edward V., and
his broder the Duke of York, were put under suer Kepynge within the
Tower, in such wyse that they never came abrode after,” and he adds,
“common fame went that Kynge Richard hadde within the Tower put unto
secrete deth the two sons of his broder Edward the IV.” Sir Thomas
More, in a history which he did not write himself, for it was written
by Morton, the Bishop of Ely, but which More published, also asserts as
a fact that the Princes were murdered. Polydore Vergil, Hall, Stowe,
and Bacon have all written to similar effect.
Horace Walpole amused himself—much in the same way as did Archbishop
Whateley in later days—by writing a clever skit entitled, “Historic
Doubts of the Life and Reign of King Richard III.,” in which that
amusing and prolific writer of gossiping letters casts doubt on the
very existence of such a being as King Richard III., which, if proven,
would do away with the existence of the little Princes. But I imagine
that “Horry” had as firm a belief that the Princes were destroyed by
their uncle in the Tower, as the Archbishop had in the existence of
Napoleon.
The tragic death of the sons of the fourth Edward has been a favourite
subject both with poets and painters. Two of Paul de la Roche’s finest
paintings represent the brothers in the Tower, and one of Millais’ most
successful and characteristic works is a group of the two boy princes
standing together on the prison stairs, and seeming to listen for their
murderers’ approach. And who does not recall, when thinking of that
tragedy, the matchless pathos of the lines describing the scene as
spoken by Tyrell in _Richard III._:
“The tyrannous and bloody act is done:
The most arch deed of piteous massacre,
That ever yet this land was guilty of.
Dighton and Forrest, whom I did suborn
To do this piece of ruthless butchery,
Albeit they were flesh’d villains, bloody dogs,
Melting with tenderness and mild compassion,
Wept like two children, in their death’s sad story.
O thus, quoth Dighton, lay the gentle babes,—
Thus, thus, quoth Forrest, girdling one another
Within their alabaster innocent arms:—
Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,
Which, in their summer beauty, kissed each other.
A book of prayers on their pillow lay;
Which once, quoth Forrest, almost changed my mind;
But, O, the devil—then the villain stopp’d;
When Dighton thus told on,—We smothered
The most replenished and sweet work of nature,
That from the prime creation, e’er she fram’d.
Hence both are gone with conscience and remorse,
That could not speak; and so I left them both,
To bear the tidings to the bloody King.”
A curious event occurred to one of the State prisoners in this reign,
Sir Henry Wyatt—the father of the poet, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and
grandfather of the Thomas Wyatt who lost his life for the part he
played in the rebellion against Mary in favour of Jane Grey—was a
Lancastrian in politics, and had been imprisoned in the fortress on
more than one occasion; “once,” the Wyatt papers say, “in a cold and
narrow tower, where he had neither bed to lie on, nor meat for his
mouth. He had starved then, had not God, who sent a crow to feed his
prophet, sent this and his country’s martyr a cat both to feed and
warm him. It was his own relation unto them from whom I had it. A cat
came one day down into the dungeon unto him, and, as it were, offered
herself unto him. He was glad of her, laid her on his bosom to warm
him, and, by making much of her, won her love. After this she would
come every day unto him divers times, and when she could get one, bring
him a pigeon. He complained to his keeper of his cold and short fare.
The answer was, ‘he durst not better it.’ ‘But,’ said Sir Henry, ‘if
I can provide any, will you promise to dress it for me?’ ‘I may well
enough,’ said the keeper, ‘you are safe for that matter’; and being
urged again, promised him, and kept his promise; dressed for him, from
time to time, such pigeons as his acater the cat provided for him. Sir
Henry Wyatt, in his prosperity, for this would ever make much of cats,
as other men will of their spaniels or their hounds; and perhaps you
shall not find his picture any where, but like Sir Christopher Hatton,
with his dog, with a cat beside him.”
[Illustration: _Prison beneath the Wakefield Tower._]
Sir Henry had the faithful cat portrayed with a pigeon in its claws
offering it through the grated bars of his prison window. There is a
similar story of a cat befriending Lord Southampton when a prisoner in
the Tower in the reign of Elizabeth.
CHAPTER VII
THE TUDOR KINGS—HENRY VII.
When Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, had become Henry VII., after the
battle of Bosworth, a relative calm settled over the Tower, as it did
over the country generally. Not that State and ordinary prisoners
ceased to enter the Tower gates, the former to die on the adjacent
Hill, the latter at Tyburn, and some to be released. But we hear no
more of midnight murders within its prisons, and with the baleful
figure of Richard Plantagenet, such crimes ceased to cast their shadows
on the scene of his many misdeeds.
The first notable State prisoner sent to the Tower by Henry VII. was
Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, son of the murdered Duke of
Clarence. During the reign of Richard III., Warwick had been kept under
surveillance at Sheriff Hutton Castle, in Yorkshire; but Henry had him
brought to the Tower for greater security. There was some reason, from
Henry’s point of view, for this care; for Warwick, being descended from
Clarence, the elder brother of John of Gaunt, had a better and more
rightful claim to the throne than the first of the Tudors. So long as
Warwick lived, Henry felt his seat insecure; and he seized the earliest
opportunity for destroying him.
In 1487, Lambert Simnel, the son of an Oxford tradesman, had been
declared by the Earl of Kildare and some malcontent English residents
in Ireland, to be the Earl of Warwick. A conspiracy was at once formed
to overthrow Henry, and a small army, partly recruited in Germany,
and partly formed by Irish troops furnished by Kildare, crossed St
George’s Channel. At Stoke, near Nottingham, this force encountered the
Royal troops, and was completely defeated. Simnel was taken prisoner,
and although the King publicly exposed his deception by showing the
Earl of Warwick to the people, the Pretender was considered too
insignificant for execution, and was relegated to the position of a
scullion in Henry’s kitchen.
[Illustration: _All Hallows, Barking_]
Warwick could in no way be considered affected by this rising, although
his mere existence gave it a _raison d’etre_; but two years later, when
Ferdinand of Spain refused to allow his daughter, Catherine of Arragon,
to marry Henry’s eldest son Arthur, on the ground that the Earl of
Warwick had a prior right to the crown, the King ordered a trumped-up
charge to be drawn up against the unfortunate Earl, of an attempt to
escape from the Tower; and on this charge he was tried, condemned, and
executed on the 28th of November 1499. With him ended the line male of
the House of Plantagenet.
The records of the Tower are not entirely of the sombre colour of
imprisonments and executions. In the month of November 1487, we read
of the pageant that took place at the coronation of Henry’s Queen,
Elizabeth, the daughter of Edward IV.; their marriage united the rival
factions of the White and Red Roses. A few days before her coronation
at Westminster, Elizabeth had been brought to the Tower from the palace
at Greenwich by water, in barges “freshely furnyshed with baners and
stremers of silk, richly besene”; one barge was “a great red dragon,
spowting Flamys of Fyer into the Temmys.” She landed at the Tower
Wharf, where the “Kyngs Hyghnesse welcomede her in suche maner and
form as was to al th’ Æstats, and other ther being present, a very
good sight, and right joyous and comfortable to beholde,” as writes a
chronicler of the scene. The following day the Queen, being “rially
apparelde” in cloth of gold and damask, and a mantle of ermine, “her
faire yelow hair hanging downe playne byhynd her Bak, with a Calle of
Pypes over it, and a Serkelet of Golde richely garnyshed with precious
Stonys upon her Hede,” was borne in a litter which was “coverde with
Cloth of Golde of damaske, and large Pelowes of downe covered with lik
Clothe of Golde,” to the Abbey, through streets hung with tapestry and
lined with “the crafts in their Lyveryes,” through lines of children,
“some arrayde like Angells and others lyke Vyrgyns, to singe sweete
Songes as her Grace passed by” (Leland).
The most serious danger to the stability of Henry’s monarchy was the
insurrection brought about by the impostor Perkin Warbeck, a man who,
by some writers, is said to have been a Florentine Jew, whilst by
others he is declared to have been a Fleming. Warbeck gave out that he
was Richard, Duke of York, the younger son of Edward IV., and that he
had not been murdered in the Tower, but had escaped. In 1491 he landed
at Cork with some followers. In Ireland he was supported by Desmond,
and was also assisted from Flanders by Margaret of Burgundy. Until the
year 1495, when he made a descent upon England, little was heard of
him. By this time Henry, owing to his avarice and tyrannical form of
government, had made himself extremely unpopular, and consequently his
enemies gladly availed themselves of such an opportunity, as Warbeck’s
claim presented, of injuring the King. In an evil moment for himself,
Sir William Stanley, who had so powerfully aided Henry in his victory
at Bosworth, and who had placed the crown, taken from Richard the
Third’s dead body, upon his head, and whom Henry had made his Lord
Chamberlain, declared that, “if he certainly knew” Perkin Warbeck to
be the son of Edward IV., he would never draw his sword or bear arms
against him. He was impeached upon a charge of uttering these words,
and tried by a Council summoned by the King, who was then in residence
in the Tower. He was found guilty, and executed on Tower Hill.
Meanwhile Warbeck was received in Scotland as the rightful heir to
the English crown, and James III. believed his story so firmly, and
favoured him to such an extent, that he ordered his relative, Catherine
Gordon, Lord Huntley’s daughter, to marry the Pretender. Warbeck now
styled himself Richard IV., and advanced into England with an army; but
at the first reverse, he fled in panic, taking refuge in Ireland. In
1497 he made a second descent upon England; but after suffering defeat,
and again taking to flight, he was finally made prisoner at the Abbey
of Beaulieu in the New Forest, whence he was sent to the Tower, and
hanged on the 23rd November 1499.
More festivities took place in the Tower in the year 1501, when the
nuptials of Henry’s eldest son, Prince Arthur, with Catherine of
Arragon were solemnised there, the execution of the Earl of Warwick
having at length enabled the Spanish King to give his consent to the
match. The bride and bridegroom were little more than children, Arthur
being fourteen, and Catherine a year older; but the marriage—that was
to be so fruitful of trouble and death in the next reign—was solemnised
with the greatest splendour, there being daily banquets within the
walls, and daily tournaments without. In the next year, Sir James
Tyrell met with his deserts for the part he had played in the murder
of the little princes in the Tower, being beheaded on Tower Hill; he
should have been hanged, but pleading his privilege of knighthood, he
was allowed death by the axe. In 1503 Henry’s Queen gave birth to a
daughter in the Tower, but soon afterwards mother and child followed
each other to the grave; and when six years had passed, Henry VII.
himself was taken to that stately mausoleum which he had created in the
Abbey of Westminster, and Henry VIII. reigned in his stead.
CHAPTER VIII
HENRY VIII.
After succeeding to the throne, Henry VIII. passed a few tranquil days
in the Tower, but his sanguinary nature soon showed itself, and his
first victims were his father’s most trusted counsellors. Having formed
a new Council, Henry had Sir Henry Stafford (the Duke of Buckingham’s
brother), Sir Richard Empsom, and Edmund Dudley arrested, the former
on some slight charge of disaffection of which he was able to clear
himself, and the two others on the charge of extortion during the late
reign.
Empsom and Dudley were disliked throughout the country, having been the
tools of the late King’s intense avarice, which became his consuming
passion towards the close of his life; both men appear to have enforced
his tyrannical policy with extreme harshness. Henry VIII. benefited
by his father’s miserliness, however, for the seventh Henry left the
colossal sum, for those times, of one million eight hundred thousand
pounds. His son, in order to obtain popularity at the beginning of his
reign, gave up his father’s ministers to gratify the popular clamour
against them, and although Empsom and Dudley both deserved punishment,
it was deemed necessary for form’s sake not to condemn them without a
specified charge. The Council was instructed, therefore, to trump up a
charge of conspiracy against the King’s person; and, upon this the two
men were condemned and executed upon Tower Hill.
Henry then bethought himself of marriage, and took to wife his
sister-in-law, Catherine of Arragon, he being then only nineteen
years of age, and Catherine five-and-twenty. For the first few years
this appears to have been a happy union; but it was one much to be
regretted, as it brought Mary Tudor into the world.
Henry possessed a handsome presence and a genial bluff manner, and as
long as all went well with him, and his least wish was carried into
instant execution, he could be amiable and even attractive. But his
character was both cruel and crafty, and, in later years, these defects
became more strongly marked. With old age and infirmity, he became
more akin to a wild animal than to aught human; and although he was
personally popular amongst the great bulk of the people, on account of
his magnificence and prodigality, no greater tyrant ever sat upon the
English throne.
Froude has in vain tried to whitewash Henry’s character. The early
years of his reign were indeed years of promise, but Henry must be
judged, not by his promise, but by his life and deeds; and the butcher
of Anne Boleyn, of More and Fisher, can only be regarded as a worthy
colleague of the worst tyrants that have from their height of place
been the curse and bane of their subjects.
Henry, with his love of show and splendour, gave himself and Catherine
a gorgeous wedding ceremony. They had held their court at the Tower
previous to their nuptials, and on the 21st of June the wedding took
place. Never had the English court made so magnificent a show as at
this time. The costumes of the men vied in splendour with those of the
women, and many of the great nobles literally bore their fortunes upon
their backs. The King blazed in a habit of crimson velvet, lined with
ermine and covered with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and other gems.
And as he rode through the streets, bareheaded, on a charger arrayed
in damasked cloth of gold, he was surrounded and followed by a suite
of knights and nobles, all in crimson velvet or scarlet cloth, Sir
Thomas Brandon, the Master of the Horse, being the most splendid figure
in the procession next to the King. Brandon, the chronicler tells us,
was arrayed in “tissue broudered with roses of fine gold, and having
a massy balderick of gold.” He led the King’s spare horse by a silken
rein, “trapped barde wise, with harneis broudered with bullion golde,”
and he was followed by nine children of honour, “apparelled in blewe
velvet, poudered with floure delices of gold and chains of goldsmithes
woorke, every one of their horses trapped with a trapper of the King’s
title.”
The Queen’s cortege was no less magnificent. Catherine was seated in a
chariot drawn by two white palfreys, and was attired “in white satyn
embroidered, her heire hangyng downe to her backe, and on her hedde
a coronall, set with many rich orient stones.” She was followed by a
crowd of ladies riding white palfreys, dressed in cloth of gold and
silver, these again being followed by an army of attendants.
The coronation was soon followed by executions; Henry seems to have
required blood-shedding as a kind of relaxation, and to have caused
it to flow with as much delight as he participated in the pomps and
splendours of his regal state. His next victim, after Empson and
Dudley, was Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk. Although the only crime
that could be brought against him was his consanguinity to the Blood
Royal of the Plantagenets, it was quite a sufficient excuse for the
King, and Suffolk was beheaded in 1513. He had been born in 1464, his
father being John de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, and his mother Elizabeth
Plantagenet, daughter of Richard, Duke of York, consequently he was
of the Blood Royal by his mother’s side, and, through her, nephew to
Edward IV. and Richard III. Edmund de la Pole had surrendered the
Dukedom of Suffolk in 1493, but was attainted in 1504, imprisoned
in the Tower in 1506, and executed seven years later. “Audacious,
strong and prompt in council” is the character given to Suffolk by a
contemporary writer. The title of Duke of Suffolk was bestowed by Henry
upon his brother-in-law, Charles Brandon, who had made such a fine
figure at his marriage.
Half-a-dozen years passed, and again the Tower prisons were filled,
some of the prisoners there having been concerned in a City riot.
With these was a Dr Bell, charged with “inflammatory and seditious
preaching.” During this riot the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Roger
Cholmondeley (whose effigy is in St Peter’s Chapel), fired the Tower
guns upon the City, but the damage done by the cannonade seems to have
been very slight.
In 1521 a descendant of Edward II. was brought to the fortress; this
was Edward Bohun, Duke of Buckingham, who traced his descent from
the grandfather of Richard II. through Anne the eldest daughter of
Thomas of Woodstock. Wolsey, now all-powerful, hated Buckingham for
the arrogance of his manner towards him, the Duke never troubling
to conceal his contempt for the lowly born, but ambitious Cardinal.
Wolsey’s opportunity for being revenged upon the nobleman for his
insolence came, when some ill-guarded expressions uttered by Buckingham
were repeated to him; the Duke was immediately arrested and taken
to the Tower. This was on the 16th of January 1521, and on the 13th
of the following month he was tried on the charge of high treason
and sentenced to death. Holinshed, in his Chronicle, describes how
Buckingham was taken by water from the Tower to Westminster. A barge
had been furnished for the occasion with a carpet and cushions, and
when the Duke was brought back from Westminster in the same manner, but
with the axe’s edge turned towards him, he refused to take the seat
which he had occupied on his way to his trial, saying to Sir Thomas
Lovel, “When I came to Westminster I was Lord High Constable, and Duke
of Buckingham, but now, poor Edward Bohun.” It is interesting to see
how closely Shakespeare has followed Holinshed’s description of this
episode in Buckingham’s condemnation, in his play of _Henry VIII._:
_Vaux._ Prepare there, the Duke is coming: see the barge be
ready;
And fit it with such furniture as suits
The greatness of his person.
_Buckingham._ Nay, Sir Nicholas,
Let it alone; my state will now but mock me.
When I came hither, I was Lord High Constable
And Duke of Buckingham; now, poor Edward Bohun—
In Brewer’s Introduction to the third volume of “Foreign and Domestic
State Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII.,” is the following interesting
account of Buckingham’s trial and execution:—
“As trials for treason were conducted in those days it was little
better than a question of personal credibility, assertion against
assertion; and very few reasonable men could entertain doubts as to
the issue. The King had already pronounced judgment, he had examined
the witnesses, encouraged and read their correspondence, and expressed
his belief in the Duke’s guilt. Who was to gainsay it? Who should be
bold enough to assert that the King had arrived at a false conclusion,
and that such manners of procedure were fatal to justice? In a court
also, constituted of men who were not lawyers by profession, who had
received no training for such nice questions, who understood nothing of
the salutary laws of legal evidence, what hope could there be for the
accused? How could he expect that protection which not only innocence
but guilt had a right to demand until the charge be fairly and fully
proven? The only lawyer employed was the Attorney-General, on behalf of
the Crown. But in those days Attorneys-General regarded themselves as
the servants of the Crown, who had to earn their wages by establishing
the guilt of the prisoner. So the Lords retired, and on their return
into court the sentence of each peer was taken one by one. Then said
the Duke of Norfolk to the Duke of Suffolk, ‘What say you of Sir
Edward, Duke of Buckingham, touching this high treason.’ ‘I say that he
is guilty,’ answered the Duke, laying his hand upon his heart. Every
peer made the same response; and against each of the names entered on
the panel—a little scrap of dirty parchment, still preserved in the
Record Office—there is to be seen to this day, in the handwriting of
the Duke of Norfolk, ‘Dicit quod est culpabilis.’
“Then was the Duke brought to the bar to hear his sentence. For a few
moments he was overpowered by his situation. In the extremity of his
agony, he chafed and sweat violently.[8] Recovering himself after a
while, he made his obeisance to the court. After a short pause, a
death-like silence! ‘Sir Edward,’ said the Duke of Norfolk, ‘you hear
how you be indicted of high treason, you pleaded thereto not guilty,
putting yourself to the judgment of your peers, the which have found
you guilty.’ Then bursting into tears (he was an old man, and had faced
death unmoved in the field of Flodden), he faltered out: ‘Your sentence
is, that you be led back to prison; laid on a hurdle, and so drawn
to the place of execution; there to be hanged, to be cut down alive,
your members cut off and cast into the fire, your bowels burnt before
your eyes, your head smitten off, your body quartered and divided at
the King’s will. God have mercy on your soul. Amen.’ The Duke heard
this horrible sentence with proud dignity and composure. Turning to
the Duke of Norfolk, he quietly replied, ‘You have said, my lord, as a
traitor should be said unto; but I was never one.’ Then addressing the
court, he requested that those present would pray for him, assuring
them that he forgave them his death, and expressing his determination
not to sue for mercy. In compliance with the custom of the time he
entered his barge at Westminster stairs, and was delivered, on landing
at the Temple, to Sir Nicholas Vaux and Sir William Sandys, by whom
he was conducted through the city to the Tower. This was about 4 P.M.
The trial had lasted some days, having commenced on a Monday, and on
the following Friday (17th of May), between eleven and twelve in the
forenoon, when the hills of Surrey were cloathed in their freshest
verdure, and the then unoccupied banks of the Thames, steeped to the
water’s edge with the tender green and delicate blossom of the white
thorn, the Duke’s favourite flower, the sombre procession threaded
its way through the dark passages of the Tower, and emerged upon the
Green. Amidst the sobs and tears of the spectators, the Duke, led by
the Sheriffs, mounted the scaffold with a firm and composed step.
Turning himself to the crowd, he requested all men to pray for him,
‘trusting,’ he said, ‘to die the King’s true man; whom through his own
negligence and lack of grace he had offended.’ With this brief request,
he kneeled at the block. There was a sudden glimmer for an instant in
the air, then a dull thud, and the head rolled heavily from the body.
The headsman wiped his axe; the attendants threw a cloak over the
headless trunk, to conceal the blood which streamed in a torrent over
the scaffold and dripped through the platform on the grass beneath. In
rough frieze, barefooted and bareheaded, six poor Augustinian friars,
shouldering a rude coffin, emerged from the shuddering and receding
crowd. Gathering up the remains of the once mighty Duke of Buckingham,
for the King, satisfied with his condemnation, had commuted the last
extremities of the sentence, they carried the corpse to the church
of the Austin Friars. The Duke in his lifetime had been kind to poor
religious men, and this was the last and only office they could render
him.”
[Illustration: _Queen Anne Boleyn_
(_From an Engraving after a portrait of the time._)]
Thus closed the life of Edward Bohun, Duke of Buckingham, Earl of
Hereford, Stafford, and Northampton.
Lords Montague and Abergavenny, and Sir Edward Nevil, were also
committed to the Tower with Buckingham, being charged with having
concealed their knowledge of his so-called treason; but they were all
three liberated after an imprisonment of some months duration.
In the fifth volume of “Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic,” in
the reign of Henry VIII. is the following memorandum of repairs made
in the Tower during the summer of 1532:—“Work done by carpenters and
taking down old timber, etc., at St Thomas’s Tower; and for alteration
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 Robyn the
Devil’s Tower—that is, Julius Cæsar’s Tower; and of the tower near
the King’s Wardrobe. Half of the White Tower is new embattled, coped,
indented, and cressed with Caen stone to the extent of 500 feet.” The
return to this memorandum estimates the total expense of the alteration
at £3593, 14s. 10d.
The Tower was again the scene of festivities when, in the month of
May 1533, Anne Boleyn—to whom Henry had been secretly married on
January 25 of the previous year—was taken there in state. Again, as
five-and-twenty years previously, the old fortress put on its gala
apparel and became splendid for the new Queen’s coronation. The old
chronicler Hall describes the wondrous scene of “marvellous cunning
pageants,” of the fountains running wine, “Apollo and the Muses,
the Graces and all the Virtues, Mary, the wife of Cleophas, and her
children” welcoming the beautiful Queen, coming in all the glory of
youth and loveliness from Greenwich to the Tower, where she landed at
“five of the clocke, where also was such a pele of gonnes as hathe not
byn harde lyke a great while before, and on her landing was met by the
Kyng, who received her with loving countenance, at the Posterne by the
Water syde, and kyssed her.”
The next day, through streets strewn with gravel and gay with tapestry,
silks, and velvets, Anne wended her triumphal way to the old Abbey at
Westminster. The order of Anne’s coronation has been given at full
length by Shakespeare in the scene in the Abbey in _Henry VIII._:
“At length her grace, and with modest paces
Came to the altar; where she kneel’d, and saintlike
Cast her fair eyes to heaven and pray’d devoutly.
Then rose again and bow’d her to the people:
When by the Archbishop of Canterbury
She had all the royal makings of a queen;
As holy oil, Edward Confessor’s crown,
The rod, and bird of peace, and all such emblems
Laid nobly on her: which performed, the choir
With all the choicest music of the kingdom,
Together sung ‘Te Deum.’ So she parted
And with the same full state paced back again
To York Place where the feast is held.”
(_Henry VIII._, Act iv. scene 1.)
Three short years passed away and a pall of darkness falls over this
brilliant scene, and Anne’s regal state and “royal makings of a queen”
are changed to the prison and the scaffold.
In September 1533, Anne brought a daughter into the world, the future
Queen Elizabeth. In the following year Parliament passed an Act of
Succession, devised by Henry, by which his former marriage with
Catherine of Arragon was declared to be an unlawful one, and Anne’s
daughter was made successor to the Crown, thus excluding the Princess
Mary from the succession. All the King’s subjects were commanded to
acknowledge this new Act, but the Chancellor, Sir Thomas More, and
Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, whilst willing to obey the Act as an Act
of Parliament, declined to allow that the King’s marriage with the
Spanish Princess was illegal. Henry, on hearing this, burst into one of
his Tudor furies, and both More and Fisher were, by his orders, sent
to the Tower. At the same time Henry sent Commissioners through the
length and breadth of England to suppress all the religious communities
that refused to obey the Act, and also those who were not willing to
conform to his new Law of Succession.
Thomas Cromwell was the principal agent in carrying out Henry’s
commands against the monasteries. No fitter man for the task could
have been found. Risen from a humble station, Cromwell, who had been
introduced to the King’s notice by Wolsey, after his patron’s fall had
become private secretary to the sovereign; and in 1534 he was appointed
Henry’s Vicar-General in all matters appertaining to Ecclesiastical
affairs.
One of the Orders of Friars, styled Friars Observant, had openly
expressed their opinion concerning Henry’s second marriage, and for
this the Order was ruthlessly suppressed, many of its members being
executed. The same fate befell the Carthusians, some of whom were
imprisoned in the Tower for refusing to conform to the oath of this
Act of Succession. The Prior of Sion Hospital was hanged as a felon,
and many other priests and friars were put to death with every brutal
detail appertaining to the manner of execution for high treason.
Among all these martyrs for their faith, none were more eminent for
holy living than the aged prelate, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. He
was in his seventy-ninth year when Henry ordered him to be imprisoned
in the Tower; he appears to have been a frail, emaciated old man, and,
to judge from the life-like drawing of him by Holbein, had the look
of a man who has but a few years before him. So beloved was he in his
diocese, that when the order came to remove him from his see, the whole
city of Rochester turned out to bid its revered Bishop farewell. The
grounds for the charge of treason that was brought against him were
that he had listened to the prophecies of a woman known by the name
of the “Nun of Kent”; but Henry’s real reason for ridding himself of
Fisher was the Bishop’s refusal to comply with the Act of Succession.
Fisher, being a fervent servant of Rome, declared that Henry’s first
marriage had the sanction of the Pope, and consequently of the Church,
and therefore could not be declared illegal and invalid. Neither would
he acknowledge Henry’s new title of “On earth supreme Head of the
Church of England,” a title assumed by the King in 1534. This combined
refusal was, in the eyes of Henry and his Council, tantamount to a
penal offence, and both More and Fisher were condemned and executed for
denying the King’s supremacy in the State.
Fisher was imprisoned in the Bell Tower on the 21st April (1534),
and in the following November an Act of Parliament declared him to
be attainted of high treason, and his Bishopric to be vacant. His
household goods were seized and his library, which he had intended
bequeathing to his College of St John’s, Cambridge, was confiscated.
In the chapel of that same College the good Bishop had prepared
his tomb, which, however, was fated never to contain his shrunken
frame. The aged Bishop suffered much from the cold of the winter,
1534–35, in his prison, and there is a piteous letter from him, still
existing, addressed to Cromwell, in which he describes his hardships.
“Furthermore,” he writes, “I byseche you to be gode, master, unto me in
my necessite; for I have neither shirt nor sute, nor yett other clothes
that are necessary for me to wear, but that bee ragged, and rent so
shamefully. Notwithstanding I might easily suffer that, if they would
keep my body warm. But my dyett also, God knoweth how slender it is at
any tymes, and now in myn age my stomak may nott awaye but with a few
kynd of meats, which if I want, I decay forthwith, and fall into coafs
and diseases of my bodye, and kan not keep myself in health.” He then
begs Cromwell to soften the King’s heart on his behalf; he might as
well have asked Cromwell to soften the nether millstone.
[Illustration: _John Fisher. Bishop of Rochester_
(_From the drawing by Holbein at Windsor._)]
Bishop Burnet has written that news of Fisher’s sufferings reached the
ears of Pope Clement, who, “by an officious kindness to him, or rather
to spite King Henry, declared him a Cardinal, and sent him a red hat.
When the King heard of this, he sent to examine him about it; but he
protested that he had used no endeavour to procure it, and valued it so
little that, if the hat were lying at his feet, he would not take it
up. It never came nearer him than Picardy, yet did this precipitate his
ruin.” Henry had sworn that before the cardinal’s hat could arrive the
Bishop should have no head upon which to place it.
When asked by the Lord Chancellor, after he had been declared guilty of
high treason, what he had to say in arrest of judgment, the venerable
old man answered: “Truly, my lord, if that which I have said be not
sufficient I have no more to say; but only to desire Almighty God to
forgive them who have condemned me, for I think they know not what they
have done.” The Chancellor then read out the sentence by which the
Bishop was doomed, by the usual ghastly form of words, to a traitor’s
death. As Fisher was passing under Traitor’s Gate, where he had been
landed on his return to the Tower from his trial, he turned to his
guard of halberdiers and said: “My masters, I thank you for all the
great labours and pains which ye have taken with me to-day. I am
not able to give you anything in recompense, because I have nothing
left, and therefore I pray you accept in good part my hearty thanks.”
Those who were present were struck by the “fresh and lively colour in
his face, as he seemed rather to have come from some great feast or
banquet rather than from his trial and condemnation, showing by all his
carriage and outward behaviour nothing else but joy and satisfaction.”
Three more days of prison and the good old man’s troubles ceased.
At five o’clock in the morning, on the 22nd of June, the Lieutenant
of the Tower awoke Fisher from his sleep, telling him that he had
come with a message from the King—namely, that he was to die that
day. “Well,” answered the Bishop, “If this be your errand you bring
me no great news, for I have sometime looked for this message. I most
humbly thank his Majesty that it pleases him to rid me of all this
worldly business, and I thank you also for your tidings. But pray, Mr
Lieutenant,” he added, “when is my hour that I must go hence?” “Your
hour,” said the Lieutenant, “must be nine of the clock.” “And what hour
is it now?” said Fisher. “It is now about five.” “Well then, let me by
your patience sleep an hour or two, for I have slept very little this
night; and yet, to tell you the truth, not for any fear of death, thank
God, but by reason of my great weakness and infirmity.” “The King’s
further pleasure is,” said the Lieutenant, “that you should use as
little speech as may be upon the scaffold, especially as to anything
concerning his Majesty, whereby the people should have cause to think
otherwise than well of him and his proceedings.” “For that,” remarked
the Bishop, in answer to this practical confession of the injustice
of his sentence, “for that you shall see me order myself so, by God’s
grace, as that neither the King nor any one else shall have occasion to
dislike what I say.”
He then slept on for two hours more, when he rose and was helped to
dress; a hair shirt, which he wore next to his body, he removed,
replacing it with a clean white one. Upon his ordering his attendant
to give him his best clothing, the latter remarked upon the care and
attention that he was bestowing upon his dress that day. “Dost thou
not mark that this is our wedding-day,” said Fisher in answer, “and it
behoves me therefore to be more nicely dressed than ordinary for the
solemnity of the occasion.”
At nine o’clock the Lieutenant called for him. “I will wait upon you
straight,” said the Bishop, “as fast as this body of mine will give me
leave.” He then called for his furred tippet, which he placed round
his neck, “Oh, my Lord,” said the Lieutenant, “what need you be so
careful of your health for this little time, which you know is not
much above an hour.” “I think the same,” said Fisher, “but yet, in the
meantime, I will keep myself as well as I can to the very time of my
execution. For I tell you truly, though I have, I thank our Lord, a
very good desire and a willing mind to die at this present, and so that
of His infinite goodness he will continue it, yet will I not willingly
incommodate my health in the meantime one minute of an hour, but I
will still continue the same as long as I can by such reasonable ways
and means as God Almighty hath provided for me.” With that, taking a
little book in his hand—it was a Latin New Testament—that lay by him,
he made the sign of the cross upon his forehead, and then went out of
the chamber with the Lieutenant, being so weak that he could scarcely
go down the stairs. For this reason he was placed in a chair, and
carried by two of the Lieutenant’s men to the Tower Gate, surrounded
by a small number of guards. At the Gate he was to be delivered over
to the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex for his execution, but when
the procession arrived there it had to wait until a messenger, who had
been sent to the Sheriffs, returned to say whether those officials
were ready to receive him. During this waiting the Bishop rose from
his chair, and stood leaning against the wall with his eyes raised to
the sky. Then he opened the Testament he was carrying in his hand,
and said, “O Lord, this is the last time that I shall ever open this
book, let some comfortable place now chance to me, whereby I, Thy poor
servant, may glorify Thee in this my last hour!” Looking into the book,
the first words he espied were these! “And this is the life eternal,
that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou
hast sent. I have glorified Thee on the earth, I have finished the work
which Thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Thou me with
thine own self.” Fisher then closed the book, saying, “Here is learning
enough for me to my life’s end.” From the Gate he was carried to the
scaffold on Tower Hill, praying as he went, and when several persons
offered to help him to mount the steps, he turned to them and said,
“Nay, masters, seeing that I am come so far, let me alone, and you
shall see me shift for myself well enough.”
The sun shone brightly on the old man’s face when, standing on the
scaffold, with uplifted hands, he pronounced the words “Accedite ad eum
et illuminamini, et facies vestrae non confundentur.” The headsman,
as was the custom, knelt and asked the Bishop’s forgiveness for the
task he was about to perform. “I forgive thee with all my heart, and I
trust thou shalt see me overcome this storm with courage,” answered the
Bishop. Before kneeling down, he spoke a few words to the dense crowd
gathered around the scaffold. He had come there, he said, to die for
the Faith of Christ’s Holy Catholic Church, he begged their prayers
that he might be enabled at the point of death, and at the moment of
the supreme stroke, to continue steadfast without wavering in any one
point of that Faith. Then he prayed for the King, and for the realm,
being so cheerful that he seemed glad to die, and “although he looked
death itself in the human shape,” according to one of the writers of
the time, “his voice was full, strong, and clear.” When on his knees
before the block, the venerable Bishop repeated certain prayers, the
Te Deum, and the Thirty-first Psalm, “In te Domine speravi.” Then the
axe fell, and his head rolled on the scaffold. Thus died John Fisher, a
true martyr to his Church and Faith, far worthier of canonisation than
many enrolled in the long list of hagiology.
Henry was not content with merely putting this aged and venerable man
to death, but, if Cardinal Pole is to be believed, he ordered the
headless body of the Bishop to be treated with insult. It was left
naked for hours on the scaffold, until some charitable soul with a
touch of humanity, cast some straw over the poor remains of one who,
but a short time before, had been among the best, if not the greatest
of English Churchmen (Dr Hall’s “Life of the Bishop of Rochester”).
Fisher’s head was stuck upon a pike and placed on London Bridge. Dodd,
in his history of the Church, recounts that after the head had been
some days on the Bridge, it was taken down and thrown into the river,
the reason for this being that rays of light were seen shining around
it. Hall, in his “Life of the Bishop,” states that “the face was
observed to become fresher and more comely day by day, and that such
was the concourse of people who assembled to look at it, that almost
neither cart nor horse could pass.”
[Illustration: _Sir Thomas More_
(_From the drawing by Holbein at Windsor._)]
The Bishop of Rochester’s judicial murder was immediately followed by
that of Sir Thomas More; it would not be easy to say which execution
was the greater crime: their blood lies equally on Henry’s soul.
In many respects a parallel might justly be drawn between More and
Gladstone. Their fame as statesmen and scholars in both cases was
European. More’s life was equally pure, learned, and brilliant as that
of Gladstone. Both men were as well known on the continent of Europe as
in their own country, and the friend of Erasmus in Germany, and Colet
in England, in the sixteenth century, was as celebrated as the friend
of Dollinger and Hallam in the nineteenth. Their very faults only
brought their great qualities into higher relief. More showed a stern
severity to the Reformers which must always be deplored; Gladstone, in
his Irish and foreign policies, proved the frailty of even the best
intentioned motives. But the very fact of these being the only shadows
of weakness that obscured the brilliancy of both these noble lives,
speaks trumpet-tongued to their undying renown.
Although More had been one of Henry’s greatest friends, and had been
treated by him like a close companion—for Henry could appreciate More’s
humour and admire his learning—at the first sign of his old favourite
standing in the way of his wishes, the monarch turned upon the subject
in deadly rage.
Condemned for the same reason as that for which Fisher had been
executed, More met his fate with similar firmness and cheerful courage.
Neither complaint nor remonstrance troubled the serene calm of his
demeanour throughout the last days of his beautiful life. After his
condemnation, when he had been brought back from judgment to the Tower,
the porter at Traitor’s Gate asked for More’s cloak as a perquisite.
Sir Thomas gave him his cap as well, regretting that they were “not
better.” He was allowed one attendant in his prison, who was unable to
read or write, and although Sir Thomas had no writing materials, he
managed, with a coal in lieu of ink, to write a letter to his beloved
daughter, Margaret Roper. That letter was full of the perfect peace
that reigned in him, and of the affection he felt for her to whom he
wrote; it concludes with these words,—“Written with a cole by your
tender, loving father, who in hys pore prayers forgetteth none of you
all, nor babes nor your nurses, nor your good husbands, nor your good
husbands shrewde wyves, nor your fathers shrewde wyfe neither, nor
our other frendes. And thus fare ye hartely well, for lack of paper.
Thomas More, Knight.” Sir Thomas was allowed ink and paper after he
had written this letter, and he passed the time of his imprisonment in
writing a treatise on Our Lord’s Passion; but his writing materials
were then taken away from him, and he spent the rest of his days in
prayer and meditation.
One day the Lieutenant asking him why he kept his prison room so dark,
More answered, “When all the wares are gone, the shop windows are to
be shut up.” Early in the next year (1535) his wife was allowed to see
him; she urged him to conform to the King’s wishes, but it is needless
to say that he declined to do so. And when he was told that the King
had been mercifully pleased to allow him, as having held the highest
office in the realm, to be beheaded instead of being hanged, drawn, and
quartered, Sir Thomas laughingly said, “God forbid the King shall
use any more such mercy to any of my friends.”
[Illustration: _A Daughter of Sir Thomas More, supposed to be Mʳˢ.
Roper_
(_From the original drawing by Holbein_)]
There are few more touching scenes in the history of the Tower than
that when, after his final trial, More’s daughter, Margaret Roper, made
her way through the crowd to give her father a farewell embrace when
he landed at the fortress, and to receive his last blessing. Kneeling
before him, the poor creature could only say again and again, “Oh, my
father! oh, my father!” Those standing around, hardened as they were to
scenes of cruelty, could not help being moved at the piteous sight.
Early on the morning of the 6th July Sir Thomas Pope, an old friend of
More’s, entered his prison to tell him that the hour for his execution
was fixed for nine o’clock that day. As in the case of Fisher, Sir
Thomas More was asked not to “use many words” on the scaffold, for
the King feared the effect of a speech from his old friend upon the
public. At parting Sir Thomas said to Pope, who was deeply moved, “Be
not discomfited, for I trust that we shall in Heaven see each other
full merrily, where we shall be sure to live together in joyful bliss
eternally” (Roper’s “Life of Sir T. More”).
Punctually at nine o’clock Sir Thomas left his prison. He was dressed
in an old frieze cloak; his beard had grown long, and his face and
form were thin and worn; in his hand he carried a red cross. At what
appears to have been a kind of public-house, near the gate of the
Tower, a woman came out and offered him a glass of wine, but he refused
it, saying, “Marry, my good wife, I will not drink now, my Master had
vinegar and gall, and not wine given Him to drink.” Another woman asked
him for some papers that she had given him to keep for her when he was
Lord Chancellor: to her he said that she must have patience for an
hour, “and by that time the King’s Majesty will rid me of the care I
have of thy papers, and all other matters whatsoever.”
On reaching the scaffold he found it in a very shaky condition,
and turning to the Lieutenant, he said, laughing, “I pray you, Mr
Lieutenant, see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for
myself.” When on the platform he turned to the people, and, like
Fisher, told them he had come there to die for the Holy Church and
begged their prayers; then, kneeling down, he repeated the Misere to
the end. When the executioner asked his forgiveness Sir Thomas, who
meanwhile had risen from his knees, embraced him, saying, “Pluck up thy
spirits, man, and be not afraid to do thy office. I am sorry my neck is
short, therefore strike not awry.” He then bound a cloth which he had
brought with him over his eyes, and placed his head upon the block. An
instant before the axe fell he turned his head towards the executioner
while he moved his beard, “Pity that should be cut,” he said, “that has
not committed treason.”
The head was placed on London Bridge, but Margaret Roper obtained that
sacred relic, and it was buried with her when she followed her beloved
father in 1544, “to where beyond these voices there is peace.” Both
the bodies of Bishop Fisher and of Sir Thomas More were buried in St
Peter’s Chapel in the Tower, where they rest side by side.
One of the earliest inscriptions to be found on the walls of the
Beauchamp Tower is that of Thomas Fitzgerald, who was known as “Silken
Thomas,” from the costliness of his attire. He was the eldest son of
Gerald Fitzgerald, ninth Earl of Kildare, Lord-Deputy of Ireland. Earl
Gerald had been summoned to London, leaving Thomas in Ireland as Deputy
in his place during his absence. On arriving in London, the father
was arrested and thrown into the Tower. When the news reached Thomas
Fitzgerald he broke into open rebellion, and together with five of his
uncles laid siege to Dublin Castle, and having captured Archbishop
Allen, put him to death. Dublin Castle was defended by Sir J. White,
and would probably have fallen into the hands of the rebels had not the
Earl of Ormonde raised the siege with a powerful force. In retaliation,
the Castle of Maynooth, one of the Geraldine strongholds, was taken,
and the garrison incontinently hanged by Lord Leonard Grey; when the
news of this disaster reached Earl Gerald in the Tower, he died, it is
believed, of a broken heart, on the 12th December 1534, and was buried
in St Peter’s Chapel. “Silken Thomas” surrendered with his five uncles,
on the promise of a pardon, to Leonard Grey, who, oddly enough, was
another of his many uncles, Lord Leonard’s sister having married Earl
Gerald. These Geraldines were imprisoned in the Beauchamp Tower, where,
as we have seen, a fragmentary inscription cut by “Silken Thomas” is
still visible in the principal dungeon. Despite the promise of pardon,
Thomas and his uncles were all hanged at Tyburn, only one member of
the Fitzgeralds, a youth, escaping the King’s fury; and so great was
Henry’s anger, that he ordered Grey to be condemned to death for
allowing the youth in question to save himself: Henry had determined to
utterly extirpate the whole Geraldine race. The unfortunate Grey was
beheaded, six years after these events occurred, on Tower Hill. “The
fair Geraldine,” sung by Surrey, was the sister of “Silken Thomas.”
QUEEN ANNE BOLEYN
On May Day of the year 1536 a tournament was held at Greenwich Palace,
at which great surprise was caused by the King leaving suddenly whilst
the jousting was in progress. The next day Queen Anne Boleyn was
arrested, and interrogated by some members of the Council, of whom her
uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, was the President. From Greenwich the Queen
was brought to the Tower by water, arriving at five o’clock in the
afternoon; with her came Secretary Cromwell, the Lord Chancellor, Sir
J. Audley, and the Constable of the Tower, Sir William Knighton. Her
journey up the river and her reception at the grim old fortress were
in bitter contrast with the triumphant progress she had made the day
before her brilliant coronation. Arrived at the Tower, Anne sank upon
her knees in prayer, and, rising, declared her innocence to those about
her. She then inquired of the Constable where she was to be lodged, and
was told that she would occupy the rooms in which she had lived at the
time of her coronation three years before. “It is too good for me,”
said the poor Queen. She appears to have fallen into violent hysterics,
“weeping a great pace, and in the same sorrow fell into a great
laughing, and so she did several times afterwards,” writes Knighton to
Cromwell.
The Queen’s sudden arrest must have fallen upon the Court like a bolt
from the blue, although probably some of the courtiers had noticed
Henry’s growing _penchant_ for Jane Seymour: Anne herself had seen it
only too clearly, as well as the peril in which this new attachment of
the King’s placed her.
On the 3rd May, Archbishop Cranmer wrote as follows to the King:—“I
think your Grace best knoweth, that next unto your Grace I was most
bound unto her of all creatures living, and my mind is clean amazed,
for I never had better opinion in woman than I had in her; which maketh
me to think that she should not be culpable. I wish and pray that
she may declare herself inculpable and innocent.” But this would not
have served Henry’s purpose, even if the poor Queen could have proved
her innocence. He was determined to be rid of her, and as quickly as
possible, in order that he might satisfy his new passion, and all the
Archbishops in Christendom would not have stopped him.
A letter, supposed by such good authorities as Sir Henry Ellice and
Froude to be authentic, was written by Anne to the King from her
prison. This letter was found amongst Cromwell’s papers, being endorsed
by the Secretary thus, “To the King from the Ladye in the Tower.” It
is too long to quote in its entirety, but concludes as follows:—
“Try me, good King, but let me have a lawful trial; and let not
my sworn enemies sit as my accusers and my judges; yea, let me
receive an open trial, for my truth shall fear no open shame.
Then you shall see either mine innocency cleared, your suspicions
and conscience satisfied, the ignominy and slander of the world
stopped, or my gilt lawfully declared; so that, whatsoever God
or you may determine of me, your Grace may be freed of an open
censure; and mine offence being so openly proved, your Grace is at
liberty, before God and man, not only to execute worthy punishment
upon me as an unlawful wife, but to follow your affection already
settled on that party for whose sake I am now as I am, whose name
I could some good while since have pointed unto; your Grace not
being ignorant of my suspicion therein.” (This pointed allusion to
Henry’s attentions to Jane Seymour was surely unfortunate?) “But
if you have already determined of me; and that not only my death,
but an infamous slander, must bring you the joying of your desired
happiness; then I desire of God that He will pardon your great sin
therein and likewise my enemies, the instruments thereof; and that
He will not call you to a straight account for your unprincely and
cruel usage of me, at His general judgment seat, where you and
myself must shortly appear; and in whose judgment I doubt not,
whatever the world may think of me, mine innocence shall be openly
known and sufficiently cleared.
“My last and only request shall be, that myself may only bear the
burden of your Grace’s displeasure, and that it may not touch the
innocent souls of those poor gentlemen, who, as I understand, are
likewise in straight imprisonment for my sake. If ever I have found
favour in your sight, if ever the name of Anne Boleyn hath been
pleasing in your ears, then let me obtain this request; and I will
not so have to trouble your Grace any further; with mine earnest
prayers to the Trinity to have your Grace in His good keeping, and
to direct you in all your actions. From my doleful prison in the
Tower, this 6th of May. Your most loyal and ever faithful wife,
Anne Boleyn.”
This does not read like the letter of a guilty person; it has a fine
brave note running all through it, and the petition for the unfortunate
men accused with her, shows Anne’s unselfish nature in thinking of
others in her own time of dire misfortune.
[Illustration: _The Curfew Tower, from the Moat_]
Knighton’s wife, whose husband was the Constable of the Tower, was set
to watch the Queen, and repeat all she said to her husband, who was in
correspondence with Cromwell. In writing to the latter, Knighton says
that Lady Boleyn (Anne’s aunt) and a “Mestrys Cosyn” were kept in
the same room with the Queen; both of these ladies were Anne’s bitter
enemies, and they acted as spies upon the unhappy prisoner. “I have,”
writes Knighton, “everything told me by Mestrys Cosyn that she thynks
mete for me to knowe.”
The trial was held in the large room, called at that time the King’s
Hall, which is on the second floor of the White Tower, adjoining the
Chapel of St John’s. Here a gallery had been erected for the judges,
and seats and benches for the Lords. The Duke of Norfolk, who presided,
sat under the “clothe of estate,” and represented the King as High
Steward of England. By a singular coincidence Norfolk was uncle to both
Anne Boleyn and the second wife whom Henry beheaded, Catherine Howard.
At Norfolk’s feet sat his son, the Earl of Surrey, both holding staffs
in their hands—Norfolk that of the Lord High Steward, Surrey that of
Earl Marshal. On the Duke’s right hand sat the Lord Chancellor, and on
his left the Duke of Suffolk, the peers occupying seats on either side
of the chamber, in the order of their degree. Led by the Constable of
the Tower and the Lieutenant (Sir Edmund Walsingham), the Queen was
brought to the bar. Anne Boleyn’s defence was admirable, and must have
greatly disconcerted her judges, who knew that no defence, however
convincing, could avail her; she was already sentenced by the King.
Not one of these men, with their high-sounding names and titles, dared
to give their vote in her favour. All, to a man, declared on their
consciences that the Queen was guilty. Surely some of the innocent
blood counted against these noble cowards as well as against their
master, when their day of reckoning arrived. Norfolk, whose tears
appear always to have been at command, wept “so that the water,” writes
Constantyne in his Memorial, “roune in his eyes,” when he pronounced
the sentence, which ran thus: “Because thou hast offended our
Sovereign the King’s Grace, in committing treason against his person,
and here attainted of the same, the law of the realm is this; that thou
shalt be burnt here within the Tower of London, on the Green, else to
have thy head smitten off as the King’s pleasure shall be further known
of the same.”[9]
According to Froude, Anne Boleyn’s trial was conducted “with a
scrupulousness without a parallel in the criminal history of the time.”
One can only wonder what kind of a trial that would be which was not
conducted with the “scrupulousness” that characterised the proceedings
in the King’s Hall, under the Duke of Norfolk, when Anne Boleyn was
condemned to die.
On the 17th of May the Queen was taken to Lambeth Palace, where she
made her confession to Archbishop Cranmer, but, according to Bishop
Burnet, any statements that she made then were induced by the prospect
of saving her life; but this cannot be proved.
Up to the last Anne appears to have maintained her cheerfulness and
lightness of heart. Knighton writing to Cromwell tells him that, whilst
dining with him, the Queen had announced her intention of going to
Antwerp, as if she fully expected to be released. Another time she said
to him, “If any man accuse me, I can say but nay, and they can bring
no witness”; and also, “I think the King does this to prove me.” In
Burnet’s “History” the following incident, which took place shortly
before Anne’s execution, and which I think goes far to prove her
innocence of the charges brought against her, is recounted: “The day
before she suffered, upon a strict search of her past life, she called
to mind that she had played the step-mother too severely to Lady Mary
(afterwards Queen Mary), and had done her many injuries. Upon which,
she made the Lieutenant of the Tower’s lady sit down in the Chair of
State; which the other, after some ceremony, doing, she fell down on
her knees, and with many tears charged the lady, as she would answer
it to God, to go in her name, and do, as she had done, to the Lady
Mary, and ask her forgiveness for the wrongs she had done her.” Speede,
alluding in his “History” to this scene, says, “as she cleared her
conscience of the lesser crimes, so undoubtedly could she have done of
the greater, if any had been committed.”
In a long letter Knighton wrote to Cromwell on the 18th of May, he says
that the Queen had sent for him to be present when she received the
Sacrament in her prison. “And at my commyng,” he writes, “she sayd,
‘Mr Knighton, I hear say that I shall not dye affore noon, and I am
very sory therefore; for I had thowtt to be ded by thys time and past
my payne.’ I told hyr it should be no payne it was so suttel, and then
she sayd, ‘I have heard say the executioner was very good and I have a
lyttel neck,’ and put her hand about it lawying hartely. I have seen
many men and also women executed, and that they have been in grate
sorrow; and to my knowledge thys lady hasse muche joy and plesur in
dethe.” One may infer from the tone of this letter that Knighton did
not believe in Anne’s guilt.
A little before noon on the 19th May, Anne Boleyn, accompanied by four
of her ladies, came out of her prison on to Tower Green, attended by
Sir William Knighton. Near the scaffold stood the Duke of Suffolk and
the Duke of Richmond, the latter a natural son of the King’s; there
also were the Lord Chancellor and Secretary Cromwell, the Lord Mayor
and the Sheriffs of London and Westminster; in all, about thirty
persons gathered at the Tower that bright May morning to behold a
sight that had never been witnessed in England before—the execution
of a Queen. Henry had given orders that the execution should be as
private as possible, fearing the effect of the public sympathy with
his victim, if many persons were admitted to see her die. To the very
last Anne showed a steadfast courage, and may be said to have looked
death fearlessly and without faltering in the face. After a few words
full of resignation to her fate, and of forgiveness for those who had
brought about her death, even for the chief of these, she said: “And
thus I take my leave of the world, and of you all, and I heartily
desire you all to pray for me.” After she had finished speaking her
ladies came to her and placed a bandage over her eyes, and left her,
all weeping bitterly. Kneeling, but keeping her upright position of
body, for on this occasion no block was used—and the headsman, who had
been specially brought over from Calais, did his work with a sword—she
received the stroke of death “with resolution,” writes a contemporary
and eye-witness, “and so sedately as herself to cover her feet with
her garments.” And thus, and without more to say or do, was her head
stricken off, she making no confession of her fault, and only saying,
“O Lord God, have pity on my soul.”
[Illustration: _Traitors’ Gate, from the River_]
When all was over, one of the ladies took up her head, the others the
body, and covering them with a sheet, placed them in a chest which was
ready for the purpose, and carried the remains to St Peter’s Chapel,
“where they say she lieth buried.”
“Such,” writes Lord de Ros in his “Memorials of the Tower,” “was
the end of this most unfortunate lady, who but three years before
had entered the Tower in triumph as the idol of the King, and the
admiration of all around her. Levities, which even now would be
thought slight and pardonable, but which in that coarse and licentious
Court could hardly deserve a moderate censure, were the only offences
found against her, unless the extorted accusation of Smeaton was to
be regarded as proof of any deeper guilt.” At about the time of
Anne’s execution, her brother, Lord Rochford, and three gentlemen of
the Court, Brereton, Western, and Norris, were sentenced to death
as accomplices in the crime of which she was accused. Mark Smeaton,
a musician who, on the promise of pardon, had confessed his and the
Queen’s guilt whilst under torture, was hanged. The accusation against
Anne Boleyn and her brother, Lord Rochford, consisted only of the
charge that he had one morning entered his sister’s chamber, and,
whilst conversing with her in the presence of her attendants, had
rested his hand upon the bed. Rochford died declaring his innocence, as
did the other gentlemen who died with him. They were all buried in the
churchyard of the Chapel of St Peter.
The day after Anne Boleyn’s execution, Henry married Jane Seymour.
There is a tradition that the King had ordered a gun to be fired from
the roof of the White Tower, then mounted with cannon, which he could
see from his palace, as a signal that Anne Boleyn had ceased to live.
When Queen Victoria visited the Tower for the first time, and was shown
the place on the Green on which the scaffold had stood where Jane Grey
and Anne Boleyn had been executed, and where the grass, tradition said,
never grew, Her Majesty ordered the brass tablet that now records those
tragic events, to be placed on the spot, with the words, “Site of the
ancient scaffold: on this spot Queen Anne Boleyn was beheaded on the
19th May 1536.”
The year 1537 saw the Tower full of prisoners, the result of the rising
in the North, called the Pilgrimage of Grace. Thomas Cromwell’s crusade
against the religious endowments of the country, his spoliation of
the monasteries, his wholesale butchery of the monks and friars, had
stirred up a violent feeling of resistance in the north of England. A
report had been spread that as soon as the monasteries had been ruined
and destroyed, it would be the turn of the parish churches, and the
people of Lincoln and Yorkshire took instant alarm. A zealous Roman
Catholic, named Robert Aske, headed the rebellion, bearing a banner
emblazoned with the five wounds of Christ. The peril became so great
that Henry found it necessary to send an army against the insurgents,
the Duke of Norfolk being appointed its general. But Norfolk hesitated
to bring matters to a crisis, and temporised. He promised that the
grievances of the people should be heard, and a Parliament was summoned
in the North to consider their complaints, and mend or end them.
However, in 1537, Henry, breaking faith with the Pilgrimage of Grace,
seized the ring-leaders, and established a Council in the North, which
was a precursor, in cruelty and bloodshed, of Jeffreys’ Bloody Assize
in Devonshire, a century and a half later. Cromwell instituted a reign
of terror. His commissioners tore down, among others, such incomparable
buildings as Fountains, Rievaulx, and Jervaulx Abbeys; the sacred fanes
were gutted, their roofs torn off, and the holy shrines abandoned to
the bats and owls, serving as quarries for anyone who cared to cart
away the materials. The Abbots and heads of these, and many other
religious houses, were either hanged out of hand, or sent in droves
to London, and placed in the Tower. Among many others, the Abbots of
Rievaulx, Fountains, and Jervaulx, and the Prior of Bridlington, after
being imprisoned in the Tower, were hanged as traitors at Tyburn.
Two peers, Lord Darcey and Lord Hussey, who had taken part in the
Pilgrimage of Grace, were beheaded, the former on Tower Hill, and the
latter at Lincoln; Sir Robert Constable, Sir Francis Bagot, Sir Thomas
Percy, the brother of the Earl of Northumberland, Sir Stephen Hamilton,
William Lumley, Nicholas Tempest, Robert Aske, and Sir John Bulwer,
also suffered death, and, horrible to relate, the wife of the last was
burnt at Smithfield.
[Illustration: _The Block and Axe_]
Thomas Cromwell, in his treatment of women, resembled Judge Jeffreys,
and, monstrous as is the fact of a woman being burnt to death in the
reign of Henry VIII. for a political offence, it is not quite so
revolting as the case of Elizabeth Gaunt, executed in the reign of the
second James for sheltering one of the followers of Monmouth after the
Battle of Sedgemoor. Both Cromwell and Jeffreys were the obedient tools
of their masters, who, to quote the great Duke of Marlborough’s remark
when describing James II., “This marble,” he said, laying his hand on a
marble chimney-piece, “is not harder than the King’s heart.”
Secretary Cromwell, having put down the rising in the North of the
country in this ruthless fashion, turned his attention to the West,
where there yet lingered, amongst the descendants of the great houses
of de la Pole and Courtenay, the last hopes of the Yorkists. In order
to accomplish his object of exterminating them, Cromwell required
the services of a traitor; and this he soon found in the person of
Sir Geoffrey de la Pole, brother of Viscount Montagu. How it was
that Geoffrey turned traitor, and denounced his own kith and kin to
Cromwell is not known, but his treachery threw into the Secretary’s
power not only his own brother, Montagu, but also Henry Courtenay,
Marquis of Exeter, together with Sir Edward Nevill and Sir Nicholas
Carew. They were charged with maintaining a traitorous correspondence
with Cardinal Pole; and all perished on Tower Hill on 9th January
1539. Geoffrey’s brother, Henry de la Pole, Lord Montagu, was the son
of Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, and the brother of Cardinal Pole.
Born in 1492, he was consequently about fifty when he was executed.
He had served in the Army, had fought in France, and had been one of
the most conspicuous of Henry’s followers on the Field of the Cloth of
Gold. He had married Jane Nevill, a daughter of Lord Abergavenny, but
had no son to succeed him. Another of Geoffrey de la Pole’s victims,
Henry Courtenay, was one of the most distinguished of Henry’s nobles.
Three years previously he had commanded the Royal army, and only a few
months before his own trial he had presided as High Steward of England
at the proceedings which had resulted in the condemnation to death of
Lords Darcey and Hussey. He was son of the tenth Earl of Devonshire,
and head of the great house of Courtenay, whose descent from the
Eastern Emperors has been so eloquently set forth by Gibbon. His mother
was imprisoned in the Tower at the same time as himself; she shortly
afterwards died there. Courtenay was forty-five at the time of his
execution. Geoffrey de la Pole’s treachery brought him little good, for
shortly after the death of his kinsmen we find him a prisoner in the
Beauchamp Tower, where his name can still be seen carved with the date,
1562. He died there after Elizabeth’s accession.
There is in the possession of Lord Donnington, an interesting portrait
of a stately young lady in the costume of the days of Henry VII. The
face is handsome and refined, although somewhat too long; the neck
is finely formed, but this, too, is unusually long. In her jewelled
left hand she holds a sprig of honeysuckle, or it may have been the
intention of the artist to represent the broom flower, the French
_genet_ (Planta Genesta), the badge and origin of the name Plantagenet.
This portrait represents Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury,
the daughter of the murdered Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV.;
her mother was a daughter of the great Earl of Warwick, the King-maker.
Thus, as the representative of the Plantagenets and of the Nevills,
her position was second only to that of the reigning family. She had
married Sir Richard Pole, and was the mother of Lord Montagu, of the
distinguished prelate, Reginald Pole, who had fled to Rome, where a
Cardinal’s red hat awaited him, as well as of the traitor Sir Geoffrey.
Born in 1470, Lady Salisbury was nearly seventy years old when, by
Henry’s orders, she was imprisoned in the Tower. There was no charge
which could possibly be brought against the aged noblewoman, and she
was kept more as a hostage on her son, the Cardinal’s, account, than
for any alleged cause of offence. Her close relationship to the late
dynasty was in reality her only crime, but this was sufficient to bring
her grey head to the block.
Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in his history of Henry VIII., tells
the story of Lady Salisbury’s horrible but heroic death as
follows:—“Shortly after,” Lord Herbert writes, alluding to the death
of the Marchioness of Exeter, the mother of Courtenay, in the Tower,
“followed the Countess of Salisbury’s execution (27th May 1541), the
old lady being brought to the scaffold, set up in the Tower, was
commanded to lay her head on the block; but she, as a person of great
quality assured me, refused, saying, ‘So should traitors do, and I am
none’; neither would it serve that the executioners told her it was
the fashion, so turning her grey head every way, she bid him, if he
would have her head, to get it as he could; so that he was constrained
to fetch it off slovenly.” Lingard quotes a passage from a letter of
Cardinal Pole’s in which he says his mother’s last words were, “Blessed
are they who suffer persecution for righteousness sake”; but, to judge
from Lord Herbert’s account of the frightful scene at her death, the
poor old Countess, although she may have said these words at some
period of her imprisonment, could scarcely have uttered them at its
awful close. Henry appears to have added intentionally severe hardships
to his kinswoman’s imprisonment in the Tower, probably hoping that
she would die in consequence, and save him the ignominy of butchering
her in public. One of the Tower gaolers, named Phillips, writing to
a member of the Privy Council about Lady Salisbury, says, “The Lady
Salisbury maketh great moan, for that she wanteth necessary apparel,
both for change, and also to keep her warm. Her gentlewoman, Mistress
Constance, has no manner of change, and that she hath is sore worn”
(Miscellaneous Exchequer Documents).
Lady Salisbury was Lady of the Manor of Christchurch in Hampshire, and
there she had built a chapel in the church, called after her the
Salisbury Chapel. This building was adorned with elaborate carving and
tracery wrought in Caen stone, her effigy being within the chantry,
representing the Countess kneeling before the Trinity; beneath were
a coat of arms and the motto, “Spes in deo est.” Thomas Cromwell’s
Commissioners caused this chapel to be dismantled. The effigy was
destroyed, but the chantry itself still remains as a memorial of the
last of the Plantagenets. The aged Countess’s mutilated remains were
buried in St Peter’s Chapel in the Tower.
[Illustration: _St. Peter’s Chapel and the Site of the Scaffold on
Tower Green_]
Five years after the judicial murder of More and Fisher, their traducer
and bitter enemy, Thomas Cromwell, who had been created Earl of Essex
by Henry in 1540—only three months before his sudden fall—suffered
death on Tower Hill. A parallel has been drawn between Cromwell and
Jeffreys in their brutal administration of what they considered
justice, and a second parallel might very fittingly be drawn between
Henry’s secretary and Maximilian Robespierre. Both sprang from the
people; both rose to almost supreme power; both attained their ends
by the force of their overwhelming ambition and intense determination
of character; both were untroubled by any touch of pity or qualm of
conscience; and both ended their lives upon the scaffold.
Very little is known of Cromwell’s early years. He was the son of a
blacksmith, and was born at Putney in 1490. At Wolsey’s death he darted
into power, and his influence with the King became stronger than even
the Cardinal’s had ever been. Cromwell once owned to Cranmer, after
he had attained the position of the most powerful subject in the
realm, that in early life he had been a “ruffian,” and a ruffian he
remained until his death on Tower Hill. Henry required an unscrupulous
instrument to carry out his schemes in suppressing the religious
orders, and in Cromwell he found a man as utterly lacking in principles
as he himself. Cromwell was exactly what he described himself as having
been in his youth to Cranmer, but a ruffian without heart, feeling,
or conscience. I have compared Thomas Cromwell to Robespierre, and the
likeness can be even traced in their lineaments. There is an admirable
engraving which has all the marks of being a faithful likeness of
Cromwell in the “Herologia,” and a portrait of him in the National
Portrait Gallery, and in both the facial resemblance to Robespierre
is remarkable. The features are of the ferret type, not brutal by any
means, but the suggestion of the weasel in both faces is strongly
marked. Cromwell made a close study of Machiavelli, and “The Prince”
was his constant companion, philosopher, and guide; Cæsar Borgia could
not have followed the precepts of the cynical Florentine more literally
than did the ennobled son of the Putney blacksmith.
It was his aim to make the King supreme both in Church and State. In
order to achieve this object, the Church was first pillaged, and when
he and his master were glutted with the spoils of monasteries and
abbeys, he turned his attention to the State, sweeping off the heads
of those nobles whom he considered sufficiently independent in their
views to resist the merging of the supreme power in the sovereign. For
ten years—from 1530 to 1540—there was an English “Terror.” Even Henry
himself, who seemed to fear neither man nor God, feared Cromwell. It
was Cromwell who was more responsible than Henry for the deaths of
More and Fisher; it was Cromwell who, when the Pilgrimage of Grace
took place, carried fire and sword into Yorkshire, and afterwards into
Devonshire; it was Cromwell who instigated Henry to exterminate the
families of de la Pole and Courtenay; it was Cromwell who threatened
to destroy Cardinal Pole, although the latter had put the seas between
himself and the terrible instrument of the King’s enmity. “There may
be found ways enough in Italy,” he wrote to the Cardinal, “to rid a
treacherous subject. When justice can take no place by process of law
at home, sometimes she may be enforced to take new means abroad.” The
Cardinal soon learnt what Cromwell meant by “justice at home,” when the
news reached him in Italy that Cromwell and the King had butchered his
aged mother upon Tower Green. Shortly before his fall—and this fact
of his career is similar to that of Robespierre—Cromwell had attained
what was practically the supreme power. Besides being Earl of Essex,
he was also Great Chamberlain of England, Vicar-General of the Church,
the head of all foreign and domestic affairs, and President of the Star
Chamber—the most supreme and most redoubtable council in the land,
which corresponded in its power to the Council of the Ten at Venice.
Like Robespierre again, in private life Cromwell lived simply and
without ostentation—a strong contrast this to his old master and
patron, the magnificent Wolsey. Whether Cromwell possessed any
redeeming points in his character history has not recorded, but his
fall was singular, as sudden and as unexpected as had been his rise.
It was brought about by a woman, although indirectly. Cromwell had
arranged the marriage of Henry with Anne of Cleves, and when the King
found that princess lacking in all the charms with which she had been
accredited both by painters and courtiers, he not only spoke of her as
“a Flanders mare,” but visited his disappointment upon the negotiator
of the marriage, and, from being Henry’s most trusted adviser, Cromwell
became the object of his royal master’s implacable hatred.
The old historian Stowe thus relates the fall of the newly created Earl
of Essex: “The King’s wrath was kindled against all those that were
preferrers of this match, whereof the Lord Cromwell was the chief, for
the which, and for dealing somewhat too far in some matters beyond the
King’s good liking, were the occasions of his hasty death.” On the 10th
of June 1540, Cromwell, who had been in his place in the House of Lords
the same afternoon, was arrested and placed in the Tower; so sudden
was the effect of Henry’s rage. Cranmer, who appears to have been a
true friend of the fallen Minister, wrote to Henry in his behalf, but
with the usual result.
Foxe, the martyrologist, bears witness to the courage and unshaken
firmness evinced by Cromwell during his imprisonment. On the 29th of
the month he was condemned to death by both Houses of Parliament. The
day after he wrote a piteous letter to the King, which ends thus,
“Most Gracious Prince, I can say but mercy, mercy, mercy!” But Henry
and mercy were strangers, and the former slayer of women and children
must have bitterly regretted the little of the same quality that he had
shown to others in the days of his power.
A month later he was beheaded. On his way to Tower Hill he met Lord
Hungerford, bound on a similar errand—the distance from the Tower to
Tower Hill takes but five minutes, walking very slowly—and whilst these
two were making their way to their final earthly destruction, Cromwell
appears to have encouraged his fellow-sufferer, who was complaining and
bewailing the approach of death, as they faced the Hill together, and
the grim shadow that was closing round them. “And so,” writes Foxe,
“went they together to the place of execution, and took their death
patientlie.”
What Cromwell said in his dying speech on the scaffold has been made
uncertain by the garbled accounts of his words; but, to judge from
these, he made a better exit from the world than his career in it would
have led one to expect. The executioner was awkward, and, according to
the chroniclers, Stowe, Hall, and Foxe, “very ungoodly performed his
office.” Cromwell was fifty years of age when his career thus ended.
From the son of a blacksmith, and with no manner of advantages, he
had risen from his humble surroundings at Putney to become an Earl, a
Knight of the Garter, Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Keeper
of the Privy Seal, and Lord Great Chamberlain of England. He did much
evil, but he accomplished two good things for the benefit of his
country, which should be put upon the other side of his account; he
caused the Bible to be printed in English in 1538, and he instituted
the system of parish registers, which he himself superintended.
[Illustration: _St. Thomas’s and Curfew Towers_]
The Lord Hungerford of Heytesbury, who has been mentioned as having
been beheaded at the same time as Cromwell, had been accused of having
persuaded some persons to prophesy how long the King would live. It
was probably only a trumped-up charge, and certainly, if true, not of
any greater offence than that of _lèse majesté_, but it was considered
quite sufficient to bring the too curious inquirer to the scaffold.
In the same year, as has already been stated, Lord Leonard Grey was
executed.
An apparently justifiable execution took place in the year 1541, that
of Lord Dacre, on Tower Hill, he being, according to Holinshed’s
Chronicle, guilty of murder.
Cromwell, although not a professed Protestant, had always protected the
followers of that faith, but with his death they were again persecuted
by Henry, and at the end of July 1541 three of the most prominent of
the Lutherans, Dr Robert Barnes, Thomas Gerard, and William Jerome,
were haled to the dungeons of the Tower, and thence dragged through
the City on hurdles, and burnt at Smithfield. On the same day (30th
July) Henry, with his almost incredible impartiality when engaged
on persecution, caused four Roman Catholic priests—Doctor Abel,
Fetherstone, Powel, and Cooke—to be burnt to death at the same place
(Hall).
In the Beauchamp Tower is a carving, representing a bell, on which the
capital letter “A” is cut. This is a rebus carved by the learned and
unfortunate Dr Abel, while he was awaiting his trial and execution in
this tower. Abel was a man of great learning, and had been domestic
chaplain to Catherine of Arragon, and had offended the King by
championing Catherine’s cause during the trial of divorce between her
and Henry. Below Dr Abel’s rebus appears the name of “Doctor Cooke,
1540,” which is the inscription of Lawrence Cooke, Prior of Doncaster.
These four priests were martyrs for the old faith, like More and
Fisher, and many less known Roman Catholics, who preferred death rather
than acknowledge Henry’s supremacy in the Church of England.
QUEEN CATHERINE HOWARD
Six years after Anne Boleyn’s execution upon Tower Green, another of
Henry’s Queens was led out from her prison in the Tower, to a similar
doom on that same spot.
In the case of Queen Catherine Howard, one cannot, alas! feel that
the poor victim was innocent of the charge which the King had brought
against her. Catherine Howard was an erring woman, much to be pitied.
She confessed her guilt both to Archbishop Cranmer and many Lords of
the Council, to Suffolk, Southampton, and also to Thirlby, the Bishop
of Westminster—the only Bishop who ever occupied that see.
On the 10th of February 1542 Queen Catherine Howard was brought from
Sion House, where she and Lady Rochford had passed the winter in close
confinement, to the Tower, and three days later both these unhappy
ladies were beheaded on the scaffold on Tower Green. Both died with
courage, and both confessed their guilt before the axe fell, for on
this occasion the services of the Calais executioner were not called
into requisition. An eye-witness of their deaths, named Otwell Johnson,
in a letter written by him (and which is undoubtedly genuine, as Sir
Henry Ellice includes it in his first series of “Original Letters”),
declares that both victims “made the moost godly and chrystian end,
that ever was hard tell of I thynke sins the world’s creation.” So the
last act in these poor women’s lives atoned for the evil of which they
had been undoubtedly guilty. Weever, a contemporary, alludes thus
to the Queen’s burial: “Within the choir of this chapel (St Peter’s)
lieth buried near the relics of the said Annie Bollein, the body of
Katherine, the fifth wife of King Henry VIII., who, having continued
his wife but the space of one year, six months, and four days, was
attainted by Parliament and beheaded here in the Tower upon the 13th of
February 1542.” Lady Rochford shared her mistress’s place of interment.
Catherine Howard was but twenty-two years of age when her life closed
so tragically. Culpepper and Dereham, who were charged with being the
Queen’s paramours, were hanged at Tyburn, and some of her relatives
suffered imprisonment in the Tower on her account. Among these were
her grandmother, “old Duchess of Norfolk,” as Shakespeare calls her;
Lord and Lady William Howard, and the Countess of Bridgwater, the
daughter of Thomas, second Duke of Norfolk. By a singular coincidence,
the Duke of Norfolk, who had presided at the trial of Anne Boleyn,
was uncle both to that unfortunate Queen and to Catherine Howard, and
when the latter was attainted, he wrote thus to Henry: “The abominable
deeds done by two of my nieces against your Highness have brought me
into the greatest perplexity that ever poor wretch was in” (State
Papers: Domestic Series). The “poor wretch” himself came within an ace
of losing his own head by Henry’s orders, and the King’s death the
day before that fixed for Norfolk’s execution, alone saved him from
perishing on the scaffold.
An unusual occurrence happened in the Tower in this same year of
Catherine Howard’s death, Arthur Lisle Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle,
dying of joy, according to old Hall, on hearing that he was declared
innocent of the charge upon which he had been placed in the Tower,
that he had intended to betray the town of Calais. Arthur Lisle was
a natural son of Edward IV., and had served in the Navy, of which he
was a Vice-Admiral. He had been knighted and created Viscount Lisle in
1523, and given the Garter in the following year.
It is about this time that the first mention is made of that most
uncomfortable dungeon in the White Tower, named from the smallness of
its size, “Little Ease,” Hall, in his “Chronicles,” stating that one
of the officers belonging to the Sheriffs of London was placed in this
prison.
The disaster to the Scottish Army at Solway Moss in 1542 brought many
Scottish prisoners to the Tower, thus repeating the history of the
building during the reigns of the first and third Edwards. Among them
were the Earls of Cassillis and Glencairn, Maxwell, Oliphant, and
Somerville, together with some twenty knights; they were not long in
the Tower, however, being sent to various places to undergo their terms
of imprisonment.
ANNE ASKEW
One of the most memorable names connected with the Tower in the
reign of Henry VIII. is that of Anne Askew, or Ascue, as it is
sometimes spelt, the daughter of Sir William Askew, the head of an old
Lincolnshire family. In early life she had married a Mr Kyme, so that
when her persecution for her faith took place—a persecution which has
immortalised her name—it would have been more correct to have called
her by her husband’s name; however, her maiden appellation has clung to
her, and will always remain the one by which she is known. Kyme appears
to have been a bigoted Roman Catholic, and his wife’s strong attachment
to the Reformed faith may have been increased by his conduct towards
her, for he seems to have been a good-for-nothing fellow who made her
life the reverse of a happy one. Amongst Anne’s friends in London who
belonged to the Reformed faith, was no less a person than Catherine
Howard’s successor as Henry’s wife, Queen Catherine Parr. Anne, it
appears, had some post about the Queen’s person; at any rate, she was
known to many of the principal ladies of the Court. An Act known as
“The Six Articles,” which obtained the popular name of “The Whip with
Six Strings,” had been made law in 1539. The first clause of this Act
ordained that whoever disagreed with the declaration of the Statute of
Transubstantiation or the Real Presence, that the “Natural Blood Body
and Blood of Christ” were present in the Sacrament, should suffer death
by fire. Many men and women had been barbarously killed for denying
the truth of this doctrine, and amongst those who suffered martyrdom
was Anne Askew. To the horror of such a death Henry and his Council
added that of torture, in order to force the victim to recant; torture,
although illegal, was often, nay commonly, used in Henry’s reign.
Lord de Ros’s account of Anne Askew’s sufferings and death are too
interesting to need an apology for my quoting it here:
“In March 1545, she was summoned before an Inquest or Commission
at the Guildhall, and subjected to a long examination by one Dare,
when she displayed an intelligence and shrewdness, which, with her
modest, gentle demeanour, drew the admiration even of her enemies.
Being remanded to the Compter, she was shortly after brought before
Bishop Bonner for examination, who exercised all his subtlety to
entangle her in her replies; and at length drew out a written
summary, in which he had grossly perverted their meaning, and
desired her, after hearing it read, to declare whether or not she
would subscribe to its contents. Her answer merits to be recorded,
‘I believe,’ she said, ‘as much therof as is agreable to the Holy
Scriptures; and I desire that this sentence may be added to it.’
Furious at what he called her obstinate evasions, Bonner was about
to proceed to violent extremities, when by the interference of some
powerful friend, and probably for other reasons, she was allowed
to be released on the bail of her cousin, one Brittayne, who,
during the examination, at which he was present, had judiciously
cautioned her ‘not to set her weak woman’s wit to his lordship’s
great wisdom.’ We have no record of the cause, or rather pretext,
of her being, about three months afterwards, again arrested. This
time her husband, Kyme, was brought up along with her before the
Privy Council, sitting at Greenwich. Wriothesley, the Chancellor,
now undertook her examination, and chiefly on the great point of
Transubstantiation, on which she firmly refused to abandon her
own convictions, and was committed to Newgate; from whence she
wrote some devotional letters, which show her to have possessed
considerable talent. Her next appearance was before the Council at
the Guildhall, when, after an examination by a silly Lord Mayor
(Martin), in which she entirely foiled him by her simplicity
and good sense, she was plainly told, that unless she renounced
her errors, and distinctly declared her acquiescence in the Six
Articles, she must prepare to die; and, on her firm refusal,
she was condemned, without any trial by jury, to be burned as
an heretic. Meantime, instead of being sent back to Newgate,
she was committed to the Tower, with a view to subject her to
the torture of the rack, for which the gloomy seclusion of that
fortress afforded greater convenience than the ordinary prison of
Newgate, with the hope of inducing her to incriminate the Duchess
of Suffolk, the Countess of Sussex, the Countess of Hertford, and
other ladies who were supposed to have assisted her with money for
her support in prison. She was too high-minded and grateful to
betray them; and whatever might have been the case, she declared
that she had been chiefly kept from starvation by her faithful
maid, who went out and begged for her of the ‘’prentices and others
she met in the street.’
“The unhappy lady was now carried to a dungeon, and laid on the
rack in the presence of the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir A.
Knyvett, and Wriothesley, the Chancellor, Rich, a creature of
Bonner, and a secretary, sitting at her side to take down her
words. But when she endured the torture without opening her lips
in reply to the Chancellor’s questions, he became furious, and
seizing the wheel himself, strained it with all his force, till
Knyvett, revolting at such cruelty, insisted on her release from
the dreadful machine. It was but in time to save her life, for she
had twice swooned, and her limbs had been so stretched, and her
joints so injured, that she was never again able to walk without
support. Wriothesley hastened to Westminster to complain to the
King of the Lieutenant’s lenity; but the latter, getting into
his barge with a favourable tide, arrived before him, obtained
immediate audience, and told his tale so honestly and with such
earnestness, that Henry’s hard heart was softened for once, and
approving his conduct he dismissed him with favour. A stronger
reason for this may have been that the rack was regarded with such
horror by the people as to be applied only in secrecy; and had Anne
expired under it, and the fact became known, some violent outbreak
might have been apprehended in the City. She was shortly afterwards
carried to Smithfield and there burnt to ashes, together with three
other persons for the same cause, in the presence of the Duke of
Norfolk, the Earl of Bedford, Sir Thomas Wriothesley, the Lord
Mayor, and a vast concourse of people. One of the peers, learning
that there was some gunpowder about the stakes, became frightened
lest any accident should happen to himself from the faggots being
blown into the air; but the Earl of Bedford assuring him that no
such chance could occur, and that it was only to hasten the deaths
of the sufferers, he remained looking on with the same barbarous
indifference as the brutal mob who had assembled to witness the
dreadful spectacle.”
[Illustration: _Traitors’ Gate, from the Bloody Tower_]
Anne Askew’s fellow-sufferers were named John Lascels (? Lascelles),
John Adams, and Nicholas Beleinian; there is a woodcut of their
martyrdom in Foxe’s book.
Anne Askew’s death appears to have been fraught with some danger to
Queen Catherine Parr. Aware of the Queen’s sympathy for Anne, and
her leaning towards the Reformed faith, Wriothesley, the bigoted
Lord Chancellor, went so far as to draw up a warrant for Catherine’s
arrest. Fortunately for the Queen she was warned of her danger, and
either was actually frightened into a fever, or feigned illness.
During an interview with the King, the suffering Queen so worked upon
his feelings, that when Wriothesley appeared with a guard to take her
into custody, Henry turned upon him, and, heaping the foulest abuse
upon him, drove him from the presence (Speed’s Chronicle). Luckily for
Catherine Parr the days of Henry were near their end, or it is more
than probable that she would have shared the fate of Anne Boleyn and
Catherine Howard.
In 1546 peace had been made between England and France, and in order
to ratify the treaty the French sent their Lord High Admiral to
England, with the Bishop of Evreux, and some other nobles. Landing at
Greenwich, they were conducted with great ceremony to the Tower—where
a splendid banquet awaited them in the palace of the fortress—by the
Earls of Essex and Derby in the royal barge. After leaving the Tower
they proceeded to Lambeth Palace, and thence to Hampton Court, where
the treaty was signed. These were the last guests of the Sovereign in
the Tower. The last State prisoner to be executed in Henry’s reign was
the gifted and brilliantly endowed Earl of Surrey, the eldest son of
Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, who, as I have said before, also
narrowly escaped with his life.
Henry VIII., for the good of his people, was dying fast at the close of
the year 1546. His once handsome and athletic form had become a bloated
mass of corruption. His nature, always cruel, became fiend-like during
his later years, owing to his physical sufferings. He knew that death
was gaining upon him rapidly, but whilst he lived he determined still
to destroy, and when even in the very grasp of the King of Terrors,
still sent out his death orders. No cause can be assigned for the King,
while his wicked old life was fast ebbing away from him, ordering the
death of Norfolk and his son Surrey. The only possible reason was that
perhaps Henry feared they might wield too great an influence after his
death, when his heir, Edward, should have become King.
Henry intended that his son’s uncle, Lord Hertford, Queen Jane
Seymour’s brother, should be his sole guardian, and for a wretched
pretext Norfolk and Surrey were arrested, imprisoned in the Tower,
and sentenced to death. Of the Duke of Norfolk, Sir Walter Raleigh
wrote in the preface to his great History: “Henry knew not how to
value his deservings, having never omitted anything that concerned his
own honour and the King’s service.” Despite his weakness for tears,
Norfolk may rank amongst the English worthies, for he had done good
service to the State, both in arms and council. He had commanded the
English army at the Battle of Flodden, and had led another army during
a second victorious war in Scotland; he had also led the English van in
the war with France. In Ireland he had been one of the best and most
just of the English Lords-Deputy. By the accident of birth the Duke
was of the blood-royal, being descended from the Mowbrays; further
than this, he had married one of the daughters of Edward IV., and two
of his nieces had been Queens of England. For his own safety he was
perilously near the steps of the throne, and his birth was too high,
the story of his life too romantic, for Henry to tolerate his surviving
himself, consequently, with reason or without, his death was determined
upon; Henry was never troubled by lack of just cause. The dying King
excused his treatment of the Duke and his son Surrey to foreign courts,
by giving out that they had conspired to take upon themselves the
government of the State; this was a pure invention. Another and a
still more ridiculous charge brought against them was that Norfolk and
his son had quartered in their shield the royal arms of Edward the
Confessor. This charge could not have hoodwinked the most simple, for
it had been the custom of the Duke’s family long before he himself was
born to have these arms quartered upon their shield. However, on the
14th of January 1547, the House of Lords, without even the form of a
trial, and without examining either the Duke or his son, passed a bill
of attainder against them, and the end of the month was fixed for their
execution.
While awaiting his trial in the Tower Norfolk appears to have been
inclined—to make use of a racing expression—to “hedge,” as regarded his
religious opinions. The Duke had always professed himself a Catholic,
both by birth and conviction, but from his prison he sent a petition
to the Lords of the Council in which, after asking their permission
to have some books sent to him from Lambeth, he adds, “for unless I
have books to read ere I fall asleep, and after I wake again, I cannot
sleep, nor have done these dozen years. That I may have mass, and be
bound upon my life not to speak to him who says mass, which he may do
in the other chamber whilst I remain within. That I may be allowed
sheets to lie in; to have licence in the daytime to walk in the chamber
without, and in the night be locked in as I am now. I would gladly
have licence to send to London to buy one book of St Austin, ‘de
Civitate Dei,’ and one of Josephus, ‘de Antiquitatibus,’ and another
of Sabellius, who doth declare most of any book that I have read, how
the Bishop of Rome from time to time hath usurped his power against all
Princes by their unwise sufferance” (“Seward’s Anecdotes,” Ed. 1798).
Surrey was placed in the Tower at the same time as his father. Not
only was Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, a charming poet, especially
when writing of love, of which his verses addressed to the “Fair
Geraldine” are perhaps his best, but he was also remarkable in the
history of English literature as having been the first writer of blank
verse in our language; he was also a distinguished soldier. But thirty
years old when his fate came upon him, he was a national loss, and in
killing Surrey, Henry destroyed one of England’s most gifted sons. Not
being a peer, Surrey was tried before a Common jury at the Guildhall
on the 13th January 1547. He made a splendid defence where no defence
was necessary, and where no defence, however eloquent, and no career,
however blameless, would have saved him. With the axe’s edge turned
towards him he left the Guildhall for the Tower, and six days later one
of the wisest, noblest, and most gifted heads that England possessed,
rolled in the bloody sawdust of the scaffold on Tower Hill. Norfolk’s
life was only saved by the providential death of Henry VIII., which
took place only a few hours before the time fixed for the Duke’s
execution. He remained a prisoner in the Tower until the reign of Mary
Tudor, and lived to preside at the trial of the Duke of Northumberland,
and again to take up arms when Wyatt’s rebellion broke out, although
then in his eightieth year. He died a natural death in his bed—a rare
event with the heads of his house—in 1554, aged eighty-one. Norfolk had
lived in the reign of eight English sovereigns—from the reign of Henry
VI. to that of Mary Tudor.
[Illustration: _Back of the Byward Tower_]
CHAPTER IX
EDWARD VI
The boy King Edward VI. was only ten years of age when he succeeded to
the throne. On the 30th of May 1547, he was brought in state to the
Tower amidst an outburst of the people’s gladness, which, considering
all the troubles they had for so long endured under the savage rule of
the late monarch, must have been heartfelt and genuine.
Near the town of Midhurst in Sussex are the ruins of one of the finest
of the old Tudor mansions, Cowdray House, the old home of the Montagus.
In the reign of Edward VI. Cowdray belonged to Sir Antony Brown, who
held the proud office of Grand Standard Bearer of England. Here it
was that the boy King in the year of his accession was entertained
by Sir Antony, and in his precocious diary the little monarch wrote
that he was “marvellously, yea, rather excessively banketted.” Cowdray
House—and that is my reason for writing about it here—contained a
most interesting series of paintings upon its walls illustrating the
events in the reign of Henry VIII. and that of his son, who was so
“excessively banketted” within its halls. Among these paintings were
representations of the siege of Boulogne by Henry VIII.; the Field of
the Cloth of Gold; and a huge painting of the coronation of Edward VI.,
in which the long procession is seen wending its gorgeous length from
the Tower to Westminster Abbey. All these paintings perished in the
disastrous fire which destroyed Cowdray on the 24th of September 1793.
Fortunately, George Vertue copied these paintings and engraved the
copies in the middle of the eighteenth century, the engravings being
published by the Society of Antiquaries. Next to the Bayeux tapestry,
nothing more interesting than these pictured records of English history
have come down to us.
Among the pageants and devices with which the joyous Londoners graced
the occasion when the young King rode through the festive streets,
was a very quaint one, which Holinshed thus describes: “An argosine
(a sailor) came from the batilment of Saint Poule’s Church, upon a
cable, beyng made faste to an anker at the deane’s doore, liying uppon
his breaste, aidyng himself neither with hande nor foote, and after
ascended to the middes of the same cable, and tumbled and plaied many
pretie toies, wherat the Kyng and other of the peres and nobles of the
realme laughed hartely.” A few days before his coronation Edward had
taken his place upon a throne in the Tower, and had had his little
hand kissed by the peers, receiving the accolade of knighthood from
the hands of his maternal uncle, the Protector Somerset. But whilst
he received knighthood from one uncle, to another he gave lodging in
the Tower. The latter was Thomas, Lord Seymour of Sudley, Lord High
Admiral of England. Lord Sudley—or as it is also written Sudeley—was
an over-ambitious personage. He had married the late King’s widow,
Catherine Parr, and after her death, which he is supposed to have
hastened, he began to pay very marked attentions to the Princess
Elizabeth. Although one does not wish to allude to any scandal that
may have attached itself in the gossip of the time to the name of that
Princess, the flirtation—to give Elizabeth’s conduct with the Lord
High Admiral its mildest description—was at one time too notorious an
episode in the future “Gloriana’s” career to be wholly omitted from
mention. Who has not read of the “high jinks” carried on between them?
How on one occasion Seymour was found cutting the Princess’s gown
“into a hundred pieces,” in the gardens of Hanworth, and how on another
he had the audacity to pay Elizabeth a visit in her bed-chamber, on
which occasion she “ran out of her bed to her maidens, and then went
behind the curtains of her bed.” Seymour was certainly uncommonly
handsome, and it is well known that Elizabeth was very impressionable
in the matter of manly beauty. Probably Elizabeth’s chances of one day
succeeding to the Crown may have helped to make Seymour so forward in
his advances, but it was neither his flirtation with the Princess,
nor his marriage with Catherine Parr, that brought about his ruin; he
was discovered to be intriguing against his all-powerful brother, the
Protector Somerset. A warrant was issued for his arrest on the 17th of
January 1549, and he was taken to the Tower, in spite of his threat to
poignard any person who dared to lay hands on him (“State Papers,” Dom.
Ed. VI.). “By God’s precious soul,” he wrote, “whosoever lays hands
on me to fetch me to prison, I shall thrust my dagger into him.” It
is not recorded whether he carried his threat into execution. He was
repeatedly interrogated whilst in the Tower, but without any effect,
and on the 25th of February the bill of attainder against him was
introduced into the House of Lords. On the 2nd of March it passed the
Commons, and three days later received the royal assent; on the 15th,
Goodriche, Bishop of Ely, communicated to Seymour that he was to suffer
death on the 20th.
The Protector has naturally been greatly blamed for the part he took in
bringing his brother to the scaffold, and there is a curious passage
in a letter written by the Princess Elizabeth to her sister Queen
Mary, shortly after she herself was sent a prisoner to the Tower, in
which she says, “In late days I hearde my Lorde Somerset say, that if
his brother had bine suffered to speke to him, he had never suffered;
but the persuasions were made to him so gret, that he was brought in
beleafe that he could not live safely if the admirall lived; and that
made him give his consent to his dethe.” The young King’s entry in
his diary regarding his uncle’s death is extremely laconic: “The Lord
Sudley, admiral of England, was condemned to death, and died in March
ensuing.” Burnet in his “History” says, “What his behaviour was on the
scaffold I do not find,” and indeed no record, as was the case with
so many of his distinguished contemporaries, has come down to us of
his last moments, except that Strype in his “History” says, that just
before the end the Admiral bade his servant, “speed the thing that he
wot of.”
This last message appears to have regarded two letters which he had
written in the Tower, one to the Princess Elizabeth, and the other to
the Princess Mary. They had been written in some kind of invisible ink,
and, having no pen, he had written them with the point of an “uglet”
which “he had plucked from his hose,” and they had been sewn between
the sole of one of his velvet shoes. “By this means these letters
came to light, and fell into the hands of the Protector and Council.
The contents of these tended to this end, that the two sisters should
conspire together against the Protector, enforcing many matters against
him, to make these ladies jealous of him, as though he had, it may be,
estranged the King their brother from them, or to deprive them of the
right of their succession. Both these papers Latimer himself saw, and
repeated publicly in his fourth sermon before the King, though in the
last edition of his sermons the passage is left out.” The following,
however, is the passage from Latimer’s most strange discourse on the
death of the Lord High Admiral, which he preached before the King
regarding his uncle’s death; a less charitable or courtly address is
not often met with: “As touching the kind of his death, whether he be
saved or no, I refer that to God. In the twinkling of an eye He may
save a man or turn his heart. What he did I cannot tell, and when a man
hath two strokes with an axe, who can tell but between two strokes he
doth repent? It is hard to judge, but this I will say, if they will ask
me what I think of his death, that he died very dangerously, irksomely
and horribly. He was a wicked man and the realm is well rid of him”
(“Latimer’s Sermons”).
The death of his brother made the Protector still more disliked by
the people; he was already unpopular by reason of his rapaciousness
and the manner in which he attained great wealth by the seizure of
Church property. The huge palace he had built by the riverside, and
called after himself Somerset House, was a standing witness of his
overpowering greed in the eyes of all men. In order to increase the
size of this building he had committed desecration by pulling down a
church, and casting away the human remains that had been buried within
it; such an action in those days was considered by the populace as a
crime.
The elder brother soon followed the younger along the same gloomy road
to the grave, thus fulfilling the words of the chronicler Grafton, who,
when Seymour died, had written, “It was commonly talked that the fall
of one brother would be the overthrow of the other, as soone after it
came to passe.”
The Protector’s fall was brought about by John Dudley, Duke of
Northumberland, his rival. At a meeting convened at Ely House, Holborn,
at which Lord St John, the President of the Council, Northumberland,
Southampton, Arundel, and five other members of the Privy Council
were present, the Protector’s arrest was decided upon. When Somerset
heard this startling news he took the young King from Hampton Court
to Windsor, and prepared to defend himself by force to the last. His
call to arms, however, met with no response; none of his former friends
came forward in his support, and he felt that his cause was lost.
Meanwhile the Privy Council had taken possession of the Tower and
despatched Sir Philip Hoby as its messenger to the King at Windsor,
with letters, “beseeching his highness to give credit to that which he
should declare in their names; and the King gave him libertie to speak,
and most gentlie heard all that he had to saie, and trulie he did so
wiselie declare his message, and so gravelie told his tale in the name
of the Lords, yea therewithal so vehementlie and greevous so against
the Protector, who was also there present by the King, that in the end,
the Lord Protector was commanded from the King’s presence” (“Grafton’s
Chronicle”).
On the 12th of October, two days after the meeting of the Privy Council
at Ely House, the Protector occupied the prison chamber at Beauchamp
Tower. The once all-powerful Duke was brought to his knees in every
sense of the term, for, on the 21st of January 1550, he actually signed
a confession, kneeling before his nephew the King. Apparently, in
consequence of this submission, Somerset was released from the Tower,
as Edward records in his diary on the 6th of February, that his uncle
“supped at Sir John Yorke’s, one of the sheriffes of London, where the
Lords assembled to welcome him”; and on the 31st of March he reappeared
at Court, the King writing under that date, “My Lord Somerset was
delivered of his bondes and came to court.” On the 21st of April the
King recorded, “It was granted that my lord of Somerset should have all
his moveable goodes and leases, except those that be alreadie given.”
Warwick, who had about this time been created Duke of Northumberland,
had arranged a marriage between his eldest son, Lord Lisle, and
Somerset’s daughter, Lady Anne, in June 1550; but in spite of this
alliance, the old feud between these enemies broke out again, with
the result that on the 16th of October 1551, Somerset was again a
prisoner in the Tower, on a charge of high treason. And that evening
the royal diarist writes, “This morning none were at Westminster of
the conspirators. The first was the duke, who came later than he was
wont, of himself. After dinner he was apprehended.” On this occasion
Somerset’s wife shared his imprisonment.
The indictment against the Duke was presented at the Guildhall on the
21st of November, a true bill being found by a jury of Middlesex.
Strict orders were given to the Lord Mayor “to cause the citie to be
well looked to and garded all to-morrow and the next night.” Two days
afterwards the King entered in his diary, “The Lord Treasurer (this was
William Paulet, created Marquis of Winchester in 1555) apointed high
stuard for the arraignment of the Duke of Somerset.”
[Illustration: _The King’s House_]
Stowe writes on the 2nd of December, “The sayde Duke brought out of
the Tower of London, with the axe of the Tower borne before him, with
a great number of billes, glaves, holbardes, and polaxes attending
upon him; and was had from the Tower by water, and having shot London
Bridge at five of the clock in the morning, so came unto Westminster
Hall, where was made the middle of the Hall a new scaffold, where all
the Lordes of the King’s Counsaill sate as his judges, and there was he
arraigned and charged with many articles both of treason and felony.
And when, after much speeche, he had answered not guiltie, he in all
humble manner put himself to be tryed by his peeres who, after long
consultations among themselves, gave their verdict that he was not
guiltie of the treason, but of the felony.”
The King gave a long and very involved account of the Duke’s trial
in his diary, far too long to quote; at the close he writes as
follows:—“So the lordes acquited him of high treason and condemned
him of treason feloniouse, and so he was adjudged to be hanged. He
gave thankes to the lordis for their open trial and cried mercy of the
Duke of Northumberland, the Marquis of Northamptoon, and the Erie of
Pembroke for his ill meanings against them and made suet (suit) for his
life, wife and children, servantes and dettes, and so departed without
the axe of the Tower. The people knowing not the matter, shrieked half
a dozen times so loud that from the halle dore it was heard at Charing
Crosse plainely, and rumours went that he was quitte of all.”
Grafton writes of the Duke’s trial: “But nevertheless he was condemned
to death, wherof shortlye after he tasted. The felony that he was
condemned of was upon the statute made the last yere agaynst rebelles
and unlawfull assemblyes, wherein among thinges is one branch that
whosoever shall procure the death of any counsellor, that every
such attempt or procurement shall be felonye, and by force of that
statute the Duke of Somerset being, accompanyed with certain others,
was charged that he purposed and attempted the death of the Duke
of Northumberland. After the Duke was thus condemned he was agayne
returned to the Tower, through London, where were bothe exclamations,
the one cried for joye that he was acquitted, the other cried out
that he was condemned. But howsoever they cried he was conveyed to
the Tower where he remained until the twenty-second daye of January
next following.” Burnet says that everything was done to prevent
the young King taking the fate of his uncle to heart, there being
many festivities at Court during the month, but the Bishop adds
significantly, “he was not much concerned in his uncle’s preservation.”
The 22nd of January was a Friday, and at seven o’clock in the morning
the fatal Hill was covered with a dense crowd, who had come out from
all sides of London to see the Protector die. An eye-witness of the
scene has left the following account of the Duke’s execution:—
“Soon after eight o’clock of the morning, the Duke of Somerset was
beheaded on Tower Hill. There was as gret company as have been
syne: the King’s gard behynde them with ther halbards and 1000 men
with halbards of the priviledge of the Tower, Ratcliffe, Lymhouse,
Whytechappell, Saint Katheryn, and Stretford, Bow, Hogston, and
Shoerdyche, and ther were two sheriffs ther present seying the
execuyson of my Lord” (Machyn).
Grafton adds that the Duke, “nothing changing voyce nor countenance,
but in a manner with the same gesture that he partely used at home,
kneeling down upon both his knees, and lifting up his handes, erected
himself unto God. And after that he had ended a few shorte prayers,
standing up agayne, and turning himself unto the East syde of the
skaffolde, he uttered to the people these words.” Then follows a long
speech in which the Duke rather praised himself for having upheld
religion when he was in power. In the midst of his speech a great
tumult arose, and Sir Anthony Browne of Cowdray was seen riding up
the Hill, at the sight of whom loud cries of “Pardon! Pardon!” and
“God save the King!” were raised by the people. Grafton continues
his account thus: “The truth of this hurly-burly grewe hereof, as it
was afterwards well knowen. The manner and custome is that when such
executions are done out of the Tower, the inhabitants of certayne
hamlets round about London, as Hogsden, Newynton, Shordiche, and
others, are commanded to give their attendance with weapons upon the
Lieutenant. And at this tyme, the Duke being upon the scaffolde, the
people of one of the hamlets came late, and coming through the postern
gate and espying the Duke upon the scaffolde, made haste and beganne
to roune, and cried to their felowes that were behind, ‘Come away,
come away.’ The people sodainely beholding them to come rounning with
weapons, and knewe not the cause, cried, ‘Away, away,’ by reason
whereof the people roun every way, not knowing whither or wherefore.”
So great was the panic that many persons fell into the Tower moat.
The Duke appears to have waited calmly until the disturbance ceased,
and then resumed his speech. He gave a scroll to Dr Coxe, the Dean
of Westminster, who attended him upon the scaffold, which probably
contained a confession of faith. Coxe was afterwards made Bishop of Ely
by Queen Elizabeth, after having been imprisoned in the Tower by Queen
Mary, who deprived him of his Deanery, and it was to him that Elizabeth
wrote her famous letter, “Proud Prelate, you know what you were before
I made you what you are; if you do not immediately comply with my
request, by God I will unfrock you.”
After bidding farewell to his friends about him, Somerset gave himself
over to the executioner, “and kneling downe agayne in the straw untyed
his shirtstrings, and the executioner coming to him, turned downe his
collar rounde about his necke, and all other things which did let or
hinder him. Then he, covering his face with his own handkerchiefe,
lifting up his eyes unto heaven, where his only hope remained, laid
himself downe alone, and there suffered the heavie stroke of the axe,
which dispersed the head from his bodye, to the lamentable sight and
griefe of thousands that heartily prayed God for him and entirely loved
him.” Burnet declares that the people were generally “much affected by
the execution,” which was somewhat strange, seeing how deeply unpopular
the Protector had been, “and many threw handkerchiefs into the Duke’s
blood, to preserve it in remembrance of him. One lady that met the Duke
of Northumberland when he was led through the city in Queen Mary’s
reign, shaking one of these bloody handkerchiefs, said, ‘Behold the
blood of that worthy man, that good uncle of that excellent King, which
was shed by thy malicious practice, it doth now begin apparently to
revenge itself upon thee.’” In Edward’s diary is this laconic entry on
22nd January (1551–52): “The Duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon
Towre hill between eight and nine a cloke in the morning.” The boy-king
was certainly not much “concerned,” as Bishop Burnet remarked, for the
fate of his uncle.
The Protector, like his brother the Admiral, was a singularly handsome
man even in that age of handsome men, and according to Sir John
Hayward, one of his contemporaries, was “courteous and affable.” A
French writer of the period is not so complimentary in his appreciation
of the Duke of Somerset, writing that he was a “homme de quelque
entendement, couvert et simulé en ses actions, de la nature commune
des Anglois, douce apparence, gracieuses paroles, et maligne volonté.”
One of the invariable results of the fall of a party chief in these
so-called “good old days,” was that his most trusted friends and
adherents fell after him; this occurred in the case of the Protector.
The Earl of Arundel, Lords Grey and Paget, with others of his
supporters, were sent to the Tower at the same time as the Duke, and of
these, Sir Ralph Vane, Sir Michael Stanhope, Sir Thomas Arundel, and
Sir Miles Partridge, were executed. Sir Ralph Vane had distinguished
himself at the siege of Boulogne in 1544, where he had gained his
knighthood, a distinction given in those times only for distinguished
services on the field. James I. was the first monarch to prostitute
this honour by making it a thing of sale. Vane had also fought in the
Scottish campaign. “A man of fierce spirit,” Hayward characterises
him, “both sodaine and bold, of no evill disposition, saving that he
thought scantnesse of estate too great an evill.” Sir Ralph had in
some manner offended the all-powerful Duke of Northumberland, and on
some now unknown charge, he was lodged in the Tower in the March of
1551. He was released, but again imprisoned on a charge of conspiring
with Somerset. He fled, hiding himself in a stable in Lambeth, but was
re-arrested, and again placed in durance in the Tower. When examined
by the Privy Council he showed a bold, even a defiant, front, “The
time hath been,” he exclaimed, “when I was of some esteeme; but now we
are at peace, which repenteth the coward and the courageous alike,”
“and so with an obstinate resolution he made choice rather not to
regard death than by any submission to intreat for life” (Hayward’s
Edward VI.). When found guilty and sentenced to death he said that his
blood would make Northumberland’s “pillow uneasy to him,” and Edward
hearing of Sir Ralph’s replies to the Court, wrote in his diary under
the date 27th January 1551–52, “Sir Ralph Vane was condemned of felony
in treason, answering like a ruffian.” Sir Michael Stanhope was a
cousin of Somerset’s, a fact sufficient in itself to condemn him. Sir
Thomas Arundel, another of the condemned knights, was of Lamberne in
Cornwall, and had been one of Wolsey’s attendants, being made a Knight
of the Bath at Anne Boleyn’s coronation. In 1549 he was appointed
Receiver-General of the Duchy of Cornwall. He had been accused of
forming a conspiracy in Cornwall, for participation in which his
relative, Humphrey Arundel, Governor of St Michael’s Mount, had been
hanged at Tyburn in 1549, but Sir Thomas had been released from his
imprisonment, the charge against him not having been proved. Shortly
afterwards, however, he was again thrown into prison, charged with
complicity in the Somerset conspiracy, the nature of this fresh charge
being indicated by King Edward’s brief entry in his diary of 11th
October 1551, “Sir Thomas Arrundel had ashuired my Lord that the Tower
was sauf.” On the 16th October he was sent to the Tower, and Edward
writes, “Arrondel was taken.” Arundel was tried the day after Sir Ralph
Vane, and also sentenced to die. These and the two others were all
executed on the same day, 26th February 1552. Sir Ralph Vane—or, as it
should be spelt Fane, for he belonged to the same stock as the Fanes,
Earls of Westmoreland, but in those days of euphonious spelling, it
is found as Vane, Fane, Perne, and even Phane—and Sir Miles Partridge
were hanged, whilst Sir Thomas Arundel and Sir Michael Stanley were
beheaded. “Ther body wher putt into dyvers new coffens to be bered, and
heds, into the Towre in cases, and ther bered” (Machyn’s Diary); the
Earl of Arundel, Lords Grey and Paget were acquitted.
Edward’s short reign of six years ended on the 6th of July 1553,
and considering the brief time he occupied the throne, there was a
sufficiency of blood shed upon the scaffold, through the machinations
of those around him, to have pleased the insatiable Henry the Eighth
himself.
CHAPTER X
MARY TUDOR
Northumberland had persuaded the dying King to pass over his sisters,
Mary and Elizabeth, in favour of Lady Jane Grey, the grand-daughter of
Henry VII. by the marriage of Mary, daughter of that King, with Charles
Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, as well as cousin to the late King Edward
VI., and his own daughter-in-law; and the Privy Council, immediately
after Edward’s death, had confirmed this measure. Northumberland’s
plan, in which he had induced Edward to acquiesce, annulled both the
Statute of Succession and the will of Henry VIII., for not only did it
set aside both the late King’s sisters, but also the direct successors,
to whom the crown would hereditarily fall, failing Henry’s daughters.
These were the descendants of Henry’s eldest sister Queen Margaret,
wife of James IV. of Scotland, who was represented by the girl Queen
Mary Stuart, and, after her, by the descendants of Queen Margaret’s
second marriage with the Earl of Angus, who were represented by Henry
Stuart, Lord Darnley, Queen Margaret thus being grandmother to both
Queen Mary Stuart and Lord Darnley. Henry VIII. himself, however, had
passed over Queen Margaret’s claims in his will, and had placed the
children of his younger sister, Mary, Duchess of Suffolk, next to
his daughter Elizabeth in the succession. The Duchess of Suffolk’s
daughter—Lady Frances Brandon—had married Henry Grey, Marquis of
Dorset, by whom she had had three daughters, of whom Lady Jane Grey
was the eldest.[10] Dorset, who became Duke of Suffolk during the
Protectorate, having been given his father-in-law’s dukedom, was a
fervent follower of the Reformed faith, his children sharing his
religious beliefs.
The Duchess of Suffolk, Jane’s mother, who was still alive at this
time (1553) was passed over in Northumberland’s scheme, since he had
succeeded in wedding the daughter to his fourth son, Guildford Dudley,
his firm expectation being that as the future Queen’s father-in-law
he would have the government of the realm in his own hands. But
Northumberland’s ambitious dream was a short one, and the awakening was
terrible.
At the time of Edward’s death Lady Jane Grey (Lady Jane Guildford as
she should be called, but as was the case with Anne Askew, the paternal
name has always been retained) was living at Sion House, a house
belonging to her father-in-law, and here a deputation of the Council,
headed by Northumberland, Suffolk, Pembroke, and others, went to pay
their homage to the new Queen; on the 9th of July 1553, Lady Jane, or
as she was now styled, Queen Jane, entered the Tower in state.
Jane Grey was but a girl of sixteen when the ambition of her relatives
drew her from the retired and studious life that she loved, and forced
her to take up all the perils and troubles that surround a throne. A
more perfect creature, according to the unanimous testimony of her
contemporaries, never gladdened God’s earth. Her brow was lofty, her
features were delicate and refined, bearing a winning sweetness and
bright cheerfulness which made all those who were fortunate enough
to approach her, at once attached to her with a sentiment little
short of devotion. Young as she was, her knowledge, even for those
days when the daughters of great houses received an education which to
us would appear almost encyclopædic, was prodigious. According to her
tutors, Aylmer and Roger Ascham, Jane Grey knew Greek, Latin, French,
and Italian, being able to both write and speak these languages.
Besides, she knew something of Hebrew, Arabic, and even Chaldee. She
was proficient in music, and could play upon a variety of instruments,
singing to her own accompaniment. In addition to these accomplishments
she wrote a beautiful hand—a rare talent for the time—and was a past
mistress in the use of her needle.
[Illustration: _Queen Mary Tudor_
(_From a portrait at Latimer._)]
Ascham’s account of his visit to Lady Jane at Broadgate has often been
quoted, but it will bear quoting again:
“Before I went into Germany, I came to Broadgate in Leicestershire
to take my leave of that noble lady, Lady Jane Grey, to whom I was
exceedingly much beholden. Her parents the Duke and Duchess, and all
the household, gentlemen and gentlewomen, were hunting in the park. I
found her in her chamber reading the Phaedron of Plato in Greek, and
that with as much delight as some gentlewomen would read a merry Tale
of Boccaccio. After salutations and duty done, with some other talk,
I asked her why she should lose such pastimes in the park. Smiling,
she answered me, ‘All their sport in the park is but a shadow to the
pleasure I find in Plato.’ However illustrious she was by fortune, and
by royal extraction, these bore no proportion to the accomplishments
of her mind adorned with the doctrines of Plato and the eloquence of
Demosthenes.”[11]
With all her learning and her great accomplishments Lady Jane appears
to have been entirely lacking in that provoking superiority and
aloofness which, for want of a better word, we call “priggishness.” She
was indeed that rare creature, a perfect woman in mind, and character,
and person.
Most unwillingly did Lady Jane comply with Northumberland’s wishes. No
crown could add to her happiness, which was not dependent upon this
world’s state or station, nor one bestowed by the tinsel and glitter of
earthly power or riches, but a “peace above all earthly dignities, a
still and quiet conscience.” Jane Grey was not known to the Londoners,
and Northumberland was heartily disliked because of his arrogance and
overbearing manners, so it was not surprising that when they entered
the city on the 10th of July, as the Duke himself said afterwards in
deep chagrin, “not a single shout of welcome or God speed was raised as
they passed through the silent crowd on their way to the Tower,” “With
a grett company of lords and nobulls, and there was a shott of gunne
and chambers as has nott been seen oft, between four and five of the
clock” (Machyn). Jane Grey’s reign was not a long one.
On the 14th of July, Northumberland had left the Tower with his sons
to take command of the troops that had been despatched against Mary,
who, in the meantime, had been proclaimed Queen throughout London,
whilst the fleet at Yarmouth had also declared for her, a warrant
being issued for the arrest of Northumberland as a consequence. The
Duke was at Cambridge when he was taken prisoner; he showed great
cowardice, throwing his cap up in the air when he saw that his hopes
were useless, crying, “God save Queen Mary!” and furthermore, when the
Earl of Arundel, who had been sent by Mary, appeared on the scene, the
Duke literally grovelled on his knees before him. But his tardy loyalty
and his entreaties availed him little, for on the 25th of July he was
lodged a prisoner in the Tower, where only a month before his word had
been the supreme command. On the 18th of the following month he was
arraigned for high treason in Westminster Hall, the Duke of Norfolk,
who acted as Lord High Sheriff, breaking his wand upon giving sentence,
which was a signal for the court to break up. Northumberland was taken
back to the Tower and occupied a room in the Beauchamp Tower, where
several inscriptions cut by his sons and himself are to be seen to this
day.
[Illustration: _Lady Jane Grey_
(_From the original portrait at Madresfield Court by Lucas van
Heere_)]
The day after he entered the Tower the Duke received a visit from
Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, to whom he declared that he was a
Roman Catholic at heart, and that he had always been a member of that
faith. But although he “ratted” in his religion as well as in his
politics, his facility of opinion was in vain. Gardiner was only too
pleased to prove the Duke’s apostacy by a public ceremonial in which
the changeable nobleman was the principal actor. Mass was said in the
Chapel of the White Tower in which the Duke took part, and, that ended,
he made a public confession, and a formal recantation of his former
religion.
To return to Lady Jane Grey. When the news of Northumberland’s arrest
at Cambridge reached the Tower, Lady Throckmorton, one of Lady Jane’s
gentlewomen, on entering the Presence Chamber in the Palace, found
that the canopy of state, and all the other ensigns of royalty had
been removed. The nine days’ reign was at an end, and not unwillingly
did Jane cease playing a part that she must have felt did not by right
belong to her, and which must have been distasteful to her noble and
upright nature. But a prison awaited both herself and her boy-husband,
Guildford Dudley.
The tradition that Jane was imprisoned in the Brick Tower is incorrect,
for at first she occupied a room in the Lieutenant’s House, now the
King’s House, and later was removed to a house on the Green adjacent
to the Lieutenant’s lodging, then occupied by the Gentleman gaoler of
the Guard, Nathaniel Partridge by name. When Northumberland was led
from the Beauchamp Tower to abjure his religion in the White Tower,
Stowe writes that “Lady Jane looking through the windowe sawe the
Duke and the reste going to the Church.” Jane’s feelings on learning
Northumberland’s apostacy in the vain hope of saving his life, have
been recorded in an anonymous MS. of the time, now in the British
Museum (Harleian MSS. No. 194). The writer, who dined on the afternoon
of the same day (29th August) with Partridge at the Gentleman gaoler’s
house, met Lady Jane Grey there. After noting her graciousness to all
present, he says that Lady Jane inquired whether Mass was being said
in all the London churches, and on being answered that such was the
case, she said that she did not think that so strange as the sudden
conversion of the Duke, “for who would have thought,” she said, “that
he would have done so?” On someone remarking that probably he had
done so in order to obtain his pardon, “Pardon,” quoth she, “woe unto
him! He hath brought me and our stock in most miserable calamity by
his exceeding ambition. But for the answering that he hoped for his
life by his turning, though other men be of that opinion, I utterly am
not; for what man is there living, I pray you, although he had been
innocent, that would hope of life in that case; being in the field
against the Queen in person as general, and after his taking, so hated
and evil-spoken of in the Commons? And at his coming into prison so
wondered at, as the like was never heard at any man’s time. Should I,
who am young in years, forsake my faith for the love of life? But God
be merciful to us, for he sayeth who so denieth Him before man, he will
not know him in His Father’s kingdom.” Whether Lady Jane spoke thus
at Partridge’s dinner table is not possible of proof, “methinks the
lady doth protest too much” for these to be the _ipsissima verba_ of
Lady Jane. Of her sorrow for Northumberland’s cowardice and smallness
of spirit in allowing himself to be made an exhibition for the
glorification of Queen Mary’s priests and creatures, there can be no
doubt.
[Illustration: _Lord Guildford Dudley_
(_From the original portrait at Madresfield Court by Lucas van
Heere._)]
The day after his recantation in the chapel of St John’s,
Northumberland was beheaded. With him there went to the scaffold on
Tower Hill, Sir John Gates and Sir Thomas Palmer, both these knights
having been concerned in his conspiracy. Still clinging desperately
to the hope of being pardoned at the last moment, Northumberland
continued, as he was led to death, to profess his zeal for the
Roman Catholic faith, and in the speech he made to the crowd from
the scaffold declared that he was a fervent Papist. His example was
not followed by his fellow-sufferers, both of whom died with manly
fortitude, meeting their fate with a calm and unflinching demeanour.
Others who had been implicated in Northumberland’s schemes, amongst
whom were Lords Northampton, Warwick, and Ferrers, who had also been
placed in the Tower, were pardoned, but their prisons were soon
filled by fresh batches of captives. Of these new prisoners, the most
important were Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, Cranmer, Archbishop
of Canterbury, and Ridley, Bishop of London, and the fortress was
so full that these three prelates were obliged to share the same
prison-chamber. On the 8th of March in the following year, the Bishops
were taken from the Tower to their martyrdom at Oxford.
During the month of September in this year, Lady Jane was allowed
to walk in the garden of the Palace, her husband, according to a
chronicler of the time, also being given, with his brother, Lord Harry
Dudley, what was called “the liberty of the leads” in the Beauchamp
Tower. This meant that they were allowed to promenade on the outer
passage running along the top of the wall which connects the Beauchamp
with the Bell Tower.
Queen Mary had entered the Tower on the 3rd of August, practically in
triumph, and there she held her court until after the funeral of her
brother, the late king; Mary was again in the Palace of the fortress
prior to her coronation, which took place on the 1st of October. On
her first visit to the Tower in August she found, on reaching Tower
Green, a group of State prisoners who awaited her arrival on their
knees. Among these prisoners of the late reign was the old Duke of
Norfolk; near him knelt the young and handsome Edward Courtenay, Earl
of Devonshire, who had passed most of his short life in the Tower.
Here, too, was the Duchess of Somerset, imprisoned at the same time
as her husband, who had so lately been beheaded on Tower Hill. Here,
too, knelt the Bishops of Winchester and Durham, Gardiner and Tunstall.
To all of these Mary spoke with some emotion; she had come as their
deliverer, and for once she appeared a woman as well as a Queen. On
the eve of her coronation Mary was accompanied to the Tower by her
half-sister Elizabeth.
It is strange to picture three such strangely different women as Queen
Mary, Elizabeth Tudor, and Lady Jane Grey, together within the walls
of the fortress at this time. The first a Queen, who has left behind
her a more hateful memory than many far worse women among monarchs;
the second, then but a powerless and semi-captive princess, whose
future fame as a sovereign and ruler might well excite the envy of the
mightiest potentate, but who, as a woman, lacked all that is best and
most admirable in her sex; and the third, an uncrowned girl-queen of
but seventeen summers, whose fate has called forth the love and pity of
thousands, and whose brief life and death are the brightest and saddest
in all history.
Mary’s coronation was marked by all the wonted splendour and elaborate
ceremonial of such functions at such a period, and Holinshed has
recorded that her head was so weighed down by her jewelled crown that
“she was faine to bear up her head with her hand.” A month later the
State trials commenced.
On the 13th of November a remarkable procession passed through the
Tower Gate, and wended its way through the streets of the City to the
Guildhall. Preceded by the axe, borne by the Gentleman Chief Warder,
first came Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, followed
by Lord Guildford Dudley and Lady Jane Grey, attended by two of her
ladies. Lady Jane wore a dress of black from head to foot which is thus
described by the chronicler Machyn:—“A black gown of clothe, turned
downe, the cappe lyned with fese velvett, and edged about with the
same; in a French hoode, all black, with a black habilment; a black
velvet boke before her, and another boke in her hande open.” This
account does not give a very clear idea of Lady Jane’s costume, but the
curious reader, if he visits the National Portrait Gallery, will find
a little full-face portrait of Lady Jane Grey as she then appeared,
in which she is represented in this very dress, which she wore at her
execution as well as during the trial.
The trial was held before the Lord Mayor of London, Thomas White, by
special commission, the Duke of Norfolk presiding as High Steward.
All the prisoners who pleaded guilty were attached for high treason,
“for assumption of the Royal authority by Lady Jane, for levying war
against the Queen, and conspiring to set up another in her room,” and
Lady Jane was sentenced “to be burned alive on Tower Hill or beheaded
as the Queen pleases,” the verdict being afterwards confirmed by Act of
Parliament.[12] After sentence had been pronounced the prisoners were
taken back on foot to the Tower.
During the few days that remained to Jane on earth, she was allowed
to walk in the garden of the Palace, a three-cornered plot of ground
enclosed on the north by the Queen’s Gallery, on the east by the Salt
and Well Towers, and on the south and river side by the Ballium wall,
which ran from the Well to the Cradle Tower. Sad and solitary must
these gardens have been in those dark December days, and the heart of
Jane Grey must have been very heavy when she recalled the days of her
free and happy girlhood at Broadgate and Sion. Guildford Dudley was
also allowed his daily walk on the wall passage between the towers, but
he and his young wife were not to meet again on this side of eternity.
At the last hour, however, permission was given that Dudley might bid
farewell to Jane on his way to death on Tower Hill, but she, fearing
the effect of such a supreme leave-taking for both, declined to avail
herself of this sad opportunity.
If, after the trial, there had been any intention on Mary’s part to
pardon Lady Jane Grey, such intention was frustrated by the action of
Jane’s father, who, in an evil moment for himself and his children,
joined in Wyatt’s rebellion. Baker, in his chronicle, writing of these
events, says: “The innocent lady must suffer for her father’s fault,
for if her father, the Duke of Suffolk, had not this second time made
shipwreck of his loyalty, his daughter had perhaps never tasted the
salt waters of the Queen’s displeasure, but now on a rock of offence
she is the first that must be removed.”
A few days before the end, Jane wrote the following letters to her
father, probably just before his own arrest, which took place on the
10th of February 1554. These letters bear no dates; this feminine fault
of not dating her letters is the only one that can be found with gentle
Lady Jane Grey.
“Father, although it has pleased God to hasten my death by you,
by whome my life should rather have beene lengthened, yet I can
soe patiently take it, that I yield God more hearty thanks for
shortening my woful dayes, than if all the world had been given
into my possession, my life lengthened at mine owne will. And
albeit I am well assured of your impatient dolours, redoubled
many wayes, both in bewaling your own woe, and especially as I am
informed, my wofull estate, yet my deare father, if I may, without
offence, rejoyce in my own mishaps, herein I may account myselfe
blessed that washing my hands with the innocence of my fact, my
guiltless bloud may cry before the Lord, Mercy to the innocent! And
yet though I must needs acknowledge, that beyng constraynd, and as
you know well enough continually assayed, yet in taking upon me, I
seemed to consent, and therein greivusly offended the Queen and her
lawes, yet doe I assuredly trust that this my offence towards
God is so much the lesse, in that being in so royall estate as I
was, mine enforced honour never mingled with mine innocent heart.
And thus, good father, I have opened unto you the state wherein I
presently stand, my death at hand, although to you perhaps it may
seem wofull yet to me there is nothing that can bee more welcome
than from this vale of misery to aspire, and that having thrown off
all joy and pleasure, with Christ my Saviour, in whose steadfast
faith (if it may be lawfull for the daughter so to write to her
father) the Lord that hath hitherto strengthened you, soe continue
to keepe you, that at the last we may meete in heaven with the
Father, Sonn, and Holy Ghost.—I am, Your most obedient daughter
till death,
“JANE DUDLEY.”
(_Harleian MSS., and Nichols’ Memoirs of Lady Jane Grey._)
Here is another of her letters to her father:
“TO THE DUKE OF SUFFOLK.
“The Lord comforte your Grace, and that in his worde, whearin all
creatures onlye are to be comforted. And thoughe it hathe pleased
God to take away two of your children, yet thincke not, I most
humblye beseache your Grace, that you have loste them, but truste
that we, by leavinge this mortall life, have wonne an immortal
life. And I for my parte, as I have honoured your Grace in this
life, wyll praye for you in another life.—Your Grace’s humble
daughter,
“JANE DUDLEY.”
[Illustration: IANA GRAYA DECOLLATA.
_Regia stirps tristi cinxi diademate crines
Regna sed omnipotens hinc meliora dedit_
_H.Holbeen in._ _E. V. Wÿngaerde ex_]
On the 8th of February Queen Mary’s favourite priest, Feckenham, had
an interview with Jane in her prison, of which Foxe the martyrologist
has recounted the details at great length; but, needless to say, Lady
Jane remained unshaken in her firm faith, and in her attitude to the
Reformed religion. It had been ordered that Guildford Dudley should
die on Tower Hill, whilst Jane suffered within the walls the same day,
Monday the 12th of February being fixed for the double execution.
On the eve of this day Jane was sufficiently calm to write a long
“exhortation” for the use of her sister, Catherine Grey, writing it in
the blank pages of a manuscript on vellum, entitled “De Arte Moriundi.”
This exhortation is as full of devotion and perfect faith in the mercy
of her Saviour as were the beautiful lines she wrote to her father.
Although Guildford wished for a last interview with Jane on the morning
of their execution, she was firm in deciding that “the separation would
be but for a moment” as she is reported to have said, adding, that if
their meeting could benefit either of their souls she would be glad to
see her husband, but she felt it would only add a fresh pang to their
deaths, and they would soon be together in a world where there would
be no more death or separation. The last moments of this unfortunate
lady were inexpressibly tragic. About ten o’clock on the morning of
the 12th of February, Guildford Dudley was led forth from his prison
to the scaffold on Tower Hill, being met at the outer gate by Sir
Thomas Offley, and passing under his wife’s windows as he crossed the
Green. Bidding farewell to Sir Anthony Brown and Sir John Throgmorton,
Guildford met his fate with high courage. His body was brought back to
the Tower in a handcart, the head being placed in a cloth; and looking
forth from her prison, Lady Jane was suddenly confronted with the
remains of what a few minutes before had been her husband. But nothing
could shake her fortitude, as the following account, taken from the
Chronicles of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, shows:—
“By this tyme was ther a scaffolde made upon the grene over agaynst
the White Tower for the saide Lady Jane to die upon.... The saide Lady
being nothing at all abashed, neither with feare of her own deathe,
which then approached, neither with the ded carcase of her husbande,
when he was brought into the chappell, came forthe the Lieutenant (who
was Sir John Bridges, afterwards Lord Chandos of Sudeley) leading
hir, in the same gown wherein she was arrayned, hir countenance
nothing abashed, neither her eyes mysted with teares, although her two
gentlewomen Mistress Elizabeth Tylney and Mistress Eleyn wonderfully
wept, with a boke in hir hand, whereon she praied all the way till she
came to the saide scaffolde, whereon when she was mounted, this noble
young ladie, as she was indued with singular gifts both of learning
and knowledge, so was she as patient and mild as any lamb at hir
execution.”
After praying for her enemies and herself, Jane turned to the priest
Feckenham and inquired whether she could repeat a Psalm, and he
assenting she repeated the fifty-first. She then handed her gloves and
her handkerchief to one of her ladies, giving the book she had brought,
to Thomas Bridges for him to give to his brother, Sir John. On a blank
page of this book[13] she had written:
“For as mutche as you have desyred so simple a woman to wrighte in
so worthye a booke, good mayster Lieuftenante, therefore I shall
as a frende desyre you, and as a christian require you, to call
uppon God to encline your harte to his lawes, to quicken you in his
wayes, and not to take the worde of trewethe utterlye oute of youre
mouthe. Lyve styll to dye, that by deathe you may purchas eternall
life, and remember howe the ende of Mathusael, whoe as we reade in
the scriptures was the longeste liver that was a manne, died at the
laste; for as the precher sayethe, there is a tyme to be borne, and
a tyme to dye: and the daye of deathe is better than the daye of
oure birthe.—Youres, as the Lord knowethe, as a frende,
“JANE DUDDELEY.”
The chronicle of her death continues thus:
“Forthwith she untied her gowne. The hangman went to her to have helped
her off therwith, then she desyred him to let her alone, turning
towards her two gentlewomen, who helped her off therwith, and also her
frose paste” (this most singular term means a matronly head-dress)
“and neckercher, geving to her a fayre handkercher to knytte about her
eyes. Then the hangman kneled downe, and asked her forgiveness whom she
forgave most willingly. Then he willed her to stand upon the strawe,
which doing she sawe the blocke. Then she sayd I pray you despatche me
quickly. Then she kneled downe saying, ‘Will you take it off before I
lay me downe?’ And the hangman answered her, ‘No, madame.’ She tied
the kercher about her eyes. Then feeling for the block, saide ‘What
shal I do, where is it?’ One of the standers by guyding her therunto,
she layde her head downe upon the block, and stretched forth her body,
and said, ‘Lord, into thy handes I commende my spirite,’ and so she
ended” (Holinshed, and Chronicles of Queen Jane and Queen Mary).
No wonder that good old Foxe could not refrain from shedding tears
when he recounted this tragedy, but sad as is the story of Jane Grey’s
death, her life and its close are amongst England’s glories. Heroines
are rare in all times and in all countries, but in Jane Grey we can
boast of having had one of the truest and noblest of women, a perpetual
legacy to us for all time. The name of Jane Grey shines out like some
brilliant star amid the storm wrack that surrounds it on every side.
Amidst all the bloodshed, crime, and cruelty of this sanguinary age
of English history to read of that gentle spirit, that marvellously
gifted, and most noble, pure, and gifted being, is like coming suddenly
upon a beautiful white lily in the midst of a tangle of loathsome weeds.
Fuller, of “English Worthies” fame, has, in his quaint manner, summed
up Jane Grey’s life in these words: “She had the birth of a Princess,
the life of a saint, yet the death of a malefactor, for her parent’s
offences, and she was longer a captive than a Queen in the Tower.” Both
Jane and her husband were buried in the chapel of St Peter’s of the
Tower.
The news of the Queen’s approaching marriage with Philip of Spain
set half the country in a blaze. The men of Kent rose, headed by
Sir Thomas Wyatt, as did those of Devon, led by Sir Peter Carew. As
we have already seen, the Duke of Suffolk headed another rising in
Leicestershire, but he was soon defeated and captured, and together
with his brother Lord John Grey was taken to London and imprisoned in
the Tower, on the 10th of February, two days before his daughter, Jane
Grey’s, execution. It was only four months before, that Suffolk had
received his daughter at the fortress as Queen of England, and he must
have felt more than the bitterness of death at the thought that it was
owing to his conduct in again leading an armed force against Queen Mary
that Jane’s life, as well as his own, were sacrificed.
Five days after Jane had met her death on a scaffold which stood
close to her father’s prison, he himself was taken to his trial at
Westminster Hall. It was noted that when he left the fortress the Duke
went “stoutly and cheerfully enough,” but that on his return when he
landed at the water gate, “his countenance was heavy and pensive.” This
is scarcely to be wondered at for he had been sentenced to death, and
was beheaded on Tower Hill on the 23rd of the same month.
In the brief speech which he delivered to the people before his death
the unfortunate Duke admitted the justice of his sentence, saying,
“Masters, I have offended the Queen and her laws, and thereby I am
justly condemned to die, and am willing to die, desiring all men to
be obedient; and I pray God that this my death may be an example to
all men, beseeching you all to bear me witness that I die in the faith
of Christ trusting to be saved by his blood only, and by no other
trumpery, the which died for me, and for all men that truly repent and
steadfastly trust in him. And I do repent, desiring you all to pray to
God for me that when you see my head depart from me, you will pray to
God that he may receive my soul.”
Of Suffolk, Bishop Burnet writes; “That but for his weakness he would
have died more pitied, if his practices had not brought his daughter to
her end.”
Although it is probable that Suffolk’s body was buried in St Peter’s
Chapel, his head is believed to be in the Church of the Holy Trinity in
the Minories, a building which is within the ancient liberties of the
Tower. The Duke’s town house was the converted convent of the church
of the nuns of the order of Clares, so called after their foundress
Santa Clara of Assisi. They were known as the “Sorores Minores,”
whence the name of the district—the Minories. This building had been
made over to Suffolk by Edward VI., and the present church of the Holy
Trinity actually stands upon the site of the old convent chapel. This
interesting edifice is now (1899) threatened with destruction, and in a
few years it is extremely probable that the ground upon which it stands
will be covered with warehouses or buildings connected with the London
and North-Western Railway.
The head was found half-a-century ago in a small vault near the altar,
and as it had been placed in sawdust made of oakwood, it is quite
mummified, owing to the tannin in the oak. There is the mark of the
blow of a sharp instrument above the place where the head was severed
from the neck, and Sir George Scharf, than whom a better judge of
an historical head whether on canvas or in a mummified state, never
existed, wrote of it thus: “The arched form of the eyebrows and the
aquiline shape of the nose, correspond with the portrait engraved in
Lodge’s series from a picture at Hatfield; a duplicate of which is
in the National Portrait Gallery.” This grim _memento mori_ may some
day find its way to the Tower, where it would be an object of much
interest, although, if Suffolk’s ghost be consulted, it would perhaps
plead for this melancholy relic of frail mortality to be placed in
consecrated ground.
It was during Wyatt’s rebellion that the Tower was attacked for the
last time in its history. Wyatt had defeated a force commanded by the
old Duke of Norfolk and Sir Henry Jerningham, at Rochester, and from
thence marched on to Gravesend, where he was met by some members of the
Privy Council who had been sent to find out the exact nature of his
demands: “The custody of the Tower, and the Queen within it!” was his
modest request.
[Illustration: _Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk_
(_From the portrait by Joannes Corvus in the National Portrait
Gallery._)]
Mary, cruel and bigoted as she was, had inherited the courage of the
Tudors, and as Wyatt approached the City, resolutely refused to take
shelter in the Tower as she was strongly urged to do, offering a
pension of one hundred pounds a year (about £1000 of our money value)
to any one who would bring her Wyatt’s head. On the 3rd of February
he arrived opposite to the Tower, cannonading the fortress from the
Southwark side of the river, but without causing any hurt either to
the buildings or to their defenders. In attempting to cross the river
at London Bridge he was driven back, practically being compelled to
retreat along the Southwark side as far as Kingston, where was the only
other bridge by which he could gain the City and the Tower. Crossing
this bridge, Wyatt now marched to the east upon a dark and stormy
night; his men were worn out with fatigue, their spirits dashed by
the recent repulse, and the consequence was that they melted away in
shoals. Very few remained with him when he encountered the Royal troops
drawn up at Hyde Park to bar his passage, and although he succeeded in
pushing his way through the soldiers with a handful of his friends, he
sank down utterly exhausted when he reached Temple Bar. The gate of
the Bar was closed and he and his companions were immediately taken
prisoners by Sir Maurice Berkeley.
There is a lengthy list of prisoners who were brought with Wyatt
into the Tower, or shortly after his arrest. Amongst these were, Sir
William Cobham and his brother George Cobham; Hugh Booth, Thomas Vane,
Robert Rudstone, Sir George Harper, Edward Wyatt, Edward Fog, George
Moore, Cuthbert Vaughan, Sir Henry Isley, two Culpeppers, and Thomas
Rampton, who had been Suffolk’s secretary. Wyatt was beheaded on the
11th of February, the day before Lady Jane Grey and her husband,
stoutly maintaining to the end, even under the torture of the rack,
that Elizabeth had had no cognisance of his insurrection and had played
no part in it as Queen Mary suspected. With all these prisoners the
headsman and the hangman of the Tower had a busy time, and blood flowed
freely on Tower Hill in the springtime of 1555. Some of these prisoners
were, however, executed out of London. Sir Henry Isley and his brother
suffered at Maidstone, the Knevets at Sevenoaks, and Bret, who had
cannonaded the Tower during Wyatt’s rebellion, was hanged in chains at
Rochester.
London in those days must have looked like some vast Golgotha. Gibbets
were placed in all the principal streets, each bearing its ghastly
load; and the decapitated heads and limbs of Queen Mary’s victims were
stuck over many gates of the town, standing up in horrid clusters,
especially on London Bridge, the air being tainted far and near with
these grisly fragments of mortality. London had indeed been turned into
a shamble; it had become a veritable city of blood, a precursor of an
African Benin.
Whilst these scenes were taking place in her capital, Mary wedded
Philip of Spain at Winchester, vainly attempting to make herself
attractive to that morose prince.
From some words let fall, it is said by Wyatt, Mary ordered three
members of the Privy Council to go to Ashbridge in Hertfordshire where
her half-sister, the Princess Elizabeth, was then living in a state
of semi-captivity. These three Privy Councillors were Sir Richard
Southwell, Sir Edward Hastings, and Sir Thomas Cornwallis; they were
accompanied by a guard of two hundred and fifty horsemen. On arriving
late at night at Ashbridge they were told that the Princess was ill and
was in bed, but they nevertheless forced their way into her bedroom.
“Is the haste such,” cried Elizabeth, “that you could not have waited
till the morning?” Their answer was that they had orders to bring
her hence, dead or alive, and early the next morning she was taken
in a litter by short stages to London, the journey, however, taking
six days to accomplish, the people showing the Princess the most
marked sympathy as she passed along the roads. On reaching Whitehall,
Elizabeth was closely confined, being examined there by the Council;
a fortnight later she was taken by water to the Tower and landed at
Traitor’s Gate. Her proud attitude and indignant words on leaving her
barge are well known, but, like most of her recorded sayings, are well
worth repeating:—“Here landeth,” she exclaimed on putting her foot on
the stone steps of that historic gate, “as true a subject, being a
prisoner, as ever landed at these stairs, and before thee, O God, I
speak it, having none other friends but thee.” She then seated herself,
in spite of the heavy rain then falling, on a stone—some accounts
have it on the steps themselves—saying with true Tudor determination,
“Better sit here than in a worse place.” And it was not until the
Gentleman Usher burst into tears that she could be induced to rise and
enter her prison.
[Illustration: _Middle Tower_]
Elizabeth once within the Tower, it became the more difficult for Mary
and her Council to know how to act. Judging from her general character,
Mary would have been only too ready to shed her sister’s blood, but the
Council were more humane than the Queen, and while the followers of
Wyatt, and Wyatt himself, were being tortured in order to extract some
admissions whereby Elizabeth might be incriminated, the Princess was
kept in close confinement. But nothing could be proved against her. In
vain the crafty Gardiner examined and cross-examined Elizabeth herself;
for a whole month she was not allowed to leave her prison room, mass
being said daily in her apartment;—this must have been intensely
irritating to the proud spirit of the Protestant Elizabeth. At length
her health broke down and she was permitted to walk in the Queen’s
Privy Garden, but always accompanied by the Constable of the Tower, the
Lieutenant, and a guard of men. There is a story, and probably a true
one, of a little boy, aged four, who was wont to bring the Princess
flowers to brighten her prison room. On one occasion he was watched
as he left, and strictly questioned, with the result that the little
fellow’s kind attentions had to cease, by order of Sir John Gage, the
Constable. Holinshed has narrated a quarrel that occurred between
Elizabeth’s attendants with her in the Tower, and the Constable. The
latter had given orders that when her servants brought the Princess’s
dinner to the gates of the fortress they were not to be admitted, but
were to hand over the provisions to the “common rascall souldiers.”
Elizabeth’s servants strongly objected to this arrangement, complaining
that the “rascalls” took most of the Princess’s dinner themselves
before it reached her, but the only satisfaction they obtained from
Sir John was that “if they presumed either to frown or shrug at him”
he would “sette them where they should see neither sonne nor moon.” An
application to the Privy Council forced the Constable to give way, but
Holinshed remarks that he was not over-pleased at having to do so, “for
he had good cheare and fared of the best, while her Grace paid for all.”
It being impossible to prove anything against Elizabeth she was at
length allowed to leave her prison. This she did on the 19th May 1554,
under the charge of Sir Henry Bedingfield, and was taken to Woodstock.
There is a tradition that when it was known in the City that the
Princess had been released from the Tower, some of its church bells
rang merry peals of joy, and that when she became Queen she gave those
churches silken bell-ropes.
The Earl of Warwick and his three brothers, Ambrose, Robert, and Henry
Dudley, were still confined in the Beauchamp Tower, but the Earl died
on the 21st of October 1554, and his brothers were released in the
following year. About the same time other notable personages were set
free, in order, it is thought, to curry favour with the populace and
make the Spanish match less unpopular. These included the Archbishop of
York, Sir Edward Warner, and some dozen other knights and gentlemen.
Then came the religious persecutions which were carried on by Mary
with zest, and it has been estimated that during her short reign, and
during the three and a half years that the persecution of the reformers
lasted, no less than three hundred victims perished at the stake.
These martyrs, however, did not suffer in vain, “You have lost the
hearts of twenty thousand that were rank Papists within these twelve
months,” wrote a Protestant to Bonner; and Latimer’s dying words to
his fellow-martyr, as he was being tied to the stake at Oxford, will
never be forgotten in England, “Play the man, Master Ridley, we shall
this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as I trust shall
never be put out.”
At length, on the 17th of November, Mary died, and the people had
peace, the last political prisoners in the Tower in her reign being
Thomas, second son of Lord Stafford, and some of his followers, who had
raised a rebellion against Mary’s government in the north of England.
Stafford was beheaded on Tower Hill, and his followers were hanged at
Tyburn.
CHAPTER XI
QUEEN ELIZABETH
The important position occupied by the Tower at the commencement of
the reign of Elizabeth, and its connection with all branches of State
affairs is shown by the great antiquary of that reign, John Stowe, who
says it was “The citadel to defend and command the city, a royal palace
for assemblies and treaties, a State prison for dangerous offenders,
the only place for coining money, an armoury of warlike provisions, the
treasury of the Crown jewels, and the storehouse of the Records of the
Royal Courts of Justice at Westminster.”
Elizabeth’s imprisonment, four years previous to her accession, had
not left kindly impressions of the Tower, and although her first visit
to any royal palace after she became Queen on 28th November 1558, was
to the fortress, she did not take up her abode there for any length
of time, remaining at Somerset House, and at the palace at Whitehall,
until Mary’s funeral had taken place.
Three days, however, before her coronation, Elizabeth entered the
Palace of the Tower, the crowning taking place on Sunday the 15th
January 1559. Elizabeth’s love of show and magnificence must have been
amply gratified by the great pageant in which she was the central
figure, the procession from the Tower to the Abbey being more brilliant
than any in the history of the English Court.
Seated in an open chariot which glittered with gold and elaborate
carvings, Elizabeth, blazing with jewels, passed through streets hung
with tapestry and under triumphal arches, the ways being lined with the
City companies in their handsome liveries of fur-lined scarlet. In
Fleet Street a young woman, representing Deborah, stood beneath a palm
tree, and prophesied the restoration of the House of Israel in rhymed
couplets, whilst Gog and Magog received her Majesty at Temple Bar.
Although the horrors of Smithfield and other _auto-da-fés_ had ceased
with Mary’s reign, religious persecution on the part of the Reformers
was all too rampant under Elizabeth. The new Queen inherited far too
much of her father’s nature to brook any kind of opposition to her
wishes. She was a strange compound of the greatest qualities and the
meanest failings. Endowed with prodigious statecraft, her vanity was
no less immense, and her jealousy of all who came between herself and
those whom she liked and admired, caused her not only to commit acts of
injustice, but actual crimes. Her mind, which had a grasp of affairs of
state and policy that would have done credit to a great statesman, had
also many of the weaknesses and pettinesses of a vain, frivolous, and
foolish woman. Elizabeth’s conduct towards the unfortunate Catherine
Grey, her cousin, and the younger sister of Lady Jane, shows the
jealousy of her character in its worst light.
It was to Catherine Grey that Lady Jane, on the eve of her execution,
had sent the book in which she had written the “exhortation.” Lady
Catherine had married Lord Herbert of Cardiff, but had been separated
from him, being known by her maiden name. In 1560 she had met at
Hanworth, the house of her friend the Duchess of Somerset, the latter’s
eldest son, Lord Hertford, the result of this meeting being that an
affection had sprung up between them which was followed by a secret
marriage, as it was known that Elizabeth would not approve of the
match. The only confidante was Hertford’s sister, Lady Jane Seymour,
and the young couple—he was only twenty-two and she twenty—were married
as secretly as possible.
Catherine, accompanied by Lady Jane Seymour, walked from the Palace at
Whitehall—they were both ladies-in-waiting on the Queen—along the river
side at low tide, to Lord Hertford’s house near Fleet Street. Here the
marriage took place, but, by a strange want of foresight or by some
strange oversight, neither of the contracting parties were afterwards
able to remember the name of the clergyman who married them, “with such
words and ceremonies, and in that order, as it is there” (the Prayer
Book) “set forth, he placing a ring containing five links of gold on
her finger, as directed by the minister.” The Hertfords afterwards
described the minister as being of the middle height, wearing an auburn
beard and dressed in a long gown of black cloth.
The newly-wed Lady Hertford was too nearly related to the Queen to be
allowed to please herself with regard to whom she married, and when the
time drew near when further concealment was impossible, the poor lady
was in a terrible dilemma. Lord Hertford appears to have been the more
timid of the two, for when he found that his wife was about to become
a mother, he, dreading the Queen’s anger, fled to France, leaving poor
Lady Hertford to bear the brunt of Elizabeth’s imperious temper alone.
To complicate matters, Lady Jane Seymour, who throughout this adventure
had been the young couple’s only friend, died early in the year 1561.
When concealment was no longer possible, Lady Hertford threw herself
upon the mercy and generosity of her terrible mistress. But on being
informed of what had happened, Elizabeth’s anger knew no bounds, and
poor Lady Hertford was at once sent to the Tower, where shortly after
her arrival her child was born. Hertford now returned to England, and
was promptly arrested, being also imprisoned in the Tower, where he
remained for many a long year.
In the meantime the Queen declared that the marriage was illegal, and a
Commission sitting upon the matter, consisting of the Primate, Parker,
and Grindal, Bishop of London, declared it null and void. Matters
might perhaps have been arranged had not another child been born to
the Hertfords. When Elizabeth heard that Lady Hertford had been again
confined, her rage was ten times greater than before. She summarily
dismissed the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Edward Warner, for having
allowed the unfortunate couple to meet again, and ordered Hertford to
be brought before the Star Chamber, when he was heavily fined and sent
back to his prison, where he remained for the next nine years.
In the Wardrobe accounts of the Tower in the Landsdowne MSS. at the
British Museum, there is a list of the furniture supplied to Lady
Hertford in her prison. Tapestry and curtains are mentioned, also a
bed with a “boulster of downe,” as well as Turkey carpets and a chair
of cloth of gold with crimson velvet, with panels of copper gilt and
the Queen’s arms at the back. All this furniture, which sounds very
magnificent, is noted by the Lieutenant of the Tower as being, “old,
worn, broken, and decayed,” but in a letter he addressed to Cecil he
wrote that Lady Catherine’s monkeys and dogs had helped to damage it.
One is glad to know that the poor lady was allowed her pets, however
harmful to the furniture, to amuse her in her lonely prison, where she
lingered for six years, dying there in 1567.
Considering Elizabeth’s own experience of the amenities of imprisonment
in the Tower one would have thought that she might have shown more
mercy to her unfortunate kinswoman. In later years Hertford consoled
himself by marrying twice again, both his second and third wives being
of the house of Howard. His marriage with Catherine Grey was only made
valid in 1606, when the “minister” who had performed the ceremony was
discovered, a jury at Common Law proving it a _bonâ fide_ transaction,
and making it legal.
Another unfortunate lady who was a victim of Elizabeth’s implacable
jealousy was Lady Margaret Douglas, who married the Earl of Lennox.
The Countess, like Lady Catherine Grey, was one of Elizabeth’s
kinswomen, and owing to her near relationship her actions were a
source of continual suspicion to the Queen. Lady Lennox suffered three
imprisonments in the Tower; as Camden has it, she was “thrice cast
into the Tower, not for any crime of treason, 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 description of
the King’s House, reference has been made to the inscription in one of
its rooms recording the imprisonment of the Countess of Lennox there;
that inscription refers to her second incarceration in the Tower in
1565. Few women can have suffered so severely for the love affairs of
their relatives as this unfortunate noblewoman.
The long struggle between Elizabeth and Mary Stuart, which only closed
on the scaffold at Fotheringay in 1589, brought many prisoners of State
to the Tower. Some of the earliest of these belonged to the de la Pole
family, two brothers, Arthur and Edmund de la Pole, great-grandchildren
of the murdered Duke of Clarence, being imprisoned in the Beauchamp
Tower in 1562, on a charge of conspiring to set Mary Stuart on the
English throne. There are, as we have seen, several inscriptions in
the prison chamber of the Beauchamp Tower bearing the names of the two
brothers. These two de la Pole brothers ended their lives within their
Tower prison, whether guilty or not who can tell?
Few can realise the terrible and constant danger in which Elizabeth
lived from the claim of Mary Stuart to the throne of England. Compared
with France, England at the close of Mary Tudor’s reign was only a
third-rate power, and never had the country sunk so low as a martial
power as in the last years of her disastrous rule. We had no army, no
fleet, only a huge debt, whilst the united population of England and
Wales was less than that of London at the present time.
Motley has conjectured that at that time the population of Spain
and Portugal numbered at least twelve millions. Spain possessed the
most powerful fleet in the world, an immense army, with all the
wealth of the Netherlands and the Indies wherewith to maintain them;
consequently, when difficulties arose between France and England,
Philip trusted that to save herself England would become a firm ally
of Spain. But the Spanish monarch had left out of his reckoning the
magnificent courage of England’s Queen, and the indomitable pluck, and
bull-dog determination of her subjects to hold their own. All this
should be remembered when the stern repression of all and every kind
of conspiracy is brought against Elizabeth and her principal advisers,
of whom Walsingham and Burleigh were the foremost. It was a desperate
position, only possible of being defended and upheld by desperate
means. The horrors perpetrated by the Romish bishops in the name of
religion whilst Mary Tudor reigned, had given the English but too vivid
a suggestion of the fate that would befall their country if the King
of Spain were again to become its ruler, either as conqueror or as
King-consort. This terror was the principal cause of the passionate
tide of patriotism that under Elizabeth stirred our glorious little
island to its very foundations, and had it not been for the detestation
of foreign rule there would not have been that universal rallying round
the Queen and country in the hour of danger, which was the marked
feature of our people during that courageous woman’s reign.
A suspicion of conspiracy was sufficient in those days, electrical
with perils for the Queen and the country, and on the 11th of October
1589 Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, the son of the ill-fated
Surrey, and the grandson of the old Flodden duke, was brought a
prisoner to the Tower on the charge of high treason, his intended
marriage with Mary of Scots constituting the charge against him. In the
following month the Queen thus directed Sir Henry Neville to attend to
Norfolk’s safekeeping in the Tower. “The Lieutenant is permitted to
remove the Duke to any lodging in the Tower near joining to the Long
Gallery, so as it be none of the Queen’s own lodgings; and to suffer
the Duke to have the commodity to walk in the gallery, having always
of course the said Knollys in his company” (Hatfield Calendar of State
Papers). Owing to the plague which raged in London in the following
year, Norfolk was allowed to leave the Tower for his own home at the
Charter House, still a prisoner; but he was soon back again in the
fortress, a correspondence which he had carried on with Mary Stuart’s
adherents having been discovered. Others implicated in the undoubted
conspiracy to set Mary on the throne, were the Earls of Arundel and
Southampton, Lord Lumley, Lord Cobham, his brother Thomas Cobham, and
Henry Percy; these were all arrested. On his return to the Tower,
Norfolk was confined in the Bloody Tower. About this time a batch of
letters, written by a Florentine banker named Ridolfi to the Pope and
to the Duke of Alva, on the perpetually recurring subject of Mary’s
succession to the English throne after Elizabeth’s dethronement, were
intercepted by Elizabeth’s government, with the result that a fresh
batch of prisoners, with the Bishop of Ross, Sir Thomas Stanley, and
Sir Thomas Gerrard amongst them, entered the fortress. These letters
disclosed a conspiracy which was known under the name of the Italian
Ridolfi, its prime instigator. Ridolfi, who was a resident in London,
had crossed over to the Netherlands, where he had seen the Duke of
Alva, informing that Spanish general that he had been commissioned by
a large number of English Roman Catholic noblemen to send over a
Spanish army to drive Elizabeth from the throne, and place Mary Stuart
in the sovereignty in her stead. The Duke of Norfolk would then marry
Mary, and by these means the English would return to the benign sway
of the Holy Father, and become the faithful subjects of the gentle
Philip. Alva had suggested that Elizabeth should be got rid of before
he himself came to London with his army, Philip entirely agreeing with
his general as to the necessity for her removal.
[Illustration: _Queen Elizabeth’s Walk, from the Curfew Tower to the
Beauchamp Tower_]
The mere chance of a packet of letters being intercepted not only saved
Elizabeth’s life, but probably England as well from a terrible disaster.
The Ridolfi Plot conspirators were distributed in the various prisons
of the fortress, in the Beauchamp and the Salt Towers, and in the
Cold Harbour, much of the information regarding the conspiracy having
been obtained from a young man called Charles Bailly, who was seized
at Dover on his way to the Netherlands with a packet of treasonable
letters. He was brought back to London, placed in the Tower and
tortured, whereupon he confessed the names of several other persons
implicated. Bailly left several inscriptions on the walls of the
Beauchamp Tower where he was imprisoned.
On the 16th of January 1572 the Duke of Norfolk was taken from the
Tower to Westminster to undergo his trial. He was charged with having
entered into a treasonable conspiracy to depose the Queen and to take
her life; of having invoked the aid of the Pope to liberate the Queen
of Scots, of having intended to marry her, and for having attempted to
restore Papacy in the realm.
The Duke, who was not allowed counsel, pleaded in his own behalf,
attempting to prove that his intended marriage with Queen Mary of Scots
would not have affected the life or throne of Elizabeth. “But,” replied
the Queen’s Sergeant, Barham, “it is well known that you entered into a
design for seizing the Tower, which is certainly the greatest strength
of the Kingdom of England, and hence it follows, you then attempted
the destruction of the Queen.” By his own letters to the Pope the Duke
stood condemned, as well as by those written by him to the Duke of
Alva, and to Ridolfi, in addition to others written from the Tower to
Queen Mary by the Bishop of Ross. Norfolk was accordingly condemned,
but Elizabeth appears to have wavered regarding the signing of his
death warrant, for the Duke was her cousin. At length, however, the
House of Commons insisted that the Duke must die for the safety of the
State, and Elizabeth signed the warrant, and the 2nd of June was fixed
for his execution.
The Duke wrote very appealingly to the Queen for pardon, beseeching
her to forgive him for his “manifold offences” and “trusts that he may
leave a lighter heart and a quieter conscience.” He desired Burghley
to act as guardian to his orphaned children, and concluded his letter
thus: “written by the woeful hand of a dead man, your Majesty’s most
unworthy subject, and yet your Majesty’s, in my humble prayer, until
the last breath, Thomas Howard.”
Fourteen years had passed since anyone had been executed on Tower
Hill. The old wooden scaffold had fallen into decay, and it was found
necessary to build a new one. Compared with former reigns the fact of
no execution having taken place amongst the State prisoners for such a
length of time does credit to Elizabeth’s clemency, Norfolk being the
first to die for a crime against the State during her long reign. The
Duke has found apologists among historians, and has been regarded as a
hardly-used victim of Elizabeth and her Ministers. But his treason to
the Queen he had sworn to obey and defend was proved beyond all manner
of doubt, and his particular form of treason was the worst, having no
possible extenuation, since he plotted for the admission of a foreign
army into the realm, composed of the most bloodthirsty wretches that
ever desecrated a country, and led by a general whose cruelty
resembled that of a devil, and has left him infamous for all time.
[Illustration: _Queen Elizabeth’s Walk, from the Beauchamp Tower to the
Curfew Tower_]
Norfolk merited his doom, and the more illustrious his name and rank,
the more grievous his fault. As to finding cause for pitying him on the
ground of his attentions to Queen Mary, that, too, seems unnecessary.
The Duke had never seen the Scottish Queen, nor is he likely to
have felt much affection for a woman who had been implicated in her
husband’s murder, and had allowed herself to be carried off by that
husband’s assassin. Norfolk was accompanied to the scaffold by his old
friend, Sir Henry Lee, the Master of the Ordnance.[14] Norfolk refused
to have his eyes bandaged, and begging all present to pray for him,
met his fate with calmness. “His head,” writes an unknown chronicler
(Harleian MSS.), “with singular dexteritie of the executioner was with
the appointed axe at one chop, off; and showed to all the people.
Thus he finyshed his life, and afterwards his corpse was put into the
coffyn; appertaninge to Barkynge Church, with the head also, and so was
caryed by foure of the lyeutenant’s men and was buried in the Chappell
in the Tower by Mr Dean (Dr Nowell) of Paules.” The Duke’s last words
are worthy of remembrance. While reading the fifty-first Psalm, when
he came to the verse, “Build up the walls of Jerusalem,” he paused an
instant, and then said, “The walls of England, good Lord, I had almost
forgotten, but not too late, I ask all the world forgiveness and I
likewise forgive all the world.”
One of Queen Mary Stuart’s most devoted adherents was John Leslie,
Bishop of Ross, who, like Norfolk, had been deeply implicated in the
Ridolfi conspiracy, and had been imprisoned in the Bell Tower. When
tried for treason, the Bishop pleaded that being an Ambassador he was
not liable to the charge; he was kept for two years in the Tower and
then he was banished.
Priests, and especially those who were Jesuits, were very harshly dealt
with at this time, the utmost rigour being shown to all who opposed the
Queen’s acts or intentions. We have one instance of this in the fate
which befell that eminent theologian, John Stubbs, who had written a
pamphlet against the proposed marriage of Elizabeth with the Duke of
Anjou, the brother of the King of France, Charles IX., and himself
afterwards King of that country under the title of Henry III. Dr Stubbs
was sentenced to have his right hand cut off by the hangman, the
unlucky printers of his pamphlet being treated in the same barbarous
manner. Immediately his hand was cut off, Stubbs raised his cap with
the other, shouting, “God save the Queen!”; this truly loyal incident
was witnessed by the historian Camden.
Besides the penalty of losing the right hand for writing or printing
matter which might be disapproved by the Queen or her Council, the
same punishment was awarded to any person striking another within the
precincts of the royal palaces, of which the Tower was one. Peter
Burchet, a barrister of the Middle Temple, had been committed to the
Tower in 1573 for attempting to kill the celebrated Admiral Sir John
Hawkins, whom he had mistaken for Sir Christopher Hatton. During his
imprisonment he killed a warder, or attendant, by knocking him on the
head with a log of wood taken from the fire. For this he was condemned
to death, but before being hanged at Temple Bar, his right hand was
cut off for striking a blow in one of the royal palaces. At this time
Elizabeth found it essential to drastically assert her authority, and
in 1577 an individual named Sherin was not only imprisoned in the Tower
for denying her supremacy, but was afterwards drawn on a hurdle to
Tyburn, where he was hanged, disembowelled, and quartered. In that same
year six other poor creatures were treated in the same manner, after
being imprisoned in the fortress, for coining. From 1580 until the
close of Elizabeth’s reign the penal laws were enforced with terrible
rigour, owing to the invasion of the Jesuit missionary priests led by
Parsons and Campion. Cardinal Allen’s seminary priests were ruthlessly
hunted down, and when caught, imprisoned, generally tortured, and
invariably executed. The Cardinal, who had set up a seminary for
priests at Douai, maintained a large and ever increasing staff of young
men who were ready to sacrifice their lives in what they believed to
be the cause of Heaven. The first to suffer of these was Cuthbert
Mayne. Between Elizabeth and the Cardinal the war became fierce and
sanguinary. Plot was met by counter-plot, and Cecil showed himself as
astute and deep as any Jesuit of them all, the priests of Douai and
Allen’s Jesuits faring ill in consequence. Both Campion and Parsons
had been at the English Universities, and both for a time succeeded
in their mission of bringing over to their religion many from among
the higher classes of this country. But Elizabeth’s great minister
proved too strong for them, and Campion was arrested and sent to the
Tower, whilst Parsons sought safety on the Continent. Campion, with
two other priests named Sherin and Brian, was hanged at Tyburn. Many
of the imprisoned priests were tortured in the Tower; some were placed
in “Little Ease,” where they could neither stand up nor lie down at
full length; some were racked, others subjected to the deadly embrace
of the “Scavenger’s Daughter,” others being tortured by the “boot,” or
the “gauntlets,” and hung up for hours by the wrists. Sir Owen Hopton,
the Lieutenant of the Tower at this time, seems to have been a very
hard-hearted gaoler, and on one occasion when he had forced some of
these wretched priests, with the help of soldiers, into the Chapel of
the Tower whilst service was being held, he boasted that he had no one
under his charge who would not willingly enter a Protestant Church.
From 1580 onwards, the Tower was filled with State prisoners. In
that year the Archbishop of Armagh and the Earls of Kildare and
Clanricarde, and other Irish nobles who had taken part in Desmond’s
insurrection, were imprisoned in the fortress, and three years later
a number of persons concerned in one of the numerous plots against
Elizabeth’s life were likewise sent there, among them John Somerville,
a Warwickshire gentleman, and his wife, together with her parents, and
a priest named Hugh Hall, declared to have designs to murder the Queen.
Mrs Somerville, her mother, and the priest were spared; her husband
committed suicide in Newgate, where he had been sent to be executed,
and her father was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Smithfield. In the
following year (1584) Francis Throgmorton, son of Sir John, suffered
death for treason like his father, a correspondence between Queen Mary
and himself having been discovered. In the month of January 1585,
twenty-one priests lay in the Tower, but were afterwards shipped off to
France. In this same year Henry Percy, eighth Earl of Northumberland,
a zealous Roman Catholic, with Lord Arundel, the son of the fourth
Duke of Norfolk, were imprisoned in the Tower. But Northumberland
killed himself, locking his prison door, and shooting himself through
the heart with a pistol he had concealed about him, being supposed to
have committed suicide in order that his property should not come into
possession of the Queen—whom he called by a very offensive epithet—as
would have been the case had he been attainted of treason. Arundel died
in the Beauchamp Tower after a long imprisonment, as has been told
in the account of that building. His death was no doubt owing to the
severity of his confinement, combined with the austerities he thought
it his duty to inflict upon himself; he certainly deserves a place in
the roll of those who have died martyrs to their faith.
Another conspiracy against the Queen’s life came to light in this
same year, when a man named Parry was arrested on a charge of
having received money from the Pope to assassinate Elizabeth, a
fellow-conspirator named Neville being taken at the same time, it being
alleged that they intended to shoot the Queen whilst she was riding.
Neville, who was heir to the exiled Earl of Westmoreland, hearing
of that nobleman’s death abroad, turned Queen’s evidence, hoping by
this treachery to recover the forfeited Westmoreland estates. His
confederate was hanged, and although Neville escaped a similar fate, he
remained a prisoner for a considerable time in the Tower.
Axe and halter once more came into play in extinguishing what was known
as the Babington Plot in 1586. Elizabeth had never run a greater peril
of her life, and it was owing to this plot that Mary Stuart died on the
scaffold at Fotheringay on the 8th of February in the following year.
Anthony Babington was a youth of good family, holding a place at Court,
and, like many other of Elizabeth’s courtiers, belonged to the Roman
faith, the Queen being too courageous to forbid Roman Catholics from
belonging to her household. The soul of the plot was one Ballard, a
priest, who had induced Babington, with some other of his associates,
also of the Court, to adventure their lives in order to release Mary
Stuart, and to place her upon the throne after having got rid of
Elizabeth. Walsingham, with his lynx-eyed prevoyance, discovered the
plot, and Ballard with the rest were arrested, tried and condemned.
According to Disraeli the elder (in his “Amenities of Literature”)
the judge who presided at the trial, turning to Ballard, exclaimed,
“Oh, Ballard, Ballard! What hast thou done? A company of brave youths,
otherwise adorned with goodly gifts, by thy inducement thou hast
brought to their utter destruction and confusion.” Besides Ballard and
Babington, thirteen of these young conspirators were executed—to wit,
Edward Windsor, brother of Lord Windsor, Thomas Salisbury, Charles
Tilney, Chidiock Tichburn, Edward Abington, Robert Gage, John Travers,
John Charnocks, John Jones, John Savage, R. Barnwell, Henry Dun, and
Jerome Bellarmine. Their execution, accompanied with all its horrible
details, lasted for two days, Babington exclaiming as he died, “Parce
mihi, Domine Jesu!” On the second day the Queen gave orders that the
remaining victims should be despatched quickly without undergoing the
attendant horrors of partial hanging, drawing, and quartering.[15]
Mary’s execution followed in the next year, but it was Elizabeth’s
secretary, Davison—he had been appointed about this time co-secretary
with Walsingham—who had to bear all the odium of her death, Elizabeth
accusing him of having despatched the death-warrant without her
sanction. She sent him to the Tower and caused him to be fined
so heavily that he was completely ruined in consequence. Another
scandalously unjust imprisonment in the Tower of a loyal and faithful
servant of the Queen, was that of Sir John Perrot, a natural son of
Henry VIII. Perrot was a distinguished soldier, and had acted as
Lord-Deputy in Ireland, where, by his justice and humanity and clear
common-sense, he had done much to restore order and comparative
prosperity to that distracted island. Sir John Perrot was cordially
hated by the Lord Chancellor, Sir Christopher Hatton, who was
particularly noted for his skill in dancing, this hatred having been
aroused, it is said, by Perrot remarking that the Lord Chancellor “had
come to the Court by his galliard.” This criticism resulted in Perrot’s
being arrested, after being summoned from Ireland on a trumped-up
charge of treason, and committed to the Tower in 1590. At his trial
two years later, nothing could be proved against him except a few idle
words that he had uttered concerning the Queen, and which had been
repeated to her; nevertheless he was found guilty. When brought back
to the Tower, Sir John exclaimed angrily to the Lieutenant, Sir Owen
Hopton, “What! will the Queen suffer her brother to be offered up as
a sacrifice to the envy of my strutting adversary?” On hearing this,
the Queen burst out into one of her finest Tudor rages, and swearing
“by her wonted oath,” as Naunton writes, “declared that the jury which
had brought in this verdict were all knaves, and that she would not
sign the warrant for execution.” So Sir John escaped the headman,
but the gallant knight died that September in the Tower, Naunton
thus describing the close of his life: “His haughtiness of spirit
accompanied him to the last, and still, without any diminution of
courage therein, it burst the cords of his magnanimitie.” In his youth
Perrot had been distinguished for his good looks and strength of body.
“He was,” writes Naunton, “of stature and size far beyond the ordinary
man; he seems never to have known what fear was, and distinguished
himself by martial exercises.” During a boar hunt in France in 1551, it
was related of him that he rescued one of the hunters from the attack
of a wild boar, “giving the boar such a blow that it did well-nigh part
the head from the shoulders.”
From a memorandum drawn up by Sir Owen Hopton for the use of his
successor, Sir Michael Blunt, in the Lieutenancy of the Tower in 1590,
we find that the following prisoners were at that time confined in
the fortress:—James Fitzgerald, the only son of the Earl of Desmond,
who had come from Ireland as a hostage, Florence Macarthy, Sir
Thomas Fitzherbert (who died in the Tower in the following year),
Sir Thomas Williams, the Bishop of Laughlin, Sir Nicholas White, Sir
Brian O’Rourke, “who hath the libertie to walk on the leades over his
lodging,” and Sir Francis Darcy. All these prisoners were connected
with the war in Ireland, or were suspected of conspiring against the
Queen and her government.
The year 1592 is a memorable one in the life of the great Sir Walter
Raleigh, for it was then that he began his long acquaintance with the
prisons of the Tower, and from this time until his execution a quarter
of a century later, Raleigh’s days were mainly passed within the walls
of that building.
Raleigh’s first imprisonment in the Tower was owing to his marriage
with Elizabeth Throgmorton, one of the Queen’s ladies, and the daughter
of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton. Raleigh had wooed, won, and wedded his
wife without Elizabeth’s knowledge or consent. The Queen, then over
sixty years of age, was still as jealous and as vain as any young girl
of sixteen, and for any of her favourites—and Raleigh at this time
was the principal one—to marry without her august permission, and
especially to marry one of her ladies, was in her eyes a most heinous
crime, an aggravated form of _lése-majestè_, and it was only by the
most fulsome flattery, the most grovelling abasement, that Sir Walter
gained his freedom. In a letter from Sir Arthur Gorges, a cousin of
Raleigh’s, to Sir Robert Cecil, there is an account of an extraordinary
scene enacted by Sir Walter whilst in the Tower. “I cannot choose,”
writes Gorges, “but advertise you of a strange tragedy that this day
had like to have fallen out between the captain of the guard and the
lieutenant of the ordnance, if I had not by great chance come at the
very instant to have turned it into a comedy. For upon a report of
Her Majesty’s being at Sir George Carew’s, Sir Walter Raleigh having
gazed and sighed a long time at his study window, from whence he might
discover the barges and boats about the Blackfriars stairs, suddenly
he brake out into a great distemper, and swore that his enemies had on
purpose brought Her Majesty thither to break his gall in sunder with
Tantalus’s torment, that when she went away he might see death before
his eyes, with many such like conceits. And as a man transported with
passion, he swore to Sir George Carew that he would disguise himself,
and get into a pair of oars to cure his mind with but a sight of the
Queen, or else he protested his heart would break. But the trusty
jailor would none of that, for displeasing the higher powers, as he
said, which he more resented than the feeding of his humour, and so
flatly refused to permit him. But in conclusion, upon this dispute they
fell flat to choleric outrageous words, with straining and struggling
at the doors, that all lameness was forgotten, and in the fury of the
conflict, the jailor he had his new periwig torn off his crown, and
yet here the struggle ended not, for at last they had gotten out their
daggers. Which when I saw, I played the stickler between them, and so
purchased such a rap on the knuckles, that I wished both their pates
broken, and so with much ado they stayed their brawl to see my bloody
fingers. At first I was ready to break with laughing to see them two
scramble and brawl like madmen, until I saw the iron walking, and then
I did my best to appease their fury. As yet I cannot reconcile them by
any persuasions, for Sir Walter swears, that he shall hate him for so
restraining him from the sight of his mistress, while he lives, for
that he knows not (as he said) whether ever he shall see her again,
when she is gone the progress. And Sir George on his side, swears
that he would rather lose his longing, than he would draw on him Her
Majesty’s displeasure by such liberty. Thus they continue in malice
and snarling; but I am sure all the smart lighted on me. I cannot tell
whether I should more allow of the passionate lover, or the trusty
jailor. But if yourself had seen it, as I did, you would have been as
heartily merry and sorry, as ever you were in all your life, for so
short a time. I pray you pardon my hasty written narrative, which I
acquaint you with, hoping you will be the peacemaker. But, good sir,
let nobody know thereof, for I fear Sir Walter Raleigh will shortly
grow to be Orlando Furioso, if the bright Angelica persevere against
him.”
Here is a portion of a letter written by Sir Walter himself to Sir
Robert Cecil, which the writer evidently wished should be shown to the
Queen. “My heart,” he writes, “was never broken till this day, that I
hear the Queen goes away so far off, 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.” (This “dark prison” from which
Raleigh writes, was probably the Brick Tower; in later years Sir Walter
was to become acquainted with other prisons in the Tower.) “While she
was yet at hand,” he continues, “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”—Alas! Sir Walter!
How long, in spite of the above fulsome letter, the Queen would have
kept “her love-stricken swain,” as Raleigh called himself, within
the Tower there is no knowing, if it had not been for the accident
of his good ship, the _Roebuck_—which had escaped from the Spanish
fleet sent to capture her—falling in, off Flores, with some great East
Indian carracks bound for Lisbon. When the _Roebuck_ had taken the
great Spanish ship, the _Madre de Dios_ and brought her into Dartmouth
with a huge treasure on board, which Raleigh himself estimated at
half-a-million pounds, Elizabeth’s covetousness completely overmastered
her resentment, and “her love-stricken swain” was set at liberty in
September 1592, to arrange the disposal of the Spanish treasure—of
which the Queen took the lion’s share.
Two attempts to poison Elizabeth were discovered in 1594. The first
of these dastardly schemes was concocted by the Queen’s physician, a
Spaniard or Portuguese named Lopez, who had been bribed by the Spanish
governors of the Netherlands, Fuentes and Ibara, to administer poison
to his royal mistress in some medicine. This plot is said to have
been discovered by Essex. Lopez and two of his confederates met the
fate they deserved, after being imprisoned in the Tower. According to
Camden, Lopez declared on the scaffold that “He loved the Queen as much
as he did Jesus Christ.” This sentiment coming from a Jew was received
with much merriment by the spectators at the execution. The second plot
was much more curious.
Walpole, a Jesuit priest, had bribed a groom in the royal stables,
named Edward Squire, to rub some poison on the pommel of the Queen’s
saddle, but, as may be supposed, the poison had no harmful effect, and
priest and groom, being convicted, were hanged at Tyburn.
The last year of the sixteenth century saw the fall of one of
Elizabeth’s most brilliant courtiers, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.
After forty years of stern repression, Ireland, towards the close of
Elizabeth’s reign, had become more Irish than ever. All the cruelties
committed in that country by the Government of the Queen, cruelties in
which Raleigh played so flagrant a part, had not crushed the Irish, and
a larger army of occupation was found necessary.
Essex and Raleigh were bitter enemies. The chief cause of their
dissension was the treatment of the Irish, Raleigh advising that they
should be completely trodden under foot, whilst Essex urged a show
of justice and some degree of goodwill towards the country and its
inhabitants; but the favour shown by the Queen to both these remarkable
men was also an additional cause for their mutual jealousy. Both were
extremely self-willed, and their immense egotism, and lust for place
and power, was the common ruin of each of them.
Essex was the youngest and last of that brilliant combination of
soldier, statesman, and courtier, that added to the glory and charm of
those “spacious days.”
Robert Devereux had many personal claims to Elizabeth’s good will.
Strikingly handsome in face and form, he shone equally in the Court or
in the field, and both by birth and marriage he was related to some
of the most prominent persons attached to the Court. His father had
been a personal friend of Elizabeth’s; his step-father was the Earl
of Leicester; Sir Francis Knollys was his grandfather; Walsingham his
father-in-law; Lord Hemsdon was his great-uncle, and the all-powerful
Burleigh his guardian. To us Essex’s most conspicuous merit was that
Shakespeare called him his friend. The poet was closely linked in
the bonds of friendship both with Essex and with his dearest friend
Southampton, and their fall is thought to have thrown the shadow of
their misfortunes over the drama composed about the time of Essex’s
execution, and Southampton’s disgrace and imprisonment. _A Midsummer
Night’s Dream_ had been written in honour of Essex’s marriage, and the
only two books of verse that Shakespeare published had been dedicated
to Southampton; and it was probably to the latter that the Sonnets were
addressed, if he was not their actual inspirer.
On the eve of Essex’s disastrous expedition to Ireland, Shakespeare
referred to his friend in the prologue of Act v. of the play of _Henry
V._ After “broaching rebellion in Ireland,” Essex is thus referred to:
“Were now the general of our gracious empress
As in good time he may, from Ireland coming,
Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,
How many would the peaceful city quit
To welcome him!”
But the poet’s prophecy was not to be fulfilled; for two years after
the declamation of these proud lines foretelling Essex’s glory, both
their subject and Southampton—who had accompanied Essex to Ireland as
Master of the Horse—were charged with treasonable conduct and neglect
of duty. Thus Shakespeare lost his two most influential friends by one
and the same fatality.
Essex, half mad with rage and disappointment at his failure, and
smarting under the bitterness of mortified vanity and ambition, and
under what he considered the ingratitude of the Queen, lost his
self-control. Raleigh, he believed, had poisoned Elizabeth’s mind
against him, quite forgetting his own insolences to his Sovereign
on many occasions. Had he not during one of his outbursts of temper
exclaimed in the hearing of some of the people attached to her person,
that Elizabeth was as crooked in her mind as she was in her body? Essex
must have been well aware that the aged monarch would never pardon such
a speech; and it was probably one of the chief causes which led her to
sign the warrant that consigned her former favourite to the scaffold.
[Illustration:
HIC TVVS ILLE COMES GENEROSA ESSEXIA NOSTRIS
QVEM QVAM GAVDEMVS REBVS ADESSE DVCEM.]
Enraged at the charges brought against him and the failure of the Irish
expedition, Essex formed a wild plot to seize the Queen’s person, being
assisted in the scheme by Southampton and some other hot-heads, amongst
them, Rutland, Sandys, Cromwell, and Monteagle; with these were a band
of about three hundred armed men. Although Essex was immensely popular
with the Londoners, the sober citizens had no idea of imperilling their
lives and possessions in such a harum-scarum adventure as this promised
to be. Consequently Essex and his friends found no support, and instead
of seizing the Queen and upsetting the Government they themselves were
taken prisoners after a short siege in Essex’s townhouse. Early in
February 1601 Essex with Southampton passed under Traitor’s Gate.
Essex occupied a prison in the Tower which owes its name to his having
spent the last days of his short and brilliant life within its walls.
On the 19th of February, Essex and Southampton were taken to their
trial at Westminster Hall, and there were both adjudged guilty of high
treason.
It appears that up to the last Essex expected a reprieve, as he took
no leave of his family or of his friends. Lady Essex appealed to Cecil
for her husband’s life, and Cecil perhaps might have saved him, had
it not been—one regrets to write it—that Raleigh strongly urged the
great minister by letter, to carry out the sentence (Lansdowne MSS. and
Ellis’s “Original Letters”) and the law took its cruel course. Essex
was so beloved by the people that, perhaps, for fear of an attempted
rescue by the Londoners when they saw their favourite led out to die,
his execution was arranged to take place within the gates of the
fortress instead of upon Tower Hill. Camden indeed states that it was
Essex’s own desire to die within the walls of the Tower, his reason for
doing so being that the “acclamations of the citizens should have heven
him up,” whatever that meant. He himself admitted that so long as he
lived the Queen’s life would not be in safety, a most suicidal remark
to make, but which he made nevertheless to Cecil four days before the
end.
The following account of Essex’s last evening upon earth, and of his
death, was written by an eye-witness of the execution, and is taken
from the Calendar of State Papers (Dom. Series, 1598–1601).
“Feb. 25. 112.—Account of the execution of the Earl of Essex at 8 A.M.
in the Tower.
“On Tuesday (24th February) night, between ten and twelve o’clock, he
opened his window and said to the guards, ‘My good friends, pray for
me, and to-morrow you shall see in me a strong God in a weak man; I
have nothing to give you, for I have nothing left but that which I must
pay to the Queen to-morrow in the morning.’ When he was brought from
his lodging by the Lieutenant, he was attended on by three divines,
and all the way from his chamber to the scaffold he called to God to
give him strength and patience to the end, and said: ‘O God, give me
true repentance, true patience, and true humility, and put all worldly
thoughts out of my mind’; and he often entreated those that went with
him to pray for him.
“Being come upon the scaffold which was set up in the midst of the
court, he was apparelled in a gown of wrought velvet, a satin suit, and
felt hat, all black; and first turning himself towards the divines,
he said, ‘O God, be merciful unto me, the most wretched creature
on the earth,’ and then turning himself towards the noblemen that
sat on a form placed before the scaffold, he vayled his hat, and
making reverence to the Lords, laid it away, and with his eyes most
attentively fixed up to Heaven, spoke to this effect: ‘My Lords, and
you my Christian brethren who are to be witnesses of this my just
punishment, I confess to the glory of God that I am a most wretched
sinner, and that my sins are more in number than the hairs of my head;
that I have bestowed my youth in pride, lust, uncleanness, vainglory
and divers other sins, according to the fashion of this world, wherein
I have offended most grievously my God, and notwithstanding divers
good motives inspired unto me from the Spirit of God, the good which I
would I have not done; and the evil which I would not I have done; for
all which I humbly beseech our Saviour Christ to be the Mediator unto
the Eternal Majesty for my pardon; especially for this my last sin,
this great, this bloody, this crying and this infectious sin, whereby
so many, for love of me, have ventured their lives and souls, and have
been drawn to offend God, to offend their Sovereign, and to offend the
world, which is as great grief unto me as may be. Lord Jesus, forgive
it us, and forgive it me, the most wretched of all; and I beseech Her
Majesty, the State, and the Ministers thereof, to forgive it us. The
Lord grant Her Majesty a prosperous reign, and a long one, if it be his
will, O Lord, grant her a wise and understanding heart; O Lord, bless
her and the nobles, and ministers of Church and State. And I beseech
you and the world to have a charitable opinion of me for my intention
towards Her Majesty, whose death, upon my salvation and before God, I
protest I never meant, nor violence to her person; yet I confess I have
received an honourable trial, and am justly condemned. And I desire all
the world to forgive me, even as I freely and from my heart forgive all
the world.
“‘And whereas I have been condemned for my religion, I was never, I
thank God, Atheist or Papist, for I never denied the power of my God,
not believing the word and scriptures, neither did I ever trust to
be justified by my own works or merits, but hope as a true Christian
for my salvation from God only, by the mercy and merits of my Saviour
Jesus Christ, crucified for my sins. This faith I was brought up in,
and therein am now ready to die; beseeching you all to join with me
in prayer, not with eyes and lips only, but with lifted-up hands and
minds, to the Lord for me, that my soul may be lifted up above all
earthly things, for now I will give myself to my private prayer; yet
for that I beseech you all to join with me, I will speak that you may
hear.’
“Then putting off his gown and ruff and presenting himself before the
block, he was, as it seemed, by one of the chaplains encouraged against
the fear of death; to whom he answered, that having been divers times
in places of danger, yet where death was never so present nor certain,
he had felt the weakness of the flesh, and therefore desired God to
strengthen him in that great conflict, and not to suffer the flesh to
have any rule over him.
“Preparing to kneel down, he asked for the executioner, who on his
knees also asked his pardon, to whom he said, ‘Thou art welcome to
me; I forgive thee; thou art the minister of true justice.’ And then,
with eyes fixed up to Heaven, he began his prayers, ‘O God, creator
of all things and judge of all men, thou hast let me know by warrant
of thy word, that Satan is then most busy when our end is nearest,
and that Satan being resisted, will fly, I humbly beseech thee to
assist me in this my last combat, and since thou acceptest even of our
desires as of our acts, accept of my desires to resist him as with
true resistance and perfect grace; what thou seest of my flesh to be
frail [strengthen?] and give me patience to be as becometh me, in this
just punishment inflicted upon me by so honourable a trial. Grant me
the inward comfort of thy Spirit; let the Spirit seal unto my soul an
assurance of thy mercies; lift my soul above all earthly cogitations,
and when my life and body shall part, send thy blessed angels to be
near unto me, which may convey it to the joys in Heaven,’ then saying
the Lord’s Prayer, he iterated this petition, ‘As we forgive them that
trespass against us,’ saying, ‘As we forgive _all_ them that trespass
against us.’
“Then one of the divines put him in mind to say over his belief, which
he did, the doctor saying it softly before him, and added these words,
‘Lord Jesus, receive my soul; into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my
spirit.’ He was likewise remembered by the divines to forgive and pray
for his enemies. Whereupon he beseeched God to forgive them as freely
as he did, ‘because,’ said he, ‘they bear the image of God as well as
myself.’
“Asking what was fit for him to do for disposing himself to the block,
and his doublet being taken off, after he had asked the executioner
whether he would hinder him or no in a scarlet waistcoat, he bowed
himself towards the block, and said, ‘O God, give me true humility and
patience to endure to the end, and I pray you all to pray with me and
for me, that when you shall see me stretch out my arms and my neck
on the block, and the stroke ready to be given, it would please the
everlasting God to send down his angels to carry my soul before his
mercy seat,’ and then lifting up his eyes devotedly towards Heaven, he
said, ‘Lord God, as unto thine altar I do come, offering up my body and
my soul for a sacrifice, in humility and obedience to thy commandment,
to thy ordinance, and to thy good pleasure, O God, I prostrate myself
to my deserved punishment.’ Lying flat along the boards, his hand
stretched out, he said, ‘Lord, have mercy upon me, thy prostrate
servant,’ and therewithal fitting his head to the block, he was willed
by one of the doctors to say the beginning of the 51st Psalm, Have
mercy upon me, O God, etc., whereof he said two verses; the executioner
being prepared he uttered these words, ‘Executioner, strike home.
Come, Lord Jesus, come, Lord Jesus, and receive my soul; O Lord, into
thy hands I commend my spirit.’ In the midst of which sentence his head
was severed by the axe from the corpse at three blows, but the first
deadly, and depriving all sense and motion.
“The noblemen present at his death were the Earls of Cumberland and
Hertford, Lords Bindon, Darcy, Compton, and Thomas Howard, Constable
of the Tower, Sir John Peyton, lieutenant with fifteen or sixteen
partizans of the guard, and three divines, Messrs Montfort, Barlow, and
Ashe Ashton.”
Writing of Essex’s death, Stowe says, “The body and the head were
removed into the Tower, put into a coffin ready prepared, and buried
by the Earl of Arundel and Duke of Norfolk in the Church of St Peter.”
The above reads as if Essex’s remains had been buried by Arundel and
Norfolk, but it is of course intended to convey the fact that the body
of the Earl was placed alongside their graves.
There is a ghastly story told by G. S. Brandés in his work on
Shakespeare, in which the Duke de Biron, Henry III. of France’s envoy
to Elizabeth, relates a conversation he held with Elizabeth about
Essex, in which she jested over her departed favourite; the Queen
opened a box and took out of it Essex’s skull which she showed to
Biron. This story has no shadow of proof or foundation, for had Essex’s
head been taken out of the historic soil in which it mouldered in St
Peter’s Chapel, and been given to the Queen, such an extraordinary
proceeding would have been recorded; besides Elizabeth was not a
monster, as such conduct with which Biron here credits her, would
proclaim her to be.
Raleigh, at his own execution and speaking on the edge of the grave,
solemnly denied that he had rejoiced over the death of Essex. He had,
he acknowledged, watched the execution of his rival from the windows of
the Armoury, those at the north end of the White Tower, which commanded
a view of the scaffold—“where I saw him,” Sir Walter said, “but he
saw not me, and my soul hath been many times grieved that I was not
near to him when he died because I understood afterwards that he asked
for me at his death, to be reconciled to me.” Thus at the early age of
thirty-three ended the noble and gifted Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex
and Eu, Viscount Hereford and Bourchier, Baron Ferrers of Chartley,
Bourchier and Louvain.
When quite a youth Essex had married Frances, daughter of Sir Francis
Walsingham, and his son Robert, born in 1592, lived to lead the army of
the Parliament against Charles the First.
Contemporary writers have extolled Essex’s charm of character and
beauty of person. Sir Robert Naunton, in his “Fragmenta Regalia,”
writes that “there was in this young lord, together with a most goodly
person, a kind of urbanity or innate courtesy.” So popular was Essex
with the Londoners that he scarcely ever quitted the capital without a
poem or song being sung and sold in the streets. After Essex’s death
Raleigh, who, probably owing to his arrogance, was never a favourite
with the citizens, was hooted by the mob, as were also Bacon and
the other judges who had condemned the Earl. Even Elizabeth’s own
popularity paled after Essex’s death, and she was ever after coldly
received whenever she appeared amongst her lieges.
Southampton was kept a prisoner in the Tower until released by the
order of James I. in the month of April 1603. During his imprisonment,
a favourite cat of his appeared suddenly in his room, having come to
his master by way of the chimney, and after his deliverance Southampton
had his portrait painted with his faithful friend beside him. At
Welbeck Abbey there are two portraits of this nobleman, and in one of
them the cat appears by its master’s side.
Of the other conspirators in Essex’s plot, Sir Christopher Blunt, Sir
Charles Danvers, Sir Gilley Merrick, and Henry Cuffe were executed,
the first four being beheaded, and the two last hanged at Tyburn.
Cuffe, who was Essex’s private secretary, appears to have been the
principal instigator in the scheme for kidnapping the Queen; the other
prisoners were pardoned.
For a long time the Queen hesitated to sign her old favourite’s death
warrant; but finally wrote her name upon the fatal document, and by
so doing probably shortened her own time on earth, for after Essex’s
execution she fell into a state of morbid dejection which never
lightened till the end. Her last days were lonely and full of terror,
if not of despair. There are few accounts more tragic in history than
the description given by those who saw the poor, painted old woman at
this time—half delirious as the shades of death closed around her,
thrusting a sword through the tapestry of her chamber, or lying on the
ground propped up with cushions, refusing all nourishment, and having
no one near her to whom she could turn for one loving look or tender
word. There is no truth in the popular tale of the ring which Elizabeth
is supposed to have given to Essex to be returned to her in any time of
trouble, and detained until too late by Lady Nottingham.
Thus in domestic trouble and bloodshed closed the great Queen’s reign.
When Elizabeth mounted the throne England was wretchedly weak and
distracted, and apparently almost in the grasp of the huge Spanish
octopus, the baleful arms of which were closing in around her. When the
great Queen died, England was self-reliant and powerful. Elizabeth had
not only been regarded by her own people with pride and admiration,
but all Europe proclaimed her greatness. Bacon truly said that little
or nothing was wanting to fill up the full measure of Elizabeth’s
felicity; she had triumphed over all her enemies; and her bitterest
foe, Philip of Spain, had gone to his grave five years before her
own death, beaten and discredited, and like his so-called Invincible
Armada, a wreck and a derision. The only other European sovereign who
in any way could be compared with Elizabeth, and who survived her, was
Henry of Navarre; and he had called Elizabeth his “other self.” In the
next generation Cromwell, a still greater man than Henry IV. of France,
speaking of Elizabeth said, “Queen Elizabeth of famous memory; we need
not be ashamed to call her so.”
END OF VOL. I.
THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH
[Illustration: The Tower
T. Way, Lith: London.]
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| FOOTNOTES: |
| |
| [1] Mr G. H. Birch, F.S.A., the Curator of the Soane Museum, |
| says of the extent of the Roman city, that it was “originally |
| of smaller extent, and did not include the space now marked out |
| by the line of apparently Roman walls, the proof being that |
| interments have been found in the extended space, notably at |
| the Union Bank of London and at Bow Churchyard, Cheapside. The |
| first Roman city extended from the Tower to Aldgate, then along |
| Leadenhall Street to Cornhill, returning by Wallbrook to Dowgate, |
| and thence along Thames Street. Several of the bastions, notably |
| the one in Camomile Street, are composed of destroyed Roman |
| buildings and sculpture, and the work, although built in the |
| Roman manner—that is, with courses of Roman tiles or bricks—is |
| coarser in execution than the portion of the real Roman wall at |
| Postern Row and Aldgate.” |
| |
| [2] “As to the date of the extension,” writes Mr Birch, “it is |
| difficult to say, but it was probably after the withdrawal of the |
| Romans, but I hardly think as late as Alfred. The building points |
| to the work of partly Romanised inhabitants, who would have been |
| able to build only in the manner taught them by the Romans.” |
| |
| [3] The wax effigies of the Kings and Queens covered with tawdry |
| robes and gilt pasteboard crowns are far more attractive to the |
| holiday crowd of visitors in the Abbey of Westminster than the |
| tombs and shrines of the dead; and Madame Tussaud’s show attracts |
| the public more than the National Gallery. |
| |
| [4] This is the King’s or Queen’s House, according to the sex of |
| the reigning Sovereign. |
| |
| [5] He was the youngest son of John Apsley of Pulborough, Sussex. |
| He purchased the office of Lieutenant of the Tower from his |
| predecessor Sir George Moore, for £2500, and was sworn into |
| office, March 3rd, 1617, which he held until his death, May 24th, |
| 1630; he was also Surveyor of Victuals for the Navy. Whilst |
| Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Walter Raleigh was in his custody. |
| He was thrice married. His second wife was Anne, daughter and |
| heiress of Sir Peter Carew, by whom he had issue two sons and |
| a daughter, Jocosa or Joyce, who married Lyster, second son of |
| Sir Richard Blount, of Mapledurham, whose ancestors were also |
| Lieutenants of the Tower. His third wife was Lucy, youngest |
| daughter of Sir John St John, Knight of Lydiard Tregoz, Wilts, |
| to whom he was married at St Anne’s, Blackfriars, on the 23rd |
| December 1615, at which time he was of the age of forty-eight, |
| whilst the lady was but sixteen. By this marriage he became |
| brother-in-law of Sir Edward Villiers, Viscount Grandison, |
| half-brother of George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham. His |
| eldest son by this marriage, who also became Sir Allen Apsley, |
| was a zealous Royalist, and was successively Governor of Exeter |
| and Barnstaple Castles, and, after the Restoration, Falconer to |
| King Charles II., and Treasurer of the Household to James, Duke |
| of York, afterwards James II. His daughter Frances married Sir |
| Benjamin Bathurst, Knight, Governor of the Royal African and East |
| India Companies and Cofferer to Queen Anne, and ancestor of Lord |
| Chancellor Bathurst. Sir Allen Apsley, the Lieutenant of the |
| Tower, had also four other sons and two daughters; of the latter, |
| Barbara married Lieutenant-Colonel Hutchinson, and Lucy became |
| the celebrated wife of his brother, Colonel John Hutchinson, |
| Governor of Nottingham Castle, an earnest Parliamentarian. The |
| life of the latter was written by his wife, who also left behind |
| her her own autobiography, printed in 1808. |
| |
| [6] Mr Birch thinks this improbable, and that the depth and clay |
| bottom of the river would have rendered such a work impossible. |
| |
| [7] Thomas of Woodstock, seventh son of Edward III., Duke of |
| Gloucester and Aumarle, was born in 1355. He had held many |
| important offices in the State. Froissart says he was “orguilleux |
| et présomptueux de maniére.” At the time of his death he was |
| fifty-two years of age. |
| |
| [8] |
| “When he was brought again to the bar, to hear |
| His knell rung out, his judgment, he was stirr’d |
| With such an agony, he sweat extremely, |
| And some thing spoke in choler, ill, and hasty: |
| But he fell to himself again, and sweetly |
| In all the rest show’d a most noble patience—” |
| |
| _Henry VIII._, Act i. scene 4. |
| |
| [9] There is a large number of records now in the State Paper |
| Office, which are known as the “Baga de Secretis,” and are |
| the official papers connected with many of the most important |
| State trials; these records are kept in ninety-one small bags |
| or pouches, whence the name of the collection. They have been |
| calendared in the third, fourth, and fifth Reports of the |
| Deputy-Keeper of the Public Records. These interesting documents |
| begin with the trial of Edmund Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, |
| in 1499, and end in the year 1813. In Pouch Nine there are |
| the reports of the trials of Anne Boleyn and her brother Lord |
| Rochford. |
| |
| [10] On her father’s side Lady Jane Grey’s descent was as |
| follows:—Thomas Grey was Queen Elizabeth Woodville’s (the Queen |
| of Edward IV.) eldest son by her first marriage to Sir John Grey, |
| eighth Lord Ferrers of Groby in Leicestershire. Sir John was |
| killed at the second battle of St Albans, fighting on the side of |
| King Henry. His son Thomas Grey was created Earl of Huntingdon in |
| 1471 and Marquis of Dorset in 1475. In the latter year he married |
| Cicely, the daughter and heiress of William, Lord Bonville and |
| Harrington. By this marriage he had a family of seven sons and |
| eight daughters, and his grandson was the father of Lady Jane |
| Grey. |
| |
| [11] I know of only one satisfactory portrait of Lady Jane Grey, |
| and that belongs to Lord Beauchamp and is kept at Madresfield |
| Court. By Lord Beauchamp’s kindness I am allowed to reproduce |
| that portrait, together with its companion picture of Lord |
| Guildford Dudley. |
| |
| [12] The minutes of this trial are in the Baga de Secretis, Pouch |
| xxiv. in the Public Record Office. |
| |
| [13] This book, a manual of prayers in square vellum, is now in |
| the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum. It is thought that Lady |
| Jane had borrowed it from Sir John Brydges, carrying it with her |
| to the scaffold, and there returning it to its owner by the hands |
| of his brother, although, as the Lieutenant was present, it is |
| difficult to understand why she did not give it to him personally. |
| |
| [14] Sir Henry Lee was a great lover of jousts and tournaments, |
| and was noted for his prowess in the lists. He died in 1611. His |
| descendant, the present Lord Dillon, has inherited his ancestor’s |
| love of armour and all that appertains to the study of knightly |
| panoply and weapons. The country owes Lord Dillon a debt of |
| gratitude for the admirable manner in which he has classified and |
| re-arranged the collection of arms and armour in the White Tower, |
| and for the exhaustive and excellent catalogue of the same. |
| |
| [15] These executions took place on the 20th and 21st September |
| 1586. Seven on the first day, and the remainder the next. The |
| centre of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which at that time had not been |
| laid out, was the scene of these horrible barbarities. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
Transcriber’s Notes:
- Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
- Blank pages have been removed.
- Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Tower of London, (Vol. 1 of 2)" ***
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