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Title: The Tower of London, (Vol. 2 of 2)
Author: Gower, Ronald Sutherland, Lord
Language: English
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THE TOWER OF LONDON
[Illustration: _View of the Tower in the time of Charles I._
(_From an etching by Hollar._)]
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. II.
[Illustration]
LONDON
GEORGE BELL & SONS
1902
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER XII. THE STUARTS—JAMES I. 1
XIII. CHARLES I. AND THE COMMONWEALTH 28
XIV. CHARLES II. 56
XV. JAMES II. 81
XVI. WILLIAM AND MARY 91
XVII. QUEEN ANNE 95
XVIII. GEORGE I. 100
XIX. GEORGE II. 114
XX. GEORGE III. 136
XXI. THE LATE REIGNS 142
THE FIRE OF 1841 142
THE FENIAN ATTEMPT TO BLOW UP THE WHITE TOWER,
JAN. 24TH, 1885 145
APPENDIX I. DISPUTES BETWEEN THE CITY OF LONDON AND THE OFFICIALS
OF THE TOWER AS TO THE RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES OF THE
TOWER 151
APPENDIX II. THE BEHAVIOUR AND CHARACTER OF THE THREE HIGHLANDERS
WHO WERE SHOT ON JULY 18TH, 1743 155
APPENDIX III. DATES OF RESTORATIONS CARRIED ON BY H.M. OFFICE OF
WORKS AT THE TOWER OF LONDON TO THE PRESENT TIME 169
APPENDIX IV. RECENT DISCOVERIES AT THE TOWER (WITH A PLAN) 171
APPENDIX V. THE BLOODY TOWER 175
APPENDIX VI. STAINED GLASS IN THE TOWER 177
APPENDIX VII. LIST OF THE CONSTABLES OF THE TOWER 179
INDEX 183
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PHOTOGRAVURE PLATES
PAGE
View of the Tower in the time of Charles I. (From an etching
by Hollar) _Frontispiece_
State Procession from the Tower in the days of the Stuarts 2
Arabella Stuart. (From a contemporary miniature) 12
Lady Arabella Stuart 14
The Earl and Countess of Somerset. (From a contemporary print) 16
Sir Walter Raleigh 18
Execution of the Earl of Strafford, May 12th, 1641. (From an
etching by Hollar) 36
Archbishop Laud. (From an etching by Arnt Pieters) 40
London before the Great Fire. (From an etching by Hollar) 60
London after the Great Fire. (From an etching by Hollar) 62
The Tower in the time of Charles II. (From an etching by Hollar) 64
Colonel Blood. (From a contemporary engraving) 66
William, Lord Russell. (From the portrait in the National Portrait
Gallery) 72
The Earl of Essex. (From an engraving by Picart after the painting
by Lely) 76
James, Duke of Monmouth. (From a contemporary engraving) 81
Execution of the Duke of Monmouth, July 1685 82
Portraits of James, Duke of Monmouth; Arthur, Earl of Essex;
William, Lord Russell; Archibald, Earl of Argyll; Colonel
Algernon Sidney; Sir Thomas Armstrong; Alderman Cornish; and
Sir Edmundbury Godfrey. (From an engraving by John Savage) 84
The Seven Bishops. (From a contemporary print) 86
The Seven Bishops going by Water to the Tower 88
The Flight of James II. 90
View of the Tower in the time of James II. 92
View of the Tower during the command of Lord Lucas 94
St Peter’s Chapel in the time of George II. (From an engraving by
Robert West) 96
View of the Tower in the time of George I. 100
The Earl of Derwentwater. (From a contemporary engraving) 104
North-west view of the Tower in 1753 114
Scotch Prisoners entering the Tower, 1742 116
Tower Hill at the time of the Execution of the Earl of Kilmarnock
and Lord Balmerino, 1746 122
View of Tower Hill and the place of Execution of the Rebel Lords,
1746 124
Charles Ratcliffe. (From a contemporary print) 126
Execution of the Rebel Lords, 1746 128
North-west view of the Tower at the time of the Execution of Lord
Lovat, 1746 130
Execution of Lord Lovat, 1746 132
Waggons going into the Tower with Treasure taken from the
Spaniards (temp. George II.) 134
West Front of the Tower in the time of George III. 136
Entrance to the Tower Menagerie in the time of George III. 138
The Tower from Tower Hill in the time of George III. 140
The Fire at the Tower in 1841 142
Another View of the Fire in 1841 144
Breaking into the Strong Room in the “Jewel Tower” and removal of
the Regalia on the night of the Fire, Oct. 30, 1841. (From an
etching by George Cruikshank) 146
The Great Court of the Tower, _circa_ 1790 151
View of St Peter’s Chapel in 1817 174
BLOCKS
The Moat, looking West 6
The Byward Tower and Moat from the Wharf 8
Entrance to the Bloody Tower and Steps leading to Raleigh’s Walk 24
The Byward Tower 28
Vaulting in the Cradle Tower 54
Old Cannon and Mortars on the West Side of the White Tower 58
Gate and Portcullis in the Bloody Tower 76
The Beauchamp Tower 98
Window in the Cradle Tower 102
The Tower from Tower Hill 108
Middle Gate 112
The White Tower, showing the Exterior of St John’s Chapel and
remains of the Roman Wall 172
PLAN showing Recent Discoveries in the Tower 170
THE TOWER
CHAPTER XII
THE STUARTS—JAMES I.
In Nichols’s “Progresses,” that mine of information regarding James
I., his court and times, it is related that James paid his first visit
to the Tower on 3rd May 1603, “when His Majesty set forward from the
Charter House and went quietly on horseback to Whitehall where he
took barge. Having shot the bridge, his present landing was expected
at the Tower stayres, but it pleased His Highness to passe the Towre
stairs toward St Katherines, and there stayed on the water to see the
ordinance on the White Tower (commonly called Julius Cæsar’s Tower)
being in number twenty pieces, with the great ordinance on the Towre
wharfe, being in number 100, and chalmers to the number of 130,
discharged and shot off. Of which, all services were sufficiently
performed by the gunners, that a peale of so good order was never heard
before; which was most commendable to all sorts, and very acceptable to
the King.”[1]
Owing to the plague then raging in London, the customary procession
at the coronation was omitted, although the King rode in state from
the Tower to Westminster, preparatory to the opening of his first
Parliament on 15th of March 1605, as the Londoners had made their
welcome for him ready. In Mr Sidney Lee’s “Life of Shakespeare,” he
states that Shakespeare, with eight other players of the King’s company
of actors, “walked from the Tower of London to Westminster in the
procession which accompanied the King in his formal entry into London.
Each actor received four and a half yards of scarlet cloth to wear as
a cloak on the occasion, and in the document authorising the grant,
Shakespeare’s name stands first on the list.” This is the only time
that we can positively know that Shakespeare was ever at the Tower; but
his frequent introduction of the fortress into his historical dramas
makes it certain that he must often have visited a place so full of
dramatic episodes and historical memories.[2]
Four months earlier, while staying at Wilton, news had reached James
of a plot to place the crown upon the head of Lady Arabella Stuart,
and a large batch of alleged conspirators were taken to the Tower in
consequence. Among them was Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord Cobham, and his
brother, George Brooke, Thomas Lord Grey de Wilton, Sir Griffin
Maskham, Sir Edward Parham, Bartholomew Brookesby, Anthony Copley, and
two priests named Weston and Clarke. This conspiracy, if it deserves
the name, and for which Raleigh was for the second time sent to the
Tower, owed its existence to the unlucky Arabella, daughter of Charles
Stuart, Earl of Lennox, younger brother of Darnley, and consequently
James’s first cousin on the mother’s side.
[Illustration: _State Procession from the Tower in the days of the
Stuarts._]
Arabella Stuart was also related to the Tudors, and this double
relationship to the reigning sovereign and to the late Queen was her
greatest misfortune, and the cause of her untimely death. She appears
to have been amiable, refined, virtuous, and good-looking, but of a
somewhat frail physique and countenance, to judge by the excellent
miniature which Oliver painted of her. That her mind was not a strong
one is very evident, and one cannot be surprised that she became insane
under the burden of her misfortunes.
Lady Arabella was made use of as a tool by James’s enemies, and at
Lord Cobham’s trial it was conclusively proved that she had no share
in any of the schemes which had the placing of herself on the throne
for their object. Had it not been for her unfortunate marriage she
would probably have ended her life in peaceful obscurity. This unhappy
lady disliked the life of a court, and had lived principally with
her grandmother, old Lady Shrewsbury, “Bess of Hardwicke,” as that
much-married and firm-minded dame was nicknamed, in her beautiful homes
of Chatsworth and Hardwicke Hall, in Derbyshire. In the last year of
Elizabeth’s reign, Arabella, whose hand had been asked in marriage by
many suitors, and amongst them by Henry IV. of France, and the Archduke
Mathias, met, and fell in love with William Seymour, grandson of the
Earl of Hertford, and had been kept in close confinement by the Queen
in consequence.
The plot to place Lady Arabella on the throne was regarded as dangerous
by the court, owing to James’s unpopularity, which was not surprising,
for at that time everything Scottish was cordially detested by the
English. The Scotch had been as inimical to us as either the French
or the Spaniards, and for a far longer period, whilst the Scottish
alliance with France had added still more to the national dislike.
Neither was the new King’s appearance one to win the admiration of his
new subjects, for a more ungainly individual had surely never appeared
out of a booth at a fair. The English were as susceptible then, as
they are now, to the outward appearance of their rulers, and even
Henry VIII., for all his tyranny and cruelty, was popular among the
people on account of his fine presence; and when Elizabeth appeared in
public, all aglow with splendour, her lieges shouted themselves hoarse
with delight, and worshipped that “bright occidental effulgence.” What
a contrast to these was James Stuart. With his huge head, and padded
shanks, his great tongue lolling from out his mouth, his goggle eyes,
and rolling gait, and the incomprehensible, to English ears, jargon of
Lowland Scotch which he spoke, his was not a very kingly figure, and
he made anything but a favourable impression upon his new subjects. It
appears that Raleigh, at the time of James’s arrival, let fall some
remarks which were repeated to the King, to the effect that it would be
well not to allow the Scottish locusts to eat too much of the Southern
pastures. It has been supposed that Raleigh, at a meeting at Whitehall,
proposed to found a republic, and Aubrey, a contemporary writer, even
gives his words, “Let us keep the staff in our own hands, and set up
a commonwealth, and not remain subject to a needy beggarly nation.”
Raleigh met the King for the first time at Burleigh, when James, who
prided himself on his wit, said to Sir Walter, that he thought but
“rawly” of him; it is a vile pun, but is interesting as showing the way
in which his contemporaries pronounced Raleigh’s name.
Cecil, who had brought Essex to the scaffold, now lost no time in
bringing Raleigh, Essex’s rival, to the Tower, and on the 20th of
July 1603, the prison gates of that fortress once again closed upon
the founder of Virginia, on a charge of treason, based on the Arabella
Stuart conspiracy, nor did they open for him until twelve years had
passed. On the following day Raleigh attempted to stab himself with
a table-knife, for he seems to have been maddened by his treatment
by James and Cecil. In November the plague was so violent in London,
that the Law Courts were transferred to Winchester, and it was to that
city that Sir Walter and his fellow-prisoners were taken and tried on
a charge of “attempting to deprive the King of his crown and dignity;
to molest the Government, and alter the true religion established in
England, and to levy war against the King.”
George Brooke, a brother of Lord Cobham’s, and two priests were found
guilty and executed, Lords Grey de Wilton, Cobham, and Raleigh were
respited, and were taken back to their prison in the Tower. Cobham
never regained his liberty, he was a ruined man, and died probably in
the Tower. The place of his burial is unknown.
The de Cobhams were an early family of importance in the twelfth
century, and from the thirteenth to the sixteenth one of the most
powerful in the south of England. Henry de Cobham was summoned to
Parliament in 1313. The direct line ended in Joan de Cobham, who
married five times; her third husband was Sir John Oldcastle, commonly
called Lord Cobham, _jure uxoris_, but inaccurately, for he was
summoned to Parliament under his own name, Oldcastle.
In descent from Joan was Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham, attainted first of
James the First. He was born 1564, and succeeded to the title 1596–7,
and shortly after installed Knight of the Garter. He married Francis
Howard, daughter of the Earl of Nottingham, and widow of the Earl of
Kildare. He was committed to the Tower December 16th, 1603, tried, and
condemned to death, and actually brought out to be executed, but had
been privately reprieved beforehand by James the First, who played
with Cobham and Gray, and their companions, as a cat would with mice.
After fifteen years’ rigorous confinement in the Tower, his health
failed, and he was allowed out, attended by his gaolers, to visit Bath.
This was in 1617, and was taken so ill on his way back he had to stay
at Odiham, Hants, at the house of his brother-in-law, Sir Edward Moore.
He died, with very little doubt, in the Tower, January 24th, 1619,
but the place of his burial has been undiscovered. He had been well
supplied with books, for the Lieutenant of the Tower seized a thousand
volumes at the time of his death of “all learning and languages.” In a
letter from Sir Thomas Wynne to Sir Dudley Carlton (State Papers, Dom
Jac, 1st vol., 105), 28th of January 1619, occurs this passage: “My
Lord Cobham is dead, and lyeth unburied as yet for want of money; he
died a papist.” This probably was only gossip. While in the Tower he
was allowed eight pounds a week for maintenance, but very little of
this ever reached him, it probably was absorbed by his keepers and the
Lieutenant. During his long imprisonment Lady Kildare never troubled
herself further about him. She lived comfortably, first at Cobham, and
afterwards at Copthall, Essex.
By the will of George, Lord Cobham, 1552, the Cobham estates, by an
elaborate settlement, were strictly entailed, so that Henry, Lord
Cobham, only had a life interest, and the King could not seize them;
and probably it was to that fact he owed his life, for the King could
possess them during his life, but not alienate them.
Unfortunately, the next heir was the son of George Brooke, executed for
treason at Winchester, Lord Cobham’s brother, who, at the time of his
uncle’s death, was an infant of tender age, and without friends, so
negotiations were carried on with the next in succession, Duke Brooke,
a cousin of Lord Cobham’s, and this man parted with his prospective
rights to the King for about £10,000, which enabled this “specimen
of King craft” to enter into possession. Duke Brooke, dying soon after,
Charles Brooke, his brother, parted with several other manors to Cecil,
Earl of Salisbury. None of these transactions were legal; Henry, Lord
Cobham, was not dead, nor the children of George Brooke, William, and
his two sisters, Frances and Elizabeth. For some reason they were
“restored in blood,” but with the express proviso they should not
inherit any of the property of their fathers or their uncles; nor was
William to take the title of Lord Cobham. And this was all done with
the connivance of Cecil, Lord Burleigh, brother-in-law to Henry, Lord
Cobham. No wonder William Brooke became a devoted Parliamentarian in
the next reign, and died fighting against the King at Newbury, 1643.
Many letters of Henry Brooke have been preserved while in the Tower:
“To my very good Lord and Brother-in-law, Lord Burleigh.” He must both
have been clever and learned, for during his captivity he translated
Seneca’s treatises, _De Providentia, De Ira, De Tranquilitate, De
Vita Beata, and De Paupertate_: the original manuscript of one, _De
Providentia_, is in the library at Ufford Place, Suffolk, the seat of
his representative, Edward Brooke, Esq., written in a beautifully fine
hand. Raleigh and Cobham’s “treason” was that known as the Main or
Spanish Treason, one of the supposed objects of which was to place the
Lady Arabella Stuart on the throne.
[Illustration: _The Moat looking West_]
Lord Grey de Wilton, a young man of great promise, died in St Thomas’s
Tower in 1617, after passing nine years in the Brick Tower. Lord Grey
had made an eloquent defence during his trial, which lasted from eight
in the morning until eight at night, during which, according to the
Hardwicke State Papers, many “subtle traverses and escapes,” took
place. When Grey was asked why judgment of death should not be passed
against him, he replied, “I have nothing to say.” Then he paused a
little, and added, “And yet a word of Tacitus comes into my mind, ‘non
eadem omnibus decora,’ the house of the Wiltons have spent many lives
in their Princes’ service and Grey cannot beg his.”
For the next twelve years the Tower was Raleigh’s home, and not till he
had succeeded in bribing King James’s favourite, George Villiers, Duke
of Buckingham, by the payment of a large sum of money, did he again
obtain his liberty. Before settling down in the Tower, and while the
plague was still raging, Raleigh, with his wife and son, were taken to
the Fleet Prison on several occasions. At length they were placed in
the not uncomfortable rooms in the Bloody Tower, which he, with his
family and servants, must have quite filled, for besides Lady Raleigh
and her son Carew, there were two servants named Dean and Talbot, and
a boy, who was probably a son of Talbot’s. Their imprisonment was not
absolutely rigid, for they were allowed the visits of a clergyman named
Hawthorne, a doctor, Turner, and a surgeon, Dr John, as well as those
of Sir Walter’s agent, who came up from Raleigh’s place, Sherborn,
so that he was kept in touch with his affairs; one or two other
friends were also admitted. In addition to these privileges Sir Walter
was allowed the run—the liberty as it would be called then—of the
Lieutenant of the Tower’s garden, which lay at the foot of the Bloody
Tower, as has already been mentioned in the description of that place.
In 1604 the penal laws against the Roman Catholics were re-enacted
by Parliament, and in the following year the famous Gunpowder Plot
was discovered, with the consequence that in the month of November
of that year the Tower received many of the principal conspirators,
and still more of those individuals who were in some way or other
concerned in it. Foremost amongst the latter were the aged Earl of
Northumberland, Henry Percy, and with him were Henry, Lord Mordaunt,
Lord Stourton, and three Jesuit priests, Fathers Garnet, Oldcorn, and
Gerrard. Northumberland, besides having to pay an enormous fine, was
kept a prisoner in the Tower for sixteen years; Mordaunt and Stourton
were also heavily fined and remanded to the fortress during the King’s
pleasure; Fathers Garnet and Oldcorn were hanged—the former at St
Paul’s, in the usual manner, after being cruelly tortured, the latter
at Worcester. As for the third priest, Gerrard, I have in another part
of this work described the treatment he endured and his escape from the
Tower.
[Illustration: _The Byward Tower and Moat from the Wharf_]
Of the active conspirators, besides Guy Fawkes—who was executed with
Thomas Winter, Rookwood, and Keyes in Old Palace Yard—Sir Everard
Digby, the father of the accomplished Sir Kenelm, Robert Winter,
Grant, and Bates, were drawn on hurdles to the west end of St Paul’s
Churchyard, where they were done to death in the approved fashion of
execution for high treason.
Guy Fawkes and most of his fellow-prisoners while in the Tower had been
placed in the subterranean dungeons beneath the White Tower. Fawkes,
besides being tortured by the rack, was placed in “Little Ease,” in
which horrible hole he is supposed to have been kept for fifty days.
Father Oldcorn was imprisoned in the lower room of the Bloody Tower,
whilst Father Fisher was in the White Tower; Northumberland, the
“Wizard Earl,” as he was called on account of his leaning towards
chemical experiments, was lodged in the Martin Tower.
Until the month of August in that year (1605), Sir Walter Raleigh’s
imprisonment in the Bloody Tower had not been very stringent. Sir
George Harvey had filled the position of Lieutenant of the Tower, and
Sir George and Sir Walter were on friendly terms. His lodging, for a
prison, was comfortable enough; his wife and son were still with him,
Lady Raleigh having been confined of a second son about this time.
In addition to the attendance of his servants and the visits of his
friends, as I have mentioned before, he was allowed to have all the
books he required for the great literary labour that now began to
occupy much of his time. When not working in his little garden by the
Tower, or experimenting with his chemicals and decoctions in a small
outbuilding which he had built in the garden, or taking exercise on the
wall terrace which overlooked the wharf and the river beyond, he would
be writing at his “History of the World,” that wonderful fragment which
is one of the marvels of our literature.
Unfortunately for Sir Walter, his friend Sir George Harvey, with whom
he often dined and passed the evening, ceased being Lieutenant at this
time, being succeeded by Sir William Waad. Raleigh’s feelings towards
the new Lieutenant appear to have resembled those of Napoleon to Sir
Hudson Lowe. Waad, who had been Clerk of the Council, on his side seems
to have had a personal dislike to the great captive over whom he was
placed in charge, and to have done all he could—and he had the power of
doing a great deal—to render Raleigh’s life as unpleasant and galling
as possible. For instance, Waad ordered a brick wall to be built in
front of the terrace where Raleigh walked, so that the captive could
no longer watch the passing life beneath him on the wharf or river.
Then Waad complained to Cecil of Raleigh making himself too conspicuous
to the people who passed beneath the Bloody Tower, and, not content
with annoying Sir Walter, pestered Lady Raleigh, and deprived her of
the poor satisfaction of driving her coach into the courtyard of the
fortress, a privilege that had hitherto been allowed her. In these and
many other petty ways the new Lieutenant contrived to make himself as
unpleasant as he possibly could to Raleigh and his wife.
During the alarm consequent upon the Gunpowder Plot, Raleigh was
examined by the Council, probably in the Lieutenant’s, now the King’s
House, but naturally nothing could be found to implicate him with the
conspiracy, and the King had to bide his time before he could bring
his great subject to the block. In 1610, for some unknown reason, Sir
Walter was kept a close prisoner in his tower for three months, and
Lady Raleigh was taken from him.
In Disraeli’s “Amenities of Literature” is the following interesting
description of those friends of Sir Walter who shared his pursuits and
studies in the Tower:—
“A circumstance as remarkable as the work itself” (“History of the
World”) “occurred in the author’s long imprisonment. By one of the
strange coincidences in human affairs, it happened that in the
Tower Raleigh was surrounded by the highest literary and scientific
circle in the nation. Henry, the ninth Earl of Northumberland, on
the suspicion of having favoured his relation Piercy, the Gunpowder
Plot conspirator, was cast into this State prison, and confined
during many years. This Earl delighted in what Anthony Wood
describes as ‘the obscure parts of learning.’ He was a magnificent
Mecaenas, and not only pensioned scientific men, but daily
assembled them at his table, and in these intellectual communions,
participating in their pursuits, he passed his life. His learned
society was designated as ‘the Atlantis of the Northumberland
world’! But that world had other inhabitants, antiquaries and
astrologers, chemists and naturalists. There was seen Thomas
Allen, another Roger Bacon, ‘terrible and tho’ vulgar,’ famed for
his ‘Bibliotheca Alleniana,’ a rich collection of manuscripts,
most of which have been preserved in the Bodleian; the name of
Allen survives in the ardent commemorations of Camden, of Spelman,
and of Selden. He was accompanied by his friend Doctor Dee, but
whether Dee ever tried their patience or their wonder by his
‘Diary of Conferences with Spirits’ we find no record, and by the
astronomical Torporley, a disciple of Lucretius, for his philosophy
consisted of stones; several of his manuscripts remain in Sion
College. The muster-roll is too long to run over. In this galaxy of
the learned the brightest star was Thomas Hariot, who merited the
distinction of being ‘the Universal Philosopher’; his inventions in
algebra Descarte, when in England, silently adopted, but which Dr
Wallis afterwards indignantly reclaimed; his skill in interpreting
the text of Homer excited the grateful admiration of Chalman when
occupied by his version. Bishop Corbet has described
‘Deep Hariot’s mine
In which there is no dross.’
“Two other men, Walter Warner, who is said to have suggested to
Harvey the great discovery of the circulation of the blood, and
Robert Huer, famed for his ‘Treatise on the Globes’—these, with
Hariot, were the Earl’s constant companions; and at a period when
science seemed connected with necromancy, the world distinguished
the Earl and his three friends as ‘Henry the Wizard and his three
Magi.’... Such were the men of science, daily guests in the Tower
during the imprisonment of Raleigh; and when he had constructed
his laboratory to pursue his chemical experiments, he must have
multiplied their wonders. With one he had been intimately connected
early in life, Hariot had been his mathematical tutor, was
domesticated in his house, and became his confidential agent in the
expedition to Virginia. Raleigh had warmly recommended his friend
to the Earl of Northumberland, and Sion House became Hariot’s home
and observatory.”
The elder Disraeli has argued that Raleigh could not possibly have
written the whole of that large tome, “The History of the World,”
himself, for want of books of reference whilst in the Tower. But as
his friends supplied him with books, and he himself had probably taken
copious notes for the work while living in the old home of the Desmonds
at Youghal, in Ireland, where a remnant of the old Desmond library is
still existing, the argument can scarcely be considered proved. The
late Sir John Pope Hennessy has pointed out in his work on “Raleigh in
Ireland,” that, by an odd coincidence, the son of the sixteenth Earl of
Desmond, whose lands Raleigh held in Ireland, was a fellow-prisoner of
Sir Walter’s in the Tower during his first imprisonment in the fortress
during Elizabeth’s reign. Desmond died in prison in 1608, and was
buried in St Peter’s Chapel. Raleigh had this youth’s sad fate in his
mind, it seems, when he wrote from the Tower, “Wee shall be judged as
we judge—and be dealt withal as wee deal with others in this life, if
wee believe God Himself.”
An almost contemporary historian, Sir Richard Baker, refers to
Raleigh’s imprisonment in the following quaint manner:—“He was kept in
the Tower, where he had great honour; he spent his time in writing,
and had been a happy man if he had never been released.” A strange
description, surely, of what is generally understood by the term,
“happy man.”
Henry, Prince of Wales, seems to have been the only member of his
family who appreciated Sir Walter, frequently visiting him at the
Tower. On one of the occasions when he had left him, the young prince
remarked to one of his following that no king except his father
could keep such a bird in such a cage. The Prince’s mother, Queen Anne,
seems also to have shown some interest in Raleigh’s fate, and to have
tried to induce her miserable husband to set him free.
[Illustration: _Arabella Stuart._
(_From a Contemporary Miniature._)]
In 1611 Arabella Stuart was brought a prisoner into the Tower, and with
her, Lady Shrewsbury. When the news of Arabella’s marriage with young
William Seymour reached the King, her fate was sealed, for by this
marriage the half-captivity in which she had lived was changed into
captivity for life; and few of James the First’s evil actions, and they
were not a few, were more mean or cowardly than his treatment of his
poor kinswoman, Arabella Hertford.
She had never been known to mix in politics, and if she had any
ambition, it was the noble ambition of wishing to lead a pure life away
from an infamous court. Poor Arabella used to declare that although she
was often asked to marry some foreign prince, nothing on earth would
induce her to marry any man whom she did not know, or for whom she had
no liking.
At Christmastide of 1609, James, hearing a rumour that seemed to point
to Arabella being married to some foreign prince, had sent her to the
Tower, releasing her when he discovered that his fears were groundless,
and giving his consent to her marrying one of his subjects should she
wish to do so. Unfortunately, Arabella took advantage of the King’s
consent, trusting to his word, but she found to her bitter cost how
hollow and false that promise was. In the following February (1610)
she plighted her troth to William Seymour, both probably relying
upon the Royal word. Whether James had forgotten that Seymour was a
probable suitor for Arabella’s hand when he gave his promise cannot
be known, but Arabella could not have made a more unlucky choice, as
far as she herself was concerned, for the Suffolk claims had been
recognised by Act of Parliament; and the same Parliament which had
acknowledged James the First could not alter the order of succession,
and, consequently, William Seymour being the grandson of Lord Hertford,
by his wife, Catharine Grey, was in what was called the “Suffolk
Succession.” His marriage to Arabella brought her still nearer to the
Crown, and any children born of the marriage would have had a good
chance of succeeding to the throne.
The young couple were summoned to appear before the Council, and were
charged to give up all thoughts of marriage. But, in spite of King
and Council, they were secretly married in the month of May 1611—a
month said to be unlucky for marriages. Two months afterwards the news
reached the King, and the storm burst over the unlucky lovers. Arabella
was sent a prisoner to Lambeth Palace, and her husband to the Tower.
From Lambeth Arabella was first removed to the house of Mr Conyers at
Highgate, and thence she was to be sent to Durham Castle in charge of
the Bishop. At Highgate, however, she fell ill, or pretended to fall
ill, and the famous attempt made to escape by herself and her husband
took place.
By some means she procured a disguise in the shape of a wig and
male attire, with long, yellow riding-boots and a rapier, and thus
accoutred, on the 4th of June she rode to Blackwall, where she had
hoped to find her husband, but, failing in this, she rowed with a
female attendant and a Mr Markham, who had accompanied her from
Highgate, to a French vessel lying near Leigh, which took them on
board. Seymour, also disguised, escaped from the Tower by following a
cart laden with wooden billets. He got away unperceived, and managed
to reach a boat waiting for him by the wharf at the Iron Gate, but, on
arriving at Leigh, they found the French ship, with Arabella on board,
had put out to sea. The weather was against the ship in which Seymour
was sailing making Calais, and he had to go on to Ostend, where he
disembarked.
[Illustration: Lady Arabella Seymour.
_Sweet brother_
_every one forsakes me but
those that cannot helpe me.
Your most unfortunate sister_
_Arbella Seymaure_
_Her Autograph from the Original in the Possession of_ John Thane.]
Meanwhile, a hue and cry rang out from London. King’s messengers
galloped in hot haste from Whitehall to Deptford, and orders arrived at
all the southern ports to search all ships and barks that might contain
the runaways; a proclamation was issued to arrest the principals and
the abettors of their flight. A ship of war was sent over to Calais,
and others were despatched along the French coast as far as Flanders
to intercept the fugitives. When half-way across the Channel, one
of these vessels, named the _Adventurer_, came in sight of a ship
crowding on all sail in order to reach Calais; the wind, meanwhile, had
dropped, and further flight was impossible. A boat was lowered from
the _Adventurer_, the crew who manned it being armed to the teeth. A
few shots were exchanged, and the flying vessel, which proved to be
French, was boarded, and the poor runaway was taken back to the English
man-of-war; on board of her Arabella was made a prisoner, and as a
prisoner was landed at the Tower, never to leave it again until her
luckless body was taken from it for burial at Westminster.
James made as much ado about this attempted escape of the Hertfords
as if he had discovered a second Gunpowder Plot. And not only did he
have all those who had been concerned in Arabella’s flight seized and
imprisoned in the Tower, but kept the Countess of Shrewsbury and the
Earl strict prisoners in their house, and ordered the old Earl of
Hertford to appear before him.
From all appearances William Seymour showed a lack of courage at
this time, not unlike the husband of Lady Catherine Seymour in the
last reign, for he remained abroad while the storm with all its
fury fell and crushed his young wife. Poor Arabella lingered on in
her prison till death released her from her troubles on the 25th of
September 1615. She had been kept both in the Belfry Tower and in the
Lieutenant’s House, but had lost her reason some time previous to her
final release both from durance and the world. Her body was taken in
the dead of night to Westminster Abbey, and placed below the coffin of
Mary Queen of Scots. Mickle, the author of “Cumnor Hall,” and “There’s
nae luck about the house,” is credited with having written the touching
ballad on Arabella Stuart, which is included in Evans’s “Old Ballads.”
“Where London’s Tower its turrets shew,
So stately by old Thames’s side,
Fair Arabella, child of woe,
For many a day had sat and sighed.
And as she heard the waves arise,
And as she heard the black wind roar,
As fast did heave her heartfelt sighs,
And still so fast her tears did pour.”
William Seymour survived Arabella for nearly half-a-century; he married
again, his second wife being a sister of the Parliamentary general, the
Earl of Essex, the son of Elizabeth’s favourite and victim. In 1660
Seymour became Duke of Somerset, and lived just long enough to welcome
Charles II. He had shown far more loyalty to Charles I. than he had
done to poor Arabella Stuart.
In 1613, Sir William Waad, to the great delight of Raleigh, as well as
of the other prisoners in the Tower, vacated his post as Lieutenant. He
had been charged with the theft of the unfortunate Arabella’s jewels,
but his dismissal was also connected with a still more tragic story—the
murder of Sir Thomas Overbury—a murder which throws a very lurid
light upon the doings of James the First’s court and courtiers. Two
years before Arabella’s death, the Tower had been the scene of a most
foul murder. Scandalous as was the court of James, murder had not yet
been associated with it, but in the year 1613 the fate of Sir Thomas
Overbury added that dark crime to its other villainies.
[Illustration: _The portraiture of Robert Car Earle of Somerset,
Vicount Rochester, Knight of the most noble order of the Garter &ᶜ.
And of the Ladie Francis his wife._
_The Earl & Countess of Somerset._
(_From a Contemporary Print._)]
Macaulay has compared the court of James the First to that of Nero; it
would have been more correct to have likened it to that of the Valois,
Henry III. Although it was never proved, there were strong suspicions
that the somewhat sudden death of Henry, Prince of Wales, was brought
about by poison, and there is no doubt that poison was made use of by
James’s courtiers, as the death of Overbury proves. Sir Thomas Overbury
was the confidant of the King’s worthless favourite, Robert Carr, a
handsome youth who had been brought by James from Scotland in his
train, and whom he had knighted in 1607. James had also given Raleigh’s
confiscated estates to his favourite two years after making him a
knight, and in 1614 created him Lord Rochester and Earl of Somerset,
as well as Lord Chamberlain. Overbury belonged to a Gloucestershire
family, and had travelled on the Continent, whence he returned what
was then called “a finished gentleman.” Overbury and Carr were firm
friends, and it was probably on the recommendation of the latter that
James knighted Overbury in 1608. When, however, Somerset determined
to marry the notoriously improper Lady Frances Howard, the daughter
of the Earl of Suffolk, and the girl-wife of Lord Essex, from whom
she was separated, Overbury most strongly persuaded his friend from
committing such a rash action. His attitude coming to the knowledge of
Lady Frances, she vowed to avenge herself upon Sir Thomas, and carried
her threat to its bitter execution. On some frivolous pretext Overbury
was sent to the Tower; Lady Somerset, as Lady Frances had become,
notwithstanding Overbury’s advice, now determined to rid herself of
the man she mostly feared. With the help of a notorious quack, and of
a procuress, Mrs Turner, with whom she had been brought up, she set
about the task of consummating her revenge. Poison was supplied by Mrs
Turner, with which the unfortunate Overbury was slowly killed; but as
the drug—it is believed to have been corrosive sublimate—did not act
sufficiently quickly, two hired assassins, named Franklin and Lobell,
were called in, and stifled the victim with a pillow. Sir William Waad
at this time had ceased to be the Lieutenant, through Lady Essex’s
influence, and had been succeeded by Sir Gervase Elwes, a creature of
Somerset’s, who was not only cognisant of Overbury’s death in the
Bloody Tower, where he was confined, but even aided Lady Somerset in
her crime. Mrs Turner was the inventor of a peculiar yellow starch
which was used for stiffening the ruffs worn at that time; she wore one
of these ruffs when she was sentenced to die for her participation in
this murder by the Chief-Justice, Sir Edward Coke, and was also hanged
in it at Tyburn in March 1615, with the natural consequence that yellow
starched ruffs suddenly ceased to be the fashion. Lady Somerset was
also tried, and although found guilty of Overbury’s murder, received
a pardon from the King, but she and her husband, Somerset, spent six
years as prisoners in the Tower, where they occupied the same rooms in
the Bloody Tower which shortly before had been tenanted by the wife’s
victim. Sir Thomas Overbury was buried in St Peter’s Chapel, his grave
lying next to that of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.
Prince Henry’s death in 1612 was a terrible loss to Raleigh. The Queen
had already tasted Sir Walter’s famous cordial or elixir, and when
her son was given up by the physicians, Anne implored them to try
Raleigh’s specific medicine, which, according to its inventor, was safe
to cure all diseases save those produced by poison. Henry was already
speechless when the elixir was administered to him, but after he had
swallowed one or two drops he was able to utter a few words before he
expired. What was the nature of this wonderful mixture of Raleigh’s
cannot now be ascertained, although Charles II.’s French physician,
Le Febre, prepared what was believed to be the actual concoction and
wrote a treatise upon it. Some of its ingredients were indeed awful,
the flesh of vipers forming one of them, and it speaks much for the
strength of James’s Queen that she survived the taking of this terrible
physic.
[Illustration: VERA EFFIGIES CLARISSᴹᴵ VIRI DOMᴺᴵ GUALTHERI
RALEGH EQV AUR. etc
AMORE ET VIRTVTE
_The true and lively portraiture of the honourable and learned Knight
Sʳ. Walter Ralegh._]
Raleigh had intended dedicating his history to Prince Henry, but
after that young Prince’s death he seems to have lost his former
zest in the work. There is a story told that he threw part of the
manuscript into the fire on hearing that Walter Burr, the publisher
of the first edition in 1614, had been a loser by bringing it out.
Of that first part Mr Hume, in his “Life of Raleigh,” writes, “The
history, as it exists, is probably the greatest work ever produced
in captivity, except Don Quixote. The learning contained in it is
perfectly encyclopædic. Raleigh had always been a lover and a collector
of books, and had doubtless laid out the plan of the work in his mind
before his fall. He had near him in the Tower his learned Hariot,
who was indefatigable in helping his master. Ben Jonson boasted that
he had contributed to the work, and such books or knowledge as could
not be obtained or consulted by a prisoner, were made available by
scholars like Robert Burhill, by Hughes, Warner, or Hariot. Sir John
Hoskyns, a great stylist in his day, would advise with regard to
construction, and from many other quarters aid of various sorts was
obtained. But, withal, the work is purely Raleigh’s. No student of his
fine, flowing, majestic style will admit that any other pen but his
can have produced it. The vast learning employed in it is now, for the
most part, obsolete, but the human asides where Raleigh’s personality
reveals itself, the little bits of incidental autobiography, the witty,
apt illustrations, will prevent the work itself from dying. To judge
from a remark in the preface, the author intended at a later stage
to concentrate his history with that mainly of his own country, and
it would seem that the portion of the book published was to a great
extent introductory. Great as were his powers and self-confidence, it
must have been obvious to him that it would have been impossible for a
man of his age (he was in his sixtieth year when he began the work) to
complete a history of the whole world on the same scale, the first six
books published reaching from the beginning of the world to the end of
the second Macedonian war. In any case,” adds Mr Hume, “the book will
ever remain a noble fragment of a design, which could only have been
conceived by a master-mind.” And who, recalling those mighty lines on
death with which Raleigh bids farewell to his great work, but will
agree with the above admirable criticism of the work?
“O Eloquent, just and mighty Death! whom none could advise thou hast
persuaded: what now none hath dared thou hast done; and whom the world
hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised: thou
hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride,
cruelty, ambition of man, and covered it over with these two narrow
words: ‘Hic Jacet.’” How noble, too, are the introductory lines to Ben
Jonson, wherein he commends the serious study of history:
“... that nor the good might be defrauded, nor the great so cured;
But both might know their ways are understood,
And the reward and punishment assured.”
No wonder that James disapproved of such sentiments and said of the
“History,” “it is too saucy in censuring the acts of princes.”
To Raleigh, more than to any other of the great Elizabethan heroes,
does England owe her mighty earth-embracing dominion. Sir Walter
never ceased to urge the expansion of the empire, nor wearied in his
efforts to make the English fleet the foremost in all the seas, not
only as a check to Spain, but in order that the colonial possessions
of the kingdom might be increased; and he, more than any of our great
soldier-statesmen deserved those noble lines of Milton: “Those who of
thy free Grace didst build up this Brittanick Empire to a glorious and
enviable height, with all her daughter islands about her, stay us in
this felicitie.”
In 1616 Raleigh was allowed to leave the fortress, but, as I have said
before, in order to obtain his liberty he had been obliged to bribe
George Villiers and his brother, who had roused James’s cupidity by
persuading him that if Raleigh were allowed to lead a fresh expedition
to the West Indies, he might return with a great treasure of which
James would take the lion’s share. A warrant, dated the 19th of March
of this year, was drawn up, giving Raleigh permission to go abroad in
order that he might make the necessary arrangements for his voyage.
The twelve years of imprisonment had sadly marred and aged the gallant
knight, but his spirit was as bold and courageous as ever, and he
employed the first days of his liberty in revisiting his old London
haunts; many changes must have struck him in the city. In Visscher’s
panoramic view of London, taken from Southwark nearly opposite to St
Paul’s, a very clear general impression may be gained of the appearance
of the English capital in that year of sixteen hundred and sixteen,
the year when Shakespeare was dying at Stratford-on-Avon, when Raleigh
was on his way to his last journey across the Atlantic, and when
Francis Bacon was writing his famous essays in Gray’s Inn. Those
quaint, circular, Martello-like buildings in the foreground are the
Globe and Swan theatres, with the Bear Garden close by; but the former
theatre, in Visscher’s view, is not the one so intimately connected
with Shakespeare, for that was burned down in 1613, and the building
represented here is the new one erected upon its site. Opposite to the
Swan Theatre, on the Surrey side of the river, are Paris Garden Stairs,
where was a much frequented ferry, Blackfriars Bridge now spanning
the river where this ferry once used to ply. There was also a theatre
at Blackfriars, and Shakespeare and his players must often have used
the ferry on their way from the Globe Theatre across the river from
Blackfriars, where the poet lived. In front is old St Paul’s, towering
over all the surrounding buildings and dwarfing the highest; scores of
spires and towers break the skyline as the eye follows the panorama
towards the west, where stands the former old London Bridge, covered
along its sides with picturesque houses. So large and massive are
the great blocks of gabled buildings that span the bridge, that it
presents the appearance of a little town crossing the river, such as
is the Ponte Vecchio at Florence in little. The gates at its ends are
covered with men’s heads, stuck all over their roofs like pins upon a
pincushion. More steeples and towers crown the opposite bank, and as
the eye travels farther eastward it is arrested by the Tower, with its
encircling wall, and its river wharf all covered with cannon. The river
is alive with vessels of every shape and size, State barges and little
pinnaces, great galleons and small craft, appear in all directions,
some with, some without sails. Beyond, the distant hills of Middlesex
and Essex are dotted with villages and hamlets, whilst on the heights
of Highgate cluster a group of windmills. It is a wonderful panorama
that the old Dutch artist has handed down to us. Looking at it we see
the same scene, the same picture of time-honoured churches and palaces,
the noblest river in the world flowing beneath them, and bearing on
its shining surface all the pleasure, commerce, industry, and travail
of old London, that Shakespeare did, when, standing near his theatre
at Bankside, he gazed upon that shifting scene. All is changed now,
except the Tower. The great Gothic cathedral of St Paul’s and most of
its surrounding churches, whose towers and spires helped to make old
London an object of beauty, perished in the great fire which swept
over the city fifty years after Visscher drew his panorama. Old London
Bridge escaped the fire, and indeed remained until 1834, although the
houses clustering over it had been removed at the close of the reign
of George II., and the only prominent building in the panorama which
Shakespeare or Raleigh would now be able to recognise, could they look
across the rivers Styx and Thames, would be the great White Tower with
its surrounding lesser towers and battlements. All the rest, like “the
baseless fabric of a vision,” has passed away for ever.
But to return to Sir Walter Raleigh. He invested all that remained of
his own and his wife’s fortunes in furnishing the expedition to Guiana,
which proved so disastrous, on which he now embarked. On his return, a
ruined man and a prisoner, he expressed his amazement at having thus
in one desperate bid placed his life and all that he possessed in
that unlucky venture. But before Raleigh had left England, Gondomar,
the Spanish Ambassador, had told his master, the King of Spain, that
Raleigh was a pre-doomed man. For James had not only revealed every
detail relating to the Guiana expedition to Gondomar, but on condition
that if any subject or property belonging to Spain were touched he had
promised to hand over Raleigh to the Spanish Government in order that
he might be hanged at Seville. To assure Gondomar of his good faith,
James actually showed the ambassador a private letter written him by
Raleigh, in which the exact number of his ships, men, and the place
where the great silver mine was said to be located on the Orinoco, were
all set forth. As the Spaniards claimed the whole of Guiana, it was
evident that if Raleigh landed there he must infringe upon the Spanish
possessions, and thus place himself, according to James’s promise to
Gondomar, in the power of his enemies.
The expedition sailed from England at the end of March 1617, from
Plymouth, and consisted of fourteen ships and nine hundred men. But
its story was one of continued disaster, and on the 21st of June 1618,
writing to his friend Lord Carew, Raleigh gives a detailed account of
all his misfortunes. In the postscript he adds: “I beg you will excuse
me to my Lords for not writing to them, because want of sleep for fear
of being surprised in my cabin at night” (even on his own ship he
was a prisoner, the crew having mutinied) “has almost deprived me of
sight, and some return of the pleurisy which I had in the Tower has so
weakened my hand that I cannot hold the pen.” Sir Walter’s eldest son
was killed gallantly fighting in Guiana.
Then followed a miserable time, and on his road to London the hope of
life at times impelled him to attempt escape, but he was doomed to
drink the bitter cup of his King’s ingratitude to the dregs. On the
10th of August he again entered the Tower where so much of his life had
been spent, and which was now to be his last abode on earth.
The next day the Council of State met to decide upon Sir Walter’s
fate, and incredible as it seems, it was actually debated whether
Raleigh should be handed over to the tender mercies of the Spaniards or
executed in London. Surely if what passed on this earth could have been
known to Elizabeth, she would have burst her tomb at Westminster to
protest against this abomination, this unspeakable shame and disgrace
to the name of England.
James was now all impatience to get rid of Raleigh as quickly as
possible; he trembled at the threats of Gondomar, and had the sapient
monarch not given his word that Raleigh should die? The great
difficulty before the Council, however, was to find a pretext for
condemning Raleigh to death. Bacon and his colleagues racked their wise
brains to invent a cause by which he could be found guilty of high
treason. At length the Lord Chief-Justice, Montagu, with a committee
of the Council decided that the King should issue a warrant for the
re-affirmation of the death sentence given at Winchester in 1603, by
which it might be made valid and carried out. Sir Walter pleaded that
the King’s commission appointing him head of the Guiana expedition
with powers of life and death, invalidated the former sentence and its
punishment, both in the eyes of justice and of reason. But Sir Walter
was overruled. On the 24th of October the warrant for the execution was
signed and sealed by the King, and four days later Sir Walter was taken
from the Tower to the King’s Bench. He was then suffering from ague,
and having been roused from his sleep very early had not had time to
have his now snow-white hair dressed with his usual care. One of his
servants noticed this as he was being taken away, and telling him of
it, Raleigh answered, smiling, “Let them kem (comb) it that have it,”
then he added, “Peter, dost thou know of any plaister to set a man’s
head on again when it is cut off?”
[Illustration: _Entrance to the Bloody Tower and Steps leading to
Raleigh’s Walk_]
The end being now so certain and so near, the bright courage of the man
returned; there was no shrinking with the closing scene so close at
hand. He was not brought back to the Tower after his condemnation, and
he passed his last night upon earth in the Gate House at Westminster,
close to which the scaffold stood in Old Palace Yard. He had a last
parting that evening with his devoted wife, his “dear Bess,” but
neither dared to speak of their only remaining son—that would have
been too bitter a pang for them to bear. Sir Walter’s last words to
his wife were full of hope and courage: “It is well, dear Bess,” he
said, referring to Lady Raleigh having been promised his body next
day, the only mercy allowed her by the Council, “that thou mayest
dispose of that dead which thou hadst not always the disposing of when
alive.” Then she left him. During the long hours of that last night, he
composed those beautiful lines which will last as long as the language
in which they are written:
“Even such is time! who takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust:
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.
But from that earth, that grave, that dust,
The Lord shall raise me up I trust.”
Raleigh wrote these lines in a Bible which he had brought with him from
the Tower.
Carlyle has summed up Raleigh’s life and death in the following
pregnant lines, in his “Historical Sketches”:—
“On the morning of the 29th of October 1618 in Palace Yard, a cold
morning, equivalent to our 8th of November, behold Sir Walter
Raleigh, a tall gray-headed man of sixty-five gone. He has been in
far countries, seen the El Dorado, penetrated into the fabulous
dragon-realms of the West, hanged Spaniards in Ireland, rifled
Spaniards in Orinoco—for forty years in quest a most busy man;
has appeared in many characters; this is his last appearance on
any stage. Probably as brave a soul as lives in England;—he has
come here to die by the headman’s axe. What crime? Alas, he has
been unfortunate: become an eyesore to the Spanish, and did not
discover El Dorado mine. Since Winchester, when John Gibb came
galloping (with a reprieve), he has been lain thirteen years in
the Tower; the travails of that strong heart have been many. Poor
Raleigh, toiling, travelling always: in Court drawing-rooms, on the
hot shore of Guiana, with gold and promotions in his fancy, with
suicide, death, and despair in clear sight of him; toiling till his
brain is broken (his own expression) and his heart is broken: here
stands he at last; after many travails it has come to this with
him.”
Sir Walter Raleigh died a martyr to the cause of a Greater Britain; his
life thrown as a sop to the Spanish Cerberus by the most debased and
ignoble of our kings. Raleigh’s faults were undoubtedly many, but his
great qualities, his superb courage, his devotion to his country, his
faith in the future greatness of England, were infinitely greater, and
outweighed a thousand times all his failings. The onus of the guilt of
his death—a judicial murder if ever there was one—must be borne by the
base councillors who truckled to the King, and by the King himself who,
Judas-like, sold Raleigh to Spain.
Some less interesting State prisoners occupied the Tower towards
the close of the inglorious reign of James Stuart. Among these were
Gervase, Lord Clifford, imprisoned for threatening the Lord Keeper
in 1617. Clifford committed suicide in the Tower in the following
year. About the same time, Sir Thomas Luke, one of the Secretaries of
State, and his daughter, were imprisoned in the Tower on the charge
of insulting Lady Exeter, whom they accused of incest and witchcraft,
but, whether the charges were true or false, they were soon liberated.
James’s court seems to have combined all the vices, for Lord and Lady
Suffolk were also prisoners in the fortress about the same time,
accused of bribery and corruption.
To the Tower also were sent the two great lawyers—Lord Chancellor
Bacon, and Sir Edward Coke—the former for having received bribes, the
latter for the part he had taken in supporting the privileges of the
House of Commons. Here, also, two noble lords, the Earl of Arundel
and Lord Spencer, were in durance, owing to a quarrel between them in
the House of Lords, when Arundel had insulted Spencer by telling him
that at no distant time back his ancestors had been engaged in tending
sheep, to which Lord Spencer responded: “When my ancestors were keeping
sheep, yours were plotting treason.” The dispute seems scarcely of
sufficient importance to have sent both disputants to the Tower.
In 1622 the Earl of Oxford and Robert Philip, together with some
members of Parliament, were sent to the fortress for objecting too
publicly to the suggested marriage of the Prince of Wales, afterwards
Charles I., with a Spanish princess; and the Earl of Bristol was also
in the Tower for matters connected with the same projected alliance.
It was not always safe to have an opinion of one’s own under James the
First.
The last State prisoner of mark to be sent to the Tower in James’s
reign was Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, who had been found
guilty of receiving bribes in his official capacity as Lord High
Treasurer.
CHAPTER XIII
CHARLES I. AND THE COMMONWEALTH
With the close of the reign of James I. the Tower ceased to be a royal
residence—the Stuart kings, in fact, never passing more than a night
or two in the old fortress prior to their coronation, after which they
only visited it on very rare occasions. James himself only occupied the
Tower-Palace on the eve of opening his first Parliament; and as the
plague had broken out in the city at the time of Charles the First’s
coronation, that king did not even stay the previous night in the
building, nor does he appear ever to have visited the fortress during
the whole of his stormy reign of four and twenty years.
A very remarkable man occupied a prison in the Tower early in Charles’s
reign. This was Sir John Eliot, “fiery Eliot” Carlyle calls him. He
was first of that noble band of patriots who defied Charles’s tyranny,
and had been sent to the Tower in the winter of 1624–25 for censuring
Buckingham during Charles’s second Parliament, but he remained there
only a short time. In the March of 1628, however, Eliot, with a
batch of independent members of the House of Commons—amongst whom
were Denzil Holles, Selden, Valentine, Coryton, and Heyman—was again
imprisoned in the Tower. Eliot had boldly declared that the “King’s
judges, Privy Council, Judges and learned Council had conspired to
trample under their feet the liberties of the subjects of the realm,
and the liberties of the House.” Denzil Holles and Valentine were the
two members who had kept the Speaker in his chair by main force;
the others were committed to prison for using language reflecting
on the King and his Ministers. For the following three months these
members of Parliament were kept in close confinement in the fortress,
books and all writing materials being strictly kept from them. In
May, Sir John Eliot was taken to Westminster, where an inquiry was
held but no judgment given. After his return to the Tower, however,
Eliot was allowed to write letters, and was also given “the liberty
of the Tower,” and permitted to see a few friends. In the month of
October Eliot and the others were taken to the chambers of the Lord
Chief-Justice, and thence to the Marshalsea Prison, a change which he
jokingly described as having “left their Palace in London for country
quarters at Southwark.” Then they were tried, and Eliot, being judged
the most culpable, was fined two thousand pounds, and ordered to be
imprisoned in the Tower during the King’s pleasure. As for the fine,
Eliot remarked that he “possessed two cloaks, two suits of clothes, two
pairs of boots, and a few books, and if they could pick two thousand
pounds out of that, much good might it do them.” The fearless member
never quitted the Tower again, for a galloping consumption carried
him off two years after he had written the above lines. There can be
no doubt that this consumption was not a little owing to the harsh
treatment he endured. In 1630 he wrote to his friend Knightley,
alluding to rumours of his being released. “Have no confidence in such
reports; sand was the best material on which they rested, and the many
fancies of the multitude; unless they pointed at that kind of libertie,
‘libertie of mynde.’ But other libertie I know not, having so little
interest in her masters that I expect no service from her.” His prison
was frequently changed, and many restraints were put upon him, for,
on the 26th of December, he writes to his old friend, the famous John
Hampden, that his lodgings have been moved. “I am now,” he says, “where
candle-light may be suffered, but scarce fire. None but my servants,
hardly my sonne, may have admittance to me; my friends I must desire
for their own sake to forbear coming to the Tower.” Poor Eliot was
dying fast in the year 1632, but his last letter to Hampden, dated the
22nd of March, is full of his old brave spirit, and the gentle humour
that distinguished this great and good man. The letter concludes thus:
“Great is the authority of princes, but greater much is theirs who both
command our persons and our will. What the success of their Government
will be must be referred to Him that is master of their power.” The
doctor had informed the authorities that any fresh air and exercise
would help Eliot to live, but all the air they gave him was a “smoky
room,” and all the exercise, a few steps on the platform of a wall.
On the 27th of November Eliot died, “not without a suspicion of foul
play,” wrote Ludlow some years afterwards.
[Illustration: _The Byward Tower_]
Eliot’s staunch friends, Pym and Hampden, moved in the House for a
committee “to examine after what manner Sir John Eliot came to his
death, his usage in the Tower, and to view the rooms and place where he
was imprisoned and where he died, and to report the same to the House,”
a motion which shows how matters had changed for the better since the
days of Elizabeth, none of whose Parliaments would have dared thus to
question the treatment of State prisoners.
The blame of his untimely death—for he was but forty-two—rests upon
those who let him die by inches in his prison as much as if they had
beheaded him on Tower Hill. John Eliot died a martyr in the cause of
constitutional liberty as opposed to monarchical autocracy. Eliot’s son
petitioned the King to be allowed to remove his father’s body to their
old Cornish home at St Germains, but the vindictive and narrow-minded
monarch, who would not even forgive Eliot after death had intervened,
refused the prayer, writing at the foot of the petition, “Lett Sir John
Eliot’s body be buried in the church of the parish where he died.” No
stone marks the spot where he is buried, and his dust mingles with
that of the illustrious dead in St Peter’s Chapel in the Tower, but his
name will be remembered as long as liberty is loved in his native land.
We now come to a period of quite another sort.
In Carlyle’s “Historical Sketches,” John Felton, the assassin of
Buckingham, is thus described:—“Short, swart figure, of military
taciturnity, of Rhadamanthian energy and gravity.... Passing along
Tower Hill one of these August days (in 1628) Lieutenant Felton sees a
sheath-knife on a stall there, value thirteen pence, of short, broad
blade, sharp trowel point.” We know the use Felton made of that Tower
Hill knife on his visit to Portsmouth, where Buckingham was then about
to set sail for his second expedition to La Rochelle; how he stabbed
the gay Duke to the heart, exclaiming, as he struck him: “God have
mercy on thy soul!” how he was promptly arrested, brought to London and
imprisoned in the Tower.
The reason, or reasons, for Felton killing Buckingham have never been
made clear. He appears to have been a soured religious fanatic, but
the crime was doubtless owing to some fancied injustice regarding his
promotion in the army; and it has been thought that it was merely an
act of private vengeance, rather than one of political significance.
But after his arrest a paper was found fastened in Felton’s hat,
with the following writing upon it:—“That man is cowardly, base,
and deserveth not the name of a gentleman or soldier, that is not
willing to sacrifice his life for the sake of his God, King, and his
countrie. Lett no man commend me for doing of it, but rather discommend
themselves as the cause of it, for if God hath not taken away our
hearts for our sins, he would not have gone so long unpunished.—Jno.
Felton.” A sentiment which goes to show that Felton assassinated
Buckingham with the fanatical idea of benefiting his country.
So hated was Buckingham by the people, that Felton passed into the
Tower amid blessings and prayers. He was placed in the prison lately
occupied by Sir John Eliot in the Bloody Tower, and before his death
made two requests—one, that he might be permitted to take the Holy
Communion, and the other that he might be executed with a halter round
his neck, ashes on his head, and sackcloth round his loins. On being
threatened with the rack in order to induce him to give the names of
his accomplices, Felton said to Lord Dorset that, in the first place,
he would not believe that it was the King’s wish that he should be
tortured, it being illegal; and, secondly, that if he were racked, he
would name Dorset, and none but him—a capital answer. When he was asked
why sentence of death should not be passed upon him, he answered: “I
am sorry both that I have shed the blood of a man who is the image
of God, and taken away the life of so near a subject of the King.”
As a last favour, he begged that his right hand might be struck off
before he was hanged. He suffered at Tyburn, and his body was gibbeted
in chains at Portsmouth. “His dead body,” writes Evelyn, “is carried
down to Portsmouth, hangs high there. I hear it creak in the wind.” An
eye-witness describes Felton as showing much courage and calm during
his trial and at his death, and Philip, Earl of Exeter, who attended
the execution, declared that he had never seen such valour and piety,
“more temperately mixed,” as in Felton’s demeanour. This is surely one
of the strangest mysteries in our history.
Prisoners still continued to come to the Tower, and in 1631, Mervin,
Lord Audley, was executed on Tower Hill for a crime not of a political
nature. Six years later a very distinguished ecclesiastic, John
Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, was imprisoned for four years within the
Tower walls. Williams, who was a Privy Councillor, had repeated some
remarks made by the King, in which His Majesty had advocated greater
leniency in the treatment of the Puritans, and was accused of revealing
Charles’s private conversation, and being an enemy of Laud’s was very
hardly dealt with in consequence. He was deposed from his bishopric,
fined £10,000, and imprisoned in the Tower, where he caused some
surprise, if not scandal, by not attending the church services in the
fortress. However, after his release, Williams was reconciled to the
King, and in 1641 became Archbishop of York. He had been successively
Dean of Salisbury and Dean of Westminster, and had succeeded Bacon as
Lord Chancellor in 1621, just before he had been appointed to the See
of Lincoln. Williams certainly belonged to the Church Militant, and
during the Civil War defended Conway Castle most gallantly for the
royal cause. At the end of December 1641, he was back again in the
Tower, with ten other Bishops who had protested that, owing to their
being kept out of the House of Lords by the violence of the mob, all
Acts passed during their absence were illegal. The Peers arrested the
protesting Bishops on a charge of high treason; and on a very cold
and snowy December night they were all sent to the Tower, where they
remained until the May of 1642.
Lord Loudon, who had been sent by the Scottish Covenanters to Charles,
had a narrow escape of leaving his head on Tower Hill in 1639.
According to Clarendon, a letter was discovered of a treasonable
nature, signed by Loudon, addressed to Louis XIII. of France, and
Charles ordered Sir William Balfour, by virtue of a warrant signed
by the royal hand, to have the Scottish lord executed the following
morning. In this terrible dilemma Loudon bethought him of his friend,
the Marquis of Hamilton, and gave the Lieutenant a message for that
nobleman. Now it was one of the privileges of the Lieutenant of the
Tower that he could at any time, or in any place, claim an audience
with the sovereign. Hamilton persuaded Balfour to go with him to
Charles, but on arriving at Whitehall, they found that the King had
already retired for the night. Balfour, however, taking advantage
of his privilege, entered the room with Hamilton, and together they
besought Charles to re-consider his decision, pointing out to him that
Loudon was protected by his quality as Ambassador from the Scotch. The
King, as was his wont, was obdurate. “No,” he said; “the warrant must
be obeyed.” At length the Marquis, having begged in vain, left the
chamber, saying, “Well, then, if your Majesty be so determined, I’ll
go and get ready to ride post for Scotland to-morrow morning, for I
am sure before night the whole city will be in an uproar, and they’ll
come and pull your Majesty out of your palace. I’ll get as far as I
can, and declare to my countrymen that I had no hand in it.” On hearing
this, Charles called for the warrant and destroyed it. Loudon was soon
afterwards released (Oldnixon’s “History of the Stuarts”).
Now comes the story of the last days of one of Charles’s most noted
counsellors—last days that, as in the case of many before him, were
passed within the grim precincts of the Tower, and were the prelude
to execution. On the 11th of November 1640, the Earl of Strafford was
at Whitehall laying before Charles a scheme for accusing the heads of
the parliamentary party of holding a treasonable correspondence with
the Scotch army, then encamped in the North of England. Whilst he was
with the King the news reached him that Pym at that very moment was
impeaching him in the House of Commons on the charge of high treason.
Strafford at once made his way to the House, but was not allowed to
speak, and shortly afterwards heard his committal made out for the
Tower. At the same time Archbishop Laud was arrested at Lambeth Palace,
and carried off to the great State prison. “As I went to my barge,”
Laud writes in his diary, “hundreds of my poor neighbours stood there
and prayed for my safety and return to my home.” But neither he nor
Strafford were ever to return to their homes. Perhaps Strafford’s life
might have been saved had it not been for the King’s action, for when
it became known that Charles had plotted with the hope of inducing
the Scottish army to march on London, seize the Tower and liberate
Strafford, the great Earl was practically doomed. The city rose as one
man, a huge mob surging round the Houses of Parliament and the Palace
of Whitehall, shouting “Justice.”
For fifteen days Strafford faced his accusers and judges at Westminster
Hall, his defence being a splendid piece of oratory. He proved that on
the ground of high treason his judgment would not count, and his judges
were compelled to introduce an Act of Attainder in order to convict
him; but for the next six months he was kept in the Tower, uncertain
as to his ultimate fate until the 12th of May 1641, when the Bill of
Attainder was passed by the Lords.[3]
Charles had sworn to Strafford that not a single hair of his head
should be injured; but on the Earl writing to him and offering his life
as the only means of healing the troubles of the country, the King
yielded, and deserting his minister, gave his assent to the execution,
and signed the warrant.
On the following morning Strafford was led out to die. There is no more
dramatic episode in the great struggle between Charles and his people
than that when Strafford, amidst his guards, passed beneath the gateway
of the Bloody Tower, where, from an upper window, his old friend,
Archbishop Laud, gave him his blessing. The Archbishop, overcome, sank
back fainting into the arms of his attendants. “I hope,” he is reported
to have said, “by God’s assistance and through mine own innocency that
when I come to my own execution, I shall shew the world how much more
sensible I am to my Lord Strafford’s loss than I am to my own.”
Knowing how bitterly Strafford was hated by the people, the Lieutenant
of the Tower invited him to drive to Tower Hill in his coach, fearing
he might be torn to pieces if he went on foot. Strafford, however,
declined the offer, saying, “No, Mr Lieutenant, I dare look death
in the face, and I trust the people too.” With the Earl were the
Archbishop of Armagh (Ussher), Lord Cleveland, and his brother, Sir
George Wentworth. On reaching the scaffold Strafford made a short
speech, followed by a long prayer, and giving his final messages for
his wife and children to his brother, said: “One stroke more will make
my wife husbandless, my dear children fatherless, my poor servants
masterless, and will separate me from my dear brother and all my
friends; but let God be to you and to them all in all.” He then removed
his doublet, and said, “I thank God that I am no more afraid of death,
but as cheerfully put off my doublet at this time as ever I did when I
went to bed.” Then placing a white cap upon his head, and thrusting his
long hair beneath it, he knelt down at the block, the Archbishop also
kneeling on one side and a clergyman upon the other, the Archbishop
clasping Strafford’s hands in both his own. After they had left him
Strafford gave the sign for the executioner to strike by thrusting out
both his hands, and at one blow, “the wisest head in England,” as John
Evelyn, who was present, says, “was severed from his body.” On that
night London blazed with bonfires, and the people rejoiced as if in
celebration of some great victory.
The great Earl’s mistake was in serving and trusting such a king as
Charles. Later on it transpired that Charles had a plan of removing
Strafford from the Tower by throwing a hundred men into the fortress,
thus relieving the Earl, and keeping possession of the Tower as a check
upon the city. In pursuance of this plan, on the 2nd May 1641, Captain
Billingsby with a force of one hundred men presented himself at the
gates of the Tower, but Sir William Balfour refused to admit them, and
the King’s scheme for taking the fortress fell to the ground.
[Illustration: THE TRUE MANER OF THE EXECUTION OF THOMAS EARLE OF
STRAFFORD LORD Lieutenant of Ireland vpon Tower hill the 12ᵗʰ of May
1641
A. Doctor Vsher Lord Primate of Ireland
B. the Sherifes of London
C. the Earle of Strafford
D. his kindred and Friends
_Execution of the Earl of Strafford, May 12ᵗʰ. 1641._]
/
The first beginnings of a Tower regiment, according to Mr J. H. Round,
was the appointment of two hundred men as Tower Guards in 1640. In
November of the same year Charles promised to remove this garrison,
but he did not do so until the city offered to lend him £25,000, on
the condition that these troops should be taken away, as well as the
ordnance from the White Tower, which was a perpetual menace to the
safety of the city. Aersen, the Dutch Ambassador, writing to his
Government about this time, says, “le dessein semble aller sur le
tour.” Still the King would not withdraw the soldiers or the cannon,
and then the House of Lords expostulated with him, but Charles excused
his breach of faith by saying that his object was merely to insure the
safety of the stores and ammunition in the fortress.
After his plot to seize the Tower had been made public, the train bands
belonging to the Tower Hamlets occupied and garrisoned the fortress.
These train bands, as well as those of Southwark and Westminster, were
distinct from the city train bands. On the 3rd of January 1642, the
King made another attempt to garrison the Tower with his own troops,
which also proved a failure. On this occasion Sir John Byron entered
the fortress with a detachment of gunners and disarmed the men of
the Tower Hamlets, but the city train bands came to the rescue, and
Byron, with his gunners, had to beat a retreat. When, in 1642, the
Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Conyers, resigned his charge, the
Parliament conferred the Lieutenancy upon the Lord Mayor of London.
Later, in 1647, when the city had taken the side of the Parliament
against the King, Fairfax was appointed Constable; the Constables had
succeeded each other according to the chances which brought the King
or the Parliament to the top, thus Lord Cottrington had been replaced
by Sir William Balfour, and he in his turn had given room to Sir
Thomas Lumsford, a “soldier of fortune,” writes Ludlow of him in his
“Memoirs,” “fit for any wicked design.” Lumsford, so uncomplimentarily
referred to by Ludlow, was supposed to be willing to act according to
the King’s good pleasure, and succeeded in making himself so unpopular
with the Londoners, that they petitioned the House of Lords to beg the
King to place the custody of the Tower in other hands, the Lord Mayor
saying he could not undertake to prevent the apprentices from rising
were Lumsford allowed to remain in office; so Charles unwillingly gave
the keys of the fortress to the care of Sir John Byron. Byron, in his
turn, was succeeded by Sir John Conyers, who had distinguished himself
in the Scottish wars and had been Governor of Berwick; and after
Conyers followed Lord Mayor Pennington,[4] “in order,” as Clarendon
writes, “that the citizens might see that they were trusted to hold
their own reins and had a jurisdiction committed to them which had
always checked their own.” From 1643 to 1647 the Tower remained in
the hands of the Parliament. In the latter year the army obtained the
mastery, and Sir Thomas Fairfax, the Commander-in-Chief, became its
Constable, under him being Colonel Tichbourne as Lieutenant of the
fortress. Shortly after the King’s execution, however, Fairfax resigned
his post of Constable, none other than Cromwell, himself, stepping into
the vacant place.
But we must return to Archbishop Laud, who for four years was a
prisoner in the Bloody Tower in the prison chamber over the gateway of
that gloomy building.
In his diary, the Archbishop has left a minute account of a domiciliary
visit paid him by William Prynne in 1643. The Archbishop’s trial
being determined on by the House of Lords, Prynne was commissioned
by the Peers to obtain Laud’s private papers. “Mr Prynne,” writes
the Archbishop, “came into the Tower with other searchers as soon
as the gates were open. Other men went to other prisoners; he made
haste to my lodging, commanded the warder to open my doors, left two
musketeer centinels below, that no man might go in or out, and one
at the stairhead. With three others, which had their muskets already
cocked, he came into my chamber, and found me in bed, as my servants
were in theirs. I presently thought on my blessed Saviour when Judas
led in the swords and staves about him.”—This surely is rather a bold
comparison for an Archbishop to make?—“Mr Prynne, seeing me safe in
bed, falls first to my pockets to rifle them; and by that time my
two servants came running in half ready. I demanded the sight of his
warrant; he shewed it to me, and therein was expressed that he should
search my pockets. The warrant came from the close committee, and the
hands that were to it were these: E. Manchester, W. Saye and Seale,
Wharton, H. Vane, Gilbert Gerard, and John Pym. Did they remember when
they gave their warrant how odious it was to Parliament, and some of
themselves, to have the pockets of men searched? When my pockets had
been sufficiently ransacked, I rose and got my clothes about me, and
so, half ready, with my gown about my shoulders, he held me in the
search till half-past nine of the clock in the morning. He took from me
twenty and one bundles of papers which I had prepared for my defence;
two Letters which came to me from his gracious Majesty, about Chartham
and my other benefices; the Scottish service books or diary, containing
all the occurrences of my life, and my book of private devotions, both
which last were written through with my own hand. Nor could I get him
to leave this last, but he must needs see what passed between God
and me, a thing, I think, scarce offered to any Christian. The last
place that he rifled was my trunk, which stood by my bedside. In that
he found nothing, but about forty pounds in money, for my necessary
expenses, which he meddled not with, and a bundle of some gloves. This
bundle he was so careful to open, so that he caused each glove to be
looked into. Upon this I tendered him one pair of gloves, which he
refusing, I told him he might take them, and fear no bribe, for he had
already done me all the mischief he could, and I asked no favour of
him, so he thanked me, took the gloves, bound up my papers, left two
centinels at my door, and went his way.”—(From “Troubles and Trials of
Archbishop Laud.”)
Prynne, whose ears Laud had been the means of cutting off some
half-dozen years before, must have enjoyed this visit to his old foe.
On the 10th of March 1643, the Archbishop was brought to his trial in
Westminster Hall, but amongst all the charges brought against him none
could be considered as proving him guilty of high treason. Serjeant
Wild was obliged to admit this, but said that when all the Archbishop’s
transgressions of the law were put together they made “many grand
treasons.” To this Laud’s counsel made answer, “I crave you mercy, good
Mr Serjeant, I never understood before this that two hundred couple of
black rabbits made a black horse.”—(In Archbishop Tennison’s MSS. in
Lambeth Library. Quoted by Bayley.)
Laud’s trial lasted for twenty days, the chief accusation brought
against him being that he had “attempted to subvert religion and the
fundamental laws of the realm.” The outcome of the trial was that Laud
was beheaded on Tower Hill on 10th of January 1644. Laud was a strange
compound of bigotry and intolerance, of courage and of devotion to what
he considered to be the true Church, and of which he seemed to regard
himself as a kind of Anglican Pope. His life and character are enigmas
to those who study them, and his death became him far better than his
life had done.
[Illustration: WILLIAM LAUD
_Aerts Bisschop van Cantelbury, binnen London Onthalft den 10
January, Anno 1645_
_Arnt Pieters Excudit_]
Carlyle, in a delightful passage in his posthumously published
“Historical Studies,” writes: “Future ages, if they do not, as is
likelier, totally forget ‘W. Cant,’ will range him under the category
of Incredibilities. Not again in the dead strata which lie under men’s
feet, will such a fossil be dug up. This wonderful wonder of wonders,
were it not even this, a zealous Chief Priest, at once persecutor and
martyr, who has no discernible religion of his own?” “No one,” said
Laud, when told of the day on which he was to die, “no one can be
more ready to send me out of life than I am to go.” Indeed, no one
could have left life in a calmer or more tranquil manner than did
the Archbishop. It must be a great support to have a sublime opinion
of oneself, and if ever man had a sublime opinion of himself it was
Laud. The comparison he made in his diary, and which I have already
quoted, between his Saviour and himself—between Prynne-Judas and
Laud-Christ—proves the ineffable self-conceit of the prelate.
The fact that he himself was notoriously indifferent, if not callous,
to the sufferings of others, has destroyed all the sympathy that might
have been felt for this strange character in his fall and tribulations.
For a mere difference of opinion Laud would order ears to be lopped
off, noses slit, and brows and cheeks to be branded with red-hot iron.
His best and most enduring monument is the addition he made to St
John’s College at Oxford, of which he was at one time the president,
and in whose chapel his remains were re-interred, after resting for
a time in the Church of All Hallows, Barking, and in the library of
which his spectre is said to be seen occasionally gliding on moonlight
nights, between the old bookshelves.
After the month of August 1642, when Charles had unfurled his standard
at Nottingham, the Tower, although nominally still in the King’s
possession, was in reality held by the Parliament; and its prisoners
were those who were opposed to the representatives of the people.
Among these was Sir Ralph Hopton, who had protested against a violent
address made by the Parliament against Charles, Sir Ralph having
declared that his fellow-members “seemed to ground an opinion of the
King’s apostacy upon less evidence than would serve to hang a fellow
for stealing a horse.” This remark brought him to the Tower, where
he was soon joined by another member of Parliament, Trelawney (or
Trelauney), who had informed the House of Commons that they could not
legally appoint a guard of troops for themselves without the King’s
assent, under pain of high treason (Clarendon).
Sir Ralph, afterwards Lord Hopton of Stratton, distinguished himself
later in the war in the West of England, where he had much success,
and with the help of Sir Beville Grenville, gained a signal victory
over the Parliamentarians at Stamford Hill, near Stratton, in Cornwall.
Fairfax, however, ultimately proved too strong for him, and finally
Hopton left England, dying at Bruges in 1652.
Besides these, Sir Thomas Bedingfield and Sir James Gardner were
committed to the Tower by the House of Lords, “for refusing to be of
the counsel of the Attorney-General,” whilst the Earl of Bristol and
Judge Mallet followed them to the fortress, “merely for having seen
the Kentish petition.” This petition was drawn up by the principal
inhabitants of that county, praying, “that the militia might not
otherwise be exercised in that county than the known law permitted, and
that the Book of Common Prayer, established by law, might be observed.”
Lord Bristol soon obtained his liberty, but Mallet was kept a prisoner
for two years on the charge of being “a fomentor and protector of
malignant factions against the Parliament” (Clarendon).
In the same year, Sir Richard Gurney, Lord Mayor of London, was sent
to the Tower on the charge of having caused the King’s proclamation
against the militia, and for suppressing petitions to Parliament, to be
published in the city. Sir Richard was dismissed from his mayoralty,
and imprisoned during the pleasure of the House. Another Lord Mayor,
loyal to the cause of the King, Sir Abraham Reynoldson, was, six years
later, also a prisoner in the Tower; but his incarceration lasted only
two months, whilst Gurney, it seems, remained for several years in the
fortress. The Parliament meted out heavy punishment for “opinions,”
Lord Montagu of Boughton, the Earl of Berkshire, and some Norfolk
squires, being likewise sent to the Tower on a charge of favouring the
King’s side, and of being hostile to the Parliament. In 1643 Justice
Berkeley was imprisoned by order of the Lords on a charge of high
treason, and also a Mr Montagu, a “messenger” from the French Court to
the King.
At this time whole batches of Cavaliers began to be frequently brought
to the Tower. Of these, Sir William Moreton, who was captured at the
fall of Sudeley Castle, of which he was the governor, remained a
prisoner until the Restoration, when he was made a judge. Another was
Daniel O’Neale, who had greatly distinguished himself on the royal
side in the Scottish war, and later in England. He was committed to
the Tower on the invariable charge of high treason, but, like Lord
Nithsdale, about half-a-century later, he managed to break his prison
in female attire, and succeeded in reaching Holland, whence he returned
to serve under Rupert as a lieutenant-colonel in the Prince’s cavalry.
According to Clarendon, O’Neale became a celebrated adept in court
intrigue in the time of Charles II.
In this year (1643), Sir John Conyers was in command of the fortress,
having received the charge from the Parliament in the hope that he
would be gained over to that side. On being asked to take the command
of the Parliamentary army, Conyers, however, declined, his refusal
causing so much annoyance to the leaders of that party that he thought
it more prudent to resign his charge of the Tower, being, as Clarendon
puts it, too conscientious, “to keep His Majesty’s only fort which he
could not apply to his services.” His place, as has already been said,
was given to Sir Isaac Pennington, Lord Mayor of London.
In 1644, Sir John Hotham, and his son, Captain Hotham, who had
been imprisoned in the Tower in the preceding summer on the charge
of intending to surrender the town of Hull to the King, were both
beheaded on Tower Hill. Hotham may be described as the Bazaine of the
Parliament. The town of Hull was the greatest magazine of arms and
ammunition in England. Charles had in vain summoned Hotham, who was the
Governor for the Parliament, to surrender the town, and on his refusal
had declared him a traitor. There is little doubt that both Hotham and
his son were Royalists at heart, and both were convicted of having
entered into a correspondence with the King’s party in order to come to
terms for the surrender of the town and arsenal to the Royalist forces.
Another governor—Sir Alexander Carew, who held Plymouth for the
Parliament—was beheaded in the same month as the Hothams for a like
“intention.” Carew is said to have been decapitated with the same axe
with which Strafford was killed, and it was reported that at the time
of Strafford’s trial, Carew had said that sooner than not vote for
the Earl’s death, he would be ready to be the next man to suffer on
the same scaffold, and with the same axe: a wish which was literally
fulfilled. (Dugdale’s “Short View of the Late Troubles.”)
By one of those strange vagaries of fortune which are the
characteristic of the history of this period, and in which the Tower
played its accustomed part of imprisonment, George Monk, the future
Duke of Albemarle, and one of the makers of our history, was imprisoned
in the Tower for three years after his capture by Fairfax at the siege
of Nantwich. He was a colonel at the time, and only regained his
freedom by consenting to take the command of the Parliamentary forces
sent to Ireland (Ludlow’s Memoirs).
Two of Monk’s fellow-prisoners, Lord Macquire and Colonel MacMahon,
who had both been fighting on the Royalist side in Ireland, made a
desperate attempt to escape from the Tower in this same year (1644).
They succeeded in sawing through their prison door and lowered
themselves by a rope, which they had been enabled to find through
directions written on a slip of paper that had been placed in a loaf
of bread, sent to them by some of their friends. They got down into
the moat, across which they swam, but were taken on the other side and
hanged at Tyburn in February 1645, although Macquire pleaded that, as
an Irish peer, he had the right of dying by the axe and not by the
halter. For allowing the escape of these officers from their prison
chamber the Lieutenant of the Tower was fined heavily.
That splendid cavalier, “Old Loyalty,” as he was proudly called,
John Paulett, Marquis of Worcester, who had defended Baring House so
long and so well, came a prisoner into the Tower in this same year,
accompanied by Sir Robert Peake, who had aided him in the defence of
his home, and who had also been taken prisoner after the storming of
the place. They were followed by Sir John Strangways, who had been
taken at the siege of Cardiff. In 1647 Sir John Maynard, Serjeant
Glynn, the Recorder of London, and the Lord Mayor, Sir John Gayre,
with some of his aldermen and sheriffs, were in the Tower, and amongst
the Royalists who were brought to the fortress as Charles’s fate was
closing over him, were the Earl of Cleveland, Judge Jenkins, Sir Lewis
Davies, and Sir John Stowell.
At the time of the King’s death on the scaffold in front of the
Banqueting House at Whitehall, many of his most devoted adherents were
close prisoners in the Tower, among them being James, Duke of Hamilton,
one of Charles’s closest friends, who had made a rash attempt to invade
England in 1648, and, meeting Cromwell, was defeated and made prisoner
at Uttoxeter. For fellows in misfortune the Duke had George Goring,
Earl of Norwich, Lord Capel, and the Earl of Holland—taken after the
surrender of Colchester Castle—and Sir John Owen. The imprisonment of
captured Royalists by the Parliament was but too often the prelude to
their execution, but before the Duke and Lord Holland were beheaded,
much interest was made to save them—more particularly Lord Holland; but
Cromwell was obdurate, and they were both put to death in New Palace
Yard. Lord Capel had succeeded in getting out of his prison. There
is an interesting account of his escape and recapture given by Lord
Clarendon in his “History,” and, although lengthy, may be quoted here
as throwing an interesting light upon those times of revolution. “The
Lord Capel, shortly after he was brought prisoner to the Tower from
Windsor Castle, had, by a wonderful adventure, having a cord and all
things necessary conveyed to him, let himself down out of the window
of his chamber in the night, over the wall of the Tower, and had been
directed through what part of the ditch he might be best able to wade.
Whether he found the right place, or whether there was no safer place,
he found the water and the mud so deep, that if he had not been by the
head taller than other men, he must have perished, since the water
came up to his chin. The way was so long to the other side, and the
fatigue of drawing himself out of so much mud so intolerable, that his
spirits were near spent, and he was once ready to call out for help,
as thinking it better to be carried back to the prison, than to be
found in such a place, from whence he could not extricate himself, and
where he was ready to expire. But it pleased God that he got at last
to the other side, where his friends expected him, and carried him to
a chamber in the Temple, where he remained two or three nights secure
from any discovery, notwithstanding the diligence that could not be
used to recover a man they designed to use no better. After two or
three days a friend whom he trusted much, and who had deserved to be
trusted, conceiving he might be more secure in a place to which there
was less resort, and where there were so many harboured who were every
day sought after, had provided a lodging for him in a private house in
Lambeth Marsh; and calling upon him in an evening when it was dark, to
go thither, they chose rather to take a boat they found ready at the
Temple Stairs, than to trust one of that people with their secret, and
it was so late that there was only one boat left there. In that the
Lord Capel (as well disguised as he thought necessary) and his friend
put themselves, and bid the waterman to row them to Lambeth. Whether,
in their passage thither, the other gentleman called him ‘my lord,’
as was confidently repeated, or whether the waterman had any jealousy
by observing what he thought was a disguise, when they were landed,
the wicked waterman undiscerned followed them, till he saw into what
house they went; and then went to an officer and demanded: ‘What he
would give him to bring him to the place where Lord Capel lay?’ And the
officer promising to give him ten pounds, he led him presently to the
house, where that excellent person was seized upon, and the next day
carried to the Tower.”
Lord Capel was after this sentenced to be hanged, but this was commuted
to his being beheaded, the sentence being carried out in front of
Westminster Hall on the 9th March 1649. Clarendon writes of him as
being, “the noblest champion his party possessed; a man in whom the
malice of his enemies could discover very few faults, and whom his
friends could not wish better accomplished.” Arthur Capel had been
created Baron Capel of Hadham in Hertfordshire by Charles I., and his
son, Arthur, was created Earl of Essex by Charles II., coming, as we
shall see, to a tragic end in the Tower in that monarch’s reign.
Sir John Owen, that gallant Welsh knight, who had fought long and
valiantly for the Royal cause, was taken prisoner at the engagement
near Llandegas, and was imprisoned with the Duke of Hamilton and his
fellow-Cavaliers at Windsor Castle before going to the Tower. At his
trial Owen told his judges “that he was a plain gentleman of Wales,
who had been taught to obey the King; that he had served him honestly
during the war, and finding that many honest men endeavoured to raise
forces whereby he might get out of prison, he did the like.” When he
was condemned to be beheaded, he made his judges a low bow and said:
“It was a great honour to a poor gentleman of Wales to lose his head
with such noble lords; for, by God,” he added, “he was afraid they
would have hanged him.” But the gallant old Cavalier did not lose his
head, for Ireton stood up in the House and said that although the noble
lords who had been condemned to death had many advocates, plain Sir
John Owen had not one to speak for him. Ireton interceded so well, that
Sir John was pardoned, and after a few months’ imprisonment in the
Tower, was released. He went back to his beloved country, where he died
in 1666, and rests in the church of Penmorven, in his native county of
Carnarvonshire.
The execution of the other Cavaliers caused much indignation, and,
as was the fashion of the times, some pamphlets were written on the
subject against those in power, Colonel John Lilburne being the most
prominent of the pamphleteers. He, with three other writers, Walwayn,
Prince, and Overton, were sent to the Tower by order of the Parliament
for writing against its authority. Lilburne was banished the country,
the others were liberated. The Colonel, who was known as “Freeborn
John,” was a born pamphleteer, and no amount of prisons or pillories
stopped his output of what was certainly seditious matter. There is a
strong resemblance between “Freeborn John” and the French pamphleteer,
Rochefort, of our own time, for whatever Government was in power he
opposed it by his writings. In later life he became a Quaker, because
he was determined to enjoy what he considered “Christian Liberty.”
The Parliament met with considerable opposition from the Lord Mayor of
the city. In 1648 Lord Mayor Sir Abraham Reynardson was kept prisoner
in the Tower for two months, because he refused to publish in the city
the Ordinance of the House of Commons, abolishing the title of King.
Sir Abraham was one of the city worthies. He had been Master of the
Merchant Taylors Company in 1640–41, and had filled the highest civic
post in the city for six months prior to his imprisonment, and had
valiantly resisted the “turbulent disorders,” and the tyranny of the
Rump Parliament, which had tried in vain to force the Corporation of
London to follow its commands. Sir Abraham was not only imprisoned,
but was also fined £2000, and degraded from the office of Lord Mayor.
Reynardson’s generosity was great, and he is reported to have spent
£20,000 whilst he was Lord Mayor, not inclusive of the heavy fine. But
his loyalty to the Crown was unshaken, and he most willingly suffered
both loss of office and fortune in the Royalist cause. His portrait,
recently acquired by the Company of Merchant Taylors, is one of the
most interesting features of their splendid hall. Sir Abraham was
re-elected to the Lord Mayoralty on the return of Charles II. (see
C. M. Clode’s “Memoirs of Sir A. Reynardson”). The list of Royalist
prisoners gained additions almost every month. At this time an agent
of the young King’s, named Penruddock, was in the Tower with Sir John
Gell, Colonel Eusebius Andrews, and Captains Benson and Ashley. Colonel
Andrews, an old Royalist, was beheaded on Tower Hill; Gell, who was a
Parliamentary General, and who left some interesting memoirs of the
Civil War, was released after an imprisonment of two years. Benson was
hanged at Tyburn, and Ashley was liberated. All these were suspected
of plotting against the Parliament, and to them may be added Lords
Beauchamp, Bellasis, and Chandos, committed to the Tower by the Council
of State, “upon the suspicion of designing new troubles.” Lord Howard
of Escrick and a minister named Love were in the Tower at the same
period—the former, who was a member of Parliament, being imprisoned
on a charge of bribery whilst contesting the city of Carlisle; he
was dismissed the House and fined £10,000. The minister, Christopher
Love, had been a preacher at St Anne’s, Aldersgate, and St Lawrence’s,
Jewry, and was the author of many theological works. After the death
of Charles the First he became as violent a Royalist as he had been
a republican, and was found to be in correspondence with Charles the
Second. His pardon was eagerly begged by many London parishes, and by
no less than fifty-four of the clergy, but all they could get was a
respite for a month, and Love was beheaded in July 1651. His execution
caused much stir, as is proved by the fact that a Dutch allegorical
engraving was made of the scene, an engraving which, after those of the
executions of Strafford and Laud, is the earliest representation of an
execution on Tower Hill in existence. Lord Clarendon writes that “when
Love was on the scaffold he appeared with a marvellous undauntedness.”
In the same year, after the Battle of Worcester, the Tower was filled
with the captured Royalists from that disastrous fight. With these came
the Earls of Lauderdale, Kelly, and Rothes, General Massey and General
Middleton, the earls being soon removed to Windsor Castle, where they
remained prisoners until the Restoration. The two generals were enabled
to escape from the Tower, and joined Charles in Paris, “to the grief
and vexation of the very soul of Cromwell,” writes Clarendon. These
constant escapes from the Tower during the power of the Parliament and
the Commonwealth would seem to point to great laxity in its protection,
or to sympathy on the part of its guardians with the prisoners.
In the September of the following year the famous Edward Somerset,
Marquis of Worcester, and Earl of Glamorgan, was a prisoner of
the Commonwealth in the Tower. It was he who, with much show of
probability, is supposed to have come within reasonable distance of
inventing the steam-engine. He published in 1665 a book with a long
title, which may be abbreviated into “A Century of Invention,” which
Horace Walpole unkindly called “an amazing piece of folly.” Worcester
died in 1667, and the model of his steam-engine is supposed to have
been buried with him.
During the closing years of the Protectorate most of the State
prisoners in the Tower were those implicated in schemes for
assassinating Cromwell. One of these schemes, in 1654, brought Lord
Oxford, Sir Richard Willis, Sir Gilbert Gerrard, and his brother, John
Gerrard, with other Cavaliers, to the fortress, charged with belonging
to a set of conspirators who aimed at taking the Protector’s life. It
was proved that they had met at a tavern where it was proposed to kill
Cromwell, seize the Tower, and proclaim Prince Charles king. One of
the conspirators, named Fox, turned what would now be called king’s
evidence, with the result that two of his fellow-conspirators were
executed—Vowel, who was hanged at Charing Cross, and John Gerrard, who
was beheaded on Tower Hill.
In the following year Cromwell made a raid among the officers of the
Cavalier party, many of whom were seized and cashiered, Major-General
Overton being sent to the Tower. Two other generals came there to bear
him company in the same year, Generals Penn and Venables. They had
made a disastrously unsuccessful expedition to the West Indies, which
so exasperated Cromwell that on their return he ordered both of them
to be imprisoned. A year later the Lieutenant of the Tower was ordered
to release “one that goes by the name of Lucy Barlow, who for some
time hath been a prisoner in the Tower of London. She passeth under
the character of Charles Stuart’s wife; and hath a young son whom she
openly declareth to be his; and it is generally believed; the boy being
very like him; and both the mother and child provided for by him”
(“Mercuris Politicus,” 1656). This Lucy Barlow was better known later
on as Lucy Walters, and her son, who was then, and for some time to
come, known by the name of James Crofts, became Duke of Monmouth.
Clarendon describes at some length the strange story of the death in
the Tower, in 1657, of Miles Syndercombe, once an intimate friend of
Cromwell’s, but who for some unknown reason became involved in one
of the many plots for assassinating the Protector. Syndercombe was
sentenced to death, and it being expected that an attempt at his rescue
might take place, he was most carefully guarded in his prison. On the
morning of the day fixed for the execution, however, Syndercombe was
found dead in his bed, but nevertheless the corpse was dragged at a
horse’s tail to the place of execution, a stake being driven through it
after it was buried: Cromwell’s enemies accused him of having caused
his former friend to be poisoned.
Cromwell, who, with all his natural courage lived in constant terror
of assassination, in 1658 ordered all Royalists to live twenty
miles away from London, and sent Colonel Russell, Sir William
Compton, and Sir William Clayton, together with Henry Mordaunt, Lord
Peterborough’s brother, to the Tower. Mordaunt had been in the young
King’s employment, and, with a Dr Hewet, was put upon his trial for
conspiracy. Mordaunt was acquitted, but Hewet was found guilty, and
beheaded on Tower Hill. Another eminent Royalist, Sir Henry Slingsby, a
great Yorkshire magnate who had fought for Charles, was also beheaded
in the same year.
During the short interval that elapsed between the death of Cromwell
in September 1658 and the return of Charles II. in May 1660, the Tower
contained many important prisoners. Among them were Lady Mary Howard,
the daughter of the Earl of Berkshire, and another lady, a Mrs Sumner,
both of whom appear to have been mixed up in Mordaunt’s conspiracy
against Cromwell, as well as a Mr Ernestus Byron and a Mr Harlow
for the same cause. Other Royalists then in the fortress were Lord
Falkland, Lord Delaware, the Earl of Chesterfield, Lords Falconbridge,
Bellasis, Charles Howard, and Castleton, who had all taken part in a
Royalist rising in Cheshire under the leadership of Sir George Booth.
None of these, however, suffered more than a short imprisonment.
While the faction of the Parliament was making a desperate stand
against the military party in the government of the country, an
attempt was made by the former to seize the Tower. “The Lieutenant,
Colonel Fitz, had consented that Colonel Okey, with 300 men, should
be dispersed in the vicinity prepared for the enterprise, promising
that on a certain day he would cause the gates to be opened at an
early hour for the passage of the Colonel’s carriage, at which time
Colonel Okey with his men, embracing the opportunity, might seize the
guards and make themselves masters of the place. This plot, however,
was discovered, and on the night before its intended execution Colonel
Desborough being despatched from the Army, with a body of horse,
changed the guards, seized the Lieutenant, and placed a fresh garrison
in the Tower under the command of Colonel Miller” (Ludlow’s “Memoirs”).
Shortly after this episode, and during a disturbance amongst the
soldiers there, Lenthal, the Speaker of the House of Commons, proceeded
to the Tower, and removing the Lieutenant, who had been appointed by
the Committee of Safety, conferred the government of the fortress upon
Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper. But when General Monk declared for the King,
that officer seized the fortress in the name of his royal master,
released many of the prisoners, and placed in it a garrison commanded
by Major Nicholson.
It was now the turn of the Royalists, and in the month of March 1660,
Sir Arthur Hazelrigge and Colonel John Lambert were placed in the Tower
because they had opposed Monk’s design for the restoration of the
King, an event which showed the other members of the Committee in which
direction the wind was blowing, and they made an attempt to secure
the Tower by victualling the fortress, with the intention of standing
a siege if it were necessary. Ludlow proposed that a force of two
thousand men should join Colonel Morley’s regiment in the Tower, that
the building itself should be stored with provisions for six months,
and that two thousand sailors should also be placed within its walls as
an additional security for its defence. This scheme, however, came to
nothing.
Samuel Pepys has given a description of how Lambert escaped from his
prison in the Tower, “The manner of the escape of John Lambert out
of the Tower, as related by Rugge:—That about eight of the clock at
night he escaped by a rope tied fast to his window, by which he slid
down, and in each hand he had a handkerchief; and six men were ready
to receive him, who had a barge to hasten him away. She who made the
bed, being privy to his escape, that night, to blind the warder when
he came to lock the chamber door, went to bed, and possessed Colonel
Lambert’s place and put on his night-cap. So, when the said warder came
to lock the door according to his usual manner, he found the curtains
drawn, and conceiving it to be Colonel Lambert, he said, ‘Good-night,
my lord.’ To which a seeming voice replied, and prevented all further
jealousies. The next morning, on coming to unlock the door, and espying
her face, he cried out, ‘In the name of God, Joan, what makes you here?
Where is my Lord Lambert?’ She said, ‘He is gone; but I cannot tell
whither.’ Whereupon he caused her to rise and carried her before the
officer in the Tower, and (she) was committed to custody. Some said
that a lady knit for him a garter of silk, by which he was conveyed
down, and that she received £100 for her pains.”
Lambert was, however, retaken by Colonel Ingoldsby in Warwickshire,
together with some other Roundhead officers who had joined him, and
he was again placed in the Tower. At the Restoration he was banished
to Guernsey, where he remained a prisoner until his death in 1683.
Lambert had a high military reputation amongst the Roundheads, and had
contributed greatly to the victory at Naseby, as well as defeating the
Royalists both in Scotland and in the Midlands: his fame was such that
Cromwell was supposed to have been somewhat jealous of his successes.
[Illustration: _Vaulting in the Cradle Tower_]
CHAPTER XIV
CHARLES II.
Immediately after the return of Charles II. in the month of May 1660,
the trials and executions of the late King’s judges began. The first
of the regicides to be sent to the Tower was Major-General Thomas
Harrison, who was committed for high treason on 19th May, and on the
11th of the following October, drawn on a hurdle to Charing Cross, and
there hanged and quartered. Harrison, who was the son of a Nantwich
butcher, and had been bred for the law, had been useful to the
Protector in keeping down the Presbyterian faction. He died stoutly
asserting the righteousness of the cause for which he suffered. The
same fate befell Gregory Clement and Colonel John James, both members
of the High Court of Justice which had condemned Charles I. Clement
had succeeded in hiding himself in a house near Gray’s Inn, but was
discovered and brought before the Commissioners of the Militia, to
whom, however, he was not known by sight. He would probably have
escaped, when it chanced that a blind man came into the room as Clement
was quitting it, and recognised him by his voice, upon which Clement
was arrested and sent to the Tower (Ludlow’s “Memoirs”). Among the
other regicides confined within the Tower during that summer were
Colonel Bamfield, Colonel Hunks, Colonel Phair, Francis Corker, Captain
Hewlet, and John Cook, the last of whom had conducted the prosecution
against the King. Hewlet was accused of having been one of the masked
executioners at Whitehall, but this was never proved.
James Harrington, the author of the political romance called “The
Commonwealth of Oceana,” was imprisoned in the Tower early in this
reign. He became insane, and was transferred from prison to prison.
His book, by which he was made famous, laid down a plea for a lasting
republic, the government of which was to be maintained by rotation.
This unhappy author died in 1677, and was laid near Sir Walter Raleigh
in St Margaret’s, Westminster.
In the same summer of Charles’s restoration, the Marquis of Argyll, who
was shortly afterwards beheaded at Edinburgh, was a prisoner in the
Tower charged with high treason, and with having sided with Cromwell;
with him was the Marquis of Antrim. The Laird of Swinton was another
prisoner of this year, being imprisoned upon various charges, one
of which was that he intended to kill the King whilst pretending to
be touched by Charles for “the evil”—_i.e._ scrofula; and also for
deserting the army at the Battle of Dunbar.
The next illustrious name that one comes to in the portentous annals
of the Tower is that of Sir Harry Vane, whose death was a monstrous
injustice, Charles confessing as much when he himself said of Vane that
“he was too dangerous a man to let live, if we can honestly put him
out of the way.” Although Vane had much to do in bringing Strafford
to his death, he was not in any way concerned with the execution of
Charles I., and had, on the contrary, always been opposed to that
great mistake. However, in the month of July 1660, he was sent to the
Tower, whence he was taken to be imprisoned in the Scilly Isles, then
brought back to the Tower in March 1662, and beheaded on Tower Hill
in that same year. At his trial he had pleaded Charles’s promise of
a “merciful indemnity to all those not immediately concerned in his
father’s death,” which should, at any rate, have saved Sir Harry from
the scaffold. But Vane was too good a man for Charles to tolerate, and
his execution was a judicial murder of the basest kind. Both Houses
of Parliament had voted for an Act of Indemnity in Vane’s favour,
but they were overruled by the King and his creatures. Pepys took the
trouble to rise early on the morning of the 14th of June to see Vane’s
execution. “Up by four o’clock in the morning and upon business in my
office. Then we sat down to business, and about eleven o’clock, having
a room got ready for us, we all went out to the Tower Hill; and there,
over against the scaffold, made on purpose this day, saw Sir Harry Vane
brought. A very great press of people. He made a long speech, many
times interrupted by the Sheriffs and others there, and they would have
taken his paper out of his hand, but he would not let it go. But they
caused all the books of those that writ after him (reporters?) to be
given to the Sheriffe, and the trumpets were brought under the scaffold
that he might not be heard. Then he prayed, and so fitted himself, and
received the blow; but the scaffold was so crowded that we could not
see it done.” Sir Harry had been a thorn in Cromwell’s flesh, and the
Protector’s exclamation, “The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!” is
historical.
To return to the year 1660, Colonels Axten and Hacker, the latter of
whom had commanded the guard at the King’s trial and at his execution,
together with one of his judges, Thomas Scott, were hanged at Charing
Cross.
In October of the same year, Henry Martin, one of the most prominent
of the regicides, was imprisoned for life, and died twenty years later
in Chepstow Castle. Another was General Edmund Ludlow, author of the
“Memoirs,” who died in Switzerland, after an exile of thirty-two
years. Some twenty persons in all were executed in the most brutal
fashion, while the bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and the greatest
sailor that England ever had before Nelson, Blake, were torn from
their graves in the Abbey, gibbeted at Tyburn, and buried beneath the
gallows, Cromwell’s head having been cut from the body and stuck up on
Westminster Hall. Charles’s government respected neither the dead
nor the rights of nations in the matter of taking vengeance upon the
late King’s judges.
[Illustration: _Old Cannon and Mortars on the west side of the White
Tower_]
On the 22nd of April 1661, Charles left Whitehall in state for the
Tower, to prepare for his coronation in the Abbey the following day, as
was the custom. Charles the Second was the last of our sovereigns to
sleep in the Tower on the eve of his coronation, he being lodged that
night in the royal apartments on the southern side of the White Tower,
the greater part of the Palace, including the Great Hall, having been
pulled down during the Protectorate.
We will let Pepys recount the procession from the Tower—where, as was
also the custom, Charles had created a number of Knights of the Bath—to
Whitehall. “Up early and made myself as fine as I could, and put on my
velvet coat, the first day that I put it on, though made half a year
ago. And being ready, Sir W. Batten, my Lady, and his two daughters,
and his son and wife, and Sir W. Penn, and his son and I, went to Mr
Young’s, the flagmaker, in Corne-hill; and there we had a good room
to ourselves, with wine and good cake, and saw the show very well. In
which it is impossible to relate the glory of the day, expressed in the
clothes of them that rid, and their horses and horse-clothes, among
others my Lord Sandwich’s embroidery and diamonds were ordinary among
them. The Knights of the Bath was a brave show of itself; and their
Esquires, among which Mr Armiger was an Esquire to one of the Knights.
Remarquable were the two men that represented the two Dukes of Normandy
and Aquitaine. The Bishops came next after Barons, which is the higher
place; which makes me think that the next Parliament they will be
called to the House of Lords. My Lord Monk rode bare after the King,
and led in his hand a spare horse, as being the Master of the Horse;
the King, in a most rich and embroidered suit and cloak, looked most
noble. Wadlow the vintner (Wadlow was the original of ‘Sir Simon the
King,’ the favourite air of Squire Western in ‘Tom Jones’) at the Devil
in Flete Streete, did lead a fine company of soldiers, all young comely
men, in white doublets. Then followed the Vice-Chamberlain, Sir G.
Carteret, a company of men all like Turks; but I know not yet what they
are for. The streets all gravelled, and the houses hung with carpets
before them, made brave show, and the ladies out of the windows, one of
which over against us I took much notice of, and spoke to her, which
made good sport among us. Glorious was the show with gold and silver,
that we were not able to look at it, our eyes at last being so much
overcome with it. Both the King and the Duke of York took notice of us,
as they saw us at the window.”
Another contemporary writer says: “Even the vaunting French confessed
their pomps of the late marriage with the Infanta of Spain (the wedding
of Louis XIV. with Maria Theresa of Spain) at their Majesties’ entrance
into Paris, to be inferior in state, gallantry, and riches, to this
most glorious cavalcade from the Tower.”
The same year that saw the coronation of Charles witnessed a strange
form of punishment to three prisoners in the Tower. These were Lord
Monson, Sir Henry Mildmay, and Robert Wallop, who were imprisoned for
holding republican views. They were sentenced to lose their rank,
to be drawn on hurdles to Tyburn from the Tower and back again, and
imprisoned for life.
A large number of other political prisoners were sent to the different
prisons throughout the country, and many were also shipped off to the
Pacific Islands, where they were sold as slaves. Perhaps the worst case
of any was that of three of the late King’s judges who had escaped into
Holland. They were seized in that country by an emissary of the English
Government, and, against all the laws of nations, brought back to
England, imprisoned in the Tower, and suffered death as felons. These
three men were Colonel Okey—whom we mentioned as having attempted
to seize the Tower after Cromwell’s death—Colonel Barkstead, and Miles
Corbet. They were executed in April 1662. Barkstead had been knighted
by Cromwell, the Parliament had entrusted him with the custody of
the Tower, and he had also acted as Major-General of London. He is
supposed to have enriched himself whilst head of the Tower, by exacting
money from the prisoners in his keeping. His head was placed over the
Traitor’s Gate in the Tower. Although he and his companions may have
deserved their fate, the manner of their seizure reflects the greatest
discredit upon the government of Charles, which, as I have already
said, neither respected the rights of the living nor reverenced the
dead.
[Illustration: STEEPLE IN SOUTHWARKE IN ITS FLOURISHING CONDITION
BEFORE THE FIRE _Designed by W. Hollar of Prage_
_London before the Great Fire._
_(From an engraving by Hollar.)_]
Between the years 1660 and 1667, some necessary repairs were undertaken
in the Tower, some five hundred pounds being expended thereon. In
1680 more extensive repairs were made, owing to reports made by
members of the House of Lords who had been appointed by the King in
Council, to inquire into “repairs and other works to be done, in and
about the said Tower of London, for the safety and convenience of the
garrison therein” (Harleian MSS.). An elaborate report was drawn up,
the estimate for the necessary alterations amounting to £6097, 2s.,
but like most of the important undertakings at that time, little, if
anything, was accomplished. The order for these repairs issued by the
Treasury stated that the above sum would be provided “so soon as the
state of His Majesty’s affairs would permit”: but knowing the state of
Charles’s “affairs,” we may be sure nothing came of it.
During the Great Fire of 1666, the Tower ran the most perilous risk in
all its history of utter destruction, and it was only by the timely
blowing up of the buildings which abutted on the walls of the fortress
and by the side of the moat, that the historical structure was saved.
The conflagration began at midnight on the 1st September in a house
in Pudding Lane, not far from where the monument erected in its
commemoration now stands. Pepys, that most invaluable of chroniclers
and domestic historians, then lived in Seething Lane, Crutched Friars.
“Lord’s Day, 2nd September,” he writes: “I made myself ready presently,
and walked to the Tower, and there got up upon one of the high
places (perhaps Pepys mounted to the top of the White Tower), Sir J.
Robinson’s little son going up with me. And there I did see the houses
at that end of the bridge all on fire, and an infinite great fire in
this and the other side of this and of that bridge.” On the seventh of
this September Pepys bears witness to the King’s energy in bringing
assistance to the sufferers by the conflagration. “In the meantime,” he
writes, “his Majesty got to the Tower by water, to demolish the houses
about the Graffs (?), which being built entirely about it, had they
taken fire, and attacked the White Tower where the magazine of powder
lay, would undoubtedly not only have beaten down and destroyed all the
bridge, but sunk and torn the vessels in the river, and rendered the
demolition beyond expression, for several miles about the country.”
Charles certainly showed the Stuart courage as well as resourcefulness
at a crisis, for there can be little doubt that he was chiefly
instrumental in saving the Tower, by ordering the blowing up of the
dangerous buildings attached to its walls.
In Hollar’s panoramic view of London before and after the Great Fire,
here reproduced, it will be seen how very close was the approach of
the conflagration to the walls of the ancient fortress. Another danger
threatened the Tower in this same year, a Captain Rathbone, with some
other officers, having formed a plan for scaling the outer walls, and
killing Sir John Robinson,[5] after securing the gates. It was one
of the Anti-Royalist plots with which the period was so rife, and, like
the majority of them, ended in failure; Rathbone and his gang were
taken prisoners and promptly hanged at Tyburn.
[Illustration: APPEARETH NOW AFTER THE SAD CALAMITIE AND DESTRVCTION BY
FIRE In the Yeare M. DC. LXVI.
_Wenceslaus Hollar delin: et sculp: 1666, Cum Privilegio._
_London after the Great Fire._
_(From an Engraving by Hollar.)_]
Among other prisoners there at this time was Thomas, Lord Buller of
Moor Park, incarcerated for having challenged the Duke of Buckingham
to a duel, and also the Marquis of Dorchester, for “quarrelling with
and using ill language to that duke”; the latter was likewise in the
Tower, and not for the first time. On this occasion Buckingham was
charged with treasonable correspondence and with stirring up a mutiny
in the Army. Few persons of the time were so frequently made acquainted
with the prison chambers of the Tower as this roystering ne’er-do-well,
“that life of pleasure, and that soul of whim,” George Villiers, Duke
of Buckingham, who was, in all, five times confined in the Tower, his
first visit having been paid during the Protectorate because he had
married Fairfax’s daughter, an event that greatly enraged Cromwell.
In 1666 he was imprisoned for insulting Lord Ossory, the son of the
Duke of Ormond, in the House of Lords. But he was never a prisoner for
long, the last occasion being when, together with Shaftesbury, Wharton,
and Salisbury, he opposed the “Courtiers’ Parliament.” All four were
sent to the Tower, but Buckingham, after making a humble apology,
was released. On leaving the Tower he passed under Shaftesbury’s
windows; the latter had refused to submit. “What,” said Shaftesbury
to Buckingham, “are you leaving us?” “Why, yes,” answered Buckingham,
“such giddy fellows as I am can never stay long in one place.”
Constantly in trouble, Buckingham was so boon a companion of the King’s
that Charles could not long let him remain out of his sight, whatever
the follies of which the Duke might have been guilty. Another of these
brilliant but dissipated friends and courtiers of Charles II. who was
sent to the Tower, was the infamously famous John Wilmot, Earl of
Rochester. He was there in 1669 for having abducted Elizabeth Mallet,
“la triste héritière,” as Grammont calls her. Ultimately Rochester
married the lady, and she made a most devoted wife to a most worthless
and unfaithful husband.
Charles had been greatly irritated by the preference of the beautiful
Frances Stuart, “la Belle Stewart” of Grammont, for the Duke of
Richmond, and his rival had to pass three weeks in the Tower in
consequence of the Royal jealousy. The Duke, however, had his way, and
married the fair Frances after eloping with her. Another of Charles’s
courtiers was placed in the fortress in 1665, Lord Morley, for having
killed a Mr Hastings. Morley was a noted duellist, and also what was
afterwards termed a “Mohawk,” and aided by one, Bromwich, had murdered
his victim in a street brawl.
Pepys, we have noted, was often in and about the Tower during these
years, but the most interesting entry in his diary relating to the
fortress, belongs to the year 1662. Under the date of the 20th October
he writes: “To my Lord Sandwich, who was in his chamber all alone, and
did inform me that an old acquaintance hath discovered to him £7000
hid in the Tower, of which he was to have two for the discovery, my
lord two, and the King the other three, when it is found; and the
King’s warrant to search, runs for me and one Mr Lee. So we went, and
the guard at the Tower Gate making me leave my sword, I was forced to
stay so long at the alehouse close by, till my boy run home for my
cloak. Then walked to Minchen Lane, and got from Sir H. Bennet the
King’s warrant for the paying of £2000 to my lord and other two of the
discoverers. After dinner we broke the matter to the Lord Mayor, who
did not, and durst not, appear the least averse to it. So Lee and I
and Mr Wade were joined by Evett, the guide, W. Giffin, and a porter
with pickaxes. Coming to the Tower, our guide demanded a candle, and
down into the cellars he goes. He went into several little cellars and
then out-of-doors to view, but none did answer so well to the marks
as one arched vault, where after much talk, to digging we went, till
about eight o’clock at night, but could find nothing, yet the guides
were not discouraged. Locking the door, we left for the night, and
up to the Deputy Governor, and he do undertake to keep the key, that
none shall go down without his privity. _November 1st._ To the Tower
to make one trial more, where we staid several hours, and dug a great
deal under the arches, but we missed of all and so we went away the
second time like fools. To the Dolphin Tower. Met Wade and Evett,
who do say that they had from Barkstead’s own mouth.” Pepys and his
fellow treasure-hunters then paused in their operations, but on the
17th December we read in this Diary, “This morning were Lee, Wade, and
Evett, intending to have gone upon our new design upon the Tower, but
it raining, and the work being done in the open garden, we put it off
to Friday next.” And this is the last we hear of the Tower treasure,
and for all that we know that £7000 is still under some vault in the
old building, hidden in the “butter firkins” in which it was supposed
to have been placed.
[Illustration: Castrum Royale Londinense, vulgo the Tower.
_The Tower in the time of Charles II._
_(from an etching by Hollar.)_]
Three years after the Great Fire, Pepys gives an account of a visit he
paid to his friend Sir William Coventry on the 11th of March 1669, when
he went to see him in what was then called “My Lord of Northumberland’s
Walk,” a place not now to be identified, which had at its end an iron
shield with the Earl’s arms engraved upon it and holes in which to
place a peg for every turn made by the pedestrian during his walk:
this must have been the prison exercise of the so-called “Wizard Earl,”
Raleigh’s friend.
Pepys visited his friend Sir William Coventry very frequently when the
latter was imprisoned in the Tower. Sir William had, through the medium
of Henry Savile, challenged the Duke of Buckingham to a duel in March
1669, and three days after the challenge Savile was committed to the
Gate House Prison, and Coventry to the Tower.
Savile was a gentleman of the Duke of York’s, who, being indignant at
the slight put upon him by being sent to the Gate House, asked if he
might not be sent to the Tower, and his wish was granted. Pepys was
unremitting in his attentions to his old friend Coventry, although by
constantly seeing him he was placing himself in the black books of
Charles and the Duke of York. We find him calling, on March 4th, upon
Coventry in his prison in the Brick Tower when he was in charge of a
son of “Major Bayly’s, one of the officers of the Ordnance,” again on
the following day he visits him and finds Coventry, “with abundance
of company with him.” The visits were continued on the following days
until the 16th of the same month, after which Coventry was liberated.
The stir his imprisonment had made, and the number of visitors who
called upon him—in one day some sixty coaches stood waiting outside
the Tower Gates for those who called on Sir William—had much annoyed
the King, the Duke of York, and Buckingham. Sir William Coventry, of
whom Bishop Burnet writes that he was “a man of great notions and
eminent virtue; the best speaker in the House of Commons, and capable
of bearing the chief ministry, as it was once thought he was very near
it, and deserved it more than all the rest did,” after this quarrel
with Buckingham and his imprisonment in the Tower retired from public
affairs, going to Minster Lovel in Oxfordshire, and dying at the age of
sixty, in 1686. He had been Secretary of the Admiralty, and twice
member for Yarmouth, and in 1667 had been one of the Commission of the
Treasury.
[Illustration: _Colonel Blood._
_(From a Contemporary Engraving.)_]
There is a blank in the list of commitments to the Tower between the
years 1668 and 1678. They are supposed to have been lost, but we know
that the year after Pepys’ friend Sir John Robinson had ceased to
command in the Tower, the gossiping diarist himself was a prisoner
within the walls, having been in some way concerned in the so-called
Popish Plot of 1679. It is greatly to be deplored that no account of
Samuel’s experiences in the Tower have come down to us, for his diary
ends ten years before this date: Pepys was in the Tower from the month
of May 1679 until the following February. His expenses, however,
have been recorded:—“For safe keeping of Sir Anthony Deane and Mr
Pepys, from and for the 22nd day of May 1679 unto and for the 24th of
June 1679, being four weeks and six dayes, at £3 per week, ancient
allowance, and 13s. 4d. per weeke, present demands, according to the
retrenchments, £6, 9s. 6d.” (Bayley’s “Tower of London.”)
Among other prisoners in the Tower in this reign was Nathaniel
Desborow, or Disbrew, as his name is sometimes written. Desborow was
Cromwell’s brother-in-law, “clumsy and ungainly in his person,” and, a
born plotter, he hated all who were placed above him. He had been made
Chancellor of Ireland by his nephew Richard Cromwell, but nevertheless
he helped to pull down the Protector’s son and successor from his
short-lived position. There were many others besides, imprisoned for
political and non-political offences, and of the latter was Stephen
Thomson, who was imprisoned for “stealing and conveying beyond the seas
the sole daughter and heiress of Sir Edmund Alleyn, deceased, she being
an infant.”
The most sensational event that occurred in the Tower during the reign
of Charles II. was the attempt made by a ruffian who called himself
“Colonel” Blood to steal the Crown and Regalia. Blood, half sailor,
half highwayman, and a complete scoundrel, was about fifty years
old when, in the month of May 1671, he made what was literally a
dash for the Crown. Blood appears to have served under Cromwell, and
consequently styled himself “Colonel”; after the war he became a spy of
the Government, and a short time before his performance at the Tower
he had almost succeeded in having the old Duke of Ormond hanged on the
gallows at Tyburn.
At this time Sir Gilbert Talbot held the appointment of “Master of
the Jewel House.” The allowance for this charge had been reduced,
and, as a kind of compensation, the Master had permission to allow
the public to inspect the Regalia, then kept in the Martin Tower, or
Jewel Tower, as it was then called, a fee being charged which became
the Master’s perquisite. Three weeks before Blood made his attempt, he
had called at the Martin Tower disguised as a clergyman, “with a long
cloak, cassock, and canonical girdle.” He was accompanied by a woman
whom he represented as his wife. The lady requested permission to see
the Regalia, but soon after being admitted to the Tower complained of
“a qualm upon her stomach,” and old Talbot Edwards, who had been an
old servant of Sir Gilbert’s, and had been placed by him in charge of
the Regalia, called to his wife to look after the _soi-disant_ Mrs
Blood. That lady having been given something to remove her “qualms”
was, together with her husband, most profuse in the expression of her
gratitude to the old keeper and his wife, and promised to return upon
an early occasion.
The next time Blood came to the Tower he was alone, bringing some
gloves for Edwards’s wife as a token of gratitude for the kindness
shown to “Mrs Blood.” On this occasion he informed Edwards that he had
a young nephew who was well off, and in search of a wife, and suggested
that a match might be arranged between him and their daughter. Blood
was invited to bring his nephew to make the acquaintance of the young
lady, and it was arranged that the old couple should give a dinner at
which the meeting should take place. At the dinner Blood took it upon
himself, being still in his clerical disguise, to say grace, which he
did with great unction, concluding with a long-winded oration, and a
prayer for the Royal family. After the meal he visited the rooms in the
Tower, and seeing a fine pair of pistols hanging on the wall, asked
if he might buy them to give to a friend. He then said that he would
return with a couple of friends who were about to leave London, and who
were anxious to see the Regalia before leaving, it being decided that
he should bring them the next morning. That day was the 9th of May,
and at seven in the morning old Talbot Edwards was ready to receive
his reverend friend and his companions, who soon put in an appearance.
Blood and his confederates had arms concealed about them, each carrying
daggers, pocket pistols, and rapier blades in their canes.
They were taken up the stairs into the room where the Regalia was kept,
but immediately they had entered, the ruffians threw a cloak over
Edwards’s head and gagged him with a wooden plug, which had a small
hole in it so that the person gagged could breathe; this they fastened
with a piece of waxed leather which encircled his neck, and placed an
iron hook on his nose so as to prevent him from crying out. They swore
they would murder him if he attempted to give an alarm—which the poor
old fellow could scarcely have done under the circumstances. But the
plucky old keeper struggled hard, whereupon they beat him upon the head
with a wooden mallet, and stabbed him until he fainted. The villains,
thinking they had killed him, then turned their attention to rifling
the treasures in the room. One of them, Parrot, put the orb in his
breeches pocket, Blood placed the Crown under his cloak, and the third
began to file the sceptre in two pieces, it being too long to carry
away without being seen. At this moment steps were heard; Edwards’s
young son having just returned from Flanders in the very nick of time.
The thieves dashed down the stairs past the young man who was coming
up, carrying with them the orb and crown, the sceptre being left behind
in the hurry of their flight. The pursuit was immediate; young Edwards
had brought with him his brother-in-law, a Captain Beckman, and the
latter hearing cries of “Treason! Murder!” from the terrified women in
the Tower, and the cry “The Crown is stolen!” rushed after Blood and
the two other men. These had meanwhile crossed the drawbridge between
the Main Guard at the White Tower and the Wharf; at the bridge a warder
had tried to stop them, but Blood fired his pistol, and the man,
although not wounded, fell to the ground, and they dashed past him. At
St Katharine’s Gate, near which horses were in waiting for the thieves,
Beckman overtook them; Blood again discharged his pistol but missed his
pursuer, who ducking his head, promptly seized the sham clergyman, from
under whose cloak the Crown fell to the ground, rolling in the gutter.
Then followed what the _London Gazette_ of the day called a “robustious
struggle,” Blood ultimately being secured, remarking that “It was a
gallant attempt, for it was for a Crown!”
When the Crown fell to the ground, some of the gems came loose from
their settings, and a large ruby, which had belonged to the sceptre,
was found in Parrot’s pocket. Little harm, however, was done, except to
the poor old keeper, who was nearly eighty years of age and had been
terribly injured; he was soon past all suffering, and was buried in the
Chapel of St Peter’s, where his gravestone can still be seen.
After his capture Blood occupied a prison in the White Tower for a
short time, but the King soon sent for him. And although it is not,
and cannot be known, whether Charles was an accessory or not in the
attempted theft, or whether Blood knew too much of the King’s affairs,
yet, whatever the reason, Blood was not only pardoned but rewarded, the
King giving him a pension of £500 a year, and bestowing upon him landed
estates in Ireland, the “Colonel” becoming one of the most assiduous
of the Whitehall courtiers. Whether Charles also rewarded Blood’s
accomplices is not recorded, but none of them were ever punished for
the attempted robbery. John Evelyn recounts meeting Blood at court
on the 10th of May 1671. “How he came to be pardoned,” he writes,
“and ever received into favour, not only after this but several other
exploits almost as daring, both in Ireland and here, I never could
come to understand. This man had not only a daring, but a villainous
unmerciful look, a false countenance, but very well-spoken, and
dangerously insinuating.”
Charles the Second, always in want of money, might very possibly have
commissioned Blood, after he had stolen the Crown, to pawn or sell its
gems in Holland or elsewhere, and the thieves could then have divided
the spoil. There can be little doubt that had not young Edwards and
his brother-in-law arrived at the Tower when they did, Blood and the
two, or others, would have got safely away with the jewels. The plot
had been admirably planned, and only the accident of the return of the
keeper’s son, which Blood could not possibly have foreseen, prevented
its successful accomplishment.
In later years Blood is said to have become a Quaker—not a desirable
recruit for that most respectable body, one would imagine. He died in
1680, and has had the honour of having had his bold, bad face placed in
the National Portrait Gallery; it fully bears out Evelyn’s description
of the “villainous unmerciful” look of the man.
A very different individual from Blood, who was also in the Tower about
the same time, was William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. He had
been imprisoned for no offence, unless that of writing a pamphlet on
Unitarianism could be considered a punishable crime. William Penn’s
father, the celebrated Admiral, Sir William, had accused the Duke of
York of showing cowardice in a sea fight with the Dutch, and the son’s
pamphlet was made the stick with which to beat the father. Young Penn
passed some months in the Tower, where he wrote his famous work, “No
Cross, no Crown.” Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester, was sent
to the Tower to see, and to convert, the young Quaker from his errors
in belief, but Penn only said to the prelate: “The Tower is to me the
worst argument in the world,” and Stillingfleet found that he could
make no impression.
In 1678, William Howard, Viscount Stafford, a Roman Catholic peer, was
accused of being concerned in the Popish Plot, that monstrous tangle
of lies, invented, for the greater part, by the infamous Titus Oates.
Stafford was accused by Oates, with four other Roman Catholic peers,
of being mixed up in the plot to overthrow the King, and to place the
Duke of York upon the throne. From his place in the House of Lords
Stafford had declared his innocence of the charge, but he was committed
to close imprisonment in the Tower in the month of October (1678),
remaining a prisoner until the month of November 1680, when he was
tried at Westminster Hall, Titus Oates being the principal witness
against him. In Reresby’s “Memoirs” it is said that Charles wished
to save Stafford, whom he knew to be innocent; but his mistress, the
Duchess of Portsmouth, whom Reresby believed to have been bribed,
prevented the King from acting in the matter as he would otherwise have
done, and Charles allowed an innocent man to be judicially murdered in
order not to thwart his mistress’s wishes. Stafford was beheaded on
Tower Hill on the 29th of December 1680, the crowd hooting him on his
way to the scaffold, for Titus Oates’s infamous accusations had made
any Roman Catholic an object of hatred to the populace. On Stafford
asking one of the Sheriffs, of the name of Cornish, to interfere, the
latter brutally replied: “I am ordered to stop no man’s mouth but
your own.” So fervently, however, did Stafford proclaim his innocence
on the scaffold, that many of the spectators, “with heads uncovered,
exclaimed: ‘We believe you, God bless you, my Lord!’” “He perished,”
writes Sir J. Reresby, “in the firmest denial of what had been laid to
his charge, and that in so cogent and persuasive a manner, that all
the beholders believed his words, and grieved his destiny.” The same
tribunal which had condemned Stafford, three years after his death
reversed the attainder they had pronounced against him, it having, in
the meanwhile, been proved that Stafford had perished an innocent man,
done to death by the false witness of the villain Oates. Lord Stafford
was buried in the Chapel of St Peter’s.
[Illustration: _William, Lord Russell._
(_From the Portrait in the National Portrait Gallery_)]
The Rye House Plot brought two of the best and noblest heads in England
to the block—William, Lord Russell, and Algernon Sidney. Both suffered
death for the good cause of the liberty of England. Russell was the
proto-martyr in that faith, Sidney the second.
England under Charles the Second was fast drifting back into the worst
of the tyrannies that had darkened her former history. The King, as he
proved on his death-bed, was a Roman Catholic in religion, and although
professing to belong to the Church of England, moved in the steps
of his brother James, who was an avowed Papist; and the country was
rapidly becoming, politically, a dependency of the French King, and,
in religion, a fief of the Pope. The four most conspicuous Englishmen
who clearly saw the danger that threatened the freedom, both civil and
religious, of England, and who had done their utmost to save their
country—patriots in the best sense of that much-abused term, were at
the time of the discovery of the Rye House Plot in 1683, either out of
the country or in prison.
Shaftesbury, after an imprisonment of five weeks in the Tower, had
crossed to Holland after his liberation in November 1681. The news of
his acquittal had been received with great rejoicings in the city,
Reresby writing that “the rabble lighted bonfires.” The Duke of York,
according to Lenthall, expressed his indignation publicly at “such
insolent defiance of authority such as he had never before known.” But
Shaftesbury’s friends and admirers had a medal struck in honour of his
liberation, on one side being the Earl’s portrait in profile, and on
the other a view of London taken from the Southwark side of the Thames,
with the sun casting its rays over the Tower from out the clouds; above
is inscribed the word, “Laetamur,” with the date 24 of November 1681
beneath. This medal gave rise to Dryden’s satirical poem called “The
Medal,” in which he compares Shaftesbury to Achitophel.
Russell, Sidney, and Essex were arrested and placed in the prisons of
the Tower. They suffered death in the cause of constitutional liberty,
as against the arbitrary power of the King, and also for wishing to
exclude the Duke of York from the succession to the throne after his
brother’s death. This plan was quite distinct from the Rye House Plot—a
plot that arranged for the assassination of the King and the Duke of
York on their road to Newmarket races.
Russell and Sidney were betrayed by Lord Howard of Escrick, and
although warned of his danger, Russell, unlike Shaftesbury, refused
to flee, saying he had done nothing to make him fear meeting the
justice of his country. However, on entering the Tower, he seems to
have had a foreboding of his fate, for turning round to his attendant,
Taunton, he said he knew that there was “a determination against him
to take his life, for the devil is unchained.” “From the moment of his
arrest,” writes Bishop Burnet, “he looked upon himself as a dying man,
and turned his thoughts wholly to another world. He read much in the
Scriptures, particularly in the Psalms. But, whilst he behaved with
the serenity of a man prepared for death, his friends exhibited an
honourable anxiety to save his life. Lord Essex would not leave his
house, lest his absconding might incline a jury to give more credit to
the evidence against Lord Russell. The Duke of Monmouth offered to come
in and share fortunes with him, if it would do him any service. But he
answered, ‘It would be of no advantage to him to have his friends die
with him.’”
During the fortnight which elapsed between his arrest and his sentence,
Russell’s devoted wife did all that was humanly possible to save her
husband’s life, and the night before the trial she wrote to him: “Your
friends believe I can do you some service at your trial. I am certainly
willing to try; my resolution will hold out, pray let yours. But it may
be the Court will not let me. However, do let me try.” Lady Russell not
only tried, but succeeded in being of assistance to her husband during
his trial, which took place in Westminster Hall on July 13th, 1683.
Lord Russell asked his judges if he might have “some one to help his
memory,” as he put it, and the request being granted, “My wife,” he
said, “is here to do it.” And all through that long summer day, whilst
he was being tried for his life, Lady Russell sat by her husband’s side
writing down notes of the evidence, and giving him her advice. When the
news came, during the course of the trial, that Essex had been found in
the Tower with his throat cut, Russell burst into tears. He wept for
the fate of his friend, whilst his own misfortunes only made him appear
the more serene and indifferent to the malice of his enemies. Jeffries,
who presided, took care in his charge to the jury to turn Essex’s
untimely end into an additional proof of Russell’s guilt.
Essex had been arrested soon after Russell, and on the same charge,
that of being concerned in the Rye House Plot, and was accused of high
treason. Taken from his seat at Cassiobury to the Tower, he was placed
in the same room which was occupied by his father. It is described
in the depositions placed before the Commissioners in William the
Third’s time, as being “on the left hand as you go up the mound, after
passing the Bloody Tower Gate.” In Dalrymple’s history it is stated
that Essex was confined in the same room which his father, Lord Capel,
had occupied, and in which Lady Essex’s grandfather, the Earl of
Northumberland, had killed himself in Elizabeth’s reign. To this prison
Essex was brought in the month of July in the year 1683—a year so fatal
to some of England’s truest patriots—and there, as has already been
stated, he was found with his throat cut. Whether Essex died by his own
hand, or by the hands of others, will never be known. On the whole,
the evidence points to suicide; and this is the opinion of the most
trustworthy authorities, such as Green and Gardiner.
Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex, had been one of the most popular of
the liberal leaders in the country. He had held high offices in the
State, he had been Ambassador from the court of Charles II. to that
of Copenhagen, he had been Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and, for a
short time, Prime Minister. The only son of the gallant Lord Capel
of Hadham, who had been executed by Cromwell, Essex had every reason
to expect some gratitude from the son of the man for whose sake his
father had given his life. But with the Stuarts the sense of gratitude
was an unknown quantity, and Essex was doomed to share the fates of
his friends, Russell and Sidney, accused by the same traitor who had
betrayed both them and himself. On the day of Essex’s death, the King
and his brother James had been visiting the Tower, a place in which
neither of them had set foot for a dozen years. After James’s flight at
the Revolution, it was eagerly believed that this visit was in some way
connected with Essex’s death. In a curious contemporary print, Essex is
seen being murdered by three well-dressed individuals, the position in
which his body was found after death being also shown at the same time.
In the depositions alluded to above, the sentry at the prison door
stated that two men had entered the room on the morning of the
Earl’s death, that an alarm was given by Essex’s valet when he found
his master’s body on the floor of the closet next his bedroom with his
throat cut. Two children deposed that they had seen a hand throwing a
razor out of the Earl’s window, that a woman then left the house and
picked it up. A sentry, named Robert Meek, who had made some remarks
tending to prove that Essex had met with foul play, was found dead soon
afterwards in the Tower moat.
[Illustration: _Arthur Comte d’Essex_]
[Illustration: _Gate and Portcullis in the Bloody Tower_]
Bad and heartless as were both the King and his brother James, none
can believe that they would commit a cold-blooded murder themselves;
and had they hired others to do so, the fact of the brothers having
gone that same morning to the fortress gives the idea of murder high
improbability, and Essex’s death will remain one of the many unsolved
tragic mysteries of the Tower. That the authorities believed the theory
of suicide is proved by the register of St Peter’s in the Tower, in
which is the following entry: “Arthur, Earl of Essex, cutt his own
throat within the Tower, July 13, 1683. Buried in this Chapel.”
But to return to Lord Russell. After his condemnation, and during
the few days that were left to him on earth, Russell was visited by
Tillotson, Dean of Canterbury, as well as by Bishop Burnet, both of
whom urged him to sign a paper declaring his adherence to the principle
of non-resistance, which they declared to be an article of Christian
faith. Russell said, in answer, that he had always believed in the
right of a nation to defend its religion and liberties when they were
threatened, expressing his willingness to give up his life in their
defence; and if he erred in this, “God,” he said, “would forgive him,
as it would be the sin of ignorance.” He also told the prelates that
both he and Lady Russell were agreed on this subject, and that nothing
could alter their views. Lady Russell was fighting in these days to
save the life she valued far above her own; but all was useless; it
was a hopeless struggle. “I wish,” said Lord Russell, “that my wife
would give over beating every bush for my preservation”; but he added,
“if it will be any consolation for her after my death to have done her
utmost to save me I cannot blame her.”
On the 19th of July, two days before the day fixed for his execution,
Russell wrote a letter to the King that was not to be delivered to
Charles until after the writer’s death. In that letter he assured the
monarch that “he had always acted for the best interests of the Crown,
and that if he had been mistaken he hoped the King’s displeasure would
be satisfied with his death, and would not extend to his widow and
children.” The following day he received the Blessed Sacrament from
Tillotson. “Do you believe all the Articles of the Christian Faith
as taught by the Church of England?” asked the Dean; and Russell
assenting, “Do you,” continued the Dean, “forgive all your enemies?”
“With all my heart,” answered Russell. Then after reading and signing
the paper which he intended to give to the Sheriff on the scaffold—his
farewell to his country—Russell sent for his wife, who came at once,
bringing with her their three children. “Stay and sup with me,” he said
to her, “let us eat our last earthly food together.” At ten o’clock
that night the parting between these two took place. “Both,” writes
Burnet, “were silent and trembling, their eyes full of tears which
did not overflow. When she had left, ‘Now,’ said he, ‘the bitterness
of death is past.’ Then he broke down: ‘What a blessing she has been
to me, and what a misery it would have been if she had been crying to
me to turn informer and to be a Lord Howard.’ And then he praised his
devoted wife to the good Bishop as she deserved to be praised, for a
nobler, more loyal or devoted wife than Rachel, Lady Russell, is not to
be found in all history.”
Some of the things Russell said to Burnet on that last evening of his
life are well worth recording. Speaking of death he said, “What a great
change death made, and how wonderfully those new scenes would strike
on a soul.” He had heard, he told Burnet, “how some persons who had
been born blind were struck when, by the couching of their cataracts,
they obtained their sight; but what,” said he, “if the first thing they
saw were the rising sun?”
Lincoln’s Inn Fields was the place chosen for his execution, the
scaffold being erected not far from his own house. This was on the 29th
of July, and when the Sheriffs arrived to take him they found Russell
quietly winding up his watch. “Now,” he said, “I have done with time,
and must think henceforward of Eternity.” He then gave the watch as a
souvenir to Burnet, that good old Bishop of Salisbury who had clung so
closely to his friend in his trials as to a beloved brother, and to
whom we owe the touching account of that friend’s last days upon earth.
On the 7th of December of this same year, Algernon Sidney was executed
on Tower Hill, having been condemned to death by a picked jury and the
infamous Chief-Justice Jeffreys, on the trumped-up charge of conspiring
against the life of Charles; only one witness appeared against him,
but he was condemned by his writings, which were certainly strongly
republican; yet, considering what the rule of the second Charles had
become, a man of Algernon Sidney’s lofty spirit, with his love of
freedom, could not have written or thought otherwise. It has been well
said of him that not only did he write from his judgment but also from
his heart, and he informed his readers of that which he felt as well as
that which he knew. He was condemned principally for the treatise in
which he advocated the rights of subjects, under certain contingencies,
to depose their king, and although this paper had never been published,
or, in fact, printed, it was sufficient material for Jeffreys, who
bullied the jury into a committal against Sidney. Algernon Sidney’s
life had been as noble as was his name, but his unbending republican
principles had made him the _bête noire_ of both Charles and James, and
any evidence by which he could be entrapped into a charge of treason
was welcome to them. When he came forth from the Tower to die in the
cause of liberty, “Englishmen,” as Dalrymple has finely written, “wept
not for him as they had done for Lord Russell, their pulses beat high,
their hearts swelled, they felt an unusual grandeur and elevation of
mind whilst they looked upon him.” One of the Sheriffs asked Sidney
if it was his intention to make a speech upon the scaffold, to which
he answered, “I have made my peace with God, and have nothing to say
to man,” adding, “I am ready to die, and will give you no further
trouble.” His last prayers were for “the good old cause.” When his head
lay on the block, the executioner asked him if he would raise it again.
“Not till the general resurrection; strike on!” And these were Algernon
Sidney’s last words.
[Illustration: _James, Duke of Monmouth._
(_From a Contemporary Engraving._)]
CHAPTER XV
JAMES II.
During the four years in which James the Second misgoverned England,
the most interesting events connected with the Tower were the tragedy
of the Duke of Monmouth’s death, and the imprisonment of the Seven
Bishops.
James was the first of our sovereigns to omit passing the night
previous to his coronation in the Tower, and the fortress now ceased
entirely to be a royal residence, being given over to the uses which it
still fulfils.
After the Duke of Monmouth’s capture near the New Forest, on the 13th
of July 1685, after his luckless attempt to wrest the Crown from James
at Sedgemoor, he, with Lord Grey of Wark, was brought to London and
imprisoned in the Tower, the warrant for his committal being thus
worded: “James, Duke of Monmouth, 13 July, for High Treason in levying
war against the King and assuming a title to the Crown.” Monmouth had
married Lady Anne Scott, daughter of the Earl of Buccleuch, when he
was only fourteen years of age, but the union does not appear to have
been a happy one. When the Duchess came to take her last leave of him
after his condemnation, the interview is said “to have passed with
decency, but without tokens of affection”; the prisoner’s heart was
elsewhere. Monmouth had no lack of clergymen to see him pass out of the
world at the close of his short and wasted life, for during the day and
night before he died, four ecclesiastics were in attendance upon him,
and they never left him till the end. These were Tenison, then Vicar
of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields, but afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, and
Primate; Turner, Bishop of Rochester; Hooper, afterwards Bishop of Bath
and Wells; and the saint-like Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells.
When Tenison reproached the Duke for the want of feeling he had shown
towards his wife, Monmouth replied that “his heart was turned against
her, because in his affliction she had gone to the play and into public
companies, by which I knew she did not love me.” The woman he loved
best, and with whom he had been living, was Lady Harriet Wentworth, the
daughter of Lord Cleveland.
Accompanied by the four clergymen, Monmouth left the Tower on the
morning of the 15th of July, at ten o’clock; the writ for the delivery
of the Duke’s body to the Sheriffs is still to be seen in the Record
Office, being addressed to Sir William Gostling and Sir Peter
Vanderpatt, and endorsed by them on receiving the Duke from the charge
of the Lieutenant of the Tower.
Monmouth passed on foot through a lane of soldiers, preceded by three
officers, who carried pistols and accompanied him on to the scaffold.
The Duke’s appearance caused a commotion in the crowd which had come
to see him die; he had always been a favourite with the people, his
personal beauty probably being the principal reason for his popularity;
and he was also regarded as a kind of hero on the Protestant side, as
opposed to James the Second and the Romish priests. The populace had
recently given him the title of “King Monmouth.”
The scaffold was all draped in black. Monmouth made no speech to the
people, but only conversed with the clergymen near him; but he had
prepared the following statement, written on a sheet of paper, which
he gave to one of the Bishops:—“I declare that the title of King was
forced upon me, and that it was very much contrary to my opinion when I
was proclaimed. For the satisfaction of the world I do declare that the
late King told me he was never married to my mother. Having declared
this, I hope that the King who is now, will not let my children
suffer on this account. And to this I put my hand this 15 July 1685.
Monmouth.” This extraordinary statement was also signed by the four
clerics and the two Sheriffs.
[Illustration: _Execution of the Duke of Monmouth, July, 1685._]
“Pray do your business well,” Monmouth said to Jack Ketch, the
headsman. “Do not serve me as you did my Lord Russell. I have heard you
struck him four or five times; if you strike me twice, I cannot promise
you not to stir.” Unfortunately poor Monmouth was even worse served by
the executioner than Russell had been, and it was not until the blows
had been repeated five times that the once beautiful head was separated
from the body. Jack Ketch was almost torn to pieces by the horrified
and furious mob.
It is almost incredible to believe, did one not know the baseness of
James’s character, that he had two medals struck in commemoration
of Monmouth’s execution—“savage medals,” as they were appropriately
called. “Thus,” writes John Evelyn of Monmouth’s death, “ended this
quondam Duke, darling of his father, and the ladies, being extremely
handsome and adroit; an excellent soldier and dancer, a favourite of
the people, of an easy nature, seduced by knaves, who would have set
him up only to make a property, and taken the opportunity of the King
being of another religion, to gather a party of discontented men. He
failed and perished, had a virtuous and excellent lady that brought him
great riches and a second Dukedom in Scotland.”
The son of that Marquis of Argyll who had raised the standard of
rebellion in Scotland in conjunction with Monmouth’s rising in England,
and who was beheaded in Edinburgh in the same year, was a prisoner in
the Tower for some weeks. The following is the entry with reference to
him taken from the Tower records:—“25 June 1685. Archibald Campbell,
son to the late Marquis of Argyll, upon suspicion of dangerous
practices to the State. Signed by his Majesty’s command. Sunderland.”
The young man was, however, discharged on the 19th of the following
October. After his liberation he went to Holland, returning to England
with William III., when he was created first Duke of Argyll.
The Stuarts had solemnly vowed to rule England in the Reformed
and Protestant faith, but within a quarter of a century of their
restoration, the Church of Rome had not only been allowed by them to
recover many of its privileges, but Roman Catholicism had become the
religion of the King and court. James had set aside the Test Act, a
measure passed by Parliament in 1663, which required every individual
in the civil and military employment of the State to take the oath
of supremacy and allegiance, to declare against the doctrine of
transubstantiation, and to declare in favour of the doctrine of the
Sacrament as taught by the Church of England. By annulling this act
James re-admitted Roman Catholics to any office in the country, both
in civil and military situations. Four Roman Catholic peers were added
to the Privy Council; priests and Jesuits flocked into the country
in great numbers, and Mass was publicly celebrated in the Chapel
Royal. London again saw the almost forgotten costumes of the different
religious orders, the brown-robed Franciscans, and the white-robed
Carmelites, whilst the Jesuit priests opened a school at the Savoy. At
the same time the King added largely to the standing army, and a camp
of thirteen thousand men was established at Hounslow, destined, if
James thought necessary, to keep the capital in check. Whilst James was
thus trying to coerce his subjects to the Roman Catholic religion, the
Protestants across the Channel were being persecuted by Louis; for by
a strange coincidence—if not by a prearranged plan—the same year that
saw the violation of the Test Act in England, witnessed the revocation
of the Edict of Nantes in France, with the result that thousands of
French reformers were driven from their homes and crossed to England—a
living proof of the curse that a bigoted and arbitrary ruler could be
to his subjects.
[Illustration: _Contemporary Portraits of_
_The Duke of Monmouth & others._]
In the succeeding year, 1686, James attempted to gag the English
Church. The King had appointed two Roman Catholic priests to high
preferments—Massey to the Deanery of Christ Church, and Parker to
the See of Oxford; and when the English clergy protested from their
pulpits against these appointments, James summoned an Ecclesiastical
Commission, at the head of which he placed Jeffreys. The first action
of this Commission was to suspend Compton, Bishop of London, who had
refused to suspend the Dean of Norwich (Sharpe), one of the offending
preachers against the Papist appointments made by the King.
In 1687 Oxford had the high honour of bringing about the Revolution,
which saved England from a fresh tyranny and led to the final overthrow
of the Stuart princes.
James intended to place a Roman Catholic, of the name of Farmer, over
the Fellows at Magdalen College; but the College, instead of accepting
this nominee of the King, chose one of their number, Hough, for their
head. Whereupon, the Ecclesiastical Court, with Jeffreys at its head,
declared the Magdalen election null and void, and Parker, the Bishop
of Oxford, James’s nominee to that see, was forced upon Magdalen as
its President. Parker died in 1688, and James again appointed a Roman
Catholic bishop _in partibus_, Bonaventure Giffard, to take his place.
Previously, the King had visited Oxford, and after abusing the Fellows
for their independence, had expelled five-and-twenty of them. These
arbitrary measures led to a clerical revolt throughout England. In the
April of the following year, James issued a form of indulgence, which
he ordered to be read in all the churches. By this form the King hoped
to unite the Roman Catholics with the Protestant Nonconformists under
the banner of “liberty of conscience” against the Church, and thus
make the Church herself assist in her own defeat by the use of his
ecclesiastical supremacy (Wakeman’s “History of the Church of England”).
The clergy protested, and six bishops, with Sancroft, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, at their head, drew up a petition to the King, protesting
against the form. The petition was most humble; it stated that the
petitioners considered this Declaration of Indulgence to religious
dissenters to be founded “upon such a dispensing power as hath often
been declared illegal by Parliament, and particularly in the years
1662 and 1672, and in the beginning of your Majesty’s reign; and in a
matter of so great moment and consequence to the whole nation, both in
Church and State, your petitioners cannot, in providence, honour, or
conscience, so far make themselves parties to it as the distributors of
it all over the nation, and the solemn publication of it once again,
even in God’s House, and in the time of Divine Service, must amount to
in common and reasonable contention.”
The King read the petition, scowled, and returned it to Sancroft,
saying angrily: “I did not expect this from the Church of England!”
adding, “If I change my mind you shall hear from me; if not, I shall
expect my commands shall be obeyed.”
Three weeks afterwards the Bishops and the Archbishop were summoned to
appear before the Privy Council. Jeffreys insolently inquired whether
they were ready to give recognisances to be tried for misdemeanours
before the Court of the King’s Bench, and waiving their plea of being
Peers of Parliament, he refused the prelates bail, and had them
committed to the Tower. In order to avoid the demonstration in the
Bishops’ favour, which both James and Jeffreys dreaded if they were
taken through the streets of the city, they were conveyed to the Tower
in the royal barge along the river. But their passage to the fortress
was one long ovation, and as the barge approached the Tower, numbers
of people rushed knee-deep into the water to receive the blessing of
the prelates, and, on their arrival, even the warders received them
kneeling at the landing-place.
[Illustration: _The Seven Bishops._
_(From a Contemporary Print.)_]
As the Seven Bishops passed under St Thomas’s Tower, and landed at
the Traitor’s Gate, the bells of St Peter’s Chapel were ringing for
evening service. Passing over the green, they entered the chapel and
attended the service. The appropriateness of the second lesson struck
all who were present, being a chapter in the 2nd of Corinthians—“Giving
no offence in anything, that the ministry be not blamed: but in all
things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience,
in afflictions, in distresses, in imprisonments.”
A most uncomfortable week must have been passed by these Reverend
Fathers of the Church in the Tower, for they were all crowded together
in the by no means spacious Martin Tower. On the 15th of June they
were taken from the Tower to the bar of the Court of King’s Bench—on
this occasion they were admitted to bail. Their trial began a
fortnight later, taking place in Westminster Hall, and was one of the
most memorable of the great historic events that that building has
witnessed. When the verdict of “Not guilty” was pronounced, the old oak
roof of William Rufus’s hall re-echoed with the shouts of the people
gathered below; it was a moment, as Wakeman has eloquently written in
his “History of the Church of England,” “unparalleled in the history of
English courts of law. The crowd within and without Westminster Hall
broke into a frenzy of enthusiastic joy. Men fell upon each other’s
necks, and wept and shouted and laughed and wept again; and amid the
cheers of men and the boom of cannon the heroes of the Church passed in
safety to their homes.”
The names of these seven “humble heroes” who had so nobly stood up in
defence of the rights of the Church of England and of the liberty of
their land, were Sancroft, the Primate; Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath
and Wells; William Lloyd, Bishop of St Asaph’s; John Lake, Bishop of
Chichester; Thomas White, Bishop of Peterborough; Jonathan Trelawney,
Bishop of Bristol; and Francis Turner, Bishop of Ely. Sancroft had been
promoted from the Deanery of St Paul’s to Canterbury after the death of
Archbishop Sheldon, and had helped much in the rebuilding of St Paul’s.
He left a fine library to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, of which he had
been master. Thomas Ken was famous for his unaffected piety, and the
beautiful hymn he composed. Lloyd helped Bishop Burnet to write his
“History of the Reformation.” Lake had fought in the army of Charles
I., and had been Bishop of Man and Bishop of Bristol, before occupying
the See of Chichester; Trelawney was successively Bishop of Bristol,
Exeter, and Winchester; and Francis Turner had been Dean of Winchester,
a position he had held, together with the Bishopric of Rochester,
before being preferred to Ely.
Compared with these men the State prisoners in the Tower in the reign
of James II. were not of much interest. After Monmouth’s rebellion,
Lord Stamford, with Lord Delamere and Charles Gerrard, “commonly called
Lord Bandon,” were prisoners in the fortress. Sir Robert Cotton and
John Crewe Offleigh were in the Tower charged with “dangerous and
treasonable practices,” and also Mr J. Cook, a member of the House of
Commons, “for his indecent and undutiful speech, reflecting on the King
and the House of Commons.”
A strange case was that of Sir Bevil Skelton, who was a prisoner in
September 1688, and “who had been recalled from France for exceeding
his instructions in certain political transactions,” for not only
was he speedily released, but was made Governor of the Tower, an
appointment which caused much dissatisfaction. This appointment was the
last of James’s unpopular acts, and when, three months later, the King
fled the country, the House of Lords removed Skelton from his post,
and gave the keys of the Tower into the custody of Lord Lucas.
[Illustration: _The Seven Bishops going by Water to the Tower._]
On the 11th of December 1688, James left Whitehall, a King without a
crown, and as he crossed the Thames to reach Lambeth, he dropped the
Great Seal into the river, hoping thereby that everything would fall
into confusion for the want of that symbol of legitimate authority.
The curious Dutch engraving representing the amiable act of the last
of our male Stuart monarchs gives a view of old London Bridge, and
the Tower beyond, looming large against a wintry sky. On the same day
that James threw away the Great Seal of England, his Lord Chancellor,
the justly detested Jeffreys, was taken, in the disguise of a common
sailor, in a small house at Wapping, as he was about to go on board a
collier which would have taken him to Hamburg. Once in the power of
the mob, Jeffreys’ life was in deadly peril, and he suffered severely
at the hands of the people, but was finally rescued and taken before
the Lord Mayor, who, poor man, died in a fit soon after the terrible
judge had been brought before him, more revolting in his abject terror
of death than even during the Bloody Assizes in the West, when he had
condemned shoals of men and women to tortures and death with jibes and
ghastly pleasantry. Protected by two regiments of the City train-bands,
Jeffreys was taken into the Tower on the 12th of December, and given
in charge of Lord Lucas, the Governor. The warrant of Jeffreys’
arrest, which is unique, is among the Tower records, and runs as
follows:—“We, the peers of this Realm, being assembled with some of
the Privy Council, do hereby will and require you to take into your
custody the body of George, Lord Jeffreys (herewith sent to you), and
to keep him safe prisoner until further order; for which this shall be
your sufficient warrant.” This warrant is signed by thirteen peers,
including the Bishop of Winchester.
James having fled, and the Great Seal being at the bottom of the
Thames, there was no King or Parliament existing at the time the
warrant was made out. Jeffreys was half dead with terror when the
coach in which he was taken to the Tower entered its gates. All the
way from the Mansion House he had implored the soldiers about him to
preserve him from the furious rabble that surged around the carriage
with ferocious cries of a well-merited hatred. This brute, who had
sent scores of innocent people to the block and the gallows, who had
rejoiced, like the fiend he was, at the sufferings of his victims as
they left his presence for the gibbet, or the plantations, to be sold
as slaves, now attempted to excite pity for himself amongst those
persons who came to see him in the Tower, by telling them that he had
only acted as he had done by the orders of King James, and that James
had chidden him for showing too much clemency.
Jeffreys was only forty years old when he was taken to the Tower, but
he soon wasted away, tormented, one might imagine, by the spectres of
those whom he had destroyed, and of the thousands whom he had made
desolate. Whether he died from drinking brandy to excess or not, is of
little moment, but according to Oldnixon, his body “continued to decay”
until the 19th of April 1689, when he died at the age of forty-one.
He had been Chief-Justice at thirty-five, and Lord Chancellor at
thirty-seven. No one looking at his portrait in the National Portrait
Gallery would imagine that the melancholy-looking and distinguished
young man, with his long, flowing wig, could be the most cruel,
vindictive, and unmerciful judge with whom the English Bench has ever
been cursed.
[Illustration: _de k: vhicht by nacht uyt het hof met de seegels vant
Rÿck:_]
CHAPTER XVI
WILLIAM AND MARY
Only one prisoner of State suffered death during the twelve years of
the joint reigns of William of Orange and Mary. This was Sir John
Fenwick, who had been implicated in a plot to assassinate William, and
being found guilty of high treason, was beheaded on Tower Hill on 28th
January 1697.
There were, however, a number of more or less unfortunate important
State prisoners at different times in the fortress, the most
interesting of these being the future Duke of Marlborough, for
“abetting and adhering to their Majesties’ enemies.” In Lord Wolseley’s
admirable history of that great soldier’s life, we read under the date
of 5th May 1697: “Marlborough was kept a close prisoner in the Tower,
no one being allowed to see him except by order of the Secretary of
State. His wife left the Princess Anne at Sion House in order to be
near him in town, and she left no means untried to obtain his release.
There still exist many orders signed by Lord Nottingham granting her
permission to see him in prison, the earliest being dated five days
after his committal, and worded ‘for this time only.’ A Mr Chudleigh
was a frequent visitor; the first order of admission given him was to
see Marlborough in presence of a warder, ‘for this time only.’ Later
on, we find an order addressed to Lord Lucas, the Constable of the
Tower, signifying the Queen’s pleasure that friends and relatives of
the prisoners lately committed should have access to them from time
to time. They were subsequently allowed to dine together, when all
dread of invasion had passed away. Marlborough, in the Tower, had
fewer friends than ever, but his wife makes honourable mention of Lord
Bradford, who not only refused to sign the warrant which committed
him to prison, but paid him a visit when there.... Writing to Lady
Marlborough, Princess Anne says: ‘I hear Lord Marlborough is sent to
the Tower, and though I am certain they have nothing against him, and
expected by your letter it would be so, yet I was struck when I was
told of it, for methinks it is a dismal thing to have one’s friends
sent to that place.’... ‘At length, on June 15, Marlborough was brought
before the Court of King’s Bench on a writ of habeas corpus, and
released from the Tower upon finding bail for £6000 for his appearance
when required.’” (“Life of Marlborough,” vol. ii.)
The same charge of “abetting and adhering to their Majesties’ enemies,”
upon which Marlborough had been imprisoned, was brought against Lord
Brudenell, the Earl of Huntingdon, Sir Robert Thorold, and Colonel
Langston.
In the same year the ruffianly head of the gang of “Mohawks,” Lord
Mohun, who figures in Thackeray’s “Esmond,” was twice in the Tower
for having committed two assassinations—the first, that of the actor
William Mountford, whom Mohun had murdered in a quarrel over the
celebrated actress, Mrs Bracegirdle; and the second, when, with Edward,
Earl of Warwick, he had helped to kill one Richard Coate. In 1695, Sir
Basil Firebrace was in the Tower, as well as the Earls of Salisbury,
Peterborough, and Arran, with Lord Montgomery, all imprisoned on the
charge of being concerned in Jacobite plots. With these were Sir
Edward Hale, Sir Thomas Jenner, Lord Castlemaine, Lord Forbes, Colonel
Lumley, Captain Shackerley, Lord Preston, Sir Richard Cleaver, Sir
Robert Hamilton, and Edward Griffin, upon whom James conferred a barony
whilst he was imprisoned in the Tower, a title James had no more right
to bestow than Griffin had to receive. Griffin, it seems, owed his
imprisonment to an accident. He was in active correspondence with the
court at St Germains, and had ordered a large pewter bottle to be
made with a false bottom, in which to conceal letters. Late one night
he gave this bottle to his cook with directions to have it soldered.
Whilst this was being done, a packet of letters was discovered in the
false bottom directed to James II. The cook was immediately seized, and
Griffin, with his wife, was sent to the Tower, whence, however, he made
his escape, but soon afterwards surrendered himself to the authorities.
He died in the Tower in 1710.
[Illustration: _View of the Tower in the time of James II._]
The affection and loyalty inspired by the Stuarts brought many
prisoners to the Tower, refusal to take the oath of allegiance to the
joint sovereigns being answered by the authorities with confinement
in the fortress, on the charge of “abetting and adhering to their
Majesties’ enemies.” Of these, Francis Cholmondeley, Lord Yarmouth,
and some others, were there in 1690, the names of Lords Newburgh,
Clancarty, Tyrone, Morley, Monteagle, Dartmouth, Cahir, the Earl of
Clarendon, Major-General Dorrington, and General Maxwell, also figure
on the list, but against these no specific charge is now apparent. Two
years afterwards a Mr Henry Grey, a member of the House of Commons, was
there, accused of taking bribes, as well as Lord Falkland; and the Earl
of Torrington’s defeat by the French fleet off Beachy Head was punished
by an enforced residence in the State prison.
That the fortress was crowded with prisoners towards the close of
William’s reign is apparent by two papers which, by the kindness of Mr
Birch, the Curator of the Soane Museum, I have been allowed to copy
here, but it must be added that out of all the State prisoners in the
Tower under William’s rule only one suffered the extreme penalty of the
law. The papers are as follows:—
At the Committee for ye Affaires of Ireland in ye Councill Chamber
att Whitehall, Aprill the 15 1695.
It is ordered by their Lᵈᵖˢ that Sir Christopher Wren Surveyr Genl.
of his Majities Works doe repaire to the Tower of London to view
Beauchamp Tower and Bloody Tower and report what it will cost to
Repaire and putt them in a condition to hold Prisoners of State.
Sir Christopher Wren is also to surveigh the ground behind the
Chapell in the Tower where it is proposed to Erect some buildings
for keeping prisoners, and to report in like manner what it
will cost and how many prisoners it can be made to hold, and he
is further to consider of the annexed Draught proposed for the
Erecting the Said Buildings, and give his opinion upon it, or
else make such other Draught as he shall think fitt, and Lay the
same together with his report upon the whole matter before the
Committee as soon as conveniently may be.
WM. BRIDGEMAN.
To Ye Rt Honble ye Committee of Councill for the Affaires of
Ireland. May it please yr Lʳˢ.
In obedience to yr Lʳˢ Order of the 15th instant, that I should
view the severall places in the Tower therein mentioned—viz.
Beauchamp Tower and ye Bloody Tower and report wt Expense will
put them in condition to hold prisoners of State and what number
they will hold I have accordingly viewed the same and report that
both the said places were put the last summer in better repair
than they have been in many years being whited, mended, and made
strong, but to make them fitt for prisoners of State, if by
that Expression it be intended that they should be wainscotted
and made fitt for hangings and furniture it may cost £200 or
much more but with such walls, windows and winding stairs they
never can be made proper with any cost without rebuilding. I
have also in pursuance of yʳ Lʳˢ Order viewed the place behinde
the Chappell and considered and do approve the annex’d draught
proposed to be built wch I take to be as Large as ye place
will afford containing 15 square and if it be well built in 3
storeys, Cellars and garretts it will cost £600. As to the number
of Prisoners the place may hold I can only report wt number of
rooms each place contains. Beauchamp Tower hath a large Kitching
2 large rooms and 2 small servants rooms. Bloody Tower hath a
kitching one room and one closset. The new building may contain 9
single rooms, besides cellars and garrets and a kitching all wch
is humbly submitted.
CHR WREN
Apprill 17 1695.
[Illustration: _The Tower of London, Commanded in Chief by the Rᵗ.
Honᵇˡᵉ Robert Lᵈ. Lucas._]
CHAPTER XVII
QUEEN ANNE
Few prisoners of any degree were committed to the Tower during the
reign of Anne, except during the first year of her rule, when the
Continental wars brought some French prisoners of war, who were
confined there. In 1712, however, the famous Sir Robert Walpole
was committed to the Tower “for high breach of trust and notorious
corruption.” Walpole’s committal was entirely due to political
intrigue, and his disgrace and imprisonment closely resembled that
of the Duke of Choiseul in the reign of Louis XVI., when half of the
French society of the day flocked to the fallen Minister’s house
at Chanteloup. Walpole’s apartment in the Tower was crowded all
day long with a succession of smart folk, among whom the Duke and
Duchess of Marlborough, with whom the Queen had broken off her former
great intimacy, were conspicuous; Godolphin, Somers, Sunderland, and
Pulteney, Earl of Bath, were also frequent visitors.
Three years after Walpole had left his rooms in the Tower they were
occupied by George Granville, Earl of Lansdowne—a nobleman of strong
Jacobite proclivities. He was a poet as well as a Jacobite, and finding
Walpole’s name written on the window of the room, he wrote beneath it
the following distich:—
“Good unexpected, evil unforeseen,
Appear by turns, as fortune shifts the scene;
Some, raised aloft, come tumbling down amain,
And fall so hard, they bound and rise again.”
It may be interesting at this place to recall some of the incidents
connected with the Mint in the Tower.
Few persons on reading the name of John Rotier, which is placed on the
commemoration brass tablet in the Chapel of St Peter’s in the Tower
bearing the names of the illustrious dead there buried, would probably
have an idea of his claims to distinction. So little artistic interest
is connected with the old fortress that Rotier’s name deserves more
than a passing mention.
John Rotier, or Roettier, belonged to a family of medallists, and was
the son of an Antwerp jeweller who had been of considerable assistance
to Charles II. during his exile. Rotier came over to England soon
after Charles returned, and, on the recommendation of the King, was
received into the Mint under Simon the chief medallist. In the year
1662, Rotier, with his two brothers, became the King’s medallist, with
quarters in the Tower. Pepys often came to see the three brothers at
work, and was much interested in 1667, when Rotier was engaged in
making a new medal for Charles, in which the figure of Britannia was
being taken from the beautiful face and form of Miss Stuart, one of
Charles’s mistresses, and afterwards Duchess of Richmond; this is the
same figure, with a little alteration, that appears on our copper pence
at the present day. Rotier had also made a Great Seal for Charles, and
on the accession of James he made that monarch’s coronation medal.
The King’s profile appears on the obverse of this medal, and on the
reverse is a trophy of armour, with ships in the background, and
the words “Genus Antu Antiquum” engraved above. It appears to be an
excellent likeness, the determined lines of obstinacy and self-will
which marked James’s face being admirably rendered. When William came
to the throne of his father-in-law Rotier fell into disgrace, being
supposed to be a Jacobite, a not unnatural supposition, seeing his
connection with both James and Charles. But what was more alarming
than any supposition of Jacobite sympathies was a rumour that the
exiled King had returned, and was lying concealed in Rotier’s lodgings:
he was promptly accused of stealing some dies from the Mint, and of
striking coins for the service of James.
[Illustration: _THE SOUTH-EAST PROSPECT OF THE CHAPEL ROYAL OF Sᵀ.
PETER IN THE TOWER._]
A Committee of the House of Commons sat on the poor medallist, its
decision being that “It is too great a trust and may be of dangerous
consequence for the said Roettier to have the custody of the dies, he
being a Roman Catholic and keeping an Irish Papist in his house, and
having the custody of the said dies, it lies in his power to let them
out when he pleases, or to coin false money in the Tower. That the Lord
Lucas has complained that the Tower is not safe while so many Papists
are entertained in Roettier’s house.” All Roetier’s dies and puncheons
were accordingly seized, and he himself was driven from the Tower.
He appears to have returned, however, in 1703, just after a visit he
had received from Sir Godfrey Kneller, who had been sent to him by
Queen Anne to execute a medal of her Majesty, which, however, the old
medallist was unable to perform; he died shortly afterwards, and was
buried in St Peter’s Chapel.
In an interesting article by Mr W. J. Hocking in the _Gentleman’s
Magazine_ for March 1895, entitled “Money-making in the Tower,” there
is some curious information respecting the Mint once established in
the Tower. Mr Hocking says that coining operations have been carried
on in the Tower in every reign since the Conquest, save in those of
Richard I. and Edward V. It is even possible that the Romans struck
their money in the Tower, for Constantine had a mint working in London,
the treasurer of which bore the title of Praepositus Thesaurorum
Augustinium. In Edward the Third’s reign it was enacted that all
moneys, wherever coined, should be made in the same manner as in the
Tower. James I. was present at the trial of the Pix in the Tower, and
“diligently viewed the state of his money and mint.”
Money was coined in fifteen places at least, besides the Tower, in the
reign of Charles I. It was during his tenure of the crown that Nicholas
Briot, a French engraver, worked at the Tower, the money then turned
out being said to be the finest in the world.
After the Restoration small steel rolling-mills were set up in the
Tower driven by horse and water power, the cost of striking one year’s
coinage being £1400. The new milled coinage was a great improvement
on the old hammered coins. It was at this time that the great English
medallist Simon’s “Petition Medal” was produced. This came from a
competition, between him and Roetier; the latter won the competition,
and consequently made the puncheons and dies for the new coinage. Simon
was infuriated by his defeat and spoke some hasty words which, being
repeated to Charles, caused his dismissal. Some twenty of Simon’s
“petition medals” were struck, with the legend round their edges as
follows:—“Thomas Simon most humbly prays your Majesty to compare this
his tryall piece with the Dutch (Roetier’s), and if more truly drawn
and embossed, more gracefully order’d and more accurately engraven, to
relieve him.” For one of these medals as much as £500 has been given by
a firm of London coin-dealers, so rare is the piece.
The punishment meted out to coiners and clippers of coins in this
reign was incredibly barbarous. In those so-called “good old times”
in one day seven men were hanged and a woman burned for clipping and
counterfeiting the current coin.
A Coinage Act was passed by Parliament in 1696, and under its
provisions all the old hammered money was called in, melted in furnaces
near Whitehall, and sent in ingots to the Tower, to reappear in the
new milled form. That wonderful man, Sir Isaac Newton, was made
Master of the Tower Mint, and the number of mills being increased
by his advice, in a few months, owing to his energy, a time of great
commercial prosperity ensued. In 1810 the new Office of the Mint was
opened on Little Tower Hill, where it still remains.
[Illustration: _The Beauchamp Tower_]
The following is taken from Mr Hocking’s article on the Tower Mint:—
“On the morning of December 20th, 1798, James Turnbull, one Dalton,
and two other men were engaged in the press-room swinging the fly of
the screw-press, while Mr Finch, one of the manager’s apprentices, fed
the press with gold blank pieces, which were struck into guineas. At
nine o’clock Mr Finch sent the men to their breakfast. They all four
went out; but Dalton and Turnbull returned almost directly. And while
the latter held the door, Turnbull drew a pistol and advanced upon Mr
Finch, demanding the key of the closet where the newly-coined guineas
were kept. Finch, paralyzed with fear and surprise, yielded it up. An
old gentleman who was in the room expostulated; but both were forced
into a sort of passage or large cupboard and locked in. Turnbull then
helped himself to the guineas, and managed to get off with no less
than 2308. For nine days he effectually concealed himself in the
neighbourhood, and then, while endeavouring to escape to France, was
apprehended. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. In his
defence he cleared Dalton from any willing complicity in the crime.”
Turnbull was executed at the Old Bailey.
CHAPTER XVIII
GEORGE I.
With George the First the Whigs came into power, and soon after the new
King’s accession, Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, and the former Lord
Treasurer, was sent to the Tower on the charge of having advised the
French King as to the best means for capturing the town of Tournai.
Harley had resigned his Treasurer’s staff three days before Queen
Anne’s death, and on the 10th of June 1715, he was impeached by the
Commons, of whom only a short time before he had been the idol, and
committed to the Tower. His courage never wavered, although he was
left to languish for two years in the fortress, and at length, on
petitioning to be tried, he was acquitted in July 1717. He died seven
years later, aged sixty-two. Lord Powis and Sir William Wyndham soon
followed Lord Oxford to the Tower, but the latter was very shortly
after set at liberty without even undergoing a trial. Wyndham was
member for the county of Somerset from 1708 until his death in 1740; he
had been Secretary of State for War and Chancellor of the Exchequer to
Queen Anne, as well as Master of the Buckhounds. His talents and his
eloquence made him one of the foremost men of that brilliant age, and
Pope sang his praises:
“How can I Pult’ney, Chesterfield forget,
While Roman spirit charms, and Attic wit;
Or Wyndham, just to freedom and the throne,
The Master of his passions and our own?”
Another distinguished prisoner at this time in the Tower was George
Granville, Lord Lansdowne of Bideford. Descended from that race of
heroes, the Grenvilles of the West, of whom Admiral Sir Richard of the
_Revenge_ was the most famous, and grandson of Sir Bevil Grenville,
killed at the Battle of Lansdowne, George Granville belonged by race
and conviction to the party of the Stuarts, and, too proud to seek
safety in flight, as did so many of his contemporaries at the accession
of the House of Hanover, he remained in England, and even protested
from his place in the House of Lords against the Bill for attainting
Ormonde and Bolingbroke. Strongly suspected of favouring the cause of
James Stuart, Lansdowne was accused of having taken part in a plot
for raising an insurrection in the West Country, where his name was a
pillar of strength, “being possessed,” as Lord Bolingbroke said, “now
with the same political phrenzy for the Pretender as he had in his
youth for his father.” The plot was discovered, and at the close of
September 1715, Lansdowne and his wife were committed to the Tower and
kept there in close confinement until all danger of insurrection had
passed away, and until the rising in the North had been crushed. In
Queen Anne’s time, Lansdowne had been sung as
“Trevanion and Granville as sound as a bell
For the Queen and the Church and Sacheverell.”
[Illustration: _View of the Tower in the time of George I_]
In 1710 he had succeeded Walpole as Minister for War, but he prided
himself more upon his literary gifts than upon those of his birth and
rank, or upon his political eminence. He wrote poetry, sad stuff, and
plays which were worse than his poems, for in these he out-Wycherlyed
Wycherley. The plays of the days of the Restoration not excepted, there
is nothing more indecent in theatrical literature than Granville’s “The
Old Gallant.”
The famous rising in Scotland in 1715 in favour of the son of James
II., the Chevalier de St George, or, as his adherents called him,
James the Third, brought many of the leaders of that ill-starred
rebellion to the Tower, and some to the block. Of the latter the
young Earl of Derwentwater was the most conspicuous. James Radcliffe,
Lord Derwentwater, was the only Englishman of high birth who took up
arms for the Jacobite cause in this rebellion of 1715. He appears to
have been a youth of high merit, and was only twenty-six when he was
persuaded to throw life and fortune on the side of the Chevalier. One
who knew him writes “that he was a man formed by nature to be generally
beloved.” His connection with the Stuarts was possibly brought about by
the fact that his mother, Mary Tudor, was a natural daughter of Charles
II., and also that he was a Catholic by birth. He was a very wealthy
landowner, with vast estates, which, after his execution, were given to
Greenwich Hospital. They brought him in, including the mines, between
thirty and forty thousand pounds a year, a great fortune in those days.
His home, from which he derived his title, was situated in the most
beautiful of the English lakes, the lovely Lake of Derwentwater in
Cumberland, and was called Lord’s Island.
Derwentwater had been taken prisoner at Preston, with six Scotch
noblemen, William Maxwell, Earl of Nithsdale, Robert Dalziel, Earl
of Carnwath, George Seton, Lord Wintoun, William Gordon, Lord
Kenmure, William Murray, Earl of Nairn, and William Widdrington, Lord
Widdrington. They were brought up to London with their arms tied behind
them, their horses led by soldiers, and preceded by drums and music, in
a kind of trumpery triumph, and imprisoned in the Tower. Much interest
was made on their behalf in both Houses of Parliament; in the Commons,
Richard Steele pleaded for them, and in the Lords, a motion for reading
the petition presented to both Houses, praying the King to show mercy
to the prisoners, had only been carried against the Ministry by a
majority of nine. An address was presented to George the First, praying
him to “reprieve such of the condemned lords as deserved mercy.” To
this petition George, or rather, his Prime Minister, Robert Walpole,
answered that the King would act as he thought most consistent for
the dignity of the Crown and the safety of the people, thus virtually
rejecting the address. Many of those who had places in the Government
and had voted against the Ministry were dismissed from their offices.
[Illustration: _Window in the Cradle Tower_]
The trial of the Jacobite lords commenced on the 9th of February, and
lasted ten days. Wintoun, the only one of the prisoners who pleaded
“not guilty,” was the only one pardoned; the others were condemned to
death, Lord Cowper, the Lord High Steward, pronouncing sentence on the
29th of February as follows:—“And now, my Lords, nothing remains but
that I pronounce upon you, and sorry I am that it falls to my lot to
do it, that terrible sentence of the law, which must be the same that
is usually given against the meanest offenders in the like kind. The
most ignominious and painful parts of it are usually remitted by the
grace of the Crown, to persons of your quality; but the law in this
case being deaf to all distinction of persons, requires that I should
pronounce, and accordingly it is adjudged by this Court, ‘That you,
James, Earl of Derwentwater, William, Lord Widdrington, William, Earl
of Nithsdale, Robert, Earl of Carnwath, William, Viscount Kenmure, and
William, Lord Nairne, and every of you, return to the prison of the
Tower, from whence you came, and thence you must be drawn to the place
of execution; when you come there, you must be hang’d by the neck, but
not till you be dead; for you must be cut down alive; then your bowels
must be taken out, and burnt before your face; then your heads must
be severed from your bodies, and your bodies divided each into four
quarters; and these must be at the King’s disposal. And God Almighty be
merciful to your souls!’”
Widdrington and Carnwath were released by the Act of Grace in 1717,
and Lord Nairne was subsequently pardoned, the four remaining noblemen
being left to die.
At ten o’clock in the morning of the 24th of February, Derwentwater
and Kenmure were brought out of the Tower in a coach and were driven
to a house known as the Transport Office, on Tower Hill, facing the
scaffold, which was draped in black cloth; there they remained whilst
the final preparations for their execution were being carried out.
The first to be led out was young Lord Derwentwater; as he mounted the
scaffold steps his face was seen to be blanched, but beyond this he
showed no other sign of emotion in that supreme moment, and when he
spoke to the people it was with a firm voice and a composed manner.
After praying for some time he rose from his knees and read a paper
in which he declared himself a faithful subject of the Chevalier St
George, whom he said he regarded as his rightful King. There was some
roughness upon the surface of the block, which Derwentwater perceiving,
he bade the executioner plane it smooth with the axe. He then took off
his coat and waistcoat, telling the headsman to look afterwards in the
pockets, where he should find some money for himself to pay him for
his trouble, adding that the signal for the blow would be when for the
third time he repeated the words, “Lord Jesus, receive my soul,” by
stretching out his arms. He was killed at one stroke. Thus perished in
his twenty-eighth year a man who was loved by all who knew him, rich
and poor, and whose memory still lingers in his beautiful northern lake
country in many an old song and ballad.
There is a curious legend connected with Derwentwater’s death to
the effect that after his execution, the peasantry rose and drove
Lady Derwentwater from Lord’s Island, believing that it was at her
instigation that her husband had joined the Jacobite rising; a ravine
near their old home, through which Lady Derwentwater is supposed to
have fled, still goes by the name of the “Lady’s Rake.” On the night
of his execution a brilliant “aurora borealis” lighted the northern
skies of Derwentwater, which the people in that district interpreted
as being a signal of Heaven’s displeasure at the death of the popular
young Earl; and the aurora is still called in the North, “Lord
Derwentwater’s Lights.”
[Illustration: _The Earl of Derwentwater._
(_From a Contemporary Engraving._)]
After the scaffold had been cleaned, and every mark of the first
execution removed, Lord Kenmure was brought out from the house in
which he had waited whilst Derwentwater was being put to death, and
came on the scaffold accompanied by his son, two clergymen, and some
other friends. Kenmure, unlike Derwentwater, belonged to the Church of
England. He made no formal speech, but expressed his sorrow at having
pleaded guilty. He told the executioner that he should give him no
signal, but that he was to strike the second time he placed his head
upon the block. It required two blows of the axe to kill him.
Kenmure had married the sister of Robert, Earl of Carnwath, who was
one of his fellow-prisoners, but who was respited and pardoned. By
judicious management, Lady Kenmure was able to save a remnant out of
the forfeited estates of her husband, and, later on, George the First
returned part of the family estates to her and her children.
Some of the crowd who had gone to Tower Hill that morning in the
hope of seeing three of the Jacobite lords beheaded, must have
been surprised when only two appeared; the third doomed man, Lord
Nithsdale, had made his escape from the Tower a few hours before his
fellow-captives were led out to die.
Lord Nithsdale’s escape on the eve of his execution reads more like
a romance than sober history. But it was his wife who made the name
famous for all time by her devotion and undaunted courage. All hope
seemed lost after the Address for Mercy had been rejected by the King,
and all idea of respite had indeed been abandoned except by the brave
Lady Nithsdale, who was the daughter of William, Marquis of Powis, and
was born about the year 1690. On hearing of the capture of her husband
at Preston, Lady Nithsdale had ridden up to London from their home,
Torreglas, in Dumfriesshire, through the bitter winter weather, and,
although not a strong woman, had endured all the hardships of the long
journey and the anguish of anxiety regarding her husband, with heroic
courage.
Before leaving Torreglas she had buried all the most important family
records in the garden. Accompanied by her faithful Welsh maid, Evans,
and a groom, she rode to Newcastle, and thence by public stage to York,
where the snow lay so thick that no mail-coach could leave the city for
the south. Nothing daunted, Lady Nithsdale rode all the way to London.
On her arrival in the capital, her first object was to intercede
for her husband with the King. She went to St James’s Palace, where
George was holding a drawing-room, and sat waiting for him in the long
corridor on the first floor, through which the King would pass after
leaving his room before entering the state rooms. Lady Nithsdale had
never seen George the First, and in order to make no mistake, she had
brought a friend, a Mrs Morgan, who knew the King by sight. When George
appeared, “I threw myself,” Lady Nithsdale writes, “at his feet, and
told him in French that I was the unfortunate Countess of Nithsdale,
that he might not pretend to be ignorant of my person. But seeing that
he wanted to go off without taking my petition, I caught hold of the
skirt of his coat, that he might stop and hear me. He endeavoured to
escape out of my hands, but I kept such strong hold, that he dragged
me on my knees, from the middle of the room to the very door of the
drawing-room. At last one of the Blue Ribands who attended his Majesty
took me round the waist, while another wrested the coat from my hands.
The petition, which I had endeavoured to thrust into his pocket, fell
to the ground in the scuffle, and I almost fainted away from grief and
disappointment.”
There was no time to be lost, and after this last chance of obtaining
a hearing from King George had failed, Lady Nithsdale knew that she,
and she alone, could save her husband’s life. To this almost hopeless
task she now devoted all her mind and all her courage.
Returning to the Tower, where she had already been on several
occasions, she pretended to be the bearer of good news. On this
occasion she only remained long enough to tell Lord Nithsdale the
plan she had formed for effecting his deliverance, after which she
returned to her lodgings in Drury Lane. There she confided her plan
to her landlady, a worthy soul, named Mills, and prevailed upon her
to accompany her to the Tower, together with Mrs Morgan, after some
arrangement had been made in their costumes, to which “their surprise
and astonishment made them consent,” writes Lady Nithsdale, “without
thinking of the consequences.” On their way to the fortress Lady
Nithsdale entered into the details of her plan. Mrs Morgan was to wear
a dress belonging to Mrs Mills over her own clothes, and in this dress
Lady Nithsdale would disguise her husband, and so transformed, he could
make his way out of the Tower. It was a bold scheme, and was admirably
carried out in every detail.
On arriving at the Governor’s, now the King’s, House, where Lord
Nithsdale was imprisoned, Lady Nithsdale was only allowed to bring one
friend in at a time, and first introduced Mrs Morgan, a friend, she
said, of her husband, who had come to bid him farewell. Mrs Morgan,
when she had come into the prisoner’s room, took off the outer dress
she was wearing over her own, and into this Lord Nithsdale was duly
introduced. Then Lady Nithsdale asked Mrs Morgan to go out and bring in
her maid Evans. “I despatched her safe,” she writes, “and went partly
downstairs to meet Mrs Mills, who held her handkerchief to her face, as
was natural for a person going to take a last leave of a friend before
his execution; and I desired her to do this that my lord might go out
in the same manner. Her eyebrows were inclined to be sandy, and as
my lord’s were dark and thick, I had prepared some paint to disguise
him. I had also got an artificial headdress of the same coloured hair
as hers, and rouged his face and cheeks, to conceal his beard which
he had not had time to shave. All this provision I had before left in
the Tower. The poor guards, whom my slight liberality the day before
had endeared me to, let me go out quietly with my company, and were
not so strictly on the watch as they usually had been, and the more
so, as they were persuaded, from what I had told them the day before,
that the prisoners would obtain their pardon. I made Mrs Mills take off
her own hood, and put on that which I had brought for her. I then took
her by the hand, and led her out of my lord’s chamber; and in passing
through the next room, in which were several people, with all the
concern imaginable, I said, ‘My dear Mrs Catherine, go in all haste,
and send me my waiting-maid; she certainly cannot reflect how late
it is. I am to present my petition to-night, and if I let slip this
opportunity, I am undone, for to-morrow it is too late. Hasten her as
much as possible, for I shall be on thorns till she comes.’ Everybody
in the room, who were chiefly the guards’ wives and daughters, seemed
to compassionate me exceedingly, and the sentinel officiously opened
me the door. When I had seen her safe out, I returned to my lord, and
finished dressing him. I had taken care that Mrs Mills did not go out
crying, as she came in, that my lord might better pass for the lady
who came in crying and afflicted; and the more so that as he had the
same dress that she wore. When I had almost finished dressing my lord,
I perceived it was growing dark, and was afraid that the light of the
candle might betray us, so I resolved to set off. I went out leading
him by the hand, whilst he held his handkerchief to his eyes. I spoke
to him in the most piteous and afflicted tone, bewailing the negligence
of my maid Evans, who had ruined me by her delay. Then I said, ‘My
dear Mrs Betty, for the love of God, run quickly and bring her with
you; you know my lodging, and if ever you made despatch in your life,
do it at present; I am almost distracted with this disappointment.’ The
guards opened the door, and I went downstairs with him, still conjuring
him to make all possible dispatch. As soon as he had cleared the door,
I made him walk before me, for fear the sentinel should take notice
of his walk, but I continued to press him to make all the despatch
he possibly could. At the bottom of the stairs I met my dear Evans,
into whose hands I confided him. I had before engaged Mr Mills to be
in readiness before the Tower, to conduct him to some place of safety
in case we succeeded. He looked upon the affair as so very improbable
to succeed, that his astonishment, when he saw us, threw him into
such a consternation, that he was almost out of himself, which, Evans
perceiving, with the greatest presence of mind, without telling Lord
Nithsdale anything, lest he should mistrust them, conducted him to some
of her own friends on whom she could rely, and so secured him, without
which we certainly should have been undone. When she had conducted him,
and left him with them, she returned to Mr Mills, who by this time
recovered himself from his astonishment. They went home together, and
having found a place of security, brought Lord Nithsdale to it. In the
meantime, as I had pretended to have sent the young lady on a message,
I was obliged to return upstairs and go back to my lord’s room in
the same feigned anxiety of being too late, so that everybody seemed
sincerely to sympathise in my distress. When I was in the room I talked
as if he had been really present. I answered my own questions in my
lord’s voice, as nearly as I could imitate it, and walked up and down
as if we were conversing together, till I thought they had time enough
thoroughly to clear themselves of the guards. I then thought proper to
make off also. I opened the door and stood half in it, that those in
the outward chamber might hear what I said, but held it so close that
they could not look in. I bade my lord formal farewell for the night,
and added, that something more than usual must have happened to make
Evans negligent, on this important occasion, who had always been so
punctual in the smallest trifles; that I saw no other remedy than to
go in person; that if the Tower was then open, when I had finished my
business, I would return that night; but that he might be assured I
would be with him as early in the morning as I could gain admittance
into the Tower, and I flattered myself I should bring more favourable
news. Then, before I shut the door, I pulled through the string of the
latch, so that it could only be opened on the inside. I then shut it
with some degree of force, that I might be sure of its being well shut.
I said to the servant, as I passed by (who was ignorant of the whole
transaction), that he need not carry in candles to his master, till my
lord sent for them, as he desired to finish some prayers first.” What
an admirable wife was Lady Nithsdale, and what a devoted maid to her
was her “dear Evans.”
[Illustration: _The Tower from Tower Hill_]
Lord Nithsdale got safely out of London in the suite of the Venetian
Ambassador,—whose coach and six were sent some days after his escape to
Dover,—disguised in the livery of one of the Ambassador’s footmen. From
Dover he succeeded in getting to Calais, and later on to Rome.
Although Lady Nithsdale had succeeded in rescuing her lord from the
scaffold, her self-devotion did not end there, her task, she thought,
was still incomplete. In spite of the personal peril she herself ran if
found in England or over the border, for the King was mightily annoyed
at the ruse by which she had snatched her husband from the jaws of
death, Lady Nithsdale determined to protect her son’s estates, which,
owing to the attainder of his father, were now Government property. Her
first step was to recover the papers she had hidden in the garden at
Torreglas. “As I had hazarded my life for the father,” she writes, “I
would not do less than hazard it for the son.” Attended by the faithful
Evans and her groom, who had accompanied her upon the memorable ride
from York to London, Lady Nithsdale returned to Dumfriesshire. Having
arrived safely at Torreglas, she put a brave face upon her errand, and
invited her neighbours to come and see her as if she had been sent by
the Government itself. On the night before these invitations were due,
this most astute and courageous lady dug up the family papers in the
garden, sending them off at once to a place of safety in the charge of
a trusty retainer. Before day broke she had again started on her return
journey to the south, and while the Dumfries justices were laying their
wise heads together, and consulting whether they should or should not
give orders for the seizure of Lady Nithsdale, she had put many miles
between herself and them. When the good folk of Dumfries arrived at
Torreglas, they found that the lady they sought in the name of the law
had given them the slip.
It is pleasant to picture the impotent rage of George Rex when he heard
of this second defiance of his kingly authority; he declared that Lady
Nithsdale did whatever she pleased in spite of him, and that she had
given him more trouble than any other woman in the whole of Europe.
Lady Nithsdale joined her husband in Rome, where they lived many years
together, he dying in 1749, and his devoted wife following him to the
grave soon afterwards. She rests in the beautiful Fitzalan Chapel,
near Arundel Castle. One hopes that the faithful Welsh maid, Evans,
was with them till the end. According to Lord de Ros, Lady Nithsdale’s
portrait, painted by Godfrey Kneller, still hangs in her Scottish home.
“Her hair,” he says, “is bright brown, slightly powdered; with large
soft eyes, regular features, and a fair complexion. Her soft expression
and delicate appearance give little indication of the strength of mind
and courage she displayed. Her dress is blue silk, with a border of
cambric, and over it a cloak of brown silk.”
Another of the Jacobite lords, Wintoun, also escaped from the Tower.
Little is known regarding the manner in which he broke his prison and
thus cheated the headsman, but it is supposed that he managed to saw
through the bars of his window, having previously bribed his gaoler
to let him be free and undisturbed in his work of filing the iron. In
his case there were no romantic details, or, if there were any, they
have not come down to us. Of Lord Wintoun’s escape, Lord de Ros writes:
“Being well seconded by friends of the cause in London, he was conveyed
safely to the Continent.”
Another large batch of prisoners who were suspected of being Jacobites
came into the Tower in the year 1722, the most notable of them being
Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, Lords
North, Orrery, and Grey, Thomas Layer Corkran, Christopher Layer, and
an Irish clergyman named Kelly. Of these, the last was the only one
executed on the charge of high treason.
The plot in which these persons of varying degrees were accused of
being implicated, was to seize the Tower, and raise a rebellion in
favour of the Chevalier, an idea which goes to show that the old
fortress was even as late as the days of our first Hanoverian sovereign
regarded as an essential to the assumption of the supreme power in
the country. Atterbury was attainted and banished, after undergoing a
strict imprisonment, which he endured with much patience from the 24th
of August 1722, until the 18th of January in the following year.
“How pleasing Atterbury’s softer hour;
How shines his soul unconquered in the Tower,”
as Pope has sung it. Atterbury never returned to England, dying after
eight years of exile in France.
In 1724 the Earl of Suffolk was committed to the Tower “for
granting protection in breach of the standing orders of the House of
Lords,” whatever that crime may have been, and in the following year
Lord Chancellor Macclesfield was imprisoned there “for venality and
corruption in the discharge of his office.”
[Illustration: _Middle Gate_]
CHAPTER XIX
GEORGE II.
Before coming to the year 1746, when the old fortress was the scene of
the imprisonment and death of the Jacobite leaders of the rebellion of
1745, it will be necessary to enter at some length into the treatment
of some obscure Scotch prisoners who, shortly before the great outbreak
in Scotland, were put to death in the Tower. The story of the deaths of
these unfortunate men has never appeared in any account of the Tower
and its prisoners, and I am therefore all the more anxious to give
as full an account as I have been able to find of that event. It was
owing to the kindness of Mr Gardiner, who placed in my hands a pamphlet
with illustrations of the time, describing the fate of the brothers
Macpherson and Shaw, that I became aware of this tragic story.[6]
This triple execution, which, as I have said, took place shortly
before the Jacobite rising in Scotland in the “’45,” may have had
something to do with the strong feeling against the English Government
which prevailed in the North; it was certainly one of those acts by
which governments make themselves and their ministers odious. And the
execution on Tower Green in 1744 may well have caused the unpopularity,
not to say hatred, amongst the Scotch of the English Government.
The only reference I have been able to find to this event are two
short passages in Hume and Smollett’s “History of England” (vol. xi.
page 164), and the other in a letter from Horace Walpole to Sir Horace
Mann (“Walpole’s Letters,” vol. i., Letter LXXIV.).
[Illustration: _Published according to Act of Parliament 1753_
_A North West View of the Tower of London._ | _Vue du coté du
Nord-ouest de la Tour de Londres._]
“King George was in Germany,” writes Hume, “the Duke of Cumberland, at
the head of the British army, was employed in Flanders, and great part
of the Highlanders were keen for insurrection; their natural feelings
were, on this occasion, stimulated by the suggestion of revenge. At
the beginning of the war, a regiment of those people had been formed
and transported with the rest of the British troops to Flanders.
Before they were embarked, a number of them deserted with their arms,
on pretence that they had been decoyed into the service by promises
and assurances that they should never be sent abroad; and this was
really the case. They were overtaken by a body of horse, persuaded to
submit, brought back to London, pinioned like malefactors, and tried
for desertion; three were shot to death _in terrorem_, and the rest
were sent to the plantations. Those who suffered were persons of some
consequence in their own country, and their fate was deeply resented by
the clans to which they belonged. It was considered a national outrage,
and the Highlanders, who are naturally vindictive, waited impatiently
for an opportunity of vengeance.”
So far, the historian upon the subject. This is the letter-writer’s
account of the matter. “We are,” writes Walpole to Mann on the 19th
May 1743, “in more confusion than we care to own. There lately came
up a highland regiment from Scotland to be sent abroad. One heard of
nothing but their good discipline and quiet disposition. When the day
came for their going to the water-side, one hundred and nine of them
mutinied, and marched away in a body. They did not care to go to where
it would be equivocal for what King they fought. Three companies of
dragoons are sent after them. If you happen to hear of any rising,
don’t be surprised—I shall not, I assure you. Sir Robert Monroe, their
Lieutenant-Colonel, before their leaving Scotland, asked some of the
Ministry: ‘But suppose there should be any rebellion in Scotland, what
shall we do for these eight hundred men?’ it was answered, ‘Why, there
would be eight hundred fewer rebels there.’”
It seems to have been a scandalous act on the part of the Government
to have drafted these Scottish soldiers to Flanders immediately upon
their arrival in London, after they had promised that they should not
be taken on foreign service. And the cruelly harsh treatment meted out
to the deserters, and the execution of the three men, must have stirred
up a strong feeling of hatred in Scotland against George the Second’s
Government—a hatred which burst into open flame in the “’45.”
The next event in the history of the Tower is the imprisonment and
execution of the Scotch Jacobite lords after the rebellion of 1745. For
more than a score of years the old fortress had been free of political
prisoners, and Tower Hill had seen no more executions. The blood of the
“Rebel Lords,” as they were called, was the last that dyed the scaffold
in England. These “Rebel Lords” were the Marquis of Tullibardine, the
Earl of Cromarty, and Lords Kilmarnock and Balmerino. Tullibardine
had already taken up arms for the cause of James in 1715, and when he
was taken prisoner after the “’45,” was a broken-down, elderly man
whose life was drawing to a close, and who was so feeble that, when
the standard of Prince Charles was unfurled at Glenfinnan, he had to
be supported by men upon either side whilst he held the flagstaff. His
father, the Duke of Athol, had obtained leave from George I. to will
his title and estates to his second surviving son, James, who succeeded
to the dukedom in 1729. Tullibardine had meanwhile fled to France, but
in 1719 made a desperate attempt to raise the clans at Kinsale. He was
defeated by General Wightmore at Glenshiel, and a proclamation was
issued for his apprehension, together with the Earl Marischal and
the Earl of Seaforth. A reward of two thousand pounds was promised for
the capture of any of these noblemen. During the next twenty-six years
Tullibardine’s life was passed in France. On the 25th of July 1745,
he landed with Prince Charles at Borodale, and, as it has been said,
it was he who unfurled the Prince’s standard on the 19th of August at
Glenfinnan.
[Illustration: _Scotch Prisoners entering the Tower 1742_]
After the defeat of the Pretender’s forces at Culloden, Tullibardine
fled to Mull, but he was too broken in health even to attempt escape
from the English troops sent out for his capture, and finally
surrendered himself to Buchanan of Drumskill. Taken first to Dumbarton
Castle, and then to Edinburgh, he was sent from the latter place to
London by sea. On his arrival at the Tower, Tullibardine was in an
almost dying state, and Lord Cornwallis, the Governor, was allowed
by the following order, to send a Dr Wilmott to attend “the person
formerly called Marquis of Tullibardine, a prisoner in your custody,
from time to time as he shall desire during his indisposition, provided
the same to be in the presence of you or the Lieutenant.” On the 9th
of July this staunch Cavalier died in the Tower, thus escaping a
public execution; he was only fifty-eight years old. He was buried in
St Peter’s Chapel. William, Earl of Kilmarnock, who was head of the
family of Errol, had fought at Culloden, and was taken prisoner with
Lord Balmerino. These, together with the Earl of Cromarty, who had
been captured at the castle of Dunrobin, in Sutherland, were brought
to London by sea, the warrant which committed them to the Tower being
dated the 28th of July.
The following letter from Mrs Osborn, the famous Dorothy Osborn’s
great-niece by marriage, and a daughter of the first Lord Torrington,
and wife of John Osborn, of Chicksands, in Bedfordshire, to her son,
Sir Danvers Osborn, dated 9th December 1745, gives an interesting
picture of the state of public feeling. She writes of the “most
shameful panick” which had seized London on the news of the advance
of the Scottish army. People were hurrying from their country houses
for shelter in the capital, and bringing their plate with them wherever
they could. This “panick” lasted for four days, and then came the news
of the retreat from Derby northwards, and people went home again. She
says: “The Prisoners come to the Tower a fryday, ’tis not yet clear if
the Pretender’s brother is there. They have strong suspicion still, but
the Ministry don’t choose to talk about it.” In the following June,
Mrs Osborn writes from Kensington: “’Tis thought ’twill be August
before the Lords can be try’d. After some forms are past, the Peers
must have 20 days notice. Lady Cromarty is in town, has been at the
Tower to enquire after her lord. She was at Williamson’s, and cryd most
bitterly, but no one is suffered so much as to look up at the windows.
They were all brought into Williamson’s, and from there one by one
conducted to their apartments. No one knows where the other is, and
they are kept very strict, since the King of France has ordered a most
insolent Letter, and takes himself to be King of England to forbid us
punishing the Rebels. Is the Prelates got off or not?” asks Mrs Osborn,
adding rather cold-bloodedly: “I wish they could have been beheaded at
Edinburgh, and not make such a long piece of work as the forms will do
here.”
The trial of these “Rebel Lords” took place at Westminster Hall
with much ceremonial. The Lord High Steward, Philip Yorke, Earl
of Hardwicke, arrived from Ormond Street, attended by a train of
gentlemen-at-arms, Black Rod and Garter King at Arms supporting him.
He was received by the guard in Old Palace Yard, “by drums beating as
to the Royal family.” The peers were in their robes, and the grand old
Hall was filled to its utmost limits with a vast crowd of spectators.
Horace Walpole, writing to Mann, says: “I am this moment come from the
conclusion of the greatest and most melancholy scene I ever saw; you
will easily guess it was the trial of the rebel Lords. As it was the
most interesting sight, it was the most solemn and fine. A coronation
is a puppet show, and all the splendours of it idle; but this sight
at once feasted one’s eyes, and engaged all one’s passions. It began
last Monday; the three parts of Westminster Hall were enclosed with
galleries, and hung with scarlet; and the whole ceremony was conducted
with the most awful solemnity and decency, except in the one point
of leaving the prisoners at the bar amidst the idle curiosity of the
crowd, and even with the witnesses who had sworn against them, while
the Lords adjourned to their own house to consult. No part of the
Royal Family was there, which was a proper regard for the unhappy
men, who were become their victims. One hundred and thirty-nine Lords
were present, and made a noble sight on their benches, frequent
and full. The Chancellor was Lord High Steward, but though a most
comely personage with a fine voice, his behaviour was mean, curiously
searching for occasion to bow to the Minister (Henry Pelham) that is no
Peer, and consequently applying to the other Ministers in a manner for
their orders: and not even ready at the ceremonial. To the prisoners
he was peevish; and instead of keeping to the humane dignity of the
law of England, whose character it is to point out favour to the
criminal, he crossed them, and almost scolded at any offer they made
towards defence. Lord Kilmarnock is past forty, but looks younger. He
is tall and slender, with an extremely fine person; his behaviour a
most just mixture between dignity and submission; if in anything to be
reprehended, a little affected, and his hair too exactly dressed for
a man in his situation. But when I say this, it is not to find fault,
but to show how little fault there is to be found. For Lord Balmerino,
he is the most natural, brave old fellow I ever saw; the lightest
intrepidity, even to indifference. At the bar he behaved like a soldier
and a man; in the intervals of form with carelessness and humour. He
pressed extremely to have his wife, his pretty Peggy, with him in the
Tower. When they were brought from the Tower in separate coaches, there
was some dispute in which the axe must go, old Balmerino cried, ‘Come,
come, put it with me!’ At the bar he played with his fingers upon the
axe, while he talked with the gentleman gaoler; and one day, somebody
coming up to listen, he took the blade and held it like a fan between
their faces. During the trial a little boy was near him, but not tall
enough to see, he made room for the child, and placed him near himself.
When the trial began, the two Earls (Kilmarnock and Cromarty) pleaded
guilty, Balmerino not guilty, saying he would prove his not being at
the taking of the Castle of Carlisle, as was said in the indictment.
Then the King’s Counsel opened, and Serjeant Skinner pronounced the
most absurd speech imaginable. Then some witnesses were examined,
whom afterwards the old hero shook cordially by the hand. The Lords
withdrew to their house, and returning, demanded of the judges whether,
one point not being proved, though all the rest were, the indictment
was false? to which they unanimously answered in the negative. Then
the Lord Steward asked the Peers severally whether Lord Balmerino
was guilty. All said, ‘Guilty upon honour,’ and then adjourned, the
prisoner having begged pardon for giving them so much trouble. On
Wednesday the prisoners were again brought to Westminster Hall, at
about eleven o’clock, to receive sentence; and being asked what they
had to say, Lord Kilmarnock, with a fine voice, read a very fine
speech, confessing the extent of his crime, but offering his principles
as some alleviation.”
The executions were fixed to take place on the 18th of August, the
news being broken to Lord Kilmarnock by his friend, Mr J. Foster,
a clergyman. When old Balmerino was told by the Lieutenant of the
Tower, General Williamson, of the fatal day, he was at dinner with
his wife (Margaret, daughter of Captain Chalmers). “Lady Balmerino,”
writes Williamson, “being very much surprised, he desired her not
to be concerned at it, his lady seemed very disconsolate, and rose
immediately from table, on which he started from his chair, and said
‘Pray, my Lady, sit down, for it shall not spoil your dinner.’ ‘The
brave old fellow,’ as Walpole calls Lord Balmerino, and with justice,
turned upon the General, ‘Lieutenant,’ he said, ‘with your damned
warrant you have spoiled my Lady’s dinner.’”
The following account of the execution of the Jacobite leaders is taken
from the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for the month of August 1745, and
appears to have been the most accurate and the most detailed:—
At six o’clock a troop of lifeguards, and 1000 of the
footguards—being fifteen men out of each company, marched from the
parade in St James’s park thro’ the city to Tower-hill, to attend
the execution of the Earl of Kilmarnock and the Lord Balmerino,
and being arrived there were posted in lines from the Tower to
the scaffold, and all around it. About 8 o’clock the Sheriffs of
London, and their under sheriffs and their officers, _viz._ six
sergeants at mace, six yeomen, and the executioner, met at the
Mitre Tavern in Fenchurch Street, where they breakfasted, and
went from thence to the house, lately the Transport Office, on
Tower-hill near Catherine’s Court, hired by them for the reception
of the said lords, before they should be conducted to the scaffold
which was erected about thirty yards from the said house.
At ten o’clock the block was fixed on the stage and covered with
black cloth, and several sacks of sawdust up to strew on it;
soon after their coffins were brought, covered with black cloth,
ornamented with gilt nails, etc. On the Earl of Kilmarnock’s
was a plate with this inscription, “Guliemus Come de Kilmarnock
decollatur 18 Augusti 1746. Etat suae 42,” with an Earl’s coronet
over it, and six coronets over the six handles; and on Lord
Balmerino’s, was a plate with this inscription, “Arthurus Dominus
de Balmerino decollatur 18 Augusti 1746. Etat suae 58,” with a
baron’s coronet over it, and six others over the six handles. At a
quarter after ten the Sheriffs went in procession to the outward
gate of the Tower, and after knocking at it some time, a warder
within asked, “Who’s there?” The officer without replied, “The
sheriffs of London and Middlesex.” The warder then asked, “What
do they want?” The officer answered, “The bodies of William, Earl
of Kilmarnock, and Arthur, Lord Balmerino,” upon which the warder
within said, “I will go and inform the Lieutenant of the Tower,”
and in about ten minutes the Lieutenant of the Tower with the Earl
of Kilmarnock, and Major White with Lord Balmerino, guarded by
several of the warders, came to the gate; the prisoners were then
delivered to the Sheriffs who gave proper receipt for their bodies
to the Lieutenant, who as usual said, “God bless King George!”
to which the Earl of Balmerino assented by a bow, and the Lord
Balmerino said, “God bless King J——s.” Lord Kilmarnock had met Lord
Balmerino at the foot of the first stairs, he embraced him, who
said to him, “My lord, I am heartily sorry to have your company in
this expedition.” Soon after the procession, moving in a slow and
solemn manner, appeared in the following order:—
1. The Constable of the Tower.
2. The Knight Marshal’s men and Tipsters.
3. The Sheriffs’ Officers.
4. The Sheriffs, the prisoners, and their chaplains. Mr Sheriff
Blachford walking with the Earl of Kilmarnock, and Mr Sheriff
Cockayne with the Lord Balmerino.
5. The Tower Warders.
6. A guard of musqueteers.
7. The two hearses and a mourning coach.
When the procession had passed through the lines within the area
of the circle formed by the guards, the passage was closed, and
the troops of horse who were in the rear of the foot in the lines
wheeled off, and drew five feet deep behind the foot, on the south
side of the hill facing the scaffold. The lords were conducted into
separate apartments in the house, facing the steps of the scaffold;
their friends being admitted to them. The Earl of Kilmarnock was
attended by the Rev. Mr Foster, a dissenting minister, and the Rev.
Mr Hume, a near relative of the Earl of Hume; and the chaplain
of the Tower, and another clergyman of the Church of England,
accompanied Lord Balmerino; who on entering the door of the house,
hearing several of the spectators ask eagerly “Which is Lord
Balmerino?” answered smiling, “I am Lord Balmerino, gentlemen, at
your service.” The parlour and passage of the house, the rails
enclosing the way thence to the scaffold, and the rails about
it, were all hung with black at the sheriff’s expense. The Lord
Kilmarnock in the apartment allotted to him, spent about an hour
at his devotions with Mr Foster, who assisted him with prayer and
exhortation. After which Lord Balmerino pursuant to his request,
being admitted to confer with the Earl, first thank’d him for the
favour, and then ask’d, if his lordship knew of any order signed by
the Prince (meaning the Pretender’s son) to give no quarter at the
battle of Culloden! And the Earl answering No, the Lord Balmerino
added, nor I neither, and therefore it seems to be an invention to
justify their own murders! The Earl replied he did not think this
a fair inference, because he was informed, after he was prisoner
at Inverness, by several officers, that such an order, signed by
George Murray, was in the Duke’s custody; “George Murray!” said
Lord Balmerino, “then they should not charge it on the Prince!”
Then he took his leave, embracing Lord Kilmarnock, with the same
kind of noble and generous compliments, as he had used before,
“My dear Lord Kilmarnock, I am only sorry that I cannot pay the
reckoning alone; once more, farewell for ever!” His persone was
tall and graceful, his countenance mild, and his complexion pale;
and more so as he had been indisposed. He then returned to his
own room. The Earl then, with the company kneeling down, join’d
in a prayer delivered by Mr Foster; after which having sat a
few moments, and taken a second refreshment of a glass of wine,
he expressed a desire that Lord Balmerino might go first to the
scaffold; but being informed this could not be, as his lordship
was named first on the warrant: he appeared satisfied, saluted
his friends, saying he would make no speech on the scaffold,
but desired the minister to assist him in his last moments, and
then accordingly with other friends, proceeded with him to the
scaffold. The multitude who had long been expecting to see him on
such an awful occasion, on his first appearing upon the scaffold,
dressed in black with a countenance and demeanour, testifying great
contrition, showed the deepest signs of commiseration and pity; and
his lordship at the same time, being struck with such a variety of
dreadful objects at once, the multitude, the block, his coffin,
the executioner, the instrument of death, turned about to Mr Hume,
and said, “Hume, this is terrible,” tho’ without changing his
voice or countenance. After putting up a short prayer, concluding
with a petition for his Majesty King George, and the royal family,
in vindication of his declaration: in his speech, his lordship
embraced and took a last leave of his friends. The executioner, who
before had something administered to keep him from fainting, was
so affected by his lordship’s distress, and the awfulness of the
scene that, on asking his forgiveness, he burst into tears. My Lord
bade him take courage, giving him at the same time a purse with
five guineas, and telling him that he would drop his handkerchief
as a signal for the stroke. He proceeded, with the help of his
gentlemen, to make ready for the block, by taking off his coat,
and the bag from his hair, which was then tucked up under a napkin
cap, but this being made up so wide as not to keep up his long
hair, the making it less caused a little delay; his neck being
laid bare, tucking down the collar of his shirt and waistcoat, he
kneeled down on a black cushion at the block, and drew his cap
over his eyes, in doing which, as well as in putting up his hair,
his hands were observed to shake; but either to support himself,
or as a more convenient posture for devotion, he happened to lay
both his hands upon the block, which the executioner observing,
prayed his lordship to let them fall, lest they should be mangled,
or break the blow. He was then told that the neck of his waistcoat
was in the way, upon which he rose, and with the help of a friend
took it off, and the neck being made bare to the shoulders, he
kneeled down as before. In the meantime, when all things were ready
for the execution, and the black bays which hung over the rails
of the scaffold having, by direction of the Colonel of the Guard,
or the Sheriffs, been turned up that the people might see all the
circumstances of the execution; in about two minutes (the time he
before fixed) after he kneeled down, his lordship dropping his
handkerchief, the executioner at once severed the head from the
body, except only a small part of the skin, which was immediately
divided by a gentle stroke; the head was received in a piece of red
baize, and, with the body, immediately put into the coffin. The
scaffold was then cleansed from the blood, fresh sawdust strewed,
and, that no appearance of a former execution might remain, the
executioner changed such of his clothes as appeared bloody.
[Illustration: _J. M. del. et Soulpe_ _Publish’d according to Act of
Parliament_
_The Governor of yᵉ Tower delivering the Prisoners to the Sheriffs of
London at the Barr for Execution_
_The View of the scaffold with the Guards Surrounding at the time of
Execution_
_A PERSPECTIVE VIEW of TOWER HILL and the Place of EXECUTION of the
LORDS KILMARNOCK and BALMERINO on Monday 18 of August 1746_]
In the meantime Lord Balmerino was waiting for his own end with
that imperturbable courage which never seemed to desert him. He
talked cheerfully with his friends, and drinking a glass of wine,
blithely asked them to drink to his “ain degrae ta haiven.” When
the under-sheriff came to summon him to the scaffold the old lord
interrupted him by asking how the executioner had done his work
upon Lord Kilmarnock, and remarking that it was well done, turned
to his friends and said, “Gentlemen, I shall detain you no longer,”
immediately proceeding to the scaffold, “which he mounted with so easy
an air as astounded the spectators.” He wore the uniform in which
he had fought at the battle of Culloden, a blue coat turned up with
red, with brass buttons, and a tie wig. Having walked several times
round the scaffold, he bowed to the people, and going up to the coffin
lying ready to receive his body, he read the inscription, saying, “It
is right”; then he carefully examined the block which he called his
“pillow of rest.” He required his spectacles to read the speech he had
prepared, and “read it with an audible voice, which, so far from being
filled with passionate invective, mentioned his Majesty as a prince
of the greatest magnanimity and mercy, at the same time that, thro’
erroneous political principles, it denied him a right to the allegiance
of his people.” This speech was duly handed over to the Sheriff, and
when the executioner came forward to beg Lord Balmerino’s pardon, as
was the custom, the staunch old nobleman said, “Friend, you need not
ask me forgiveness, the execution of your duty is commendable!” Then
he gave him three guineas, adding, “Friend, I never was rich, this is
all the money I have now, and I am sorry I cannot add anything to it
but my coat and waistcoat.” These he himself placed upon his coffin,
together with his neckcloth, and putting on a plaid cap, declared
that he died a Scotchman. He next bade farewell to his friends, and
then looking down upon the crowd said to a gentleman who stood near
him, “Perhaps some may think my behaviour too bold, but remember,
sir, that I now declare it is the effect of confidence in God, and a
good conscience, and I should dissemble, if I should shew any signs
of fear.” As he passed the executioner he took the axe from his hand
and felt the edge, and, returning it to the man, clapped him on the
shoulder to encourage him. Turning down the collar of his shirt he
showed the man where to strike, bidding him “do it resolutely, for
in that would consist his kindness.” After giving the Tower warders
some money, he asked which was his hearse, and ordered the driver to
bring it nearer. “Immediately,” says the writer in the _Gentleman’s
Magazine_, “without trembling, or changing countenance, he again knelt
at the block, and having with his arms stretched out, said, ‘O Lord,
reward my friends; forgive my enemies—and receive my soul,’ he gave the
signal by letting them fall, but his uncommon firmness and intrepidity,
and the unexpected suddenness of the signal, so surprised the
executioner, that though he struck the part directed, the blow was not
given with strength enough to wound him very deep; on which it seemed
as if he made an effort to turn his head towards the executioner, and
the under jaw fell and returned very quick, like anger and gnashing
the teeth; but it could not be otherwise, the part being convulsed. A
second blow immediately succeeding, the first rendered him, however,
quite insensible, and a third finished the work. His head was received
in a piece of red baize, and with his body put into the coffin, which,
at his particular request, was placed on that of the late Marquis of
Tullibardine in St Peter’s Chapel Church in the Tower, all three Lords
lying in one grave.”
[Illustration: _A -True- Representation of TOWER-HILL, as it Appear’d
from a rais’d point of View on the North side, Augᵗ. yᵉ 18ᵗʰ. 1746,
when the Earl of Kilmarnock and the Lord Balmerino were Beheaded._]
At the close of that year the brother of the ill-fated Earl of
Derwentwater, Charles Radclyffe, was also executed on the same spot. He
came very gallantly to the scaffold dressed “in scarlet trimm’d with
gold, a gold laced waistcoat, and white feathers in his hat.” He was
actually Earl of Derwentwater, his coffin in St Giles’s in the Fields
bearing the inscription, “Carolus Radclyffe, Comes de Derwentwater,
decollatur, 8 Dec. 1746, Ætis 53. Requiescat in Pace.” But although the
Derwentwater estates had only been confiscated to the Crown for his
life a clause in a later Act of Parliament directed that “the issue
of any person attainted of High Treason, born and bred in any foreign
dominion, and a Roman Catholic, shall forfeit his reversion of such
estate, and the remainder shall for ever be fixed in the Crown, his
son is absolutely deprived of any title or interest in the fortune of
that ancient family to the amount of better than £200,000.” Charles
Radclyffe, was the younger brother of James, Earl of Derwentwater,
and with him had been taken prisoner at Preston, and condemned to
death after trial and conviction. But he had been respited, and it
was thought would ultimately have been pardoned, had he not escaped
from his prison in Newgate. He went to France, and following the
Pretender to Rome, was given a small pension by that prince, and this
was literally all that he had to live upon. Later, he returned to
Paris, and there he married the widow of Lord Newburgh, by whom he
had a son. He came to England in 1733, but went back again to France
and accepted a commission from Louis XIV., “to act as officer in the
late rebellion.” But before he could reach Scotland on board the
_Esperance_, he, his men, and several other Scotch and Irish officers
were captured by an English vessel, and Charles Radclyffe ended his
unfortunate career as intrepidly as he had lived it, on Tower Hill.
By this time the axe had almost done its work in England, and Tower
Hill was to see only one more head laid upon the block—that of Simon
Fraser, Lord Lovat, who was the last of the Jacobite lords to be
executed. Lord Lovat’s long life had begun in 1667, and it had been
as wild and vicious as it had been lengthy. Like the Regent Orléans,
he might very justly have been called a “fanfaron de vice.” In his
youth he had lived in Paris, where he had become a Roman Catholic, if
such a man as Lovat could be said to have any religion. He enjoyed
what was probably a unique experience in that he was imprisoned both
in the Bastille and in the Tower, for although there is no authority
for saying that he was the only man who underwent imprisonment in the
great State prisons of England and of France, on the other hand, there
is also no authority for saying that he was not. He had been in the
Bastille in 1702, on the charge of having betrayed a Jacobite plot to
the English Government. Although not actually in arms during the “’45”
rebellion, Lovat had kept up a correspondence with the Young Pretender;
and this correspondence cost him his life. When captured at the Isle
of Moran, after the Battle of Culloden, he was so infirm that he had
to be carried to Edinburgh in a litter, and thence in the same way to
Berwick, and so to London.
[Illustration: _The_ =Effigie= _of the late =CHARLES RATCLIFFE Esqʳ.=
who was beheaded on little Tower Hill, Monday Decemʳ 8ᵗʰ. 1746. for
being concern’d in the Rebellion in the Year 1745._]
It was at the White Hart at St Albans that Hogarth met him, and there
it was that great artist painted the admirable little full-length
portrait of the old Jacobite, which is now in the National Portrait
Gallery. Hogarth used to say that he painted Lovat as he sat counting
up the numbers of the rebel forces on his fingers. The engraving of
this portrait, taken by the artist himself, had an immense success at
the time, the printing press being kept employed day and night, and for
a considerable time Hogarth made twelve pounds a day by its sale.
Lovat arrived at the Tower on the 15th of August 1746, and according
to the account given in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for that month,
came “in an open Landau driven by six horses, guarded by a party of
Liguier’s Horse, and accompany’d in the Landau by an officer—as he
passed through the streets he seemed very unconcerned, but coming
on the hill, he turn’d his eyes towards the scaffold erecting for
beholding the execution of the lords, and lifting up his hands, said,
‘A few days, and it will be my awful fate!’”
The whole aspect of Tower Hill, with the exception of the appearance
of the old fortress and its outer walls, has been entirely changed
since Lovat saw it with the huge scaffoldings being erected for the
spectators of his companions’ executions—and for his own a few months
later. The house into which they were led to await their death no
longer exists. It occupied the north-east corner of Catherine’s Court,
and was formerly the Transport Office. From a raised platform, which
was flush with the scaffold, the Jacobite lords walked from the house,
which stood immediately opposite to the spot where so many remarkable
men have perished by the axe of the headsman. During the last few years
the actual site of the scaffold has been marked by a tablet in the
garden that now surrounds the place of execution, where the axe had
done its work from the time of Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick,
the son of the Duke of Clarence, to that of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat.
With the latter ended the long list of State executions on Tower Hill,
which, during five centuries, had stained its soil with some of the
noblest blood in the country.
On the 18th of December, Lovat was taken from the Tower to the House of
Lords, where the articles of his impeachment were read to him. The best
account of the trial is undoubtedly that contained in one of the many
letters written by Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann. Writing on the
20th of March 1747, Walpole says: “I have been living at old Lovat’s
trial, and was willing to have it over before I talked to you about
it. It lasted seven days; the evidence was as strong as possible; and
after all he had denounced he made no defence. The Solicitor-General
(Sir William Murray), who was one of the managers of the House of
Commons, shone extremely. The Attorney-General (Sir Dudley Ryder),
who is a much greater lawyer, is cold and tedious. The old creature’s
behaviour has been foolish, and at last indecent.
[Illustration: _Execution of the Rebel Lords 1746_]
“When he came to the Tower, he told them that if he were not so old
and infirm, they would find it difficult to keep him there. They
told him they had kept much younger. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘but they were
inexperienced; they had not broke so many gaols as I have.’ At his own
home he used to say, that for thirty years of his life he never saw
a gallows but it made his neck ache. His last act was to shift his
treason upon his eldest son, whom he forced into the rebellion. He told
Williamson, the Lieutenant of the Tower, ‘We will hang my eldest son,
and then my second shall marry your niece.’ He has a sort of ready
humour at repartee, not very well adapted to his situation. One day
that Williamson complained that he could not sleep, he was so haunted
with rats, he replied: ‘What do you say, that you are so haunted with
Ratcliffes?’ The first day, as he was brought to his trial, a woman
looked into the coach, and said: ‘You ugly old dog, don’t you think
you will have that frightful head cut off?’ He replied: ‘You ugly old
——, I believe I shall!’ At his trial he affected great weakness and
infirmities, but often broke out into passions; particularly at the
first witness, who was his vassal. He asked him how he dared to come
thither; the man replied, to satisfy his conscience. The two last days
he behaved ridiculously, joking, and making everybody laugh, even at
the sentence. He said to Lord Ilchester, who sat near the bar: ‘Je
meurs pour ma patrie, et ne m’en soucie guère.’ When he withdrew, he
said: ‘Adieu, my Lords, we shall never meet again in the same place!’
He says he will be hanged, for his neck is so short and bearded that
he should be struck in the shambles. I did not think it possible to
feel so little as I did at so melancholy a spectacle, but tyranny and
villany, wound up by buffoonery, took off all edge of concern.”
Thursday, April 9th, was the day fixed for Lovat’s execution, and
shortly before he arrived on Tower Hill one of the scaffoldings built
for the spectators of his execution, and which held nearly a thousand
people, suddenly collapsed, eight or ten persons being killed outright,
whilst many others had broken legs and arms. Whatever may be thought of
the action of the Hanoverian Court in beheading the rebellious Jacobite
lords, there is no doubt that a richly-deserved punishment was meted
out to Lovat. Forty years before, at the last session of the Scottish
Parliament, previous to the union of the two countries, Lord Belhaven
had declared in a memorable speech, that Captain Fraser, as Lord Lovat
then was, “deserved, if practicable, to have been hanged five several
times, in five different places, and upon five different accounts at
least, as having been a traitor to the Court of St James’s, a traitor
to the Court of St Germains, a traitor to the Court of Versailles, and
a traitor to his own country of Scotland; that he deserved to be hanged
as a condemned criminal, outlaw, and fugitive, for his treatment of the
widow of the late Lord Lovat’s sister. Nay, so hardened was Captain
Fraser, that he erected a gallows, and threatened to hang thereon the
lady’s brother, and some other gentlemen of quality who accompanied
him, in going to rescue her out of that criminal’s cruel hands.” This
was in 1706, and to judge by all accounts of Lovat’s career in the
next forty years, he deserved to be hanged yet five times more, “if
practicable.”
[Illustration: _The north west prospect of the Tower of LONDON_
_at the time of Execution of the rebel Lords, in 1746–7 with a
particular View of the falling of a Scaffold, whereby above fifty
lost their lives and were disabled at the Execution of Lord Lovat_.]
Lovat waked about three o’clock on the morning of his execution, and
was heard to “pray with genuine emotion.” He was very cheerful, and
having ordered his wig to be sent to the barber, “that he might have
time to comb it out genteely, he sat down to a breakfast of minced
veal,” ordering coffee and chocolate for his friends, whose health he
drank in wine and water. When the Sheriff of London came to demand
his body, he responded to the call with alacrity, saying, “I am ready”;
and on his way downstairs accepted General Williamson’s invitation to
rest in the Lieutenant’s room, and asked him in French if he could
“take leave of his lady, and thank her for her civilities. But the
General told his lordship in the same language that she was too much
affected with his lordship’s misfortunes to bear the shock of seeing
him, and therefore hoped his lordship would excuse her.” From the
Lieutenant’s house, Lord Lovat was conveyed in the Governor’s coach
to the Outer Gate, where he was delivered over to the Sheriffs, who
took him in another coach to the house which had already served as the
last resting-place of Lords Balmerino and Kilmarnock on the way to the
scaffold. Here a room had been got ready for him, hung with black cloth
and with sconces. At first his friends were denied admittance, but upon
Lord Lovat applying to the Sheriffs, leave was granted. During the time
of waiting Lovat thanked the Sheriffs for “their favours,” and desired
that his clothes might be given up to his friends with his body, also
asking that his head might be received in a white cloth, and put into
the coffin. This was promised, as well as that the holding up of the
head at the corner of the scaffold should be dispensed with. Lord Lovat
was assisted up the steps of the scaffold by two warders, and looking
round on the great multitude of people, exclaimed, “God save us! why
should there be such a bustle about taking off an old grey head, that
cannot go up three steps without three bodies to support it.” Then
seeing that one of his friends looked very unhappy, he slapped him on
the shoulder, saying: “Cheer up thy heart, man, I am not afraid, why
should you?” Like old Lord Balmerino, he felt the edge of the axe, and
examined his coffin, upon which was inscribed: “Simon Fraser Dominus
de Lovat, Decollat April 9, 1747. Ætat Suae 80.” After repeating some
lines from Horace and Ovid, according to the _Gentleman’s Magazine_,
“he called his solicitor and agent in Scotland, Mr Wm. Fraser, and
presented him with his gold-headed cane, and said: ‘I deliver you
this cane in token of my sense of your faithful services, and of my
committing to you all the power I leave upon earth,’ and then embraced
him. He also called for Mr James Fraser, and said, ‘My dear James, I
am going to Heaven, but you must continue to crawl a little longer
in this evil world.’ And taking leave of both, he deliver’d his hat,
wig, and clothes to Mr William Fraser, and desired him to see that
the executioner did not touch them; he ordered his cap to be put on,
and unloosing his neckcloth and the collar of his shirt, he kneeled
down at the block, and pulled the cloth which was to receive his head
close to him. But being placed too near the block, the executioner
desired him to remove a little farther back, which, with the warders’
assistance, was immediately done; and his neck being properly placed,
he told the executioner he would say a short prayer, and then give the
signal by dropping his handkerchief. In this position he remained about
half a minute, and then, throwing his handkerchief upon the floor,
the executioner at one blow severed his head from his body, which was
received in the cloth, and together with his body put into the coffin,
and carried in the hearse back to the Tower, where it remained until
four o’clock, and was then taken away by an undertaker, in order to
be sent to Scotland, and deposited in his own tomb in the church of
Kirkhill; but leave not being given, as was expected, it was again
brought back to the Tower, and interred near the bodies of the other
lords. Lord Lovat, in a codicil to his will, had ordered that all the
pipers from John o’ Groats to Edinburgh were to play before his corpse,
for which they were to have a handsome allowance, and though he did
not expect this wish to be complied with, yet he said that he hoped
that the good old women of his country would sing a ‘coronach’ before
him.” The legend that Lovat’s ghost, in a monk’s dress, appeared during
a tempest with its head under its arm, probably had its origin in
this desire of his to have a great Scottish wake at his funeral, and
also to his once having worn the dress of a Jesuit priest in one of his
adventures at St Omer; of this there is a curious contemporary print.
[Illustration: A REPRESENTATION _of the Execution of Lord LOVAT_.
A. _The scaffold._
B. _Lord Lovat’s head on yᵉ Block._
C. _Cloth to receive the Head._
D. _The Executioner with yᵉ Axe._
E. _The Coffin._
F. _The House from which he came on the Scaffold._
_Execution of Lord Lovat 1746_]
Lord Cromarty was pardoned, owing to the exertions of his wife, who
petitioned every member of the Privy Council, and had fallen in a swoon
at the feet of George II. at Kensington, in the very act of presenting
him with a petition for mercy. Her prayer was more graciously received
by that sovereign than Lady Nithsdale’s petition had been by his
father. It is said that a son born to Lady Cromarty about this time had
the mark of an axe upon its neck.
The block, now in the Armoury of the Tower, is undoubtedly the one
upon which Lovat was beheaded, and is declared to have originally been
made for his execution. The axe which stands beside it was used to
behead him, as well as the other Jacobite lords who suffered death in
1746, but whether it was used previous to these executions cannot be
ascertained with any certainty.
Although Lord Lovat was the last person beheaded in England, a peer was
hanged at Tyburn after being imprisoned in the Tower in the last year
of the reign of George II. This was Lawrence Shirley, Earl Ferrers,
who had murdered his steward, Johnson, in cold blood. Probably if
this crime had been committed in these days Lord Ferrers would have
benefited by a more merciful dispensation. That he had been insane on
several occasions is certain, and he had been wilder and more reckless
in his manner of life than could be accounted for by anything short of
madness, his fits of wild rage clearly pointing to a disordered brain.
He had married a harmless and amiable woman, the daughter of Sir V.
Meredith, and she, unable to live with such a brutal husband as Ferrers
proved himself to be, had obtained a judicial separation. Ferrers was
wildly extravagant, and it was owing to his debts that the unfortunate
lawyer, Johnson, who had been appointed by a special Act of Parliament
to manage the Shirley estates, was made the steward of the property.
Ferrers had repeatedly sworn that he would rid himself of this agent
and steward, and having enticed him to his house, deliberately shot the
poor man as he knelt begging for his life. Ferrers was arrested, and
brought to the Tower under a guard of constables. A stranger procession
than that of Lord Ferrers to his prison can scarcely be imagined.
He was in his own carriage, a landau drawn by six horses, and was
dressed in “a riding frock, wearing boots, and a jockey cap.” In this
costume he appeared before the House of Lords in February 1760. He was
imprisoned in the Middle Tower, two warders being in an adjoining room,
whilst two sentries kept guard at the foot of the Tower stairs. There
he remained for the two months which elapsed before his trial. On the
5th of May he was hanged at Tyburn, with all the pomp and circumstance
that in those days clung to the death of a criminal if he were a
nobleman. Being an Earl, Lord Ferrers was allowed to be strangled out
of existence by a silken instead of a hempen rope, and although the
sentence of his execution included the order that his body was to be
dissected, the order was dispensed with.
Lord Ferrers was taken from the Tower in his own carriage, drawn by
six horses, to the gallows. He wore a superb dress, a pale-coloured
silk coat edged with silver lace, and was accompanied by grenadiers,
and horse and foot guards, his carriage being followed by some of the
coaches of members of his family, and his hearse, which was also drawn
by six horses. The streets were so crowded to see this unusual sight,
that it took the procession three hours to reach Tyburn from the Tower.
Lord Ferrers went out of the world in a far more becoming manner than
he had lived in it. He regretted, he said, not to have been allowed
to be executed on Tower Hill, where his ancestor, the Earl of Essex,
had been beheaded. If he actually made this remark, he could not
have been aware that his ancestor had not been beheaded on Tower Hill,
but within the Tower walls, on the Green. To judge by his portrait,
painted by the French portrait painter, Andran, Lord Ferrers had a
bullet-shaped head, and must have closely resembled the ordinary type
of jockey when he appeared in his riding-boots and jockey cap before
his peers at his trial.
[Illustration: _Waggons going into the Tower with treasure taken from
the Spaniards (temp. George II.)_]
One of the greatest naval achievements of the last century must not be
omitted from the story of the Tower during George the Second’s reign.
The great Spanish treasure, worth a million and a half of dollars,
captured by Lord Anson, with his ship, the _Centurion_, on the 20th of
June 1743, was brought to the Tower the following year. Two rare old
engravings are here reproduced, in which the treasure-laden waggons
are being haled by the joyous crowd up Tower Hill. Since the days of
Elizabeth, when the ships of Drake and Raleigh despoiled the fleets
and merchantmen of the Spaniards, no such spoil as this had rewarded
British prowess.
CHAPTER XX
GEORGE III.
The first political prisoner to enter the Tower in the reign of George
the Third was John Wilkes, the notorious member for Middlesex. On the
30th of April 1763, Wilkes was imprisoned in the Tower under a warrant
signed by Lords Egremont and Halifax, the charge against him being,
that he had written and published the _North Briton_ newspaper, the
forty-fifth number of which was styled “a most infamous and seditious
libel.” Wilkes, however, was only kept for a week in the fortress, the
Lord Chief-Justice (afterwards Lord Camden) deciding that the offence
for which he was committed to prison, “was not an offence sufficient
to destroy the privilege of a member of Parliament, that it was
unconstitutional, illegal, and absolutely void.”
The next prisoners of note also made the acquaintance of the inside of
the fortress indirectly through the Press. They were no less personages
than the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Brass Crosby, and one of his
Aldermen, Oliver, both members of Parliament. They had held a messenger
to bail, who, under the Speaker’s warrant, had apprehended the printers
of the _London Evening Post_, and had afterwards been charged by the
arrested printer with assault and false imprisonment. The Lord Mayor
and his Alderman attempted to justify themselves before the House of
Commons by claiming the City privileges,[7] but, nevertheless,
they were kept in durance vile in the Tower until the 23rd of July,
when, Parliament being prorogued, they obtained their liberty, after a
confinement of four months’ duration. Their liberation was regarded as
a popular triumph, and celebrated with much rejoicing.
[Illustration: _West Front of the Tower in the time of George III._]
During the American War many of the Tower guns, and a quantity of the
ammunition stored there, was sent across the Atlantic, and used against
the so-called “rebellious colonists.”
In June 1780, that half-crazed fanatic, Lord George Gordon, was a
prisoner in the Tower, charged with the instigation of the “No Popery”
riots, which for a time had placed London in peril of mob-rule, and
caused great loss of life and property by fire and pillage. After a
trial which lasted twenty-one hours, Lord George was declared not
guilty. A few years later, however, he was doomed to end his life in
Newgate prison. At the same time that Lord George was a prisoner in the
fortress, the Earl of Pomfret was committed there for having challenged
the Duke of Grafton to fight a duel. In the following year a French
spy, named Henry Francis de la Motte, was in the Tower on a charge of
high treason. He was found guilty, and hanged at Tyburn on the 23rd
of July. In 1794 the coalition between Pitt and the Whigs took place,
and soon afterwards Pitt carried two Bills through Parliament, one
of which was to the effect that mere writing, speaking, or preaching
against the King’s authority was tantamount to treason; the other
forbade all political meetings, unless advertised beforehand, and
permitted their dispersal by any two justices of the peace. These very
coercive measures over-reached themselves, and juries would not convict
persons charged with offences under their clauses. Horne Tooke, “Parson
Tooke,” as he was familiarly called, the celebrated wit, was the most
brilliant of a set who desired more civil and religious liberty in
England, and with this object they formed themselves into a society for
the propaganda of their opinions, holding meetings, and making use of
existing societies, clubs, and associations. Tooke, Jeremiah Joyce,
a clergyman, and private secretary to Lord Stanhope, Thomas Hardy,
a shoemaker, John Thelwall, Bonney, Richter, and Lovatt, were all
arrested and placed in the Tower, and brought before the Privy Council
on a charge of high treason. These so-called reformers were eight
weeks in the fortress. At length the trials took place, Hardy being
acquitted, to the great delight of the populace, the reformer shoemaker
becoming the hero of the hour. Tooke was tried at the Old Bailey, and
he also was acquitted, as were the rest of the prisoners. In 1798,
Arthur O’Connor, the editor of the _Press_, an Irish Nationalist
newspaper, with John Alley, John Burns, and James O’Coighley were
placed in the fortress on a charge of maintaining a traitorous
correspondence with the French Directory. O’Connor and his companions,
it seems, had been entrusted by the Society of the United Irishmen
with a mission to the French Directory in the month of March 1798,
but on their way to Paris they were arrested at Margate by Bow Street
runners, although they had bribed a fisherman with £150 to take them
across the Channel. On their luggage being searched, uniforms, arms,
and a large sum of money were found. They were immediately brought back
to London, and lodged in separate prisons in the Tower, but the trial
was held at Margate, and James O’Coighley, who seems to have been made
the scapegoat, was hanged on Pennenden Heath. Lord Thanet, who was a
friend of O’Connor’s, was present at the latter’s trial at Maidstone,
and with him were Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Sir Francis Burdett, and
Samuel Whitbread. During the trial O’Connor made a bolt for freedom,
springing out of the dock, and forcing his way through the court; he
almost succeeded in escaping. A free fight ensued, and in the _melée_
Lord Thanet was arrested, and on the charge of aiding and abetting the
prisoner O’Connor to escape, and with resisting the officers of the
law, was sent off to the Tower. At his trial Lord Thanet remarked
that, “he thought it only fair that O’Connor should have a run for it.”
Lord Thanet was tried at the Court of King’s Bench in May 1799, and
with him a barrister named Ferguson, who had also shown his sympathy
with O’Connor during his trial. Both were found guilty. Lord Thanet
was fined £1000, and sentenced to be imprisoned in the Tower for
twelve months; Ferguson had to pay a fine of £500, and was ordered to
be imprisoned in the King’s Bench prison. Sackville Tufton, Earl of
Thanet, was the last peer who was imprisoned in the Tower.
[Illustration: _Entrance to the Tower Menagerie in the time of George
III._]
Ten years after this another prisoner was brought to the Tower amidst
wild scenes of popular excitement, such as the old fortress had not
witnessed since the mob led by Wat Tyler had surged about its grey
walls. This prisoner was Sir Francis Burdett, who was sent to the Tower
on the 10th of April 1810, for an alleged libel on the House of Commons
in a letter addressed to his constituents, the electors of Westminster,
which had appeared in Cobbet’s “Political Register.” In this letter
Sir Francis denied the power of the House of Commons to imprison
delinquents, and this statement was voted by the House to be “libellous
and scandalous.” Burdett had made himself obnoxious to the Ministers
of his day by his strong Liberal politics, and they at once made this
letter an excuse for venting their hatred upon him. The House of
Commons during an all-night sitting passed an order for his attachment,
and a warrant was drawn up and signed by Speaker Abbot to arrest
the too popular baronet, and place him in the Tower. For some days
Burdett refused to comply with the Speaker’s warrant, and the longer
he refused to be arrested the greater became the excitement throughout
London. Free fights took place between the military and the mob, the
windows of the Tory Ministers’ houses were smashed, and the electors
of Westminster mustered round Sir Francis’s house in Piccadilly (that
now occupied by his noble-hearted and charitable daughter the Baroness
BurdettCoutts) in their thousands. These protested their devotion to
their beloved member, and their determination to prevent his being
taken to prison. At length Burdett was obliged to surrender to the
officers, who forced their way into his drawing-room, and being placed
in a coach, was driven by way of the north of London, by Moorfields and
the Minories, to the Tower. On Tower Hill the mob seemed inclined to
attempt a rescue, but fortunately no conflict occurred, and Sir Francis
was safely conducted to his prison, in a house near to that occupied
by Colonel Mathew Smith, who was acting in the place of the Lieutenant
of the Tower, General Vernon, the latter being too infirm to attend to
his duties. Lord Moira, the Constable of the Tower, was present when
Sir Francis arrived at the fortress. As the soldiers who had escorted
the Liberal member for Westminster to the Tower were returning to their
quarters there was a collision between them and the mob, and on Tower
Hill the military were obliged to charge the people, many being killed;
two more people were killed in Fenchurch Street, whilst riots broke out
in several places in the metropolis. Burdett’s imprisonment lasted for
ten weeks, he being set at liberty when Parliament was prorogued on the
21st of June. In order to avoid a fresh demonstration he was taken down
the river to his villa at Wimbledon. In later years Sir Francis changed
his politics and became a steady Whig, but for thirty years he was the
most popular member of Parliament that ever sat for Westminster.
Ten years again elapsed before the Tower opened its gates to receive
prisoners, these being Thistlewood, with his crew of cut-throats,
Ings, Harrison, Davidson, Wilson, Tidd Kamment, and Brunt, who were
imprisoned in the fortress in 1820, for plotting to assassinate the
members of the Cabinet whilst they were dining at Lord Harrowby’s
in Grosvenor Square. This was the plot known as the Cato Street
Conspiracy, from the meeting-place of this band of desperadoes being
in a house in that street, where they were taken after a stubborn
resistance. Thistlewood was imprisoned in the Bloody Tower, and was
the last prisoner to occupy its gloomy dungeon, for with him and his
associates the Tower ceased to be a prison of State, and it is to be
hoped will ever remain so. Ings and Davidson were placed in St Thomas’s
Tower; the others in the Byward, Middle and Salt Towers. Thistlewood
and five others were hanged in front of Newgate; the remainder were
sentenced to transportation for life.
[Illustration: _The Tower from Tower Hill in the time of George III._]
CHAPTER XXI
THE LATE REIGNS
During the late reigns there is little that calls for record in the
history of the Tower: happy is the land that has no history. But for
the fire in 1841, which destroyed the ugly old Armoury of William
III.’s time, and the dastardly attempt made in 1885 to blow up the
White Tower, no events of much interest have happened. The old
fortress, however, has undergone much structural alterations and needed
restoration, in which, although great mistakes have been made, as must
inevitably be the case when such a group of old buildings as those in
the Tower are touched, the result, on the whole, has benefited the
appearance of the fortress, and above all, aided the preservation for
future ages of the noblest and most historical group of buildings that
exists in our land. May they endure: may they be venerated by future
generations of our race as they deserve to be.
The following narratives concern the two events just named.
THE FIRE OF 1841
On the night of Saturday, the 30th of October 1841, the great Armoury,
or storehouse, to the east of St Peter’s Chapel, was completely gutted.
The fire broke out in the Bowyer Tower, which abutted on the Armoury;
an overheated flue in a stove is supposed to have been the cause. The
Armoury had been commenced in the reign of James II. and completed
in the reign of William and Mary, to whom, when it was finished, a
banquet had been given in the great hall of the building. This hall,
which occupied the whole length of the first floor, was afterwards used
as a storehouse for small arms, 150,000 stands of which were destroyed
by the fire; besides these, were numbers of cannon and trophies taken
in the field. The loss caused by the conflagration was estimated at
£200,000. The Regalia was saved from the Martin Tower by one of the
superintendents of the Metropolitan police, named Pierce, an incident
of bravery which Cruikshank perpetuated in one of his finest etchings.
Accompanied by the Keeper of the Jewels and his wife, Pierce, with
some other officials, broke the bars of the cage behind which the
Royal jewels were kept, with crowbars, and then at great personal risk
he managed to squeeze himself through the narrow opening thus made,
handing out the crown, orb, and sceptre to those outside. The silver
font was too large to pass through the opening, and it was necessary to
break away another bar of the grating. Repeated cries from the outside
now warned the party to leave the Jewel Room, as the fire was rapidly
gaining upon the tower, but Pierce remained until he had secured the
whole of the Regalia. The heat inside was so intense that some of the
cloth upon which the Crown jewels rested was charred. “Some public
reward to Mr Pierce,” writes Chamber, in his “Book of Days,” “who had
so gallantly imperilled himself to save the Regalia of the United
Kingdom, would have been a fitting tribute to his bravery. But no such
recompense was ever bestowed.”
[Illustration: _Sketch of the Fire at the Tower in 1841._]
A contemporary account of the disaster in George Cruikshank’s
_Omnibus_, edited by Laman Blanchard, gives the following description
of the destruction of the Armoury:—“There stood the keeper himself,
his wife at his side, partaking the peril; and the warders whom he had
summoned to the rescue. We must, however, pourtray the stifling heat
and smoke; the clamour of the soldiers outside the closed portal,
which the fires of the Armoury were striving to reach; nor the roar
of the still excluded flames, the clang of the pumps, the hissing
of the water-pipes, the gathering feet and voices of the multitude.
They are beyond the pencil. The pressure from without increased.
Again the clamours rose high, and the furnace heat rose higher. But
the keeper abided his time—the crowbars were raised in a dozen hands
awaiting his word. It was given! The first blow since the days of King
Charles descended on the iron fence; and Queen Victoria’s crown safely
deposited in its case, and sheltered therein from smoke and flame, and
the common gaze, was removed to the Governor’s house. Orbs, diadems,
and sceptres—dishes, flagons, and chalices—the services of court and of
church, of altar and of banquet, were sent forth in the care of many a
sturdy warder, gallant John Lund being the leader. The huge baptismal
font, soon to be called into use for the Prince of Wales, was last
removed. The Jewel Room was as bare as if Blood the First had left
nought behind him for Blood the Second. How must the spectators have
gazed on the bright procession, as from window, and roof, and turret,
the Armoury blazed out upon it!... Next in sublimity to the spectacle
of the blazing pile, was the scene afterwards presented, when, as
the fire lessened, and the smoke cleared off, the whole space of the
enormous armoury was opened to the straining eye—a sight of awe and
wonder. Above was the sky of a November morn, and below, covering the
immense sweep of the floor, heaps of fused metal, of dimensions scarce
to be credited, with bayonet points bristling up everywhere, close-set
and countless, like long blades of grass.”
The buildings destroyed in the fire were the Armoury, a hideous William
III. building, the upper part of the Bowyer or Chevener Tower, which
was also hideous and modern. The only relic of much interest destroyed
in the Armoury was the wheel of Nelson’s ship _Victory_; the arms
destroyed were modern, and were all soon replaced.
[Illustration: _Bragg & Ash 231 Strand_ _Printed by Kohler Denmark Sᵗ_
_The Conflagration as seen from Tower Hill before the destruction of
the Roof of the Armoury._
DESTRUCTION of the ARMOURY in the TOWER of LONDON.
_by fire on Saturday night October 30ᵗʰ. 1841._
Published by W. Spooner 377, Strand.]
The present Gothic barracks were built upon the site of the Armoury,
and were opened in some state in 1845 by the great Duke of Wellington,
who was then Constable of the Tower. These barracks, which were
completed in 1849, were named after the Duke; they are loopholed
for musketry, and will hold 1000 men. North-east of the White Tower
is a modern castellated building which is used by the officers of
the garrison; further to the south-east are the Ordnance Office and
Storehouses. The area of the Tower within the walls is twelve acres and
a few poles, and the circuit outside the moat is one thousand and fifty
yards.
THE FENIAN ATTEMPT TO BLOW UP THE WHITE TOWER ON
THE 24TH OF JANUARY 1885
Three explosions took place in London on Saturday, the 24th of January
1885, during what the Irish Fenians called the “Dynamite War.” Two of
these occurred in the Houses of Parliament, the third in the White
Tower.
The mine, or rather, infernal machine, was laid in the Armoury, and was
placed between the stands of arms in the Banqueting Room, both that
chamber and the Council Room being injured by the explosion.
Saturday being one of the days upon which the Tower is free to
visitors, the old building was full of people, the Banqueting Room
being well filled with women and children when the explosion took
place, at two o’clock—the same time as that at which the explosion
at the House of Parliament occurred. The cries of the people in the
room were most distressing, and immediately the charge exploded, the
Banqueting Room was ablaze, the flames communicating themselves to the
floor above. Since the fire in the Tower in 1841, a fire brigade had
been stationed in the building, and numerous fire extinguishers, such
as small manuals and hydrants, were kept in readiness, and although
two of the London fire brigades were telephoned for, the military, with
the aid of hoses and hydrants, had already checked the spreading of the
flames. The actual amount of damage done, happily, fell far short of
what might have been expected, considering the force of the explosion,
and the great age of the building attacked. The windows and casements
were nearly all blown out, the flagstaff at the top of the White Tower
was blown away, the floor was burnt, and the face of the clock was
damaged; and this was the extent of the hurt caused by the dastardly
attempt to wreck the White Tower. The report of the explosion is
described as being like the firing of a heavy piece of artillery, being
followed by a flame of fire that rose up through the open well that
communicates between the second and third floors in the centre of the
two halls. This flame was immediately succeeded by a shivering of all
the glass in the windows, the crashing of the woodwork, and the falling
of hundreds of rifles from the armoury racks, while a dense cloud of
dust darkened the interior of the building, and made it impossible for
the visitors or officials to discover where the explosion had occurred.
A wild panic ensued, and as the dust gradually cleared away, the people
rushed in a wild helter-skelter down the staircase, and poured out of
the Tower. Meanwhile, the warders and police arrived to the succour
of the injured, whom they had to draw out from beneath the wreckage.
Directly after the explosion the bugles sounded the assembly, and the
Grenadiers, who formed the garrison, turned out. Lord Chelmsford, the
Lieutenant of the Tower, and General Milman, its Major, caused flying
sentries to be posted at every avenue and point of egress admitting to
the Tower. Orders were given to close the gates, and no one was to be
allowed to leave the fortress under any pretext. The perpetrator of
the outrage was a scoundrel, who, two years before, had been concerned
in the outrage of a similar nature on the Underground Railway, when
bombs had been placed at Charing Cross and Praed Street stations. He
was sentenced to fourteen years’ penal servitude with hard labour, and
was released in the month of March 1899. That the White Tower escaped,
and the people in it, with so little injury, was a miracle, for the
charge of dynamite was a strong one.
[Illustration: George Cruikshanke
_Breaking into the Strong room in the “Jewel Tower” and Removal of
the Regalia, on the night of the Fire, Octʳ 30 1841_]
Crime, like history, repeats itself. Amongst the manuscripts kept at
Hatfield House is the following declaration:—
“1593–4 Feb. 6. John Danyell, Irishman, came to me, Richard Young,
the 6th day of February 1593, and gave me to understand of a plot
that is pretended for the firing of the Tower—viz. that there is a
vault wherein brimstone doth lie, and there is gunpowder under it. And
he says that there is a trap door that doth stand much open, and is
purposed that two men like labourers shall come in as though they were
workmen in the Tower, and shall cast certain balls into the vault where
the brimstone lieth, and in a short time it will take fire and consume
all.”
From this it will be seen that the intention of one criminal in the
reign of Queen Elizabeth was carried out by another nearly three
hundred years later, in the reign of Queen Victoria.
THE END.
=APPENDICES=
[Illustration: THE GREAT COURT OF THE TOWER.]
APPENDIX I
DISPUTES BETWEEN THE CITY OF LONDON AND THE OFFICIALS OF THE TOWER
AS TO THE RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES OF THE TOWER
“This dispute as to the Liberties and Privileges of the Tower began as
early as 1465–66, the fifth of Edward IV. Early in Queen Elizabeth’s
reign it was renewed; the points of controversy are referred to in the
above letter (a letter from the Lord Mayor to the Lords of the Council
complaining of the conduct of Sir William George, Porter of the Tower
of London, regarding his usurpation of the Liberties and Franchises of
the City by ‘compelling poor victuallers strangers, coming to London
by ship or boat with fish, fruit, or such victuals, to give him such
a quantity as pleased him to take, as two or three cod-fish from each
boat, etc., without payment. Such as refused he caused to be imprisoned
in the Tower, whereby the victuallers were discouraged to come to the
City, and their number decreased, to the great hurt of the markets
and the victualling of the City, especially at this present time of
Lent’). The Council referred the question to the consideration of the
Lord Chief-Justice of the Queen’s Bench (Sir Christopher Wray), the
Lord Chief of the Common Pleas (Sir Edward Anderson), and the Master
of the Rolls (Sir Gilbert Gerard), who gave their opinion upon some of
the privileges claimed by the Lieutenant, but not upon the question of
boundaries. They reported with respect to the claims of freedom from
arrest by action in the City, and protections granted by the Lieutenant
to officers and attendants in the Tower, and not obeying writs of
_habeas corpus_; that in their opinion, persons daily attendant in
the Tower, and serving the Queen there, should be privileged, and not
arrested on any plaint in London, but this should not apply to writs
of execution or _capias utlagatum_; that the Lieutenant ought to
return every _habeas corpus_ out of any court at Westminster, so that
the justices before whom it should be returned might either remand it
with the body, or retain the matter before them, and deliver the body.
They further gave their opinion that the claim of the Lieutenant,
that if a person privileged in the Tower were arrested in London, he
might detain any citizen found within the Tower until the other was
delivered, was altogether against the laws of the realm. The Lords of
the Council made an order settling these controversies, which was
dated from Nonsuch, October 3rd, 1585. The question of boundaries
still remained in dispute. Stowe quotes documents, which he says he
had seen among the Records in the Tower, from which it would appear
that the bounds in controversy were at Little Tower Hill, the Postern,
and East Smithfield on one side, and on the other the extent of Tower
Hill, and towards Barking Church. The City claimed the Postern Gate
in the end of the London Wall by the Tower, and houses built near to
the Wall and Postern; all the void ground within the Postern Gate—viz.
the whole hill and ground where the scaffold for the execution of
traitors stood, and where the Sheriffs of London received prisoners
from the Tower to be executed (from which place the boundary stone had
been removed), with the Watergate and the gardens under the London
Wall. The City also claimed that the whole ground and soil called
Tower Hill without the Postern Gate, being parcel of East Smithfield,
was theirs. They likewise objected to the Lieutenant holding pleas
in the court of the Tower, that being only a Court Baron, and not a
Court of Record; also to the exactions taken in the name of prizage of
victuallers bringing victuals, fuel, and other things by water. The
Lieutenant disputed the original position of the Postern in question,
and asserted that the City’s proofs brought from their own manuscripts,
etc., were insufficient to dispossess any subject, much less the King.
He also submitted the presentment made by an inquest held anno 27
Henry VIII., before Sir Anthony (William) Kingston, High Constable of
the Tower, which stated that the bounds began ‘at the Watergate next
the Ramshead, in Petty Wales; and so streyched North unto a Mudwall
called Pykes Garden, on this side of Crutched Friars; and so strait
East unto the Wall of London, with nine gardens above the Postern,
and above the _Broken Tower_, right unto the midst of Hog Lane End,
and so strait unto the Thames, and so six foot without the Stairs at
the East-gate of the Tower towards St Katherine’s.’ In the reign of
King James the Second the subject was again before the Privy Council,
who on the 12th May 1686, directed the boundaries to be ascertained,
which was done, and the broad arrow in iron, with the date, set on
the houses. On the 13th October in the same year a warrant was issued
by King James the Second, for a charter to be prepared for confirming
the same. This Charter, dated 10th June 1687, exempted the limits
defined in the schedule (and which were practically those claimed by
the Lieutenant) from the jurisdiction of the City, and of the Justices,
etc., of Middlesex; directed that the Governor of the Tower, or his
deputies, should execute and return all writs, processes, etc., within
the limits; that a Session of the Peace should be held four times a
year within the Liberty of the Tower, and that the Justices of the
Peace should have power to commit traitors, felons, etc., to Newgate.
It also established a Court of Record within the Liberties, the Steward
of the Court being the Coroner, the Governor of the Tower having the
appointment of the officers. Whilst the duties of the Justices of the
Peace, as defined by the charter, have been from time to time added to
by the Acts 13 George II. cap. 19. sec. 7, 37 George II. cap. 25, sec.
13–16, and by sundry licensing Acts, their powers have been limited by
the Police Act (10 George IV. cap. 44) and supplementary Police Acts.
The Central Criminal Court Act, 4 and 5 William IV. cap. 36, included
the Liberty of the Tower within the jurisdiction of that Court, and
took away the power of its Justices to try at their Sessions offences
under the Act. This, however, has been somewhat modified by subsequent
Acts.”
APPENDIX II
The
Behaviour _and_ Character
of
_Samuel M‘Pherson_, }
_Malcolm M‘Pherson_ } and { _Farquar Shaw_,
the
Three Highland Deserters;
who were
_Shot at the_ Tower, July _the 18th_, 1743.
with
Some Observations on the _Conduct_ of a certain _Stranger_, who advised
the Prisoners to wave any Defence they had, and to plead guilty.
Also
_A plain_ Narrative _of the Original Institution of the Regiment, now commanded
by my Lord S——. Containing an Impartial Account of the Rise and Progress of
the late Mutiny in that Regiment_.
To which is added,
The two Petitions which they sent to the Lords of the _Regency_,
and to the Dutchess of _Richmond_.
By the Clergyman of the Church of _Scotland_, who conversed with them
in their own Language from the Time of their Sentence till their
Execution.
_Nil turpe commitas neque coramalias neque tecum maxime
omnium reverere teipsum._
London
Printed for M. Cooper in _Pater-Noster-Row_, 1743
Price Six-pence.
The
Behaviour and Character
of the
Three Highlanders,
Who were Shot, on July 18th, 1743.
The many inconsistent and scandalous Reports that are spread about
Town, both in Print and Conversation, concerning the Characters and
Behaviour of the three unhappy young Men who suffer’d in the Tower of
_London_ on _Monday_ the 18th of _July_, make it necessary as well for
Information of the Public, as out of Charity to their Memories, to
publish the following Sheets.
The Author of this Tract thinks it necessary to premise, that he means
not in the Relation he intends to make of this Affair, either to
justify the Crime for which these Men suffer’d; or, in the least, to
arraign the Justice of the Court-Martial in their Proceedings; or tax
the Sentence with Severity; but, from a Motive of Christian Charity and
Love for Truth, means to remove from the Character of the Deceased,
such false Aspersions as are cast upon them, either by the Malice or
Ignorance of some, who think it not only necessary for the Vindication
of public Justice, to represent these unhappy Men as Mutineers and
Deserters, but must paint them as Men void of every other Virtue, and
addicted to the grossest Vices.
In order to give the Reader a just Idea of this Corps of Men, it will
not be improper to go back as far as their original Institution, by
which we shall be the better enabled to form a just Notion of their
Character.
Few that are in the least acquainted with the History or Constitution
of _Scotland_ but know, that anciently all the Lands in that Kingdom
were held of the Crown by Military Tenures, or Knights Service; and
that the Vassals of these great Men held their Lands of them by the
same kind of Tenures.
By this Means, the Nobility of that Kingdom had always a Number of Men
ready to bring into the Field, either in defence of their _Sovereign_,
or to decide their own private Quarrels with one another, at which the
Crown always conniv’d (for political Reasons) until both Parties were
reduced to an equal and moderate Share of Power.
This Practice of Subjects deciding their private Quarrels by the Sword,
obtained anciently all over _Britain_ and most other Countries, until
Civil Polity and more wholesome Laws prevailed: and still remained in
the _South_ parts, and towards the Borders of _Scotland_, till near
the Time of the Union of the Crowns in the Person of King _James_ the
First, when the chief Men in those Parts were diverted from their
private Animosities, by their necessary Attendance on the Court, now
removed at a greater Distance from them.
However, this Spirit of Family Feuds still prevailed in the
_Highlands_, and more remote Parts of _Scotland_, who, by their
Distance from the Court, were unacquainted with the Manners of the
civiliz’d Part of the Nation.
The inferior Chieftains in these Parts still determined their mutual
Quarrels as usual: and in revenge of any Affront, made Incursions and
Depredations into the Estates of one another, or connived at their
Followers doing so, to the great Discouragement of Industry, and
Disturbance of the public Peace.
In this Situation were Things in that Part of the Country about the
Time of the Union of the Kingdoms, when the Government very wisely,
by the Act called the _Clan-Act_, abolished these Tenures, and
for preventing these Depredations last mentioned, raised several
Independent Companies in the _Highlands_, the command of which were
given to some of the most considerable Gentlemen in that Corner,
such as Lord _Loveat_, Laird of _Grant_, _Lochnell_, _Farah_, etc.,
all men of Distinction and Weight, who were willing to engage their
Personal and Family Influence, as well as that of their Companies, for
suppressing those Quarrels, and settling a Civil Polity in the Country.
When this Levy was made, the Officers took a special Care that none
should be enlisted into that Service, but the Sons of the wealthiest
and most reputable Farmers in the Country; and the second and younger
Sons of some of the lesser Vassals were not asham’d to enlist in a
service calculated for restoring of Peace, and establishing Liberty and
Property in their Country. And as they were allowed to occupy their own
Farms or follow any other Occupation, except upon Muster-Days, or when
they were actually employed in pursuit of Robbers, or Disturbers of the
public Peace; they, instead of receiving Bounty-Money, made Interest
with the Officer to be admitted.
In this Shape they continued till they were Regimented, under the
Command of the Honourable the Earl of _Crawford_, a Nobleman, whose
Character was every way agreeable to them, and made little or no
Alteration in their Circumstances.
When we have taken this View of their Original and History, down to the
Period of their being Regimented, it will be no Matter of Surprize to
find the private Men of that Regiment differing much in their Manners
from those of other Corps, if we consider that when they entered the
Service it was impossible for them to have the least Apprehensions of
ever being obliged to leave their own Country where most of them had
Farms or other Concerns, and looked upon themselves, and I believe were
esteemed by the Country, only as a regulated Militia, at least till
such Time as they were Regimented, which was only a few Years ago.
The Earl of _Crawford_ enjoyed that Regiment but a short time, when it
was given to their present Colonel the Honourable Lord _Semple_.
They were quartered last year, the one half of them at _Inverness_, and
the other at _Perth_; some Time in Spring the Regiment was informed
by their officers that they were to be reviewed at _Musselburgh_, a
village within four miles of _Edinburgh_, and afterwards to return to
their quarters.
Accordingly they had a Rout given them to that place, and arrived
there; but were told they were not to be reviewed there, but at
_Berwick_ upon _Tweed_; when they came to this place, they were told
that his Majesty designed to review them in Person at _London_, and
that then they would all return to their Families.
When they arrived at _London_, and found that his Majesty was gone, the
Regiment were universally dissatisfied, that after so long a March they
were disappointed of the Honour of being reviewed by his Majesty.
Some Time after their coming here a Report was currently spread that
the Regiment was to be sent to some Parts of the _West-Indies_, and
broke or divided amongst the Colonies; which raised in the private
Men, who believed this Report, a very great Animosity against their
Officers, whom they groundlessly blamed for not informing them truly
where they were to go before they carried them from their own Country;
and not allowing them Time to settle their Concerns, of which some had
very considerable, which they were obliged to leave in great Disorder,
they thought the Interest of the Government did no ways require that
they, more than any other Regiment in _Britain_ should be left ignorant
of the Rout they were to take, and by that means be disappointed of an
Opportunity of settling their private affairs in a manner suitable to
so long an Absence; that they had been so long settled in that Country
without any View of being so suddenly called from it, that it amounted
to as great a Hardship on them (comparatively speaking) as it would be
to the Militia of the City of _London_ to be shipped for the _Indies_
on an Hour’s Warning.
The Officers took pains to allay this flame, by assuring the Men that
so soon as the Review was over they would be allowed to return Home.
But when the Report of their Embarkation prevailed, they were out of
all Patience, and looked upon the Design of sending them to _Flanders_
only as a Blind to get them on board, in order to ship them really for
the _West-Indies_.
Tho’ their Officers attempted to undeceive them, yet they had been
disappointed so often, and filled so long with Hopes of going Home,
that they had no Credit with them.
Add to this, that there was another Complaint pretended for the
Ground of their Discontent, that some small Arrears were due to them,
that they had all been obliged to use their own Swords, and that
their Cloathing, especially their Shoes and Plaids, were remarkably
deficient, these last not being worth Six-pence _per_ Yard; whereas
they used to be allowed Plaids of more than double that Value.
This Spirit continued after the Review, when the Discontented agreed
upon _Tuesday_ Night after to meet at _Finchley Common_, where a great
Number of them convened and waited till their Number increased. In
this interval some of their Officers came up, and by their persuasions
a great Number returned; However, about a 100 of them continued their
first Resolution of returning to their own Country.
Here it is remarkable that the Night was so dark that they scarce
could distinguish Faces, or make any Computation of their Number, and
that _Malcolm M‘Pherson_, one of the Deceased had never hitherto given
any Consent to go away, but came within some Distance of the Place
where the Men were assembled, and with another in Company, continued
irresolute what Course to take until the coming up of the Officers had
raised some Ferment, upon which he came into the Crowd, and allowed
himself to be hurried along without knowing where he was going.
Next Morning when by Day-Light they could discern their Number, and not
finding the Desertion so general as they expected, _Samuel M‘Pherson_,
another of the Deceased, advised the whole Body strenuously to return
to their Duty, which Advice he continued to inculcate during their
March to _Lady Wood_; and in a short Time after they came there, he
applied to a Justice of the Peace to propose terms of surrender; and
during all their Stay there, used his utmost Endeavours to prevent
Things coming to the last Extremity.
At last being in some Hopes of a Pardon by the Intervention of his
Grace the Duke of _Montague_, to whom Application was made in their
behalf, they surrendered on Discretion, in which _Samuel M‘Pherson_ was
the most instrumental, as will be acknowledged by the Officers to whom
he surrendered.
They were brought soon after to the Tower, and a Court Martial
appointed to try them.
The first Day the Court Martial sat, a Person, a Stranger to all the
Prisoners, came to the Grate, and pretending a great deal of Concern
for their Misfortunes, advised them not to mention on their Trial any
complaint they might have against their Officers, intimating, that he
was certain such a Plea would not avail them, and without serving them
would expose their Officers.
That the wisest Course they could follow for their own Safety, would
be to acknowledge their Guilt, and plead mercy of the Court Martial,
which he assured them would effectually work their Deliverance that no
Punishment would be inflicted on them, and at the same Time presented
them with a Petition which he had already drawn, addressed to the
Court Martial in these terms, and they very frankly relying on these
assurances signed and delivered the same to that honourable Court.
One of their Officers came next day to the Tower, and inculcated the
same Doctrine into the Prisoners that the Stranger had done before,
assuring them that they would all be liberate in a short time, when all
Justice should be done them.
The Prisoners were examined before the Court Martial one by one; the
Questions asked them were to this Purpose, Was you enlisted? Have you
taken the Oaths? Have you received your Pay? Had you your Cloathing
regularly? To all which they answered in the Affirmative: They were
asked if they had any Complaints against their Officers, they all
answered in the Negative, and in general pleaded nothing in Alleviation
of their Crime before the Court Martial, but Inadvertency, and that
they were moved to it by a Report which prevailed of their being sent
to the _West-Indies_, and into a Climate destructive of their Health.
I cannot help in this Place to take notice of the remarkable
Officiousness of this Stranger. He takes upon him without being asked,
or the least apparent Interest in the Prisoners, to advise them in
Matters of the last Consequence to them, their Lives and Reputation;
has the Rashness to prejudge the Opinion of the Honourable the Court
Martial in a Point of Law, which is at least a moot Point amongst the
Lawyers themselves.
How unreasonable was it for any Man to pretend to determine what Weight
any Plea would have before a Court of Judicature determining in a Case
of Life and Death; and how unjust to the Prisoners, to advise them to
conceal any Circumstance in their Case that might have the smallest
Tendency towards alleviating their Crimes, or raising the smallest
Motions of Compassion towards them in the Breasts of their Judges!
Suppose there had been but little Weight in the Plea of their Want
of Pay, yet still it was a Circumstance closely connected with their
Crime, without which it was impossible to form a just Judgment of the
Heinousness of that Action. For it must be granted on the one hand,
that a Soldier who deserts and cannot plead Want of Pay, etc., is less
excusable, and consequently deserves a greater Degree of Punishment
than he who has such a Pretence; this must be granted, tho’ it should
be admitted on the other hand, that there is not so much in this Plea,
as to skreen the Criminals totally from Punishment; But how much, or
little is in it, is a Case few wise Men will determine dogmatically,
especially against the Prisoner, since History, either antient or
modern, does not afford any one Instance of Capital Punishments
inflicted on Soldiers who mutinied for Want of Pay.
It is true, the Pay they want is but small; by their own Account ten or
twelve shillings, some less, some a trifle more, which I mention out
of Justice to the Officers, because it was currently reported in Town
that the Deficiency was much more considerable. But however trifling
this and their other Complaints may seem to Men not concerned, yet I
cannot but reckon it barbarous to have advised them to conceal these
Circumstances, the Relation of which could not be supposed to have been
capable of making the Court Martial less merciful to the Prisoners, if
it had not the contrary effect.
But however that Plea was waved, and did not fall under the cognizance
of the Court Martial who made their Report, the Consequence of which
was, that on _Tuesday_ the 12th, a Warrant was directed by their
Excellencies the Lords of the Regency to the Governor of the Tower,
for the Execution of _Samuel M‘Pherson_, _Malcolm M‘Pherson_, both
Corporals, and _Farquar Shaw_, a private Centinel, all three of the
Number of the Deserters, upon _Monday_ the 18th of _July_ last.
Having thus impartially traced this Meeting from its Rise to this
Period, it remains that we give some Account of the Character and
Behaviour of these three unfortunate Criminals from the Intimation of
their Sentence to their Execution.
_Samuel M‘Pherson_, aged about twenty-nine Years, unmarried, was born
in the Parish of _Laggan_ in _Badenuck_ and Shire of _Inverness_;
his Father still living, is Brother to _M‘Pherson_ of _Breachie_, a
Gentleman of a considerable Estate in that County, and is himself a Man
of unblemished Reputation, and a plentiful Fortune.
_Samuel_ was the only Son of a first Marriage, and received a genteel
Education, having made some Progress in the Languages, and studied for
some Time at _Edinburgh_ with a Writer (that is, an Attorney), until
about six Years ago he enlisted as a Volunteer in Major _Grant’s_
Company, where he was much respected both by the Officers and private
men, and was in a short Time made a Corporal.
_Malcolm M‘Pherson_, aged about 30 Years, and unmarried, was likewise
born in the same Parish of _Laggan_, was Son of Angus _M‘Pherson_
of _Driminard_, a Gentleman of Credit and Repute, who bestowed upon
_Malcolm_ such Education as that Part of the Country would afford. He
enlisted about seven Years ago in my Lord _Loveat’s_ Company, where his
Behaviour recommended him to the Esteem of his Officers, and was soon
made a Corporal.
_Farquar Shaw_, aged about 35 Years, unmarried, was born in the Parish
of _Rothmurchius_ in _Strathspey_, and Shire of _Inverness_. His
Father, _Alexander Shaw_, was an honest Farmer, but gave his Son no
Education, as living at a Distance from Schools, and not in a Condition
to maintain him elsewhere; _Farquar_ lived some time by droving, but
meeting with Misfortunes in that Business, was reduced, and obliged,
for Subsistance, to enlist in this regiment, where he has lived till
now without any Reproach.
The Sentence was intimated to them upon _Tuesday_ before their
Execution. This unexpected Change of their Fortunes, from hopes of Life
and Liberty, to that of a short Preparation for a violent Death, very
much shock’d their Resolution; but _Samuel_ less than any of them:
When the Warder went to acquaint _Samuel_ of this melancholy News, he
carry’d with him two Centinels, for fear any Accident might happen; and
after expressing his Concern for being the Messenger of such unhappy
News, acquainted him, he must die. He started with Surprize; and asked,
with some Emotion, _How must I die? You are to be shot, Sir._—Then he
reply’d, pretty composedly, _God’s Will be done; I have brought this
upon myself_. He then asked, If he might be allowed Pen and Ink; and
when the Post went for _Scotland_? The Warder told him the Night; but
that he could not live to receive any Return: He said, he did not want
any. He very pleasantly gave the Warder what Weapons he had, which
were only a small Penknife and a Razor: and before the Warder parted
with him seem’d to have assumed his ordinary Calmness of Mind; and he
and the other two, after some Reflection, and the Conversation of the
Clergy (who from this time attended them) were reconciled so much to
their Circumstances, as to be able to bear the thoughts of Death with
great Decency, and Christian Resignation to the Will of God.
_Samuel_ owned he had been active at the Beginning of the Sedition;
but he could not help sometimes thinking, that the great Pains he took
to influence the Men to return to their Duty afterwards, in a great
Measure, alleviated his first Crime.
_Malcolm_, to the last declared that he never advised any Person to go
away; on the contrary, that he never was resolved himself, till the
moment he joined the Men in their March from _Finchley Common_, and
then his Reflection was so short, that he scarce knew what he did.
_Farquar Shaw_, in the same manner, declared, That he was no way active
in raising the Meeting: That he never advis’d any Man to desert; deny’d
that he presented his Piece to any of the Officers, as it was reported.
He owned, that he might have utter’d some very passionate and indecent
Expressions to some of the Officers who commanded him to return; but
that these expressions did not import a threatening to strike any of
them.
But notwithstanding that they all three imagin’d themselves no more
guilty than the rest of the Prisoners, yet they never once utter’d
the least Reflection against the Sentence, the Court Martial, or the
Lords of the Regency; in short, they did not Attribute their Death
to anything else but the divine Providence of God, to which they
chearfully submitted, and acquitted all Mankind of their unhappy End;
of which _Farquar Shaw_ gave a lively Instance: It being reported to
him, that one Serjeant _Mc.Bean_ had deposed before the Court Martial,
that he (_Shaw_) had presented his Piece to him, when he commanded him
to return to his Duty; and that this Deposition had determined the
Court Martial to fix upon him in particular; he sent for the Serjeant,
and very calmly questioned him concerning this Fact; Who told him that
he had never been an Evidence against him, but own’d, that he told some
of his Officers, that he (_Shaw_) had threaten’d to strike an officer
who commanded him to return to his Duty; and that it was probable, the
Colonel might receive this Intelligence from the Officers, and that by
this means it might come to the Knowledge of the Court Martial: The
Serjeant express’d his Regret, that he should be any way instrumental
to his misfortunes. But _Shaw_, in an affable Manner, desir’d him to
give himself no Uneasiness on that Head: That he had neither Spite nor
Ill-will at him for what he had said, but would die in perfect Love
and Friendship with him, and all Mankind: That he had sent for him on
purpose to make his Mind easy and not to trouble himself with needless
Reflections, since he heartily forgave him; and accordingly parted
with him in the most friendly and amicable manner and frequently after
express’d to me his Concern for the Serjeant, lest his Reflections on
himself should prejudice him, or make him uneasy. This behaviour of
his, to the Man whom he was convinc’d had been the principal Cause of
his Death, must argue a most charitable, forgiving, and generous Temper
and Disposition of Mind, very seldom to be met with in Men of more
elevated Stations in Life.
They all three were Men of strong natural Parts, and religiously
disposed both from Habit and Principle, the natural Result of a
good Example and early Instruction in the Doctrine and Precepts
of Christianity; for I received from all of them a great deal of
Satisfaction when I examined them on the Grounds of our holy Religion;
and even _Shaw_, who was perfectly illiterate and could neither
read nor write, was ignorant of no Christian Doctrine necessary
to Salvation, or from whence he could draw Comfort in his present
Circumstance. They were educated, and died Members of the Church of
_Scotland_, tho’ they chearfully embraced the Opportunity of receiving
the Sacrament from the Hands of the Reverend Mr _Paterson_, who
officiated for the Chaplain of the Tower, after the Form of the Church
(_sic_) _England_, on the _Sunday_ preceding their Execution.
As their Notions of Religion were sincere, so they expressed the
greatest Regard for Honesty and Integrity, and thanked God, tho’ they
were great Sinners, that his restraining Grace had enabled them to
avoid all vicious and prophane Courses or the offering any Injury to
their Neighbours in their Persons or Properties; that they hoped they
had not only the Approbation of (_sic_) of a good Conscience, but the
Testimony of their Officers, Friends and Acquaintance, that they have
lived all their Life-time without Scandal to themselves, or Reproach to
their Friends, until this unhappy Period, when Rashness, without any
Mixture of Malice, Cowardice, or Disaffection to his Majesty’s Person
or Government, had brought their Lives to this miserable Catastrophe.
They applied themselves diligently to the Duty of Prayer and reading
the Scripture, from the Time of their Sentence, which they said they
had but too much and too long neglected.
When they were all three brought to one Ward near the Place of
Execution, about four o’Clock that Morning, they expressed the greatest
Affection and Sympathy for one another, each regretting the case of the
other two more than his own; at the same time encouraged one another to
Constancy of Mind, and a dutiful Resignation to the Hand of God.
_Samuel M‘Pherson_ ordered three Coffins to be made of fifteen
Shillings Value each, for which he paid; and _Malcolm_ made a Will,
which he deposited in the Hands of three of his own Name among the
_Highland_ Prisoners, some Days before their Execution.
These three were admitted to visit the Prisoners, who told them that
they thanked God that they had got the better of the Fears of Death,
and were prepared to embrace it chearfully; that they thought their
Case better than that of their Fellows, as they were leaving this World
in Hopes of Eternal Peace and Happiness, whilst they were to remain
here exposed to new Temptations and new Troubles in distant and unknown
Countries, where they would not enjoy Life, but a lingering Death. They
applied by Petition to several Persons of Quality, of which the two
following are true Copies.
_To their Excellencies the Lords Justices._
The humble Petition of _Samuel M‘Pherson_, _Malcolm M‘Pherson_,
and _Farquar Shaw_.
_May it please your Lordships_,
That, whereas your poor Petitioners lie under Sentence of Death
for Mutiny and Desertion, and have nothing to hope (under the
Almighty) but from your Lordships’ Favour on our Behalf, which we
do most humbly intreat. And as we are sincerely sorry for our base
Conduct and Misbehaviour, and it being our first Crime, we hope for
your Lordships’ kind Indulgence, which should we be so happy as to
obtain, we do sincerely promise to retrieve this our Misconduct by
a steady Attachment to our most gracious Sovereign King _George_,
by defending him and his Royal House with all our Power, where and
in whatever manner we shall be directed.
_Samuel M‘Pherson._
_Malcolm M‘Pherson._
_Farquar Shaw._
_To her Grace the Dutchess of_ Richmond,
The humble Petition of _Samuel M‘Pherson_, _Malcolm M‘Pherson_,
and _Farquar Shaw_.
_May it please your Grace_,
That, whereas your poor Petitioners lie under Sentence of Death
for Mutiny and Desertion, and have nothing to hope (under the
Almighty) but from your Grace’s charitable Intercession to the
Lords Justices on our Behalf, we do most humbly intreat your
Grace’s good Offices. And as we are sincerely sorry for our base
Conduct and Misbehaviour, and it being our first Crime, we hope for
your Grace’s kind Indulgence, which, should we be so happy as to
obtain, we do sincerely promise to retrieve this our Misconduct by
a steady Attachment to our most gracious Sovereign King _George_,
by defending him and his Royal House with all our Power, where and
in whatever manner we shall be directed.
_Samuel M‘Pherson._
_Malcolm M‘Pherson._
_Farquar Shaw._
Upon the _Monday_ Morning the Governor ordered them to put on their
Shrouds below their Cloaths, which when done, they immediately began to
pray, and continued in that Exercise very devoutly and fervently till
six o’Clock, when they were called out to Execution. They walked to
the Place close up to the Chapel in the Tower without expressing the
least Horror or Despondency in their Gaite or Countenance, but with a
Christian Composure and Resignation of Mind. Here _Samuel M‘Pherson_
standing on the Plank which was appointed for them to kneel on, with
an assured Countenance and in an audible Voice, in his own Language,
addressed his Fellow-Prisoners that were drawn up round the Place of
Execution, in this Manner:
_My Friends and Countrymen_,
You are not Strangers to the Cause of my Sufferings with these
my Companions; I hope the Anguish you must feel at the Sight of
this shocking Scene, will be the last of your Punishment; for I
am convinced you must think it a Punishment to see us bleed: But
my Blood, I hope, will contribute to your Liberty; That Thought
affords me as much Satisfaction as a Soul prepared to take a Flight
to Eternity can receive from any Earthly Concerns.—Take Example
from our unfortunate Ends, and endeavour to conduct yourselves so,
both before God and Man, as your Lives may be long, and your Deaths
natural. Next to your Duty to God, discharge what you owe your King
and Country; wipe off this Reproach by a steady Loyalty to his
Sacred Majesty, and a respectful and obedient Conduct towards your
Officers.
Having uttered this Speech, he, with his Cousin _M‘Pherson_ and _Shaw_,
kneeled down, whilst the Reverend Mr _Paterson_ and myself joined in
Prayer, kneeling before them on a Plank: When Prayers were over, their
Faces were cover’d; when Eighteen Soldiers, in three Ranks, (Twelve
of whom were appointed to do the Execution, and the other Six for a
Reserve, had been kept out of Sight for fear of shocking the Prisoners)
advanced on their Tiptoes, and with the least Noise possible, their
Pieces ready cock’d for fear of the Click disturbing the Prisoners,
Serjeant-Major _Ellisson_, (who deserv’d the greatest Commendation for
this Precaution) waved a Handkerchief as a Signal _to present_; and,
after a very short Pause, waved it a second time as a Signal _to fire_;
when they all three fell instantly backwards as dead; but _Shaw_ being
observed to move his Hand, one of the Six in Reserve advanc’d, and
shot him thro’ the Head, as another did _Samuel M‘Pherson_. After the
Execution, an Officer order’d three of the Prisoners, Name-sakes of the
Deceased, to advance and bury them; whom they presently stripp’d to
their Shrouds, put them in their Coffins, and buried them in one Grave,
near the Place they were shot, with great Decency. The Officers on Duty
appeared greatly affected, and three Hundred of the Third Regiment of
_Scotch_ Guards, who were drawn up in three Lines in the Shape of a
half Moon, attended the Execution, many of whom, of the harden’d Sort,
were observed to shed Tears.
Thus ended this melancholy Scene, which raised Compassion from all, and
drew Tears from many of the Spectators. They had by their courteous
Behaviour, gained so much upon the Affections of their Warders, the
Inhabitants of the Tower, and others that conversed with them, that
none were so hard-hearted as to deny them their Pity, nay, nor hardly
had any Resolution to see them executed.
What made this Spectacle still more moving was, that Mixture of
Devotion, Agony, and Despair that was seen in the Faces and Actions of
the remaining _Highland_ Prisoners, who were ranged within side the
Guards. When Prayers began, they all fell on their Knees and Elbows,
hanging their Heads and covering their Faces with their Bonnets, and
might easily be observed that they could not refrain from the loudest
Lamentations. Such a number of young Men, in so suppliant a Posture,
offering their Prayers so fervently to Heaven, with such Marks of
Sorrow for the Fate of the unhappy Criminals, had a prodigious effect
upon the Spectators, and I am hopeful will influence the Practice and
Conversation of all that saw them; and to the Praise of these poor Men,
(take from them the Account (_sic_) their heinous transgression of
Mutiny and Desertion) I believe their courteous and modest Behaviour,
their virtuous and pious Principles, and religious Disposition, would
be no bad Pattern for Men above the Rank of private Centinels, and
ought to be a severer Reproof to many who live here, and have all
the Advantages of a liberal Education, and the Example of a polite
Court; that Men they esteem barbarous, inhabiting a distant and
barren Country, should outdo them in real politeness, that is, in the
Knowledge and Practice of the Doctrines of Christianity.
From hence we may remark, that those who published or propagated so
many scandalous Reports of these unhappy young Men, must either have
taken little Pains to inform themselves of the Truth, or must be
possessed of little Charity, when they load their Memory with so many
Assertions no way connected with their Crime. But, as this Relation
is published from the Prisoners’ own Mouths, and attested by a Person
whose Profession and Character ought to screen him from the Imputations
of Partiality or Falsehood, it is hoped these Impressions will wear off
of the minds of the Public, and give place to sentiments of Charity for
their Crimes, and Compassion for their Sufferings.
_Magna est Veritas, et prævalebit._
FINIS
APPENDIX III
DATES OF RESTORATIONS CARRIED ON BY H.M. OFFICE OF WORKS AT THE
TOWER OF LONDON TO THE PRESENT TIME. FOR DETAILS SEE APPENDICES
IV.–V.
Under whose
direction works
executed.
Salvin. Beauchamp Tower, restored 1852
Do. Salt Tower „ 1856
Taylor. Chapel Royal „ 1876
Do. Restoration of wall on River Front together
with the Cradle and Well Towers 1878
Do. Broad Arrow Tower 1881–2
Do. Restoration of Lanthorn Tower 1882–3
Do. Do. Ballium Wall 1886
Do. Well Tower 1887
Do. Restoration of Ballium wall between Wakefield
and Lanthorn Tower 1888
Do. Restoration of S.W. Turret of White Tower 1895
Do. Restoration of S.E. Turret and base of White
Tower, S. and E.; also Stone Stairs on
the S. 1896
J. R. Westcott. North Wing of King’s Tower lifted 15 in. on
E. front; restored 1898–9
Do. Bloody Tower 1899–1900
_Note._—Certain new buildings have also lately been erected by the War
Office, including a new Main Guard, which is a permanent eyesore to the
Tower; this ugly building was completed in the year 1900, and stands on
the site of the old Main Guard.
[Illustration: DESCRIPTION
1. Kentish rag & flint with shell mortar splendid quality this work
is NORMAN
2. These foundations are from 5 to 6 feet below Dungeon floor & are
composed of Kentish Rag chalk and a small quantity of Flints. The
mortar is a kind of Clunck & not so good as Nᵒ 1
3. Similar to Nᵒ 2 & within 6 inches of surface 6 feet in depth.
Chalk & Kentish rag chalk predominating rufus very inferior
4. This wall consists of Kentish rag Gatton stone fragments of Roman
brick & Tile & shell mortar.
5. Similar to Nᵒ 2 one of the walls of Coldharbour Tower & is now
incorporated in the New Main Guard. The bottom is level with Nᵒ 2
6. Under the S.W. angle of the batter of the White Tower is the
Oubliette & into which the subway enters
7. A fine specimen of Norman masonry. In 1899 it was 56 feet deep &
contained 42 feet of water it is lined sith Gatton stone Ashler
8. An aperture discovered in 1899 leading into the subway & was
probably broken through in the 16ᵗʰ century. Through this aperture
a large number of stone, iron & lead cannon balls were lodged in
the subway believed to be relics of Flamanks or Wyatts rebellion.
The arch was made good in 1899
PLAN SHOWING RECENT DISCOVERIES AT THE TOWER.]
APPENDIX IV
RECENT DISCOVERIES AT THE TOWER
Since the time when the late Prince Consort interested himself in
the restoration and preservation of the Tower, the Commissioners of
Works and Public Buildings have cleared away, from time to time, all
useless and modern portions which obscured certain parts of the ancient
fabric. This work was actually begun in the lifetime of the Prince
Consort, under the superintendence of Mr Salvin, who still continues
to be consulted on all the more important restorations. The works are
now under the superintendence of Mr John Taylor, the Surveyor to the
Commissioners, who is aided by Major-General Milman, Major of the
Tower and the resident military commander, all designs being submitted
to the Sovereign before being carried into execution. The various
restorations, especially those of the Beauchamp Tower and St Peter’s
Chapel, have been described in the body of this work.
During the year, a range of buildings which stood against the east side
of the White Tower, and believed to have been built in the fourteenth
or fifteenth century, were pulled down, and it was found that the outer
walls were of the period generally assigned to the building, but that
the inner or west wall was of brick. This building, which extended
on the south side from the south-east turret of the White Tower to
what was formerly the Wardrobe Tower, and thence in a north-westerly
direction with a return wall to the north-east turret of the White
Tower,—had been so altered and patched that it no longer possessed any
architectural or antiquarian interest, and was entirely removed, except
those portions of the south walls and the ruins of the Wardrobe Tower,
which form the north wall of the Tower Armoury, erected in 1826.
Whilst this work of demolishing was being carried out, an interesting
discovery was made, Roman tiles and mortar being found, worked up
into the materials of which these walls were built. At the south-east
corner, and adjoining the remains of the Wardrobe Tower, a portion of
Roman wall was disclosed, having three courses of bonded tiles showing
above the surface of the _débris_. This piece of wall is in a direct
westerly line with the old city wall, shown in a plan of the Tower made
in 1597, the demolished buildings likewise appearing on this plan,
which can be seen in the office of the Commissioners of Works. Two
inferences are possible from the discovery of this Roman work; either
it is part of the old city wall or the remains of a Roman building, and
if it is satisfactorily proved to be Roman, it will practically settle
the contested point as to whether there was ever a Roman fortress on
the site of the White Tower or not. Holinshed, in the third Book of his
history of England, quoting both Leyland and Fabyan, says, that Belins,
who began to reign conjointly with Brennus as King of Britain, which
was “about the seventh year of Artaxerxes, the seventh king of the
Persians, builded a haven with a gate within the city of Troinovant,
now called London. This gate was long after called Belins gate, and
at length, by corruption of language, Billingsgate. He builded also a
castle westward from this gate (as some have written) which was long
time likewise called Belins Castell, and is the same which we now call
the Tower of London.” It was pointed out in the first volume of this
work that Fitzstephen declared the White Tower to have been built by
Julius Cæsar, and that the mortar used in the building was “tempered
with the blood of beasts,” but the Roman habit of mixing powdered tiles
with their mortar, may have given rise to this theory. Stowe, in his
survey of London about 1076, says, that William the Conqueror caused
the present White Tower to be erected at the south-east angle of the
city wall, which would be the actual spot where the fragment of the
recently discovered Roman wall now stands.
On removing the southern wall of this building, it was found that it
was built up to, and not bonded into the south-east turret of the White
Tower, which forms the apse of St John’s Chapel. When it was taken
down, the original stone-work of the White Tower was laid bare. It is
quite honeycombed by age, Sir Christopher Wren having, of course, been
unable to reface it as he did the exposed portions of the Tower.
The Cradle Tower, which is the third tower on the southern side of
the outer Ballium wall, the others being the Develin and the Well
Towers, was opened out and restored in the year 1878. Before its
restoration, the southern wall was closed up, the only apertures being
two loopholes. There was nothing to indicate that it ever had any
connection with the moat, and the only access to the interior was on
the north side, within the Ballium wall. It was used as a gunpowder
store, and was only one storey in height, no trace remaining of the
second storey which originally existed. The first step taken was to
remove the whole of the masonry which had been built up against the
Tower; this disclosed the old front as well as an arch on the south
side. The return walls extended ten feet, and were built with their
southern face in the moat, having two half arches turned against the
moat wall, and when the masonry blocking up the arch in the south wall
and these two half arches was removed, it at once became evident that
formerly the water in the moat had flowed through the half arches and
across the centre arch. By clearing away this masonry the wall of the
moat itself was disclosed, and was found to be of an earlier date than
the architecture of the Tower itself. On the ground floor there is a
chamber with a finely groined roof of the late thirteenth or early
fourteenth century. The following is the actual restoration done to the
Cradle Tower. The wall built up in the moat under the centre arch and
under the two half-turned arches has been cleared away, and the outer
walls have all been restored to their original condition. An additional
storey and turret have been erected on the same plan as the old
building. The corbels in the groined roof of the ground floor chamber,
which were broken off, have been replaced by new ones copied from a
single corbel that remained. A wooden grating, after the pattern of an
old doorway in the Byward Tower, has been fitted to the central arch,
whilst the space between that arch and the moat has been boarded over.
[Illustration: _The White Tower, showing the Exterior of St. John’s
Chapel and remains of the Roman Wall_]
A further discovery was made during the restoration of this tower. In
the space between the bridge over the moat to the east of the Cradle
Tower and the Well Tower, stood a modern building used as a storehouse
by the Ordnance Department, and this being pulled down, excavations in
its foundations, made by the Board of Works, have disclosed a brick
paving and some loopholes in the outer Ballium wall, which has helped
to identify this space as the site of the garden belonging to the
Queen’s apartments, when the royal palace stood within the Tower walls.
This palace occupied the space bounded by a line running exactly from
the south angle of the White Tower to the Broad Arrow Tower, thence
south along the inner Ballium wall to the Salt Tower, thence west to
the Wakefield Tower, and north to the south-west angle of the White
Tower. A portion of this space is now occupied by the Ordnance Stores
and the Control Office. Nearly opposite to, and to the west of the
Cradle Tower, and on the south side of the royal Palace, stood the
Lanthorn Tower (now rebuilt). The Queen’s apartments extended from
the Lanthorn Tower to the south-east angle of the White Tower, and
the space recently cleared, formed the Queen’s private garden, the
loopholes in the Ballium wall bounding the garden on the south side
giving a view of the river.
From these discoveries it would appear that the Cradle Tower was the
entrance to the Queen’s apartments from the river, and the opinion is
confirmed by the fact that the inner faces of the walls on which the
centre arch stands, are worked and pointed as outside facing, probably
to withstand the action of the water as they would be covered when
the moat was full. There is space above the arch for a portcullis and
grooves in the jambs, but it is not large enough for portcullis slides.
In the entrance on the north or land side, however, both the space and
grooves show that there was a portcullis there, and the chamber on the
east side has no outlet, except into the centre chamber or gateway—from
which it would seem that it was a guard-room for the use of a warder
while on duty at the gate. And the name of the Tower strengthens this
idea, “Cradle” being the old Saxon word “cradel,” meaning a movable
bed. The hypothesis is that there was a hoist or lift by which a boat,
after passing through the archway, was lifted on to the floor of the
gateway. On comparing the groining of the chamber with the groined
chamber in the Well Tower, the greater beauty of that in the Cradle
Tower is at once apparent, which would point to its being part of a
royal dwelling. It is also nearly opposite the site of the Lanthorn
Tower, which was the entrance to the Queen’s apartments. The access to
and from the Thames and the Queen’s apartments of the Palace, would be
from the Cradle Tower to the moat, under St Thomas’s Tower and through
Traitor’s Gate, and would be the only communication with the river. In
1641 the Cradle Tower appears to have been used as a prison, according
to “A particular of the Names of the Towers and Prison Lodgings in his
Majesty’s Tower of London, taken out of a paper of Mr William Franklyn,
sometime Yeoman Warder, dated March 1641,” in which appears, “Cradle
Tower—A prison lodging, with low gardens where the drawbridge was in
former times.”
The War Office have determined to build stores on the Queen’s gardens,
and consequently the loopholes in the old Ballium wall will be blocked
up. The site will thus be lost for further investigation, and as the
Office of Works has no power to prevent these works being carried out,
all that has been exposed of one of the most interesting portions of
the older part of the Tower will be lost.
[Illustration: _View of Sᵗ. Peter’s Chapel in 1817._]
APPENDIX V
THE BLOODY TOWER
Owing to serious signs of weakness in the upper portions of the walls
of the Bloody Tower, it was considered an absolute necessity to
carefully renew the Kentish Rag facing in various places. The work has
been thoroughly well executed stone by stone, all the old stones that
were sound being re-used, and the whole of the walls have been greatly
strengthened by what is technically known as “tying in.” It was found
that the Tower had been repaired in this same manner about the time
of Henry VIII., and probably on more than one occasion. The heart of
the walling is in excellent preservation, and is the original Norman
Transitional masonry with a liberal proportion of chalk. The parapet
has been restored to its original embattlemented character. A brick
wall, which had closed the historical entrance to Raleigh’s Walk for
the last hundred years, has been cleared away, leaving the passage open
as in the days of Cranmer and Raleigh; this wall was built to prevent
the south-west angle of the Tower falling down, and was an economical
vandalism on the part of the authorities of the time. Another act of
vandalism was committed by some former occupant of the Tower, who
had cut out a cupboard for blacking brushes in the solid masonry
immediately behind the springing of the large arch over the portcullis,
thereby seriously jeopardising the stability of the arch; happily this
has been remedied by the recent restoration. A fine arch over the
northern portcullis that had completely disappeared, has been replaced,
and early English Gothic windows of stone with lead lights have been
fixed throughout the Tower, in the room of the Georgian windows with
common double-hung deal sashes. Stone chimney-stacks have also taken
the place of the incongruous chimney-stacks of brick, and a very
interesting octagonal stone turret, which had been patched with brick,
has been restored to its original condition. This turret is circular
inside, and is about five feet in diameter; a curious internal window
was found about a foot higher than Raleigh’s Walk, and as it answers no
purpose, it is supposed that it was used for supervising the prisoners.
In a jamb of the recess immediately over the northern portcullis
several inscriptions were brought to light, but of these only the
letters R. D. were legible, which, seeing the acquaintance that both
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, or Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester,
had with the Tower, has not unnaturally led to the conclusion that the
initials belong to one or other of these royal favourites.
The Bloody Tower is of the Norman Transitional period, but the groining
as well as the gates on the south side—those on the north side have
been removed—are Tudor. The massive bottom rails of these gates were
destroyed to allow of an injudicious raising of the road surface many
years ago. It is said that the road was raised from two to three feet,
probably to overcome some difficulty of draining, but whatever the
reason, the fine gates suffered both in effect and materially. On the
west front of the Tower there is an early English doorway which has
been “Tudorised,” its outer arch being modern Norman Transitional.
The original freestone used in the building of the Bloody Tower was
procured from the neighbourhood of Red Hill, and in the old records is
called “Rygate” stone. It is known at the present time as Gatton, but
the quarries are no longer worked. The fine old arches over the main
entrance are still in this “Rygate” stone, an interesting survival,
since the whole of the external stone dressings in this material on the
Tower were superseded by Caen stone from Normandy in the reign of Henry
VIII. This was a deplorable error of judgment, for notwithstanding the
enormous amount of Caen stone used throughout the Tower in this reign,
scarcely a trace of it now remains. The modern restorations to the
interior have been carried out in the “pinny bed of Chilmark,” a stone
closely resembling the Rygate or Gatton stone, but much more durable,
whilst Kelton stone from the neighbourhood of Rutland has been employed
for the battlements and other external dressings. All the main walling
was carried out in Kentish Rag stone, which was procured from the
contractor who built the new guard buildings for the War Department. In
the records of Henry VIII.’s time, this Kentish Rag is called the “hard
stone of Kent.” The stone used in those days was undoubtedly superior
to that used by Salvin over fifty years ago, as is shown by the
comparison between the restored Beauchamp Tower and the White Tower.
Soft stones, such as Caen or Bath, absorb a great deal of moisture, and
their injudicious use consequently hastens the decay of any building
in which they are used. Much of the mischief in the Bloody Tower was
doubtless caused by the decay of the Caen stone, and also the neglect
in pointing the joints. It is generally thought amongst those most
concerned, that the restoration of the Bloody Tower is the most careful
and complete of any of the works of preservation carried out in the old
fortress, and it is now judged to be safe from all fear of collapse.
APPENDIX VI
STAINED GLASS IN THE TOWER
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 eight 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 wheatsheaf 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 leopard, 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.
APPENDIX VII
LIST OF THE CONSTABLES OF THE TOWER
Geoffrey de Mandeville
William de Mandeville
Geoffrey de Mandeville[8] 1140
Richard de Lacy 1153
Garnerius de Isenei
William Longchamp, Bishop of Ely 1189
Walter de Coutances, Archbishop of Rouen 1192
Roger Fitz Renfred
Roger de la Dane }
Geoffrey de Mandeville } During the reign of
Eustace de Greinville } John.
Archbishop of Canterbury }
Walter de Verdun }
Stephen de Segrave }
Hugh de Wyndlesore }
Randulph, Bishop of Norwich }
John de Boville }
Thomas de Blunvil }
Thomas Fitz Archer }
Ralph de Gatel }
Hubert de Burgh 1232 }
W. de St Edmund }
Geoffrey de Crancumb } During the reign of
Hugh Giffard } Henry III.
Archbishop of York } jointly }
Bertram de Crioyl } }
Peter de Vallibus }
John de Plessitus }
Peter de Blund }
Aymor Thorimbergh }
Inbert Puglys }
Richard de Culworth }
Richarde de Tilbury }
Hugh le Bigod 1258 }
John Mansel }
Hugh le Despenser }
Roger de Leyburn 1265 }
Hugh Fitz Otho }
John Walerand } jointly } During the reign of
John de la Lind } } Henry III.
Alan la Touch }
Thomas de Ippegrave }
Stephen de Eddeville }
Hugh Fitz Otho }
Walter, Archbishop of York }
John de Burgh }
Anthony Bek }
Ranulph de Dacre }
Ralph de Sandwich }
Ralph de Berners } During the reign of
Ralph de Sandwich } Edward I.
John de Crumwell }
Roger de Swynneston }
Stephen Segrave }
Bishop of Exeter }
John de Gisors }
Thomas de Wake }
John de Crumwell }
William de Monte Acuto }
Nicholas de la Beche }
Robert de Dalton } During the reign of
John Darcy } father and son } Edward III.
John Darcy } }
Bartholomew de Burghersh }
Robert de Morley }
Richard de la Vache }
Alan Buxhill }
Sir Thomas Murrieuse }
Edward, Earl of Rutland }
Ralph de Nevill } During the reign of
Edward, Duke of Albemarle } Richard II.
Thomas de Rempston }
Edward, Duke of York }
Robert de Morley }
John Dabrichcourt } During the reign of
William Bourghchier } Henry V.
Roger Aston }
John, Duke of Exeter } During the reign of
James Fienes, Lord Say } Henry VI.
John Lord Taploft, Earl of Worcester }
John, Lord Dudley } During the reign of
Richard, Lord Dacre } Edward IV.
John Howard, Lord Howard }
Marquis of Dorset }
Sir Robert Brackenbury
Earl of Oxford
Sir Thomas Lovel } During reigns of
Sir William Kingston } Henry VIII. and
Sir John Gage } Edward VI.
Lord Clinton[9]
Sir Edward Bray
Lord Howard of Walden
Lord Coltington 1640
General Sir Thomas Fairfax 1647
Sir John Robinson 1660
James, Earl of Northampton 1678
Lord Allington 1680
George, Lord Dartmouth 1684
Lord Lucas 1688
Charles, Earl of Carlisle 1715
Henry, Earl of Lincoln 1724
Charles, Duke of Bolton 1724
Henry, Viscount Lonsdale 1726
Montague, Earl of Abingdon
Algernon, Earl of Essex
Richard, Earl of Rivers
George, Earl of Northampton
John, Earl of Leicester 1731
Charles, Lord Cornwallis 1741
Lord George Lennox
Marquis Cornwallis 1785
Francis, Marquis of Hastings 1806
Arthur, Duke of Wellington 1826
Viscount Combermere 1852
Sir John Fox Burgoyne 1865
Sir George Pollock 1871
Sir William Gomm 1872
Sir Charles Yorke 1875
Sir F. Fenwick Williams 1881
General Sir R. C. Dacres 1881
Lord Napier of Magdala 1886
General Sir Daniel Lysons 1890
Sir Frederick C. Stephenson 1898
INDEX
Abel, Dr, execution of, i. 159
Abergavenny, Lord, i. 131
Albert, Prince, i. 58, 59, 60; ii. 171
Alençon, Duke d’, i. 63
Allen, Cardinal, i. 213
Andrews, Colonel Eusebius, execution of, ii. 49
Anne Boleyn, i. 35, 39;
State visit to the Tower, 131;
coronation, 132;
arrest, 143, 144;
trial, 146;
execution, 149
Anne of Cleves, i. 157
Apsley, Sir Allen, i. 41 and _n._, 42, 112
Arden, John, i. 50
Armagh, Archbishop of, murder of, i. 34
Armour in the White Tower, i. 64–73
Armoury, the, destroyed by fire, ii. 142–144
Arnold’s Chronicles, quoted, i. 117
Arques Castle, i. 61
Artillery at the Tower, i. 73
Arundel, Sir Thomas, execution of, i. 179, 180
Arundel, Philip Howard, Earl of, i. 31, 32, 214
Arundel, Richard Fitzalan, Earl of, arrest of, i. 95;
execution of, 96
Arundel, Earl of, quarrel with Lord Spencer, ii. 27
Arundel, Humphrey, i. 180
Aske, Robert, i. 151
Askew, Anne, story of, i. 162–164
Athol, Earl of, i. 85, 86
Atterbury, Bishop, ii. 112
Audley, Mervin, Lord, execution of, ii. 32
Axe, the processional, i. 12, 25, 26, 70, 73; ii. 133
Axten, Colonel, execution of, ii. 58
Babington, Anthony, i. 215
Bacon, Francis, i. 48;
imprisonment of, ii. 27
Badlesmere, Lady, i. 87
Bagot, Sir Francis, execution of, i. 151
Bailly, Charles, i. 33, 209
Balfour, Sir William, ii. 33, 37, 38
Baliol, King, i. 85
Ballard, trial and execution of, i. 215
Ballium Wall, the, i. 13, 14, 43, 44, 46, 51;
restoration of, ii. 169
Balmerino, Lord, i. 40; ii. 116, 117;
trial of, 118–120;
execution of, 121–125
Banqueting Hall, i. 57;
explosion in, ii. 145
Barkstead, Colonel, execution of, ii. 61
Barlow, Lucy, ii. 51, 52
Barnes, Dr Robert, execution of, i. 159
Barracks, the, ii. 145
Bathurst, Earl, i. 42
Battista, Giovanni, i. 46, 47
Beauchamp Tower, the, i. 14, 29–34, 44; ii. 94;
restoration of, 169
Becket, Thomas à, i. 81, 83
Bedingfield, Sir Henry, i. 200
Bedingfield, Sir Thomas, ii. 42
Bell, Mr Doyne, i. 35, 36, 39
Bell, Dr, i. 127
Bell Tower, the, i. 14, 28, 29
Berkeley, Sir Maurice, i. 197
Besant, Sir Walter, quoted, i. 2, 6
Birch, Mr G. H., i. 2 _n._, 44 _n._, 61; ii. 93, 114 _n._
Birds at the Tower, i. 74
Biron, Duke de, i. 228
Bishops, the Seven, ii. 86, 87
Block, the, i. 70; ii. 133
Blood, Colonel, i. 19, 42, 45; ii. 67–71
Bloody Tower, the, i. 12, 13, 17, 20, 21, 22; ii. 94;
restoration of, 169, 175, 176
Blount, Sir Michael, i. 41, 217
Blount, Sir Richard, i. 41
Blunt, Sir Christopher, execution of, i. 229
Board of Ordinance, the, i. 68
Bonner, Bishop, i. 163, 201
Bowyer Tower, the, i. 45;
part destroyed by fire, ii. 144
Brackenbury, Sir Robert, i. 116
Brass Mount Battery, i. 52
Brick Tower, the, i. 45
Bridges, the four, i. 9
Bridges, Sir John, i. 192, 193
Britton and Brayley, quoted, i. 44, 46, 64, 67
Broad Arrow Tower, the, i. 6, 46;
restoration of, ii. 169
Brooke, Duke, ii. 6, 7
Brooke, George, ii. 2;
execution of, 5
Brooke, William, ii. 7
Brown, Sir Anthony, i. 169, 177, 192
Brown, Horatio F., ii. 1 _n._
Bruce, David, i. 87, 88
Buckingham, Edward Bohun, Duke of, i. 127,
trial and execution of, 128–130
Buckingham, George Villiers, Duke of, bribed by Raleigh, ii. 8, 20;
assassinated, 31
Buckingham, George Villiers, 2nd Duke of, five times imprisoned in
the Tower, ii. 62
Bulwark, the, i. 9, 112
Bulwer, Sir John, execution of, i. 151
Bulwer, Lady, burnt at Smithfield, i. 151
Burchet, Peter, i. 212
Burdett, Sir Francis, ii. 139, 140
Burgoyne, Sir John, i. 25, 42
Burley, Sir Simon, execution of, i. 94
Burnet, Bishop, ii. 74, 77, 78, 79
Byron, Sir John, ii. 37, 38
Byward Tower, the, i. 10, 11, 21, 44
Cade’s Insurrection, i. 104, 105
Campion, hanged at Tyburn, i. 213
Cannon in the Tower, i. 73
Capel, Lord, escape and recapture of, ii. 46, 47;
execution of, 47
Carew, Sir Alexander, execution of, ii. 44
Carew, Sir George, i. 218
Carew, Sir Nicholas, execution of, i. 152
Carew, Sir Peter, i. 194
Carr, Robert, _see_ Earl of Somerset, ii. 17
Catherine of Arragon, i. 121, 123, 125
Catherine Howard, i. 35, 39;
execution of, 160, 161
Catherine Parr, i. 162, 165, 170
Cato Street Conspiracy, the, ii. 140
Cecil, Sir Robert, i. 218, 219, 223; ii. 4
Chaplain’s House, the, i. 34
Charles I., journey to Spain, i. 19;
armour of, 72;
treatment of Lord Loudon, ii. 33, 34;
betrayal of Stafford, 34, 35;
plot to seize the Tower, 36, 37
Charles II. and Colonel Blood, i. 42; ii. 70, 71;
executions of regicides, 56;
death of Sir Harry Vane, 59;
visit to the Tower, 59;
coronation, 59;
courage during the Fire, 62;
Papistical tendencies, 73;
visit to the Tower on the day of Essex’s death, 76, 77
Chelmsford, Lord, ii. 146
Cholmondeley, Sir Richard and Lady, i. 40, 41, 127
Clarence, George, Duke of, i. 44, 108, 111, 112
Clarke, Mr G. J., quoted, i. 6, 44, 53, 57, 61
Clement, Gregory, execution of, ii. 56
Clifford, Gervase, Lord, imprisonment and suicide of, ii. 26
Cobham Tower, i. 30
Cobham, Thomas, i. 34
Cobham, Henry, Lord, i. 30; ii. 2, 3, 5;
his career and death, 5, 6;
his writings, 7
Cobham Family, history of the, ii. 5, 6, 7
Coke, Sir Edward, i. 27, 48; ii. 18, 27
Cold Harbour, i. 6, 23, 24
Combermere, Lord, i. 25
Commines, Philip de, quoted, i. 112, 117
Constable of the Tower, office of, i. 25
Constable Tower, the, i. 46
Constable, Sir Robert, execution of, i. 151
Conyers, Sir John, ii. 37, 38, 43
Cooke, Lawrence, execution of, i. 159, 160
Cooper, Sir Anthony Ashley, ii. 53
Corbet, Miles, execution of, ii. 61
Cornwallis, Sir Thomas, i. 198
Council Chamber, the, i. 26, 27, 57
Courtenay, Edward, Earl of Devonshire, i. 188
Courtenay, Henry, Marquis of Exeter, execution of, i. 152, 153
Coventry, Sir William, ii. 65, 66
Cowdray, paintings formerly at, i. 169, 170
Coxe, Dr, Bishop of Ely, i. 177
Cradle Tower, the, i. 50, 52,;
restoration of, ii. 169, 172, 173;
recent discoveries, 173
Cranmer, Archbishop, i. 21, 144, 147, 158, 187, 189
Cromarty, Earl of, ii. 116, 117, 118, 120, 133
Cromwell, Oliver, Constable of the Tower, ii. 38;
plots to assassinate, 51, 52
Cromwell, Thomas, i. 19, 133, 143, 144, 148, 150, 151, 152;
made Earl of Essex, 155;
compared with Robespierre, 155;
his career, 155–157;
his fall, 157;
execution of, 158
Cruikshank, G., ii. 143
Cuffe, Henry, execution of, i. 230
Cumberland, Earl of, i. 72
Dacre, Lord, execution of, i. 159
Daniell, John, i. 46, 47
Danvers, Sir Charles, execution of, i. 229
Darcey, Lord, execution of, i. 151, 153
Darcy, Sir John, i. 88
Darnley, Lord, i. 181, 206
Dartmouth, William Legge, Lord, i. 67
David, King of Scotland, i. 58
Davison, Elizabeth’s secretary, i. 216
de la Motte, Henry Francis, hanged at Tyburn, ii. 137
de Ros, Lord, quoted, i. 13, 37, 42, 56, 59, 149, 163; ii. 111, 112
Derwentwater, Earl of, ii. 102, 103;
execution of, 104, 126
Desborough, Nathaniel, ii. 67
Desmond, Earl of, ii. 12
Develin Tower, the, i. 43, 52, 53
de Vere, Aubrey, Earl of Oxford, i. 109
Devereux Tower, the, i. 43
Dick, Rev. R., quoted, i. 33
Digby, Sir Everard, execution of, ii. 9
Dighton, one of the murderers of the two Princes, i. 116, 117
Dillon, Viscount, i. 65, 69, 71, 211 _n._
Draper, Hugh, i. 48
Dudley, Edmund, execution of, i. 124
Dudley, Lord Guildford, i. 34, 182, 185, 189;
execution of, 192;
buried in the Tower, 194
Dudley, Lord Harry, i. 187
Dudley family, the, i. 31, 32
Dungeons, in the Wakefield Tower, i. 18;
White Tower, 26;
Flint Tower, 44;
Salt Tower, 47;
St John’s Chapel, 55
Edward I., i. 83;
the Tower under, 85, 86
Edward II., the Tower under, i. 86, 87
Edward III., i. 36, 44;
the Tower under, 88, 89
Edward IV., murder of sons of, i. 20, 21, 22, 55, 112, 114–118;
defeats the Lancastrians, 107;
coronation of, 108, 109;
battle of Tewkesbury, 110;
his additions to the Tower, 112;
death, 112
Edward VI., coronation of, i. 169, 170;
execution of Somerset, 176, 178;
further executions, 179, 180
Edwards, Talbot, i. 42; ii. 68, 69, 70
Eliot, Sir John, imprisonment of, ii. 28, 29;
death, 29, 30
Elizabeth, Queen, i. 10;
figure of, on a wooden horse, 56;
and the Countess of Lennox, 28, 206;
birth, 132;
relations with Lord Seymour, 170, 171;
and Bishop Coxe, 177;
visit to the Tower with Queen Mary, 188;
imprisoned in the Tower, 198;
released, 200;
visit to the Tower before her coronation, 202;
her treatment of Catherine Grey, 203;
her struggle with Mary Stuart, 206;
the Ridolfi plot, 208;
proceedings against the Jesuits, 212, 213;
State prisoners, 214;
the Babington plot, 215;
imprisonment of Raleigh, 218;
fall of Essex, 221;
her last days, 230
Elizabeth, Queen of Henry VII., i. 60;
coronation of, 121
Elizabeth Woodville, i. 109, 114
Empson, Sir Richard, execution of, i. 124
Essex, Arthur Capel, Earl of, ii. 74;
death in the Tower, 75, 76, 77
Essex, Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of, i. 65, 80, 81
Essex, Robert Devereux, Earl of, i. 35, 43;
armour of, 72;
an enemy of Raleigh, 221;
his person and position, 221;
failure of his Irish expedition, 222, 223;
imprisonment and trial of, 223;
execution of, 224
Essex, Robert, Earl of, 229
Eu, Counts of, i. 88, 103
Evelyn, John, ii. 71, 83
Fabyan, quoted, i. 112–117
Fairfax, Sir Thomas, ii. 38
Fawkes, Guy, i. 26, 55; ii. 9
Feckenham, i. 191, 193
Felton, John, assassination of Buckingham, i. 29, 76; ii. 31;
execution of, 32
Fenwick, Sir John, execution of, ii. 91
Ferrers, Lawrence Shirley, Earl, hanged at Tyburn, ii. 133–135
Fire of 1841, the, i. 27; ii. 142–144
Fisher, John, Bishop of Rochester, i. 29, 132, 133;
imprisonment, 134;
trial and execution, 135–138;
buried in the Tower, 142
Fitz, Colonel, ii. 53
Fitzgerald, Gerald, Earl of Kildare, i. 142
Fitzgerald, Thomas, siege of Dublin Castle by, i. 142;
hanged, 143
Flambard, Astronomer-Royal, i. 60
Flambard, Bishop, i. 54, 57, 79, 80
Flete, John de, i. 65
Flint Tower, the, i. 43
Forde, Thomas, i. 47
Forrest, one of the murderers of the two Princes, i. 116
Fraser, Sir Simon, i. 86
Freeman, Professor, i. 53, 54, 80
Gage, J., i. 47
Gage, Sir Thomas, i. 200
Galligman’s Tower, i. 53
Garden Tower, the, i. 20
Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, i. 185, 188, 199
Gardiner, Mr S. R., quoted, i. 95, 97, 110, 113, ii. 114
Gardner, Sir James, ii. 42
Garnet, Father, i. 48;
execution of, ii. 8, 9
Gates, Sir John, execution of, i. 187
“Gentleman-gaoler,” the, i. 12
Gerard, Father, i. 44, 48–51; ii. 8, 9
Gerard, Thomas, execution of, i. 159
Gerrard, John, execution of, ii. 51
Ghosts in the Tower, i. 26, 27
Gibbons, Grinling, i. 46
Gladstone and Sir Thomas More compared, i. 139
Gloucester, Gilbert de Clare, Earl of, i. 84
Gloucester, Humphrey, Duke of, i. 103
Gloucester, Richard, Duke of, i. 108, 110;
made Protector, 112;
his portrait, 113;
imprisons his nephews, and declares them bastards, 114, 115;
crowned 115.
_See_ Richard III.
Gloucester, Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of, revolt of, i. 94;
arrest of, 95
Gloucester, Duchess of, i. 104
Glendower, Owen, i. 100
Gordon, Lord George, ii. 137
Gorges, Sir Arthur, i. 218
Gough, Sir Mathew, i. 105
Governor’s House, _see_ King’s House
Green, one of the murderers of the two Princes, i. 116
Grey, Lady Catherine, i. 191;
marriage with Lord Hertford, 203;
imprisonment of, 204;
death of, 205
Grey, Lady Jane, i. 33, 34, 35;
marriage with Guildford Dudley, 182;
enters the Tower in state, 182;
imprisonment of, 185;
trial of, 189;
letters to her father, 190, 191;
execution of, 192–4;
buried in the Tower, 194
Grey, Lord John, i. 194
Grey, Lord Leonard, i. 143;
execution of, 143, 159
Grey, Sir Richard, execution of, i. 114
Grey de Wilton, Lord, imprisonment and death of, ii. 2, 5, 7
Griffin, Edward, ii. 92, 93
Grillot, i. 45
Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester, i. 6, 54, 62
Gunpowder Plot, the, ii. 8
Gurney, Sir Richard, ii. 42
Hacker, Colonel, execution of, ii. 58
Haiward and Gascoigne’s plan of the Tower, i. 6, 7, 23, 43, 75
Hales, Sir Robert, murder of, i. 90, 91, 92
Hamilton, James, Duke of, ii. 45;
execution of, 46
Hamilton, Sir Stephen, execution of, i. 151
Harley, Robert, Earl of Oxford, imprisonment of, ii. 100
Harrington, James, ii. 56, 57
Harrison, Major-General Thomas, execution of, ii. 56
Harvey, Sir George, ii. 9, 10
Hastings, Sir Edward, i, 198
Hastings, Lord, i. 35, 57;
execution of, 114
Hengham, Ralph de, i. 86
Henry I., i. 6, 7, 81;
imprisonment of Flambard by, 79
Henry III., i. 17, 36, 45, 51, 59, 76;
buildings in the Tower due to, 82;
obliged to take shelter in the Tower, 83
Henry IV., i. 98, 100
Henry V., i. 101, 102
Henry VI., his minority, i. 103;
Cade’s insurrection, 104, 105;
deposition and imprisonment of, 108, 110;
murder of, 19, 110
Henry VII., i. 120–123
Henry VIII., i. 16, 37;
armour of, 71;
marriage with Catherine of Arragon, 125;
his executions, 126;
marriage with Anne Boleyn, 131;
execution of More and Fisher, 132 _et seq._;
execution of Anne Boleyn, 143 _et seq._;
marriage with Jane Seymour, 150;
marriage with Anne of Cleves, 157;
execution of Cromwell, 158;
execution of Catherine Howard, 160;
increasing cruelty, 166;
imprisonment of Norfolk and Surrey, 166;
death, 168
Henry, Duke of Normandy, i. 81
Henry, Prince of Wales, armour of, i. 72;
friendship with Raleigh, ii. 12;
death of, 16, 18
Hentzner, Paul, i. 8, 58, 66, 67, 69
Hertford, Lord, i. 203, 204, 205;
marriage with Lady Catherine Grey, 203;
imprisonment of, 204, 205
Hewet, Dr, execution of, ii. 52
Hocking, W. J., quoted, ii. 97, 99
Hogarth, his portrait of Lord Lovat, ii. 127
Holland, Earl of, execution of, ii. 46
Hopton, Sir Owen, i. 24, 213, 217
Hopton, Sir Ralph (afterwards Lord), ii. 41, 42.
Hotham, Sir John, and Captain, execution of, ii. 44
Hudson, Mr W. H., quoted, i. 74
Hungerford, Lord, execution of, i. 158, 159
Hussey, Lord, execution of, i. 151, 153
Hutchinson, Mrs, i. 21, 41 _n._, 42, 112
Inner Ward, the, i. 12, 20, 45, 51
James I., portrait of, in the Council Chamber, i. 27;
first visit to the Tower, ii. 1;
his appearance, 4;
treatment of the Cobhams, 6, 7;
treatment of Arabella Stuart, 13–15;
betrayal of Raleigh, 23, 24
James II., Roman Catholicism, ii. 73, 84;
visit to the Tower on the day of Essex’s death, 76, 77;
appointments of Roman Catholics at Oxford, 85;
trial of the Seven Bishops, 86, 87;
flight, 88, 89
James, Prince, of Scotland, imprisonment of, i. 100, 101
James, Colonel John, execution of, ii. 56
“Jane of the Tower,” birth of, i. 87
Jean de Vienne, i. 88
Jerningham, Sir Henry, i. 196
Jerome, William, execution of, i. 159
Jewel House, the, i. 18, 45; ii. 68
Jews, imprisonment of, i. 55, 85
Jeffreys, Judge, i. 21; ii. 75, 79, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90
Joan of Kent, i. 60
John, King, the Tower besieged by, i. 82
John, King of France, i. 58, 88
Julius Cæsar’s Tower, i. 47;
repairs in, 131
Kent, Hubert de Burgh, Earl of, i. 82
Kent, Thomas Holland, Earl of, i. 94, 96
Kenmure, Lord, ii. 102, 103;
execution of, 104, 105
Keys, ceremony of receiving the, i. 22
King’s House, i. 14, 20, 23, 24–28
Kildare, Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of, i. 39
Kildare, Thomas Fitzgerald, Earl of, i. 34
Kilmarnock, Lord, i. 40; ii. 116, 117;
trial of, 118–120;
execution of, 121–124
Knighton, Sir W., i. 144, 145, 147, 148
Knights Templars, imprisonment of the, i. 87
Knyvett, Sir A., i. 164
Lambert, John, escape of, ii. 54;
recaptured and banished, 54, 55
Lancaster, Duke of, i. 97.
_See_ Henry IV.
Lansdowne, George Granville, Earl of, ii. 95, 101
Lanthorn Tower, i. 6, 51, 52; ii. 173, 174;
restoration of, 169
Latimer, Bishop, i. 15, 172, 187, 201
Laud, Archbishop, i. 21;
imprisonment of, ii. 34;
his room searched by Prynne, 39;
trial and execution, 40
Lee, Sir Henry, i. 211
Legge’s Mount, i. 52
Leicester, Robert Dudley, Earl of, i. 31, 66, 72
Lennox, Countess of, i. 28, 206;
imprisonment of, 206
Le Swifte, E., i. 27
Lieutenant of the Tower, office of, i. 25
Lilburne, Colonel John, ii. 48
Lion Gate and Tower, i. 7, 10
Lisle, Arthur Lisle, Viscount, death of, i. 161
Lithbury, Robert, i. 86
“Little Ease,” i. 162; ii. 9
“Little Hell,” i. 44
Llewellyn, death of, in escaping from the Tower, i. 83
Lollards, persecution of the, i. 101, 102
London, Visscher’s view of, in 1616, ii. 21, 22;
the Fire, 62, 63;
Hollar’s view of London before and after the Fire, 62
London, Lord Mayor imprisoned, ii. 136, 137
Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, i. 9, 82
Lopez, plot of, i. 220;
execution of, 221
Loudon, Lord, ii. 33, 34
Lovat, Simon Fraser, Lord, i. 39, 40, 70; ii. 126, 127;
trial, 128, 129;
execution, 130–133
Love, Christopher, execution of, ii. 50
Lucas, Lord, ii. 88, 89, 91
Lucy, Richard de, i. 81
Luke, Sir Thomas, ii. 26
Lumley, William, execution of, i. 151
Lumsford, Sir Thomas, ii. 38
Lysons, Sir Daniel, i. 25
Macaulay, Lord, i. 35
MacMahon, Colonel, attempted escape from the Tower, ii. 45;
execution, 45
Maximilian, Emperor, armour given to Henry VIII. by, i. 68, 70, 71
Macquire, Lord, attempted escape from the Tower, ii. 44, 45;
execution, 45
Main Guard, the, i. 22
Margaret, Queen, i. 108, 109, 110
Marlborough, Duke of, imprisonment of, ii. 91, 92
Mary, Queen, i. 171, 172;
proclaimed Queen, 184;
visit to the Tower, 187;
coronation, 188;
marriage with Philip of Spain, 198;
imprisons Elizabeth, 198, 199;
her persecutions, 201;
death, 201
Mary Stuart, i. 181;
struggle with Elizabeth, 206
Martin Tower, the, i. 27, 45, 46; ii. 68
Master of the King’s Ordnance, office of, i. 67
Matilda, the Empress, i. 80, 81
Mayne, Cuthbert, i. 213
Menagerie, the, i. 7, 8
Menteith, Earl of, i. 85
Merrick, Sir Gilley, execution of, i. 229
Meyrick, Dr S. R., i. 64, 66
Middle Tower, i. 9, 10
Middlesex, Lionel Cranfield, Earl of, imprisonment of, ii. 27
Milman, General George, i. 24; ii. 146, 171
Minories, the, i. 196
Mint, the, i. 13, 14; ii. 95–99
Mint Street, i. 13
Moat, the, i. 8, 9,
Molini, Nicolo, Venetian Ambassador, ii. 1 _n._
Mohun, Lord, ii. 92
Monk, George, imprisonment of, ii. 44
Monmouth, James, Duke of, i. 28, 39, 43, 70; ii. 75;
execution of, 81–83
Montague, Lord, i. 131
Montford, Simon de, i. 83
Montgomery, John de, i. 65
Mordaunt, Henry, Lord, imprisonment of, ii. 8, 9
Mordaunt, Henry, conspiracy of, ii. 52
More, Sir Thomas, i. 29, 117, 132;
compared with Gladstone, 139;
imprisonment and execution, 140, 142
Moreton, Sir William, ii. 43
Mortimers, the, i. 58, 87, 88
Morton, Bishop of Ely, i. 114, 117
Napier of Magdala, Lord, i. 25
Nevill, Sir Edward, i. 131;
execution of, 152
Neville, Lady Anne, i. 108
Neville, Sir Henry, i. 208
Neville, Marmaduke, i. 31
Newton, Sir Isaac, i. 15; ii. 98
Nithsdale, Lord, i. 28; ii. 102, 103;
escape of, 105–111
Norfolk, 2nd Duke of, i. 129
Norfolk, 3rd Duke of, i. 143, 146, 151, 161, 188, 189, 196;
sentenced to death, 166;
narrow escape, 168;
death 168
Norfolk, 4th Duke of, i. 31, 207, 208;
trial, 209;
execution, 211
North Bastion, i. 52
Northumberland, Henry Percy, 8th Earl of, i. 214
Northumberland, Henry Percy, 9th Earl of, ii. 8, 9, 11
Northumberland, John Dudley, Duke of, i. 21, 39, 173, 174, 178,
179, 181, 182;
arrested and imprisoned, 184;
apostacy, 185, 186;
execution, 187
Nottingham, Earl of, i. 94, 96
Oates, Titus, ii. 72, 73
O’Connor, Arthur, ii. 138, 139
Offley, Sir Thomas, i. 192
Okey, Colonel, attempt to seize the Tower, ii. 53;
execution of, 61
Oldcastle, Sir John, i. 101, 102
Oldcorn, Father, execution of, ii. 8, 9
O’Neale, Daniel, ii. 43
Orleans, Charles of, i. 53, 57, 58, 63, 64, 103
Otho, Papal Legate, i. 84
Otway, death of, i. 76
Outer Ward, the, i. 10, 52
Overbury, Sir Thomas, i. 21;
story of the murder of, ii. 16, 17
Owen, Sir John, ii. 46, 47, 48
Owen Tudor, i. 104
Palmer, Sir Thomas, execution of, i. 187
Parade, the, i. 24
Parkhurst, Sir W., i. 15
Parry, plot and execution of, i. 214, 215
Partridge, Sir Miles, execution of, i. 179, 180
Partridge, Nathaniel, i. 185, 186
Penn, William, i. 76; ii. 71, 72
Pennington, Sir Isaac, ii. 38, 44
Pepys, Samuel, i. 37; ii. 54, 58, 59, 62, 64–67, 96
Percy, Henry, i. 109
Percy, Sir Thomas, execution of, i. 151
Perrot, Sir John, imprisonment of, i. 216;
death of, 217
Peverel, i. 31
Pierce, the Regalia saved by, ii. 143
Planché, J. R., i. 64
Pole, Arthur de la, i. 34, 206
Pole, Cardinal, i. 152, 153, 156
Pole, Edmund de la, i. 34, 206
Pole, Sir Geoffrey de la, i. 152;
death in the Tower, 153
Pole, Henry de la, Lord Montagu, execution of, i. 152
Pole, _see_ also Suffolk
Pope, Sir Thomas, i. 141
Princes, murder of the two, i. 20, 21, 22, 112–118;
their bones found, 55
Prynne, William, visit to Laud in the Tower, ii. 38, 39
Queen’s House, _see_ King’s House
Raleigh, Sir Walter, i. 21, 22, 27, 56;
marriage with Elizabeth Throgmorton, 218;
imprisonment, 218;
release, 220;
an enemy of Essex, 221, 223, 228;
second imprisonment, ii. 2, 3, 5, 8–12;
his “History of the World,” 10, 12, 18, 19,
released, 20;
expedition to the West Indies, 21, 23;
failure, 23, 24;
trial, 24;
execution, 25, 26
Raleigh, Lady, i. 76, 218, 219; ii. 8, 9, 10, 25
Raleigh’s Walk, ii. 175
Ratcliffe, Charles, ii. 126
Rathbone, Captain, ii. 62, 63
Record or Hall Tower, i. 17
Regalia, the, i. 18, 19, 45;
Colonel Blood’s attempt to steal, ii. 68–70;
saved by Pierce in 1841, 143
Reynardson, Sir Abraham, ii. 43, 49
Richard I., i. 43, 82
Richard II., i. 10, 11;
coronation of, 90;
seeks refuge in the Tower, 90, 94;
marriage with Isabel of France, 95;
arrest of the Duke of Gloucester and others, 95;
imprisonment in the Tower, 97;
deposition of, 98;
his character, 99
Richard III., murder of Henry VI. by, i. 19;
and Lord Hastings, 57;
coronation of, 115, 116;
murder of the young princes, 116
Ridley, Bishop, imprisonment of, i. 187
Ridolfi Plot, the, i. 208, 209
Rivers, Earl, i. 110, 114
Robinson, Sir J., i. 37; ii. 62
Roches, Peter de, Bishop of Winchester, i. 82
Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl of, ii. 64
Rochford, Lord, execution of, i. 150
Rochford, Lady, i. 35;
execution of, 160, 161
Roettier, J., i. 15; ii. 96, 97, 98
Roman remains, i. 2, 3, 55; ii. 171, 172
Roper, Margaret, i. 140 141, 142
Ross, Bishop of, i. 29, 208, 211
Ross, Earl of, i. 85
Russell, William, Lord, i. 43, 70; ii. 73, 74;
trial, 75, 77, 78;
execution, 79
Rye House Plot, the, ii. 73, 75
Salisbury, Earl of, i. 91
Salisbury, Countess of, i. 35, 39, 152, 153;
execution of, 154
Salt Tower, the, i. 47;
restoration of, ii. 169
Salutation Battery, i. 73
Salvin, i. 14, 17, 18, 30, 38, 51, 52, 62; ii. 169, 171
Sandwich, Ralph de, i. 36
Sandys, Sir William, i. 130
Sautre, William, i. 102
Savile, Henry, ii. 66
Saye, Lord, i. 105
Scaffold, site of the, i. 35;
on Tower Hill, 75
Scales, Lord, i. 105, 109
Scaramelli, Venetian envoy, ii. 1 _n._
Scott, Thomas, execution of, ii. 58
Scott, Sir Walter, i. 31
Scottish prisoners in the Tower, i. 18; ii. 114–116, 155–167
Sensenhofer, Conrad, i. 71
Seton, Sir Christopher, i. 86
Seymour of Sudley, Lord, i. 170;
arrest and death of, 171, 172
Seymour, Jane, i. 144;
marriage with Henry VIII., 150
Seymour, Lady Jane, i. 203, 204
Seymour, William, ii. 3, 13, 14, 15, 16
Shakespeare, at the Tower, ii. 2
Sherin, execution of, i. 212
Shaftesbury, Lord, ii. 63, 73
Shrewsbury, Lady, ii. 13, 15
Sidney, Algernon, i. 20; ii. 73;
execution of, 79, 80
Simnel, Lambert, i. 120, 121
Simon’s “Petition Medal,” ii. 98
Skelton, Sir Bevil, ii. 88
Slingsby, Sir Henry, execution of, ii. 52
Smeaton, Mark, i. 150
Somers, Will, i. 72
Somerset, Robert Carr, Earl of, ii. 17;
imprisonment of, 18
Somerset, Protector, i. 11, 39, 170, 171;
arrest, 173;
release, 174;
again arrested, 174;
trial, 175;
execution, 176, 177
Somerset, Duchess of, i. 188
Somerville, John, and family, i. 214
Southampton, Lord, i. 24, 222;
imprisonment and trial, 223;
released by James I., 229
Southwell, Sir Richard, i. 198
Spencer, Lord, quarrel with the Earl of Arundel, ii. 27
Spur-Yard, the, i. 9
St John’s Chapel, i, 36, 55, 57, 58–60;
stained glass in, 76–78; ii. 177, 178
St Ledger, Sir Anthony, i. 15
St Peter’s Chapel, plate in, i. 16, 24, 35–43;
stained glass in, 76
St Thomas’ Tower, i. 12, 13, 14;
fall of, 16, 17;
repairs in, 131
Stafford, Sir Henry, i. 124
Stafford, Thomas, Lord, execution of, i. 201
Stafford, William Howard, Viscount, execution of, ii. 72, 73
Stained glass in the Tower, i. 76; ii. 177, 178
Stanhope, Sir Michael, execution of, i. 179, 180
Stanley, Lord, i. 114
Stanley, Sir William, execution of, i. 122
Stephen, i. 17;
residence in the Tower, 80
Stevenson, R. L., description of the Duke of Orleans, i. 63
Stillingfleet, Bishop, ii. 72
Store, Dr John, i. 33
Store House, the, i. 46
Stoughton, John, i. 47
Stourton, Lord, imprisonment of, ii. 8, 9
Stowe’s “Survey,” quoted, i. 6, 40, 75, 112, 157, 202, 228
Strafford, Earl of, ii. 21;
committed to the Tower, 34;
trial, 35;
execution, 35, 36
Strafford, Edmund de, Lord Chancellor, i. 96
Stuart, Lady Arabella, ii. 2, 3, 13, 14, 15
Stubbs, Dr John, i. 212
Subterranean passages, i. 23, 44
Sudbury, Simon of, Archbishop of Canterbury, murder of, i. 90, 91,
92
Suffolk, Charles Brandon, Duke of, i. 66, 72, 127
Suffolk, Henry Grey, Duke of, i. 181, 182, 190, 194;
trial and execution of, 195;
discovery of his head, 196
Suffolk, Edmund de la Pole, Earl of, execution of, i. 126
Suffolk, John de la Pole, Duke of, i. 117, 126
Suffolk, William de la Pole, Duke of, i. 104, 105
Suffolk, Lord and Lady, imprisonment of, ii. 27
Surrey, Earl of, i. 146;
execution of, 165, 168
Sutherland, Earl of, i. 85
Syndercombe, Miles, death of, ii. 52
Talbot, Sir Gilbert, i. 19; ii. 68
Talbot, Thomas, i. 34
Tankerville, Count of, i. 88
Taylor, Sir John, i. 38
Taylor, John, ii. 169, 171
Tempest, Nicholas, execution of, i. 151
Thanet, Lord, ii. 138, 139
Thistlewood, execution of, ii. 140, 141
Throgmorton, Francis, execution of, i. 214
Throgmorton, Sir John, i. 192
Torture, instruments of, i. 69
Torture chamber, the, i. 26, 48
Tower, the, first used as State prison, i. 79;
besieged by citizens of London, 81, 82;
besieged by King John, 82;
handed over to Prince Louis of France, 82;
seized by the Barons, 84;
first woman prisoner, 87;
seized by Mortimer, 87;
survey of, in 1336, 88;
Tyler’s Rebellion, 90–93;
imprisonment and deposition of Richard II., 97–98;
Cade’s insurrection, 105;
murder of the two Princes, 112–118;
attacked for the last time, 196;
Tower guards appointed, ii. 37;
plot by Charles I. to seize, 36, 37;
in the hands of the Parliament, 38, 41;
constant escape of prisoners, 50;
seized by the Royalists, 53;
repairs in, 61;
danger from the Fire, 61, 62;
Pepys’ story of hidden treasure, 64, 65;
ceased to be a royal residence, 81;
the mint, 95–99;
Jacobite plot to seize, 112;
Spanish treasure brought to, 135;
last peer imprisoned in, 139;
ceased to be a prison of State, 141;
the Fire of 1841, 142–144;
area of, 145;
Fenian attempt to blow up, 145–147;
rights and privileges of, 151;
dates of restorations at, 169;
new buildings, 169;
recent discoveries, 171–174;
stained glass in, 177, 178
Tower Green, i. 24, 25
Tower Hill, i. 75;
last execution on, ii. 128
Tower Wharf, i. 10
Traitor’s Gate, i. 12, 14, 16, 20
Trevelyan, Mr G. M., quoted, i. 91–93
Tudenham, Sir Thomas, execution of, i. 109
Tullibardine, Marquis of, ii. 116, 117
Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, i. 188
Turnbull, James, ii. 99
Turner, Mrs, ii. 17;
execution of, 18
Tyler’s Rebellion, i. 90
Tyrell, James, i. 116; execution of, 123
Tyrell, Sir William, execution of, i. 109
Vane, Sir Harry, execution of, ii. 57, 58
Vane, Sir Ralph, execution of, i. 179, 180
Vaux, Sir Nicholas, i. 130
Victoria, Queen, visit to the Tower, i. 150
Waad (or Wade), Sir William, i. 27, 37, 48, 49, 50; ii. 10, 16
Wakefield Tower, the, i. 6, 17
Wallace, William, i. 86
Walpole, Sir Robert, imprisonment of, ii. 95
Walpole, Jesuit priest, i. 221
Walsingham, Sir Edmund, i. 146;
epitaph of, ii. 2 _n._
Walsingham, Secretary of State, i. 207, 215, 216
Walworth, William, Lord Mayor, i. 90, 91
Warbeck, Perkin, insurrection of, i. 122;
hanged, 123
Warders of the Tower, the, i. 11, 12
Warders’ Parlour, the, i. 11
Warding Gate, the, i. 11
Wardrobe Gallery and Tower, the, i. 6, 46, 47; ii. 171
Warner, Sir Edward, i. 205
Wars of the Roses, the, i. 107, _et seq._
Warwick, Ambrose Dudley, Earl of, i. 32, 33
Warwick, Edward Plantagenet, Earl of, i. 120;
execution of, 121
Warwick, John Dudley, Earl of, i. 32, 33;
death of, 200
Warwick, Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of, i. 30, 95
Waterford, Lord, i. 71
Well Tower, the, i. 52, 53;
restoration of, ii. 169
Wellington, Duke of, i. 9, 25; ii. 145
Westcott, J. R., ii. 169
Weston, Sir John, i. 88
White, Thomas, Lord Mayor, i. 189
White Tower, the, i. 4, 5, 6, 45, 53–73;
repairs in, 137;
Fenian attempt to blow up, ii. 145–147;
restoration of, 169;
recent discoveries, 171, 172
Wilkes, John, ii. 136
William I., i. 5, 62
William Rufus, i. 6, 47
Williams, Sir Fenwick, i. 25
Williams, John, Bishop of Lincoln, ii. 32, 33
Williamson, General, ii. 120, 129, 131
Wintoun, Lord, ii. 102, 103;
escape of, 112
Wolsey, Cardinal, i. 127
Woodville, Elizabeth, i. 109, 114
Worcester, Edward Somerset, Marquis of, ii. 50, 51
Worcester, Earl of, armour of, i. 72
Wren, Sir Christopher, i. 45, 54, 62; ii. 93, 94, 172
Wriothesley, Sir Thomas, i. 163, 165
Wyatt, Sir Henry, story of, i. 118, 119
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, rebellion of, i. 194;
attacks the Tower, 196;
capture and execution of, 197
Wyatt’s Rebellion, i. 30, 34, 56, 190, 194, 196, 197
Yeomen of the Guard, i. 12
Yeomen porter, the, i. 22
Yeomen Warders, i. 11, 12
Yorke, Sir Charles, i. 38
Yorke, Sir John, i. 15
THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| FOOTNOTES: |
| |
| [1] The Venetian envoy Scaramelli, writing to the Doge from |
| London on the 15th May 1603, says, “Et fra tanto non entrera sua |
| Maestà in Londra, ma solamente prenderá il possesso della Torre |
| ad uso antico, come del Trono et fondomento regale, essendovi in |
| essa il Tresoro, et le Armi, ciò è tutte le forze del regno,” |
| which translated is, “Meantime his Majesty will not enter London, |
| but will only take possession of the Tower, according to ancient |
| custom, as the Throne and the foundation of the royal power, for |
| in the Tower are the treasury and the armoury—that is, all the |
| strength of the realm.” Two years later (on December 8th, 1605) |
| Nicolo Molini, the Venetian Ambassador in England, writes to |
| Venice about the Tower, “It is a most remarkable fact in this |
| country, that if a nobleman is put in the Tower, he either loses |
| his life or ends his days there.” I am indebted to my friend, |
| Mr Horatio F. Brown, for these two interesting notices which he |
| found in the Venetian State Paper Records. |
| |
| [2] Among the contemporary dramatists of Shakespeare, reference |
| to the Tower is made by Peele, Decker, Webster, and Heywood. |
| Peele, in his play of “Edward I.,” where Llewellyn, Prince of |
| Wales, mentions how his father broke his neck in attempting to |
| escape from what he calls “Julius Cæsar’s Tower.” Decker and |
| Webster refer to the fortress in their “Famous History of Sir |
| Thomas Wyatt,” and to Guildford Dudley and Jane Grey; Heywood, in |
| his tragedy of “Edward IV.,” recounts the murders of Clarence and |
| the sons of Edward, and refers to Queen Elizabeth’s imprisonment |
| in the Tower in his “History of Queen Elizabeth.” There are also |
| allusions to the Tower and to Cromwell, Earl of Essex, and to Sir |
| John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, in the “Doubtful Plays.” The above |
| information I have obtained from that rare scholar and critic, |
| Dr Furnival. Probably scattered about the country are many other |
| inscriptions recording the connection with the Tower of the dead, |
| commemorated as was Sir Edward Walsingham on his tomb by his son |
| Sir Thomas, in the church of St Nicholas at Chislehurst in Kent: |
| |
| “A knight, sometime of worthie fame, |
| Lyeth buried under this stonie bower; |
| Sir Edmund Walsingham was his name, |
| Lieutenant he was of London Tower.” |
| |
| [3] In a series of fac-simile letters of illustrious personages |
| published by John Thorne in 1793, is the following from Strafford |
| to his wife. It is dated from the Tower the 4th February 1640—but |
| this date is evidently a mistake, and 1641 must be the year:— |
| |
| “Sweet Harte,” he writes, “it is long since I writt unto you, for |
| I am here in such trouble as gives me little or noe respett. The |
| Charges now cum in, and I am now able, prayse God, to tell you, |
| that I conceave there is nothing Capitall, and for the rest I |
| knowe at the worste his Ma.ty will pardon all without hurting my |
| fortune, and then we shall be happy by God’s grace. Therefore, |
| comfortt your self, for I trust these cloudes will pass away, |
| and that we shall have faire weather afterwardes. Farewell.—Your |
| loving husband, |
| STRAFFORD.” |
| |
| [4] Sir Isaac Pennington was a fishmonger, and elected Alderman |
| of the Ward of Bridge Without, January 29th, 1638; and became |
| Lord Mayor, 1641–42. He was one of the Commissioners who sat upon |
| the trial of Charles I., for which he was condemned to death at |
| the Restoration, but was not executed. He was sent to the Tower |
| August 25th, 1660, where he died on the 17th of the following |
| December. |
| |
| [5] Sir John Robinson was a clothworker, and elected Alderman |
| of Dowgate, December 18th, 1655, and chosen Sheriff, June 24th, |
| 1657. He was removed to Cripplegate, December 7th, 1658, and |
| made Lord Mayor in 1662, being appointed Lieutenant of the Tower |
| on September 22nd, 1663. He was the eldest son of the Reverend |
| William Robinson, Archdeacon of Nottingham, and was knighted at |
| Canterbury on 26th May 1660, and created a baronet in the June of |
| the same year.... He was a nephew of Archbishop Laud, and married |
| Anne, daughter of Sir George Whitmore, a knight and an alderman. |
| He was Lieutenant of the Tower from 1661 to 1678. King Charles |
| II. and his Queen, the Queen-mother and the Duke and Duchess of |
| York, dined with him at the Clothworkers’ Hall, where he kept his |
| mayoralty on the 23rd of June 1663. The pageant performed by his |
| Company at his inauguration was entitled “London’s Triumph.” The |
| _Gazette_ of April 23rd to 26th, 1666, contains an account of the |
| trial of certain persons for high treason for conspiring to kill |
| him and other officers of the Tower, and to fire the city. He was |
| a benefactor to the Clothworkers’ Company, who still preserve his |
| portrait in their hall. |
| |
| [6] The pamphlet has been copied _in extenso_, and will be found |
| in the Appendix. The illustrations, with the exception of one |
| which I was allowed to reproduce by the kindness of Mr Birch, the |
| Curator of the Soane Museum, were also lent me by Mr Gardiner. |
| |
| [7] See Appendix. |
| |
| [8] The office had been hereditary, but ceased to be so under |
| Stephen. |
| |
| [9] Appointed by Lady Jane Grey’s party. There is no record of |
| Constables during the reign of Elizabeth, Sir John Gage being |
| restored to office at Mary’s succession. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
Transcriber’s Notes:
- Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
- Text enclosed by equals is in bold (_bold_).
- Blank pages have been removed.
- Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Tower of London, (Vol. 2 of 2)" ***
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