The Tower of London.

From a MS. of the Poems of Charles, Duke of Orleans.
British Museum, 16 F. II.

THE
TOWER OF LONDON

By
WILLIAM BENHAM, D.D., F.S.A.
Rector of St. Edmund the King, Lombard Street,
and Honorary Canon of Canterbury

LONDON
SEELEY AND CO. LIMITED, GREAT RUSSELL STREET
New York: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
1906

To
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL
SIR GEORGE BRYAN MILMAN, K.C.B.
MAJOR OF THE TOWER,

THE FOLLOWING ACCOUNT OF THE NOBLE FORTRESS,
OF WHICH HE IS SO EARNEST AND ENTHUSIASTIC A GUARDIAN,

is Dedicated

IN TOKEN OF DEEP RESPECT FOR HIS NAME AND WORK,
AS WELL AS IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT
OF THE HELP WHICH HE HAS GIVEN ME
IN THIS LABOUR OF LOVE.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The numerous subjects drawn from the collection formed by the late Mr. J. E. Gardner are reproduced by kind permission of Mr. E. T. Gardner. The skill of Miss E. A. Ibbs has contributed to the production of the illustrations in colour.

THE TOWER OF LONDON

CHAPTER I
EARLY HISTORY

Ancient London—Its Port and Trade—The Tower its Safeguard—Invasion by Julius Caesar—The Roman Province of Britain—Roman Wall and Tower—The Roman Abandonment—Saxon Invasion—London the East Saxon Capital—Danish Invasions—Desertion of London—Its Restoration by Alfred—The Norman Conquest—Bishop Gundulf, the Conqueror’s Architect of the White Tower—It becomes a Royal Palace for the East as Westminster for the West—The Royal Menagerie in the Tower—Great Additions made by Henry III—His unpopularity—The Civil War—How the Tower became a State Prison—Additions made by Edward I—Quarrels of Edward II with his Barons—His Occupation of the Tower—His Flight—Murder of Bishop Stapledon—Murder of the King—Residence of Edward III in the Tower, first as his Mother’s Prisoner, then independent—Execution of Mortimer—The Beginning of the Hundred-Years’ War—Strange use made of the Tower in the days of preparation—Imprisonment of illustrious French Captives, the Comte d’Eu, King John of France, Charles of Blois—Also of King David Bruce of Scotland—Peace of Bretigny—The Mint—St. Katharine’s Hospital.

The Tower of London is the most interesting fortress in Great Britain; it has a history equalled in interest by few fortresses in the world. The Acropolis at Athens and the Capitol of Rome are far more ancient, but they are fortresses no longer. The only rival in this respect that occurs to me is the massive tower at the Western Gate of Jerusalem. It was probably built by King David, and enlarged by Herod; and it is a military castle at this day. So is our Tower, and it was built for that use.

The Port of London held a high position from the beginning of the history of Western Europe. Before the first Roman invasion of Britain there was a City of London, carrying on trade not only with the inland towns, but with the Continent. It was, as it is, a splendid position, and on the site of the present Tower the Britons had a fortress to protect it. Fifty-four years before the Christian era Julius Caesar led the first Roman invasion of this country, but he was only here three weeks, and it is very doubtful whether he ever came to London. He makes no mention of it in his Commentaries. We may therefore treat the story that he built the Tower as a myth, though Shakespeare does take it for granted (Richard II, act v, sc. 1). The Roman Conquest of our island was not achieved until nearly a century later; from which time, until the latter half of the fifth century, Britain was a Roman Province. The conquerors made London their chief city in Southern Britain, built the Roman wall, of which many portions still exist, and renewed the British fortress which held its commanding position as the safeguard of the city. On the south side of the great keep is a fragment which was laid bare some years ago, when some buildings were pulled down, and that fragment is certainly Roman. It is part of the Arx Palatina constructed during their domination. They abandoned the island at length, and after a brief interval came the invasion of our Teutonic forefathers, and London thus became the capital of the Kingdom of the East Saxons.

But it was now anything but a flourishing city. The Danish invasions for a while destroyed its prosperity, and as Sir Walter Besant holds, caused the greater part of the population to flee. It was King Alfred who restored London, repaired the broken walls, and brought back the trade. “There were great heroes before Agamemnon,” the poet tells us, “but they found no chronicler to recount their feats.” And in like manner, one may say, the Tower had, no doubt, passages of historic interest before the Norman Conquest, which have not come down to us. It is barely mentioned in the Saxon chronicles. A few Saxon remains are noted by antiquaries. But at the Norman Conquest the continuous and most striking history begins, and continues unbroken. As we look upon it to-day, spite of all the mighty changes which Time has wrought, not only in the surroundings, but in the building itself, the great square keep is the most conspicuous object, and it was built by William the Conqueror. He brought, on the recommendation of Lanfranc, from the monastery of Bec a Benedictine monk named Gundulf, and made him Bishop of Rochester. He had travelled not only over many parts of Europe, but in the East, and was familiar with the beauties of Saracenic art, which he made subservient to the decoration of his monastery, and now brought into use in his new See. He rebuilt Rochester Cathedral, and the noble castle beside it has also been ascribed to him, but this seems to be a mistake. And then the great King set him to work on the London fortress; and he built the White Tower, as we call it, as well as St. Peter’s Church and the old Barbican, the present Jewel House. “I find,” writes Stow, “in a fair register book, containing the acts of the bishops of Rochester, set down by Edmund of Hadenham, that William I, surnamed Conqueror, built the Tower of London, to wit, the great white and square tower there, about the year of Christ 1078, appointing Gundulf, then Bishop of Rochester, to be principal surveyor and overseer of that work.” Gundulf was the greatest builder of his time; several still existent Norman towers in Kent are almost certainly his;[1] but he was also most earnest in the discharge of his episcopal duties, and both Lanfranc and Anselm entrusted much spiritual work to him. Even the rough and brutal Rufus, as well as his brother Henry I, treated him with marked respect. He died in 1108 at the age of eighty-four. The massive Ballium wall, varying from thirty to forty feet in height, was probably also his work.

Henry I was the earliest King apparently to use the Tower as a State prison. He shut up Ralph Flambard, Bishop of Durham, in the White Tower on the charge of illegally raising funds to build the very fortress. Probably the imprisonment was a sop to public opinion, for the Bishop was hated for his exactions. He escaped, however; got possession of a rope which had been hidden in a wine cask, invited his keepers to supper and made them drunk; then fastening the rope to a window bar he let himself down. A swift horse which some friends had provided for him carried him to the coast, and he went over to Normandy, where he was cordially received by Duke Robert. But after the battle of Tenchebrai had destroyed all the hopes of the latter, King Henry welcomed the overtures which Flambard made to him, and restored him to his see at Durham, where he afterwards achieved his beautiful architectural works.

The Tower was from that time onwards a Royal Palace, as was Westminster in the West. We catch incidents of residence in two or three reigns, but they are few. It is noted by one chronicler that during the contest between Stephen and Matilda, Stephen broke through the older custom and kept the Pentecost festival in the Tower instead of at Westminster. One fact comes out clear enough. Some of the Norman Kings kept wild beasts; Henry I had some lions and leopards at his palace at Woodstock. Frederick II of Germany sent three leopards as a present to Henry III, and they were placed in the Tower, where were already some lions, an elephant, and a bear, probably other beasts as well. There is an old account of the arrival of an elephant at Dover, and the amazement of the people as it was led up to London. Amid all its vicissitudes the Tower remained a royal menagerie until 1834. The Sheriff of London was ordered in 1252 to pay fourpence a day for the keep of the bear, as well as to provide a muzzle and chain for him when he was set to catch fish in the Thames. All through the Plantagenet days the beasts had food provided at the cost of 6d. a day. Their keeper was a Court official, styled “The Master of the King’s bears and apes.” The bears dwelt in a circular pit, like that in the main street of Berne to-day. It was situated where the ticket office and refreshment rooms are now. In the days of James I the bears were baited for the brutal amusement of the privileged. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth a German tourist named Hentzner saw here “a great variety of creatures, viz. three lionesses, one lion of great size called Edward VI, from his having been born in that reign, a tiger, a lynx, a wolf excessively old, a porcupine, and an eagle. All these creatures are kept in a remote place, fitted up for the purpose with wooden lattices at the Queen’s expense.” All through our literature there are references from time to time to the Tower menagerie. The “Lion Gate” was so called from its proximity to this.

When Richard I went on Crusade, he left the Tower in charge of his Chancellor, Longchamp, Bishop of Ely. John, on usurping the kingdom, besieged the Tower, which Longchamp abandoned to him, and he committed it to the care of the Archbishop of Rouen, who held it till Richard’s return. When John’s kingdom was invaded by the French Dauphin, Louis, at the invitation of the rebellious barons, the Tower was handed over to him, but he does not seem to have resided there.

The next important builder after William the Conqueror was Henry III. A good deal of English fortification work is to be attributed to him. His master mason at the Tower was Adam of Lambourne, but the King himself may be called his own clerk of the works. He built the outer wall facing the ditch which had been dug in Norman days, and of course supplied with water from the Thames. It will be remembered that this King was the builder of the greater portion of Westminster Abbey; whatever his defects as a ruler, he was a man of learning and taste, and he decorated the Norman chapel in the White Tower with beautiful frescoes and stained glass, and gave bells to St. Peter’s Church on Tower Green. The Lantern Tower, on the new wall, he chose for his bedroom, and built a tiny chapel in it for his own devotions, which was so used by his successors until the tragedy of a king murdered before the altar destroyed the sanctity. Traitors’ Gate, also, was his work, the great entrance from the river side, and a very noble piece of engineering; how it got its name we shall see abundantly hereafter. A yet more important work of his, and for a while most unpopular, was the Wharf: the strip of bank alongside the river like the Thames Embankment of our own day. Adam of Lambourne was the engineer also of this remarkable work. Piles of timber were driven into the mud, and rubble thrown in between them, and then the whole mass was faced with a barrier of stone. At the beginning of the work the high tide washed it down, and carried away completely a tower which he was constructing to guard it. The citizens sent a remonstrance, not only against the expense, but against the harm which they considered it would cause to trade navigation, but the King persisted and ordered Adam to make his foundations stronger. A cry was even got up that the ghost of St. Thomas of Canterbury had appeared to denounce the work. But the King’s wisdom was so far justified by the result, that there to-day is the Wharf, and its foundations are firm as ever.

I have told in the story of Old St. Paul’s how his Queen, Eleanor of Savoy, had much to do with King Henry’s unpopularity. She was beautiful to look upon, and highly accomplished, a patron of the arts, and the bringer of musical excellence, both of voice and instrument, from her native land of Provence. But she was greedy of money, proud, arrogant and vindictive, and always bent on enriching her kindred. Her uncle, Boniface of Savoy, whom she made Archbishop of Canterbury, was detested by the clergy, especially by the monks, for his insatiable and unblushing avarice. Her husband loved the Tower as a place of residence, but when one day she started forth in her barge for Westminster she was received with curses and cries of “Drown the witch,” and had to hasten back in terror and take refuge once more within the Tower walls. Her son, Edward I, never forgave the Londoners for so insulting his mother, and not long after found an opportunity of revenging it. At the Battle of Lewes he defeated a regiment of London citizens fighting on the side of the Barons, and pursued them far out of the field, slaughtering some 2,000 of them. But his leaving his father to look after himself had much to do with his losing the battle.

The war between King Henry and the Barons came to an end with the defeat and death of Montfort at Evesham in 1264. The Barons had held the Tower until then, but the King now resumed authority over it, and increased its fortifications. He first made the famous Hugh de Burgh, Earl of Kent, Constable, but afterwards replaced him by Peter de Roches, Bishop of Winchester. Before long the peace of the country was again disturbed by Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, who having obtained possession of the city of London denounced the Papal Legate Otho for residing in the Tower; it was “a post,” he said, “not to be trusted in the hands of a foreigner, much less of an ecclesiastic.” The Legate, in defiance, went to St. Paul’s, and under pretence of preaching in favour of the Crusade, broke forth into fierce invectives against the earl, who was present. The preacher had some difficulty in making his way back to the Tower, which was besieged by de Clare; but he held it successfully until the siege was raised by the royal army.

One notable prisoner of this reign was Griffin, son of Llewelyn, Prince of Wales, who was caught and detained in the Tower as a hostage in 1244. He attempted to escape as Flambard had done, making a rope of his bedclothes. But he was very fat, it broke, and he was killed. His nephew Llewelyn was the chieftain who afterwards gave so much trouble to Edward I.

Prince Edward went away to the Holy Land, and during his absence his father, Henry III, died. The custody of the Tower was committed to the Archbishop of York till his return to England, when he completed the works in the fortress which his father had begun, and erected some additional fortifications on the western side. Stow quotes a record of his in which he commands the Treasurer and Chamberlain of the Exchequer “to deliver unto Miles of Andwarp [Antwerp] 200 marks towards the worke of the ditch, then new made about the bulwarke, now called the Lion Tower.” Then, says Bayley, “may be regarded as the last additions of any importance that were ever made to the fortress.” During Edward’s active and powerful reign the Tower was chiefly appropriated to the use of a State prison. Of the multitudes of Jews who were apprehended in 1278, on the charge of clipping and adulterating the coin of the realm, no less than 600 were confined at once in the Tower, and the conquest of Wales and the attempt to conquer Scotland both provided a succession of illustrious prisoners, who lost their liberty in an unequal struggle for their country’s freedom. It was in 1296 that Edward began his war for the conquest of Scotland. The battle of Falkirk in 1298 scattered the whole Scottish army, but the subjugation was not complete, for the English had to retire for want of provisions, but the leaders of the Scottish army, the Earls of Athol, Menteith and Ross, with their poor King Baliol and his son Edward, and other Scottish leaders, were brought to the Tower, as in 1305 was William Wallace. The latter was executed in Smithfield, August 25, 1305. His was one of the first trials in Westminster Hall.

Edward II, like his father, showed no partiality for the Tower as a residence, but occasionally retired to it as a place of safety. In 1322 his eldest daughter was born here, and was called in consequence “Joan of the Tower,” as his youngest son was called John of Eltham from his birthplace. During that miserable reign the conspiracies raised by the barons, first against Piers de Gaveston, and afterwards against the Despensers, the successive favourites of the unhappy King, caused the issuing of frequent orders for putting the Tower in a state of defence. In 1312 engines were constructed, and other precautions taken to make it impregnable, for the barons were in open rebellion. In 1324, Lord Mortimer being confined in the Tower, and more rebel barons in other fortresses, a plot was laid to set them at liberty simultaneously. This failed, but Mortimer contrived to escape by inviting the governor of the Tower, Sir Samuel Segrave, with other officers of the fortress, to a banquet and making them drunk. Though every exertion was made to recapture him he got away to France, where in conjunction with the Queen, Isabella, he brought about the unnatural conspiracy which deprived the wretched King of his throne and his life. Segrave was removed from his post and imprisoned, and the custody of the Tower was committed to Walter Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter—a terrible trust, as was soon proved. For the rebellion was already assuming the most formidable shape. In the early part of 1326 the Queen and her accomplice Mortimer landed in Suffolk. The King retired to the newly-fortified Tower, summoned the Mayor, Sheriffs and Aldermen of the city to his presence-chamber, and gave his commands for the preservation of the tranquillity of the capital. He further issued a proclamation offering a reward for Mortimer’s head. But the rebels came on, in the full confidence of victory. The King in vain endeavoured to rouse the Londoners in his defence; and so on October 2 he left the Tower in charge of Bishop Stapledon, his young son John of Eltham being there also, and hastened away to the West of England, in hopes of finding greater loyalty there. He had hardly left London when the rebel spirit of its inhabitants broke out in fury; they seized the bishop in charge, dragged him into Cheapside, and beheaded him with some other officers, and appointed officers of their own to rule in the name of John of Eltham. Stapledon was a man not only of rectitude of character, but a munificent patron of learning. Exeter College, Oxford, owes its foundation to him, and much of the beauty of Exeter Cathedral is his work. He was first buried in the Church of St. Clement Danes, but afterwards removed to his Cathedral, where a magnificent monument covers him. The “she-wolf” queen and her paramour, after the King’s murder at Berkeley Castle, ruled for a while in the name of the young King Edward III, and kept him secluded in the Tower as a mere puppet. But they misjudged their power; he broke through their control, and threw himself on the nation; Mortimer was arrested at Nottingham and brought to the Tower, whence on November 29 he was carried to “Tyburn Elms,” hanged, drawn, and quartered—treated, in fact, as he had treated the Despensers.

1. South Aisle of St. John’s Chapel.

From a drawing by J. Wykeham Archer, 1852.
British Museum.

2. Building a Gateway.

From a MS. of Le Trésor des Histoires,
British Museum, Aug. A. v.

3. Men-at-Arms crossing a Drawbridge.

From a MS. of Les Chroniques d’Angleterre,
British Museum, 14 E iv.

4. Staircase of the White Tower.

From a drawing by J. Wykeham Archer, 1851.
British Museum.

5. Indian Elephant and Rhinoceros brought over in 1686.

From a mezzotint by P. Vander Berge.
Gardner Collection.

6. Lions’ Dens in the Tower.

From a drawing made in 1779.
Gardner Collection.

The great but unrighteous claim of Edward III to the crown of France, resulting in the “hundred years’ war” concerns us here thus far, that he resided in the Tower whilst he was making his preparations to enforce his claim; and on his departure placed a strong garrison in it, and furnished it as a fit and secure residence for his son, Prince Edward, whom he appointed regent in his absence. In 1341 he secretly returned to England, landed at the Tower at midnight on November 30, accompanied by the Earl of Northampton, Sir Walter Manny, and other great men, and finding the fortress badly guarded, imprisoned the governor and officers and treated them with exemplary rigour. He took up his residence in the Tower, discharged the Lord Treasurer and the Lord Chancellor, Robert Bishop of Chichester, and delivered the great seal to Robert Bourchier, who afterwards fought at Crecy. All these strong measures were in consequence of the disorders and abuses which he found. From this time till 1342 King Edward kept his Court here, and here, during that period, his Queen Philippa gave birth to a princess who was named Blanche, but who died in infancy and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

That great war wrought momentous changes in the course of English history, which will indirectly concern us in these pages. It also changed very decidedly and materially the position and the uses of the Tower, which from this time onwards became peculiarly celebrated as the prison of illustrious captives. On July 27, 1346, King Edward captured Caen, one of the richest and most powerful towns in Normandy, and took prisoner the Constable of France, the Count d’Eu, the Count of Tankerville, and sent them with 300 of the most opulent citizens as prisoners to the Tower of London. He then marched along Northern France, on August 26 won the battle of Crecy, and on September 3 laid siege to Calais, a very strong town, which had done much harm to the English and Flemings by piracies. That memorable siege lasted just eleven months, and we all remember the pretty story of the self-devotion of Eustace de Saint Pierre and the averting of the King’s vengeance by the intercession of Queen Philippa.

While this siege was going on King Philip of France persuaded the King of Scotland, David Bruce, to invade England, and so to revenge past injuries, and secure future independence. He came with 50,000 men, laid waste all the border country, and drew nigh to Durham. But here he was met by a small body of English, led by Lord Percy, and entirely defeated. This was the battle of Neville’s Cross, fought on October 17, 1346. King David was taken prisoner, as were the Earls of Fife and Monteith and several more Scottish chiefs. They were all brought to London to the amazing joy and delight of the citizens. The captive King was mounted on a high black courser; the City Guilds, clad in their respective liveries, made a great escort for him, through street after street, until he was committed to the custody of Sir John D’Arcy, the Constable of the Tower, on January 2, 1347. The same year the roll of illustrious captives was increased by the famous Charles of Blois, one of the competitors for the Duchy of Brittany, and, on the surrender of Calais, by its valiant governor, John of Vienne, and twelve of his comrades. Bruce continued in captivity here for eleven years.

In 1358 the great fortress received a yet more illustrious prisoner. King John of France and his son Philip were taken captive by Edward the Black Prince at the battle of Poitiers, and brought to London. At first they were lodged in the Duke of Lancaster’s palace in the Savoy, then at Windsor, and apparently had a fine time with hawking and hunting and good cheer. Next year when King Edward returned to France “he made all the lordes of France, such as were prisoners, to be put into dyvers places and strange castelles, to be the more sure of them, and the Frenche Kynge was set in the Towre of London, and his yonge sonne with hym, and moche of hys pleasure and sport restrayned; for he was then straytlyer kept than he was before.” They had not a bad time of it, however, here apparently. The Scottish King had just been liberated, but there were many French nobles to make up a court for him. Next year the treaty of Bretigny restored him to his country.

Coining operations had been carried on in the Tower here ever since the Norman Conquest, if not long before. It was not, however, the only place. In the reign of Charles I there seem to have been fifteen mints, but an edict of the reign of Edward III enacted that all moneys, wherever coined, should be made uniform with those of the Tower. After the Restoration, small rolling-mills were set up in the Tower, driven by horse and water power, and a great improvement was hereby effected—milled instead of hammered coins. The workshops were between the inner and outer walls, and the road which runs between St. Thomas’s Tower and the Bloody Tower was formerly called Mint Street. In 1696 an Act was passed, calling in the old hammered coinage, to be melted down in a furnace at Westminster, and sent in ingots to the Tower, to reappear in milled form. Sir Isaac Newton, Master of the Mint, made many more improvements. In 1810 the Mint was removed outside—to Little Tower Hill, where it is at this day.

Though it did not belong to the Tower, nor was within its limits, the Royal Hospital of St. Katharine’s by the Tower cannot be passed over without mention. It was founded in 1148 by Matilda, wife of King Stephen, for the repose of her two children, for the maintenance of a master and several poor brothers and sisters. Eleanor, Henry III’s widow, augmented it in 1273, “for a master, three brethren, chaplains, three sisters, ten bedeswomen, and six poor scholars.” The foundation was placed under the especial patronage and jurisdiction of the Queen Consorts of England, and, with all changes, has so remained to the present day. The office of Master is the only preferment in the gift of the Queen Consort or Queen Dowager. Queen Philippa, Edward III’s wife, gave houses in Kent and Herts for its additional support. Thomas de Bekington, Master in 1445, afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells, obtained a charter of privileges, by which the precincts of the hospital were decreed free of all jurisdiction, civil or religious, except that of the Lord Chancellor, and to help the funds an annual fair was to be held on Tower Hill, to last twenty-one days from the Feast of St. James.

Henry VIII and Katharine of Aragon founded here a guild of St. Barbara, among the governors of which was Cardinal Wolsey. He did not suppress it with the other religious houses, in compliment to Anne Boleyn, whom he had lately married.

The Church was in the Decorated style, very close to the Iron Gate of the Tower, properly St. Katharine’s Gate. Stow, writing in 1598, describes it as “enclosed about and pestered with small tenements and homely cottages.” When the royal assent was given to the making of St. Katharine’s Docks in 1825, the hospital was removed to Regent’s Park. There were some interesting monuments in the old church. The first President of the Royal Society, Lord Brouncker, was buried here, and Ducarel the Antiquary. The fine tombs of John Holland, Duke of Exeter, his duchess, and his sisters, were removed to the Regent’s Park. The Duke, who died in 1447, was High Admiral of England and Ireland and Constable of the Tower.

CHAPTER II
GENERAL SURVEY OF THE BUILDINGS

A Walk round Tower Hill—The Moat—The Outward Ballium—The Legge and Brass Mount Batteries—Develin, Well, Cradle, and St. Thomas’s Towers—Traitors’ Gate—The Inner Ward, its Shape—Bell, Beauchamp, Devereux—Towers on the West; Flint, Bowyer, Brick, Martin, on the North; Constable, Broad Arrow on the East; Lanthorn, Wakefield and Bloody on the South—The Great Keep, its Construction—The Chapel—Armoury—Little Ease—The Ancient Palace, now removed—Church of St. Peter ad Vincula—The King’s House—Officers of the Tower—The Yeomen of the Guard.

Here we may conveniently pause; the building is substantially completed, the great keep, the two enclosures, the Inner and Outer Ballium. Subsequent changes are all within these, and we shall have occasion to notice them at later dates, but now that we have seen the fortress completed, and used, partly as a Royal residence, partly as a State Prison, we will survey the whole in detail. And I ask attention to the Plan opposite p. 104, which will make each point clear. I propose, then, first to take a walk round the outside and start from the bottom of Tower Hill by the main entrance, where the visitors are busy buying their tickets of admission. The modern building where they are doing this is the site of the old Lion Tower. Facing us is the Middle Tower, the gateway which leads over the Moat into the fortress itself. But as I am keeping outside I pass this and ascend the hill. To-day the whole of the bank of the Moat on the western and northern side is laid out as a flower garden, and the many seats among the trees are well occupied with loungers, mostly poor, some asleep and some reading the newspaper. The Moat, which is as old as the Tower itself, was deepened by Bishop Longchamp while he held the place for Richard I, and again by Henry III, the water of course being supplied from the Thames, which flowed in at what we call Traitors’ Gate. Its greatest width is about a hundred feet. It is said that bathing in it in the days of the Plantagenets was a capital offence, but some one suggests that this simply means that it was so unsanitary as to be likely to prove fatal. There can be no doubt that the water splashing upon the walls and bastions added greatly to the picturesqueness; you see that in all the old pictures, but the changes of Time put aside its usefulness, and after eight centuries of its ebb and flow, the Duke of Wellington, when he was Constable, had it filled up to its present level and the communication with the river cut off. So now we look down upon a smooth level, on the west side gravelled, a place for recreation, and sometimes also a drying-ground of the Tower laundry. On the other sides, when we get to them, we see great portions laid down for garden ground. On the other side of the Moat is the Outward Wall, built by Henry III. Surveying it from this western side we see first the Byward Tower, which, as a glance at the plan will show, is opposite the Middle Tower, and forms the land entrance into the fortress. On the opposite end of this western side is the “drum bastion,” segment of a circle about 80 feet diameter, called Legge’s Mount Battery, probably after George Legge, Earl of Dartmouth, who had charge of it in the seventeenth century.

Turning eastward, and surveying the north side, we observe that this is not, like the western, a straight line, but an obtuse angle, which is bounded on the east by the Brass Mount, probably so called because brass cannon were mounted on it. At the bend is the North Bastion, a modern erection containing three tiers of casements, each pierced for five guns. At the north-east we leave the side of the Moat, and passing up through the gardens emerge opposite the Mint into the open road, which leads over that wonderful achievement of modern engineering, the Tower Bridge. But as our present business is not with it, we go down a flight of steps into Little Tower Street, on a level with the Thames. The wall on the eastern side is quite straight; and so we pass to the eastern end of the river front. This, as being the most exposed and also having the moat narrower, is fortified with five regular towers, the Develin, Well, Cradle, St. Thomas’s and Byward Towers. The Develin (temp. Henry III) formerly led into the precincts of St. Katharine’s. Till lately it was used as a powder magazine. The Cradle Tower is in front of what were the royal apartments, and was a gate specially for the convenience of royalty. There was in those days a portcullis, and a hoist or lift by which a boat could be lifted from the river to the level of the gateway. Hence the name “cradle,” a movable bed.

Next we come to St. Thomas’s Tower, almost always called now Traitors’ Gate, from its ancient function. It was the water-gate of the Tower, and commanded the communication between the Thames and the Moat. It is in fact a barbican, probably unique, placed astride upon the Moat, which was here about 40 feet broad, and perforated by a passage leading from the river. The original name was the Watergate; “Traitors’ Gate” dates from the time of Queen Elizabeth. Independently of its historical associations it is really a wonderful structure, a magnificent arch, 62 feet span, with no key-stone, the stones of the two rows of the arch fitted together with perfect accuracy. The state prisoners were brought down the river in the government barge, conveyed beneath this arch to the flight of steps, by which they ascended to the gateway of the Inner Ward. Of course, like the rest of the Moat, the bed is now dry and the river walled out, but there, under the arch, are still the massive folding trellised gates, as well as the steps, the latter partially renovated, no doubt, but unmistakably showing some of the old ones which so many feet have trod. We think of the men, not only brought in as prisoners, but carried forth again to Westminster Hall for trial, and brought back so often under sentence of death, with the edge of the axe turned towards them. Not the Roman Capitol, nor the Römer of Frankfurt, nor the Bridge of Sighs at Venice can count such a list of names as Traitors’ Gate. St. Thomas’s Tower was built by Henry III, and named by him after St. Thomas of Canterbury. There is an old piscina showing that it once contained a chapel. Passing it we come along the Wharf to our starting-point, the Middle Tower, and so have completed the walk round the outside.

And now starting from the Middle Tower and crossing a stone bridge over the Moat, which replaces a wooden drawbridge which gave entrance of old, but has been withdrawn now that there is no longer need of it, we are in the Inner Ward, and I shall do with this as with the Outer, and first walk round it on the outside. It is enclosed within a curtain wall, having twelve mural towers and a gatehouse. Its longest side faces the river, the east and west sides incline inwards, so that the north face is narrower than the base, and like the corresponding wall in the outer ballium, is broken by an obtuse angle, having like that a central salient. When we get to the inside we shall find that this Inner Ward is on a higher level than the Outer, some 15 or 20 feet. This may be partially owing to the earth excavated by Longchamp when the ditch was made being thrown up here. There is a clear passage between the Inner and Outer Ward, to which the ordinary visitor is not admitted. It is known as “The Casemates.” We first, by the courtesy of the authorities, walk round this and note the semicircles of the towers: on the west side, the Bell, Beauchamp and Devereux; on the north, Flint, Bowyer, Brick, Martin; on the east, Constable, Broad Arrow, Salt; on the south, Lanthorn, Wakefield, Bloody. Most of these will be noticed in turn. This passage round, which is now quite open, was formerly filled up with houses, warders’ residences and storehouses, which were removed in 1867. There are doorways along it into the outer wall, in which are lodgings for officials and chambers for stores. And now we make a yet further move, and pass within the wall, and so are in the heart of the Tower itself. The original entrance was through the Bloody Tower; it is so now for one division of visitors, but the Wakefield is made another entrance. Within, naturally, the prominent object in view as in historical interest is the Keep, the great White Tower of William the Conqueror. It stands on sloping ground, so that the north side basement is 25 feet higher than the south; quadrangular, 107 feet north and south by 118 east and west. The two western angles are square; that on the north-east has a round stone turret; the south wall terminates eastward in a bold half-round bow, marking the apse of the chapel. This keep is 90 feet high, composed of three floors, or four stages. The basement is below ground on the north, and on the ground level on the south. The walls are from 12 to 15 feet thick. The internal area is divided by a wall 10 feet thick, which rises from bottom to top, and so makes a separate smaller western and larger eastern portion. This last is again subdivided into two by another wall running east and west. The vault or subcrypt of the chapel is known in Tower phrase as “Little Ease.” We shall have it hereafter. On the first floor is the crypt and the upper storeroom. On the second floor is St. John’s Chapel, nave and aisle, and the Lower Armoury; on the third floor the chapel triforium and the Upper Armoury, the ancient Council Chamber, or “state floor.”

7. The Tower, shewing the East Outer Ballium.

From a drawing by H. Hodge, April, 1880.
Gardner Collection.

THE DEVELIN OR
IRONGATE TOWER.

THE SALT TOWER. THE BROAD ARROW TOWER. THE CONSTABLE TOWER. BRASS MOUNT BASTION.

THE WELL TOWER.THE JEWEL TOWER.

8. The Salt Tower, and part of the ancient Ballium.

From a drawing by J. Wykeham Archer, 1846.
British Museum.

9. The Prisoners’ Walk.

From a drawing by C. J. Richardson, 1871.
Gardner Collection.

10. The Wakefield Tower.

From a drawing by C. Tomkins, 1801.
British Museum.

11. Traitors’ Gate, from without.

From a drawing by C. Tomkins, 1801.
Gardner Collection.

12. Traitors’ Gate, from within.

From an old engraving.
British Museum.

We can trace here the origins of our old Law Courts. From the first it was a recognized rule that the Inner Ballium was sacred to royalty, and the general world coming on business had to content itself with admission to the Outer Ballium. The great Council Chamber was especially the “King’s Curia,” the King’s Bench, where his justices sat to supervise the proceedings of inferior courts, as well as to deal with criminal matters directly affecting the Crown. The Court of Common Pleas, suits between subject and subject, was held in the Hall Tower close to the Outer Ballium, to which there was an entrance into the Royal Palace. And here strict rules were kept, in order to keep the commonalty at a distance. There was a preliminary meeting at the Church of All Hallows Barking, to settle who were to be admitted for the pleadings. This last Court was removed to Westminster Hall by Magna Charta.

The entrance into this wonderful building is by a well-stair at the south-west angle. The keep was restored on the outside by Sir C. Wren, who faced the windows with stone in the Italian style. The inside has been very little altered. The largest of the four turrets was the original Observatory of the great astronomer, Flamsteed.

The Chapel, dedicated to St. John the Evangelist, is a very rare, if not unique, example of such a large and complete apartment in a Norman keep. It is in plan a rectangle 40 feet by 31 feet, terminating eastward in a semicircular apse of its full breadth, making the total length 55 ft. 6 in. It is divided into a nave and aisles, a splendid example of Norman work, simple, complete. It was intended primarily, no doubt, for the devotions of the Conqueror and his descendants; the church of St. Peter below was built for the use of the garrison. Though architecturally plain, it was probably painted and hung with tapestry. Henry III gave some stained glass. The only fireplace in the great keep is on this floor.

The Armoury was begun by Henry VIII. His original locality of the armour was Greenwich, and consequently there is little armour here older than the fifteenth century. It used to be kept in a temporary gallery, removed in 1883, on the south side of the keep; it was then removed to the top floor, and within the last few years the floor below is also required. I make no attempt to classify the armour here; the subject has been fully treated in the Portfolio monographs, Nos. 33 and 38.

South of the keep, between it and the ward wall facing the river, formerly stood the Royal Palace, which was removed at various times by James I and Cromwell to make room for storehouses. Some portions even remained until after the Restoration. The Castle Keep in the Middle Ages was the occasional residence of the lord, but he almost always had his ordinary lodging close by. In the plan will be observed “k. little storehouse in Cold Harbour”; it was the old gateway into the King’s residence, and the Queen had her own rooms between the Salt and Lanthorn Towers. At “h. Mortarpiece Storehouse” was the Great Hall where the King heard cases and received deputations.

Of the twelve mural towers the Wakefield is the most ancient. It is also known as the Record Tower, the national records having been kept there until they were removed to their present home in Fetter Lane. In the survey of Queen Elizabeth it is the Hall Tower, from its proximity to the hall just mentioned. It is a large circular building; the lower part is probably the work of William Rufus. The upper storey consists of a fine handsome chamber, with a recess which it is said Henry VI used as his private chapel, fitting it with aumbry and piscina; and tradition states that it was whilst he was praying here that he was murdered. The Wakefield Tower is now the receptacle of the King’s Crown and all the other splendid articles of the English regalia.

Bloody Tower was the original gatehouse of the Inner Ward. It stands opposite to Traitors’ Gate, and also abuts against the Wakefield Tower, does not bulge out into semicircle as do the others, but its exterior face ranges with the curtain wall. All this indicates that its safeguarding was carefully thought of. Its original name was the Garden Tower, and it is so called in the survey of Henry VIII. This was owing to its being close to the Constable’s garden, now the Parade. Its present name is given to it in the survey of 1597; popular prejudice rather than Tower tradition attributes the change to the murder of Edward and his brother, but the word seems hardly appropriate to the smothering of the poor children. The chief warder showed me some hooks in the gateway. On these, he told me, heads were stuck after executions, and these he said were the origin of the name.

The Bell Tower was so called from the alarm bell suspended from its summit. The bell now discharges the duty of summoning the garrison to St. Peter’s Church.

The Beauchamp or Cobham Tower is one of special interest owing to the number of memorials cut upon its walls by its distinguished prisoners. We shall have some of them hereafter. Its name is derived from Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, who was imprisoned here towards the end of the fourteenth century. The Devereux was originally the Robert the Devil Tower. The name was altered when Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, was confined in it in 1601. The Flint and Curtain Towers were rebuilt not many years ago. The Bowyer is so called because it was the workshop of the royal maker of bows.

Martin’s Tower became the Jewel House in 1641. The jewels were moved that year from the south side of the White Tower, because, as that was used for a powder magazine, it was feared they might be endangered. It was here that Colonel Blood made his audacious attempt in 1673, as we shall see.

The others have nothing special which need detain us; they were all at one time or other used as prisons, except the Lanthorn Tower which was the King’s bedchamber and private room at the time when he had his palace here. It has been recently restored. It took its name from the light placed on the top for the benefit of vessels coming up the river.

The Church of St. Peter ad Vincula, in the north-west corner of the Inner Ward, was in existence from Norman times. There is mention of it in the days of King John, but the present building is mostly of the Perpendicular period. It is devoid of ornament, but has a deep interest as having been the burial place of so many victims who perished on the scaffold almost close to it on the Parade or Tower Green, as well as on Tower Hill outside. Most of them however have been removed to other resting-places. Some years ago the remains of the victims of the ’45 were found, and the lead coffin plates are now fastened on the wall. The chaplain is appointed by the Crown, but is under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London.

The King’s House is the official designation of the Lieutenant’s lodging, on the south-west part of the Inner Ward. This also has many interesting historical associations. In the Council Chamber, now occupied as a bedroom, the Commissioners appointed by James I examined the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot. A long Latin inscription on the wall commemorates the circumstances. Here was imprisoned Margaret, Countess of Lenox, grandmother of James I, for marrying her son, Lord Henry Darnley, to the Queen of Scots.

It has been found desirable to state these details as the canvas on which the historical incidents which follow can be written in their due course. But this seems also the place to give some account of the officers of the Tower.

When William the Conqueror had achieved his great work of building the Tower, he showed his high sense of its importance by conferring the charge of it on one of his faithful followers, Geoffrey de Mandeville, who had distinguished himself greatly at the Battle of Hastings. He was called the “Constable,” sometimes “of the Tower,” sometimes “of the sea”; this last owing to the jurisdiction which he exercised over the ships that came up the river. There are constant cases, dispersed through the records, how he allowed and restrained merchants to depart from the port, prevented forestalling, took security not to go to forbidden places, compelled those who brought fish to London for sale to take them to Queenhithe, and so on.

He had various customs and profits. From every boat coming to London laden with rushes, such a quantity as could be held between a man’s arms was to be laid for him on the Tower Wharf; from every oyster boat “one maund” (hand-basket full); from every ship laden with wine, one flagon before and one from behind the mast; swans coming under London Bridge towards or from the sea belonged to the Constable; horses, cows, pigs, sheep falling from the bridge into the Thames were the Constable’s if he could rescue them; and for every foot of such animals feeding within the ditches of the Tower, he was entitled to one penny. Then there were tenements on Tower Hill of which the rents were his, as well as those for herbage growing on Tower Hill; herring boats from Yarmouth paid him twelve pence. Then prisoners had to pay heavy fees—a duke paid twenty pounds, an earl twenty marks, a knight a hundred shillings. And there was an annual fee of fifty to a hundred pounds, and allowances of wax, wine, and other necessaries for the use of the household. It is needless to add that though these particular privileges have gone, the Constable of the Tower has always been a very important personage, holding his appointment by Royal Letters Patent under the Great Seal. He has the honour of the privilege of audience of, and direct communication with the King. On his installation the keys are delivered to him by the Lord Chamberlain. He, always a man, therefore, of high rank, appointed a Lieutenant, to whom he allowed £20 a year, with such savings as could be made in furniture and food. In the reign of Henry VIII, the Lieutenant, who had now become the actual prison warder, had a new house built for his accommodation, in a courtly quarter, under the Belfry. This is now “the King’s House,” the residence of the present Major of the Tower, General Milman, who is, ex officio, a Justice of the Peace for the Tower Liberties, and a Deputy Lieutenant of the Tower Hamlets. The Tower Commitment Book, containing the date of all prisoners as far back as 1666, is in his custody. By him the Yeoman. Warders are sworn in as special constables, their duties being confined to the limits of the Tower. They are described in the official regulations as “Honorary members of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard.” They are selected from warrant officers and noncommissioned officers of the army, and are on the same footing as serjeant-majors of the army. The “Yeoman Gaoler” who carries the curious old axe (figured in the Tower trophy of arms) on state occasions is responsible for the general maintenance of order. The “Yeoman Porter” is chief warder; has charge of the gates and drawbridges; also has the care of the Warders’ Uniforms. He asserts the right of the Tower authorities over Postern Row and George Street, by closing the iron bars across these thoroughfares on the first working day in August. Every night at 11 o’clock, when the Tower gates are locked, the Yeoman Porter applies five minutes beforehand to the serjeant of the guard at the Main Guard for the escort for the King’s keys. The serjeant acquaints the officer that the escort is called for, who furnishes a serjeant and six men for this duty, at the same time placing his guard under arms. When the keys return, the sentry at the guard-room challenges—“Halt! who comes there?” Yeoman Porter answers “The keys.” “Whose keys?” “King Edward’s keys.” Yeoman Porter places himself, with the escort, in front of the guard; the officer of the guard gives the word, “Present arms!” The Yeoman Porter then says in an audible voice, “God preserve King Edward!” and the whole guard answer “Amen!” The keys are then carried by the Yeoman Porter to the King’s House. A similar escort is called for in the morning at the opening, but no ceremony takes place then.

The Yeomen of the Guard were first appointed by Henry VII, and made their first public appearance at his coronation. Since then there has been no Royal Pageant in which they have not been conspicuous. The word “Yeoman” of itself is a puzzle. It evidently signified an officer of high grade; we have “Yeomen of the Guard,” “of the Black Rod,” “of the Chamber,” “of the Pantry,” “of the Robes,” “of the Crown,” “of the Mouth.” But the derivation of the word is quite uncertain. The Gentleman’s Magazine says (vol. xxix.) that it is of military origin, like “esquire,” and that as these were so called because they carried shields (ecu), so the yeomen were archers, who carried yew. But Johnson and Skeat both prefer ga (A.S. “village”) man. Another question is, why are they called “Beefeaters”? a question not likely to be ever settled. When I was a child, my old rector, Archdeacon Bayley, told me with much impressment that because one of their duties was to watch the royal beauffet, they were called “beauffetiers,” and that it has got thus corrupted. And this is the derivation given to the first query in Notes and Queries (I. iii. 167). Skeat (Notes and Queries, V. vii. 64) treats this with the utmost contempt. He says it was a mere guess of Steevens’s, that the yeomen didn’t wait at table, and that the word means “an eater of beef,” and by consequence “a jolly yeoman.” There are very many discussions running through Notes and Queries, and it seems to me that Skeat holds his ground well.

There are 100 yeomen. The costume is said to be that of the private soldier of Henry VII’s time. It will be remembered that he may be said to be the first monarch who had a standing army. The Naval and Military Gazette of 1876 has the following:—

“The Yeomanry of the Guard were formed into a corps in 1485 and first made their appearance at the coronation of Henry VII in white gaberdines, ornamented with the royal device, and caps surrounded by the roses of York and Lancaster. The King, who loved a joke, would sometimes dress himself in the habit of his yeomen, and scour the country in search of adventures. On one occasion he paid a visit to the Abbot of Chertsey, who, ignorant of his guest and rank, but nevertheless hospitably inclined, placed him before a round of beef, which disappeared with marvellous rapidity. The worthy dignitary exclaimed that he would give a hundred marks for such an appetite. Shortly afterwards the churchman was arrested on the King’s warrant, and imprisoned in Windsor Castle, where he was fed on bread and water. At the end of some days a baron of beef appeared, to which the abbot did justice, and lifting his eyes at the end of his meal, saw the yeoman before him, who claimed the hundred marks. ‘Who art thou, Beefeater?’ exclaimed the priest. The King revealed himself, and took the hundred marks. But the Abbot profited by the joke, for he was not long after made Bishop of Bangor.”

Fuller tells the same story, but makes the King, with more probability, not Henry VII, but VIII.

CHAPTER III
IN THE DAYS OF THE LATER PLANTAGENETS

Coronation of Richard II—The Wat Tyler Rebellion—Murder of Archbishop Simon of Canterbury—The Rebellion Quelled—Fresh Troubles raised by the Duke of Gloucester and quieted by Archbishop Courtenay—Still Troubles Continue—Execution of some Prominent Members of Parliament, and of Sir Simon Burley, the King’s Tutor—First Legal Execution on Tower Hill—Richard’s Wilfulness and Treachery—His Dethronement, August 19, 1399—Accession of Henry IV—Death and Burial of Richard II—Conspiracies against Henry IV—Battle of Shrewsbury—Prisoners shut up in the Tower—Among them James of Scotland, “The King’s Quhair”—The Great War with France—Charles, Duke of Orleans, a formidable rival; his Imprisonment and Life in the Tower—His Return to France—The Lollards—Sir John Oldcastle—His Plots and Death—Death of Henry V—Fall of the English Power in France—Rival Nobles in England: Dukes of Bedford and Gloucester, Cardinal Beaufort, Earl of Warwick—Marriage of Henry with Margaret of Anjou—Public Discontent—Cade’s Rebellion—Claim of Richard Duke of York—Battle of Wakefield—The Wakefield Tower—Battle of Towton—Accession of Edward IV—Henry VI a Prisoner in the Tower—Warwick’s Tergiversation—Battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury—King Henry slain in the Wakefield Tower—Continued Tragedies, Duke of Clarence’s Disaffection and Plottings—His Death in the Bowyer Tower—Death of Edward IV—Edward V and his Brother brought to the Tower by their Uncle Gloucester, who has Lord Hastings beheaded for loyalty to Edward—Edward deposed—Richard Crowned King—Edward and his Brother secretly Murdered—Discovery of their Bones and Burial at Westminster.

The reign of Richard II began with festivities and pageantries of unprecedented magnificence, and the Tower was the scene of some of the most prominent. On the day of the Coronation, according to Holinshed, the King, clad in white robes, issued from its gate surrounded by a vast assemblage of nobles and knights. The streets were hung with drapery, and the conduits ran wine. In Cheapside was a castle with four towers, from two sides of which “the wine ran forth abundantly, and at the top stood a golden angel, holding a crown, so contrived that when the King came near, he bowed and presented it to him. In each of the towers was a beautiful virgin, of stature and age like unto the King, apparelled in white vestures, who blew in the King’s face leaves of gold and flowers of gold counterfeit. On the approach of the cavalcade, the damsels took cups of gold, and filling them with wine at the spouts of the castle, presented them to the King and his nobles.”

13. Banquet given by Richard II.

From a MS. of The Chronicles of England, Vol. III.
British Museum, 14 E. iv.

14. An Act of Arms before the King and Queen.

From a MS. of the Romance of the Sire Jehan de Saintré.
British Museum. Nero D. ix.

15. Gateway of the Bloody Tower.

From an engraving by F. Nash, 1821.

16. Queen in a Horse Litter, attended by her Ladies on Horseback.

From a MS. of Froissart’s Chronicles.
British Museum, 18 E ii.

These revels were scarcely ended, when the Wat Tyler insurrection broke out, and the King, with his mother, fled for refuge within the Tower from which he had lately so proudly emerged. The insurgents assembled on Blackheath and asked for a conference. Richard having heard mass in the chapel, sailed down the Thames to meet them, but was so frightened by their menacing looks that he precipitately fled back to the Tower. Therefore the angry mob advanced, quartered themselves in and near St. Katharine’s Hospital and invested the fortress, “hooting,” says Froissart, “as loud as if the devils were in them.” The Lord Mayor, Walworth, recommended a sally upon them, as the majority were drunk, but this was deemed too desperate, and the King declared he would meet them and hear their grievances. He had no sooner quitted the gates, than some of the insurgents, who had lain concealed, broke into the fortress, and killed some of the King’s officers.[2] But their main quarry was the Archbishop of Canterbury, the King’s Chancellor, Simon of Sudbury, whom John Ball, the Socialist priest, had furiously denounced. They made their way into the chapel where he was engaged in prayer. “Where is the traitor to the kingdom, where is the spoiler of the Commons?” they shouted, and Sudbury replied, “Here am I, my sons; your Archbishop, neither traitor nor spoiler.” They dragged him out on Tower Hill. He saw what was coming and warned them, but in vain. After he had spoken further, and given as far as in him lay absolution to John Starling of Essex, who was standing ready to behead him, he knelt down. He was horribly mutilated, not being killed till the eighth blow of the axe. Hales the treasurer and two others were slain with him, and all the heads were stuck on poles, a cap on the Archbishop’s to distinguish him, and were placed on London Bridge. Two days later Sudbury’s head gave place to Wat Tyler’s, and he was buried with great pomp in his Cathedral at Canterbury, to which he had been a great benefactor. His fine monument is still to be seen there.

How this rebellion was quelled is no part of our subject, but the troubles of King Richard were by no means ended. In 1387 he had again to fly to the Tower for security against his uncle Gloucester and the other disaffected barons. His weakness and imbecility, and the corruptness of his ministers, had exasperated the nation against him, and Gloucester seized the regal authority and placed it in the hands of commissioners. The King summoned a Parliament at Nottingham which supported him; the nobles retorted by marching on London with forty thousand men. There was much anxiety and some fighting, but Archbishop Courtenay mediated with great patience and wisdom. Richard had gone to the Tower and was in fact besieged, and in the great Council Chamber there Courtenay arranged a meeting between the nobles and the King, with the result that the mutual differences were for the time adjusted. But the King had not in the least regained the confidence either of the nobles or of the commonalty. In fact the prominent members of the Parliament which had declared in his favour were arrested. Some were fined, others banished, others confined in the Tower. Of these latter Sir Robert Tresylian, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; Brembre, Mayor of London; Sir John Salisbury, Sir John Beauchamp and Sir James Berners were put to death at Tyburn. One of the victims calls for special mention. Sir Simon Burley had distinguished himself under the Black Prince in the French war. Edward had such a high opinion of him that he bequeathed the education of his son Richard to him. He seems to have justified the choice in the early days of the young King, and it was he who arranged his marriage with Anne of Bohemia, thereby incurring the enmity of the Lancastrian party. Although he had warned the King of his folly in the early days of his reign, he supported him in Parliament in his struggle against the barons, and in consequence he was sentenced on May 5, 1388, to be hanged, drawn and quartered, but this was commuted to beheading. We have seen that Archbishop Sudbury was executed on Tower Hill, but that was by mob violence. Burley was now condemned by law to die on the same spot. It was the first legal execution on the place which was for many years to come the regular place of execution.

Assault on a Fortress.

From a MS. of Boccaccio de Casibus Virorum et Foeminarum Illustrium.
British Museum, 35,321.

Richard bitterly resented this execution. He never forgave it. Burley had been a loyal and faithful friend both to his father and himself, and he waited for his opportunity of revenge. It came at last. He was accustomed to hold festivals from time to time with tournaments and feastings, and there was special merrymaking on the occasion of his second marriage. His first wife, “the good Anne” of Bohemia, died in 1396, and next year he married Isabel, daughter of Charles VI., the mad King of France. She was lodged in the Tower, awaiting her coronation. In the midst of the festivities the Duke of Gloucester, with the Earls of Arundel and Warwick and some others, were treacherously seized, and brought to the Tower. Gloucester was shipped off to Calais and murdered by the King’s command; Arundel was beheaded on Tower Hill; Warwick was confined in the Beauchamp Tower, named after him. But Richard dared not kill a man who had more than any man living fought for his country in the French wars, and he was sent away to the Isle of Man and kept close prisoner for life.

But Nemesis presently came. Arundel’s memory was revered by the people, who knew him as one of their great heroes, and his grave in the Church of the Austin Friars was visited by crowds day by day. Meanwhile the wretched King lost all self-control. Probably his mind had become unhinged. He dissolved the Parliament, announced that he intended to rule without one, and seized the lands of his uncle, John of Gaunt, who had lately died. On August 19, 1399, Gaunt’s son, Henry of Lancaster, landed in England, made him prisoner in Wales and brought him to London. On September 2 he was lodged in the Tower with the universal approval of the nation. On the 29th he formally resigned the crown “with a cheerful mien,” and next day Henry IV. seated himself on the throne. The fallen man remained in the fortress for a while, but as it became known that conspiracies were being formed to replace him on the throne, it was decided to remove him secretly and confine him in some secure place. First he was taken to Leeds Castle in Kent, then to Yorkshire. There is no reasonable doubt that he died at Pontefract on February 14, 1400, probably of starvation. His body was brought to London, and exposed to the public in St. Paul’s, was then buried at King’s Langley, and afterwards removed to Westminster Abbey by Henry V, whom as a boy he had treated with kindness.

There was a grand ceremonial in the Tower on the eve of Henry IV’s Coronation, and forty-six new Knights of the Bath watched their arms all night in St. John’s Chapel. But the fortress under the Lancastrian kings became less of a royal residence and more of a prison.

Henry IV, after the Battle of Shrewsbury, shut up in the Tower some of the adherents of Owen Glendower, and also a number of preaching Friars, who had circulated taunting rhymes against him to excite an insurrection, and who in due course died as traitors at Tyburn. But King Henry’s most illustrious prisoner here was James, the son and heir of Robert III, King of Scotland. That unfortunate monarch, amiable and just, but infirm in body as in will, was heavily troubled by the plottings of his brother the Duke of Albany, and also by the divisions arising out of the English troubles. The Earl of Northumberland and his son Hotspur were joined by Earl Douglas, and they were all defeated at Shrewsbury. Poor old King Robert, worried by this, and having good reason to distrust Albany, determined to send his remaining son James, a boy of eleven (his eldest son, the Duke of Rothsay, had been got rid of by foul play), for safety to France, for the expressed reason that he could receive a good education there. The vessel conveying him was intercepted off Flamborough Head by an English ship, and the boy was conveyed to London; Henry IV gave orders that he should be confined in the Tower. This was in February, 1406. His poor old father sank under this fresh trouble and died that year, and thus James became King. But King Henry still, contrary to all law, kept him prisoner, and the Duke of Albany was appointed regent.

For nineteen years the young King remained in exile. From the recent publication of English and Scottish records we learn that his expenses in the Tower were reckoned at 6s. 8d. a day for himself and 3s. 4d. for his suite. Though his capture was a flagrant breach of law, he was well treated and received an excellent education. He was moved about from time to time: part of the while he was in Nottingham Castle, then at Evesham, then at the palace of the Archbishop of Canterbury at Croydon. The poem which he wrote in his captivity, “The King’s Quhair” (Little Book), was the expression of his love for Lady Jane Beaufort, whom he met at Windsor. His marriage with her attached him to the royal family of England, and at length in 1424 he obtained his release, returned, and took possession of his throne, ruled with vigour and justice, until his earnest endeavours to assure the rights and just treatment of his people led to his assassination in 1436.

Another royal prisoner, partly contemporaneous with King James, and not less illustrious in history, was Charles, Duke of Orleans. Richard II, as we have seen, married for his second wife Isabel of Valois, daughter of King Charles VI. of France. After his death she married Charles, Duke of Orleans, whose clever, reprobate father Louis, brother of Charles VI, had been assassinated by order of the Duke of Burgundy. The two young people were therefore first cousins. When Louis had laid claim to the French throne, our Henry IV made a counterclaim, and thus there was fierce rivalry between the two men, and Louis took every opportunity of sending insulting messages to “the usurping Duke of Lancaster,” and married his son Charles to the young widowed Queen, when Hal, the madcap Prince of Wales, was eagerly wooing her. The hapless young wife died in childbirth in 1409, her husband being only nineteen years old. He bewailed his loss in some very beautiful verses. The little child lived to become Duchess of Alençon. Reasons of State induced Charles to marry again, his wife being Bona, daughter of the Count of Armagnac, who bore him no offspring. In 1415 came the memorable invasion of France and the great English victory at Agincourt. Charles, with his brothers and other members of the French royal family, had done their best in defence of their rights. Shakespeare depicts his zeal and his hatred of the invader in his flying utterances. The brave fellow fell among the wounded, and was found by the victor bleeding and speechless on the field. He made much of him, brought him to England, and sent him to the White Tower, fixing a ransom of 300,000 crowns on his head. He was now twenty-four years old, and Henry was anxious that the ransom should not be forthcoming. For he now married Isabel’s youngest sister, Catherine of Valois, and it was most important in his estimate that Charles should have no children to dispute the rights of those of his wife. It was part of the treaty into which he entered that he should succeed to the French throne, and a son of Charles of Orleans would be a most formidable rival. The result was that the latter remained a prisoner in England for five and twenty years.

And here he continued faithful to his old troubadour instincts, and was constantly occupied in writing lyrics, chiefly on his lost love and his absent wife, some in French, some in English, in which he became proficient. There is in the British Museum a manuscript volume of his poems, beautifully illuminated, with the arms of Henry VII and Prince Arthur introduced into the borders. It contains our frontispiece, the oldest picture of the Tower of London which is known to exist. In the background is London Bridge with the City behind it, in front Traitors’ Gate, though the name had not yet been given. There is the Prince seated in the now demolished banqueting hall, writing his verses. He is seen again looking out of window, evidently hoping for freedom, and again we see him below embracing the messenger who brings his ransom. Next we behold him riding away, a freed man; and in the distance he is seen finally seated in the boat, which is being pulled off to the ship which shall carry him back to France.

That deliverance did not come until 1440. Henry V had been dead eighteen years, his widow Catherine, had married Owun Tudor and his conquests in France were now nearly all lost, thanks to the Maid of Orleans and to Charles’s natural brother, John of Dunois. Every year Charles’s life had become more precious to France, as the children of Charles VI dropped one by one into the grave. The Duke of Burgundy paid the enormous ransom, and Charles returned to find his wife Bona dead, and his daughter a woman of thirty. Reasons of State caused him to marry again, his third consort being Mary of Cleves. By her he had a son, who afterwards became King Louis XII.

A large body of prisoners of a widely different character, namely the Lollards, occupied the Tower at the same period; the most remarkable of them was Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham. There is undoubtedly much mystery about his life and doings. He was a gentleman of Herefordshire, and makes his first appearance in history as a trusted servant of Henry IV, who committed to him the charge of putting down insurrection in Wales at the time of the battle of Shrewsbury. It was then that he made the acquaintance of the Prince of Wales, which ripened into close friendship. In 1409, when a second time a widower, he married Joan, Lady Cobham, who on her side was in her third widowhood. She brought him two Kentish estates, Cobham Manor and Cowling Castle, and in this latter he took up his residence, and still remained high in favour of Henry IV and his son. Wyclif died on the last day of 1384. His opinions had become largely popular, in Kent as much as anywhere. A severe law was passed against them in 1401. How Oldcastle had come to adopt these there is no evidence to show, but in 1410 a great outcry was made against him because his chaplain was preaching Lollard doctrines, and he was accused of trying to bring the Prince of Wales over to them. Convocation which met at St. Paul’s in March, 1413, just before the death of Henry IV, denounced him unsparingly, and produced manuscripts emanating from Paternoster Row of which he was alleged to be the author. It is said that Henry V was so mindful of his old friendship that he wanted to prevent action against him, though he viewed his opinions with horror, and tried in vain to wean him from them. The sequel was that he withdrew from Court and shut himself up in Cowling Castle. When at length he was arrested he was brought before Archbishop Arundel and Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, who were both anxious to save him, perhaps knowing the regard of the King for him; but he refused to recant and was handed over to the secular arm, and meanwhile was committed to the Tower. From it in some mysterious manner he escaped, and there is strong evidence that he engaged in a widespread Lollard conspiracy. The official indictment charged the conspirators with “plotting the death of the King and his brothers, with the prelates and other magnates of the realm, the transference of religious to secular employments, the spoliation and destruction of all cathedrals, churches and monasteries, and the elevation of Oldcastle to the position of regent of the kingdom.” The plot was discovered and defeated. The body of conspirators found out in time that it was so, and escaped home; Oldcastle left London and fled into Wales. He remained hid, but apparently still plotting, until he was again captured, was brought back to the Tower, and on December 14, 1417, was condemned to death, was drawn on a hurdle to St. Giles’s Fields, and there hanged and burnt to ashes. This is the man whom Shakespeare, following an older play, represents as the original of Falstaff. But though young Oldcastle was, as we have seen, a friend of Prince Hal in his youth, he was never a roué.

It would almost seem as if fuller knowledge had convinced Shakespeare of this, and that it was in this way of retractation that he put these words in the Epilogue:—“For Oldcastle died a martyr and this is not the man.”

The death of Henry V, August 31, 1422, was a heavy calamity for England. He was a wise and pious king, and his claim to the French crown, however ill-advised, was in his view just. His son was an infant of nine months old, and the mismanagement of the Government, and the victories of Jeanne d’Arc, the Maid of Orleans, make up a great chapter of English disaster. The heroine was burnt at Rouen, May 31, 1431, but it was speedily seen that her work had been successful. Henry VI was indeed crowned King of France at Paris that year, but what popularity remained to the English party was dissipated by the arrogance of the King’s rulers. He returned to England, and the cause still went down. His two royal guardians and uncles, the Dukes of Bedford and Gloucester, were at bitter feud. Two other nobles were now grown active and strong. The first was Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, the illegitimate son of John of Gaunt and Catherine Swynford, a man of great ability as well as of patriotism. Henry V had reposed strong confidence in him, and had willed that he should be the guardian of his son during his minority. This had been set aside, but although Bedford and Gloucester had been substituted, their absence abroad and their quarrels gave Beaufort real power, which had steadily grown. The other was Richard, Earl of Warwick. He too had been highly esteemed by Henry V, and he and Beaufort were now exerting themselves to guide the King wisely, when he on attaining his majority was foolishly interfering in matters which he did not understand. Bedford died, the English cause in France grew more and more hopeless, and through Beaufort’s influence Henry married Margaret of Anjou, niece of King Charles VII. A few years followed during which Henry gave himself to useful work, the foundations of Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, among them. Gloucester died in 1447; murder was suspected, but probably without ground. Beaufort died the same year; William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, was murdered in 1450. That nobleman was one of the most distinguished in England. His father and three brothers had died on battlefields in the French wars. He had been a Knight of the Garter for thirty years when the Cade rebellion broke out, and his enemies got up against him a charge of supporting it. He took ship at Dover to fly to Calais, but was captured in the Strait by the captain of a vessel called Nicholas of the Tower. When he heard the name he lost all hope, for he had been told by a soothsayer that if he could escape the danger of the Tower he would be safe. His head was hacked off, and his body thrown upon Dover beach.

The Tower was ever receiving new occupants, and the kingdom was becoming more and more disturbed. Cade’s rebellion broke out in June, 1450, and was a very formidable danger for a short time. The King, to propitiate the rebels, sent Lord Say to the Tower; they dragged him forth and beheaded him in Cheapside. The rebellion was put down in consequence of the worthlessness of Cade himself, but the discontent grew, being increased by the high-handed dealing of Queen Margaret, and that same year Richard, Duke of York, proclaimed himself, with the sanction of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, as the deliverer of the kingdom from anarchy. The difficulties were increased by the mental illness of the King, from which after a while he recovered, but his popularity had still further decreased. The Queen bore him a son, but this strengthened York’s ambition. He claimed the crown and civil war began. The partisans of York made an attack on the Tower, and here comes a decided novelty in its history. It is said that cannon were first used at the battle of Crecy. They were used now to batter the Tower walls, but unsuccessfully apparently. When the moat was cleared out in 1843 a great number of stone cannon balls were found, which were probably a relic of that bombardment. They are now under a glass case in the Beauchamp Tower. Similar balls are shown in our illustration.

On December 29, 1460, York was defeated by Queen Margaret and slain at the battle of Wakefield, while King Henry was keeping Christmas in London. She was fighting for her son’s rights; the King was under the care of the Earl of Warwick, who was actually supporting the claims of the Yorkists. In the following February Margaret was defeated three times, and Edward, Duke of York, was proclaimed King in London without waiting for Parliament. On Palm Sunday, 1461, the battle of Towton, the most terrible ever fought on English ground, placed the kingdom in Edward IV’s hands. The number of prisoners sent up to the Tower after the battle of Wakefield caused what had been hitherto the Hall Tower to be called “the Wakefield Tower,” a name which it has borne ever since. Queen Margaret still kept an army in the north, and Henry moved about from place to place. In 1464 he was captured and lodged in the Tower. Statements differ as to his treatment. One account says that Warwick, acting for the Yorkists, carried him through Cheapside and Cornhill with his legs bound under a horse with leathern thongs and a peasant’s hat on his head. Yorkist writers assert that he was treated “with all humanity and reverence.” He remained five years in this imprisonment; then came a revolution. Warwick joined Margaret and King Edward’s brother, the Duke of Clarence, and with such apparent vigour that Edward fled to Flanders. Henry was brought forth and marched through the London streets with great pomp to Westminster. But the chronicler Hall contemptuously remarks, with an epigram worthy of Sam Weller, “This moved the citizens of London as much as the fire painted on the wall warmed the old woman.” The citizens were flourishing under Yorkist encouragement of commerce, and were by no means disposed to Lancastrian restoration. Edward came back, and on Easter Day, April 14, 1471, Warwick was slain at the battle of Barnet, and Queen Margaret was defeated at Tewkesbury on May 4 following, and her son was slain. On May 21 King Henry was murdered in the Wakefield Tower by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, on the very day of the return of his brother King Edward to London.

Artillery of the Fifteenth Century.

From a MS. of “The Chronicles of England,” Vol. III.
British Museum, 14 E. IV.

In the octagonal chamber of the Wakefield Tower in which the regalia are now placed are two deep recesses opened into the walls. That to the south-east was formerly an oratory, and is so described in the Tower records in 1238. Tradition states that in this oratory Duke Richard, entering through the passage from the palace, stabbed Henry to death with many wounds as he was praying. His body was next day carried to St. Paul’s, “and his face was open that every man might see him, and in his lying he bled.” He was buried at Chertsey and the word went about that he was a saint and martyr. Henry VII afterwards requested Pope Julius II to canonize him, but gave up the idea on learning how much it would cost. He had the body removed from Chertsey, but to this day it is uncertain whether it was buried at St. George’s, Windsor, or in Westminster Abbey.

The reigns of the Kings of the House of York are full of Tower tragedies. Edward IV lived a good deal in the Tower, increased its fortifications, and deepened the moat. He had two brothers, the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester. The former had long been disaffected, had joined Margaret of Anjou and the Earl of Warwick, whose daughter he had married, in the conspiracy which caused Edward’s temporary flight, and after the latter had recovered himself and was again firmly seated on the throne, Clarence was certainly plotting against him. Clarence’s wife was dead and he aspired to the hand of Mary of Burgundy, to Edward’s indignation, who saw that he still hoped for the crown. He first sent him to the Tower, then accused him before Parliament, and he was sentenced to death. Edward was loth to carry the sentence out, but the House of Commons urged him, and to avoid the disgrace of a public execution he gave orders that it should be done in secret, and according to tradition he was drowned in a butt of malmsey in the Bowyer Tower. And perhaps it is owing to his brother Gloucester’s general bad character that he is accused of superintending the execution. The memory of this tragedy is said to have embittered the whole of Edward’s subsequent life. He was now secure on his throne, but his self-indulgent life was destroying his health, and his recklessness, joined with the perfidy of Louis XI, continually produced fresh troubles. He died at the age of forty-one, on April 19, 1483. His wife had borne him ten children, of whom seven survived him, two sons and five daughters.

The short reign of Edward V was merely a struggle for power between his uncle Gloucester and his mother’s relations, the Woodvilles. He was in Wales when his father died. His uncle, Lord Rivers, and half-brother, Lord Richard Grey, were bringing him up for his Coronation, when the Dukes of Gloucester and Buckingham intercepted them at Northampton, sent them prisoners to Pomfret, and brought the young King up to the Tower with every demonstration of loyalty, even declaring that the coronation should take place on June 22. Queen Elizabeth, anticipating what was coming, threw herself into Sanctuary with the Abbot of Westminster with her other son. A Parliament was summoned ostensibly to declare Gloucester protector, but he had already laid his train. The queen was called upon to allow her second boy to be placed with his brother in the Tower, and though she could see from the windows carpenters, vintners, cooks all making preparations for her son’s coronation, she knew in her heart that it would never be. Gloucester proceeded to make out a case for the illegitimacy of the children, on the ground that their father had made a previous marriage. That he had been a gross libertine was already notorious; Gloucester produced a witness who declared that he had married the King to one of his mistresses, Elinor Talbot. It is incredible, but there may have been some miserable frolic. Gloucester called a Council in the Council Chamber of the White Tower, and there caused his claim to be put forth in a tentative fashion. Lord Hastings thereupon declared his loyalty to Edward, and Gloucester, who had been listening outside, strode into the room. Turning up his sleeve, he showed an arm which he declared had been withered by the sorceries of Hastings, and called on the terrified councillors to condemn him. Words were useless. “I will not dine until your head is off,” he cried, and Hastings was carried down to Tower Green. The block was out of place, but a beam of wood was near; he was thrown on it and the deed was consummated.

Gloucester then got a creature, a brother of the Lord Mayor, to preach at Paul’s Cross from the text (Wisdom iv. 3), “Bastard slips shall not take deep root,” a sermon impugning the validity of Edward’s marriage, but the immediate result was to fill the listeners with shame and indignation. The Duke of Buckingham made a speech of the like character at the Guildhall, and it became known that Gloucester was getting an army together. So a packed assembly went to the schemer and offered him the crown, which he with feigned reluctance accepted. This was on June 28, 1483, and on July 6 he was crowned at Westminster. Immediately afterwards he started on a progress through the country with the intention of strengthening his position by granting privileges and making promises, but the conscience of the Londoners and of the country was roused, and almost immediately a fresh shock was given by the news that the boy King and his brother had been murdered in the Tower. There can be no doubt of the main fact, but the precise date is uncertain. Richard had placed the two boys under the care of Sir Robert Brackenbury, and after he had left London sent a message ordering him to kill them. When Brackenbury refused he sent Sir James Tyrrell with a warrant to receive possession of the Tower keys. Tyrrell’s groom, John Dighton, with one of the gaolers, Miles Forrest, entered the chamber of the two boys in the Bloody Tower, killed them, called on Tyrrell to recognize the bodies, then buried them at the foot of a staircase. This was some time in the latter part of August, and was not divulged until it was known that a plot was hatching to place the young Edward upon the throne.

The life of Richard III, which bears the name of Sir Thomas More as its author, but which appears to have been written by Cardinal Morton and edited by More, gives information which may be implicitly trusted as to the circumstances of this cruel murder. The new king, superstitious as wicked men so frequently are, was uneasy in his mind, and ordered the Tower priest to remove the bodies, and he did so, but dying soon after, no one could ascertain where he had laid them. More does not know, and says so frankly. Shakespeare expresses the uncertainty:—

The Chaplain of the Tower hath buried them, But where, to say the truth, I do not know.

Henry VII would have been glad to learn at the time when Perkin Warbeck was declaring that he was one of the alleged murdered boys. It was not until the reign of Charles II that two skeletons were found under the old stone steps of the royal chapel in the great keep. They were covered with earth and had been carefully bestowed. As they answered in every way to the bones which had been vainly sought after it was concluded, and certainly with probability, that they were the bones of the murdered children, and they were laid, by King Charles’s command, in a royal sepulchre in Westminster Abbey.

CHAPTER IV
IN THE TIME OF THE TUDOR KINGS

Henry VII.—Battle of Bosworth—Thomas Wyatt and the Cat—Edward, Earl of Warwick—Perkin Warbeck—Sir William Stanley—Edmund de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk—Sir John Tyrrell—Sir John Wyndham—Marriage of Prince Arthur and Katharine—His Death and Death of his Mother, Elizabeth of York—Death of Henry VII—Henry VIII—Empson and Dudley—Marriage with Katharine of Aragon—High Festival—Building of the Lieutenant’s House and other Improvements—Stafford, Duke of Buckingham—Marriage with Anne Boleyn—Completion of the Tower Buildings—Birth of the Princess Elizabeth—Execution of Anne—Fisher and More—Lord and Lady Howard—The “Pilgrimage of Grace” and its Victims—Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter—The Pole Family—Treachery of Geoffrey Pole—Thomas Cromwell, his Rise and Fall—Marriage with Anne of Cleves and Divorce, 1540—Marriage with Katharine Howard, and her Execution—Anne Askew, Protestant Martyr, Friend of Katharine Parr—Festivities to French Ambassadors—Dukes of Norfolk and Surrey Condemned—Death of Henry VIII—Edward VI—His Uncles the Seymours—Their Fall—Ascendancy of the Duke of Northumberland—Other Executions—The King’s Death.

We have come to the end of secret murders, but the Tower was never more in use as a State prison than under the house of Tudor, which began its royal course after the battle of Bosworth, August 22, 1485.

In the reign of Richard III Henry Wyatt, a gentleman of Surrey and member of the House of Commons, was thrown into the Tower for favouring the claims of Henry Tudor. According to his son’s statement, Richard had him tortured, vinegar and mustard being forced down his throat, and afterwards remonstrated with him. “Wyatt, why art thou such a fool?” said he, “Henry of Richmond is a beggarly pretender; forsake him and become mine. Thou servest him for moonshine in water. I can reward thee, and I swear to thee, I will.” “If I had chosen thee for my master,” answered the prisoner, “I would have been faithful to thee. But the Earl of Richmond, poor and unhappy though he be, is my master, and no allurement shall drive me from him, by God’s grace.” And here comes a pretty legend, we hardly dare regard it otherwise, which is told in the Wyatt papers. King Richard, in a rage, had him confined in a low and narrow cell, where he had not clothes sufficient to warm him and was a hungered. A cat came into this cell, he caressed her for company, laid her in his bosom and won her love. And so she came to him every day and brought him a pigeon when she could catch one. He complained to his keeper of his short fare, and received for answer, that “he durst not better it.” “But if I can provide any,” said Sir Henry, “will you dress it for me?” “I may well enough promise that,” was the answer, and so he promised. And he was as good as his word, and dressed each time the pigeon which the faithful cat brought. When Richmond became King Henry VII he rewarded his faithful liegeman by making him a Privy Councillor and giving him rich offices enough to enable him to buy Allington Castle, one of the finest in Kent. He was equally well regarded by Henry VIII, who visited him at Allington; but more of this farther on.

The two most noteworthy occupants of the Tower, however, in this reign, strangely different in character and circumstances, were brought into close connexion with each other. Edward, Earl of Warwick, was the eldest son of the Duke of Clarence, and was three years old when his father was put to death in the Tower. His early history is obscure; at one time Richard III, after the death of his son, thought to nominate him as his heir, but changed his mind, and sent him to Sheriff Hutton Castle, Yorkshire. After Bosworth Henry VII brought him from thence and shut him up in the Tower, his only offence being that he was the representative of the fallen dynasty of York. The injustice of this was widely felt, and this, combined with the uncertainty as to the whereabouts or movements of the youth, induced a usurper named Lambert Simnel to personate him in Ireland in 1487, and he was actually crowned in Dublin Cathedral. King Henry found it advisable to bring the Earl forth for a day and march him through the streets to St. Paul’s. It was the last day of his life that he spent outside the limits of the Tower. He was taken back and remained there for twelve years longer. And here we have to take up another history. Perkin Warbeck was the son of a citizen of Tournay, who came to England as a serving man to two or three English gentlemen, and in 1491, moved by vanity and ambition, whilst in Ireland, where feeling against Henry VII was strong, declared himself to be the Duke of York, who had been reported murdered in the Tower with his brother Edward V. The King of Scotland, James IV, acknowledged him, and two years later gave him his own cousin, Catherine Gordon, to wife. Charles VIII of France also for a while acknowledged him. But his strongest ally was Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy. This remarkable woman has little to do with the Tower, but is too much connected with English history to be passed over. She was the sister of Edward IV, fifteen years old when he became King. In 1467 she married Charles, Duke of Burgundy, and is favourably remembered as having patronized Caxton, who gave up the Mastership of the Merchant-Adventurers of Bruges to enter her service, and produced his first great printing work under her patronage. In 1477 her husband was killed at the battle of Nancy, and she was left a childless widow. The rest of her life was spent in the Netherlands, and when Henry VII confiscated the dowry which her brother King Edward had granted her, nothing more was needed to ensure her hatred of his rule, and desire to get the Yorkist dynasty restored. She had abetted Simnel, and now furnished Warbeck with means to carry out his attempt. When the latter, after repeated failures, was taken prisoner in October, 1497, his life was spared on his making full confession of his imposture, and he was then placed in the Tower, after being paraded through the streets in mockery. In 1498 he escaped, but was captured in a week, placed in the stocks in Westminster Hall and in Cheapside, and then sent back to the Tower. Next year he renewed his attempt at escape by bribing his gaolers, and unhappily induced the Earl of Warwick, who was of course nothing loth, to join him. The plot was discovered, and on November 23 Warbeck was hanged at Tyburn, and five days later Warwick was beheaded on Tower Hill. This last was a shameful act of injustice, but Henry longed to get rid of him, and it is said that his aversion was furthered by the refusal of King Ferdinand of Aragon to marry his daughter Katharine to Arthur, Prince of Wales, so long as a son of the Duke of Clarence existed as a possible claimant of the succession. When, years later Katharine of Aragon was bewailing the injustice done to her, she observed that it was a judgment of God upon her because her former marriage was sealed with blood, namely Warwick’s.

17. Vaulted Room in the Crypt of the White Tower,
in which the Rack stood.

From a drawing in the Gardner Collection.

18. A Cell in the Bloody Tower.

From a drawing by J. Wykeham Archer.
British Museum.

19. The Privy Council Chamber in the Lieutenant’s Lodging.

From a drawing by P. Justyne, 1873.
Gardner Collection.

20. A Room in the Beauchamp Tower, with Prisoners’
Inscriptions on the Walls.

From an old engraving.

21. The Beauchamp Tower, and St. Peter’s Chapel.

From a drawing by P. Justyne, 1873.
Gardner Collection.

22. The Lieutenant’s Lodging.

From a drawing by C. J. Richardson, 1871.
Gardner Collection.

23. The Collegiate Church of St. Katherine, looking west.

From an engraving by J. Carter, 1780.

24. The Collegiate Church of St. Katherine, looking east.

From an engraving by B. T. Pouncey, 1779.

There was yet another victim to Warbeck’s imposture. Sir William Stanley, who had turned the scale in King Henry’s favour at Bosworth Field, was, in 1495, impeached as having been heard to say that “if he were sure that the young man called Perkin was really the son of Edward IV, he would never draw sword against him.” For this he was sent to the Tower, tried in its Council Hall, and beheaded on Tower Hill, February 16, 1495.

Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, was the son of Elizabeth, sister of Edward IV. His plottings against Henry VII, encouraged by Maximilian, failed, and he fled the kingdom, and remained abroad several years. But Philip, King of Castile, who had given him shelter, visiting Henry in 1506, persuaded him to spare the fugitive’s life on his surrender, and Suffolk was committed to the Tower. Here he remained until 1513, when he was beheaded by order of Henry VIII on a charge of plotting. But he had involved two men in his ruin; Sir James Tyrrell, the same who had assisted at the murder of the two princes, and Sir John Wyndham, who had been knighted for his good service against Perkin Warbeck, were both executed on Tower Hill for their share in Suffolk’s treason. Tragedies enough, these, for one reign; yet we have hardly come to the end of them. The marriage of Prince Arthur with Katharine of Aragon took place in St. Paul’s Cathedral on November 14, 1501, and the rejoicings took the form of a succession of tournaments and feasts within the Tower walls. There were great pageants to emphasize the descent of the bridegroom from his namesake the British hero whose fabulous exploits fill the pages of Geoffrey of Monmouth. But they could not alter the fact that he was a poor sickly child of fifteen, and five months later he died. The calamity was a terrible blow to his mother, Elizabeth, of York, whose health appears to have failed from that time. On February 2, 1503, she gave birth to a daughter, Katharine, in the Tower, and died nine days later, on her birthday, aged thirty-eight. An amiable and beautiful woman, according to all accounts; “brilliant, witty, and pious,” so says Erasmus. Six years later her husband was buried by her side in the Abbey.

The reign of Henry VIII forms an epoch in the history of the Tower. There are tragical events in plenty, but there are other notes on which it is pleasant and interesting to dwell. He began his reign by imprisoning Empson and Dudley, who had been his father’s instruments of extortion. He did so because he knew how they were hated by the nation, though he profited by their misdeeds, for Henry VII bequeathed him what was then the enormous sum of £1,850,000. Next year they were both beheaded on Tower Hill. Meanwhile the King was holding high festival to celebrate his marriage with his brother’s widow Katharine. He was now nineteen years old, and she twenty-five. Surrounded by a splendid retinue he created four and twenty Knights of the Bath, after which there was a gorgeous procession from the Tower to Westminster; the details are given at length, and dismal enough they are when one sees the hollowness of them all in what followed. Henry was bent on improving the Tower buildings, and appointed Commissioners to take the work in hand. In the S.W. corner a Lieutenant’s house was built with many chambers, having a free passage both into the Beauchamp and Garden Towers. This house was flanked by two smaller buildings, warders’ houses, one on the West, the other on the South. The Bell Tower part of this building had a stone vault pierced for archers, who from it could sweep the outer works. This is called in old records the Strong Room. Though not intended for the reception of prisoners, it presently received an illustrious one, as we shall see. In the State Papers of the reign are the following memoranda of repairs done in the Tower during the summer of 1532: “Work done by carpenters and taking down old timber, etc., at St. Thomas’ Tower, and for alterations in the palace.” “There has also been taken down the old timber in the four turrets of the White Tower; and the old timber of Robert the Devil’s Tower—that is Julius Caesar’s tower; and of the tower near the King’s wardrobe. Half of the White Tower is now embattled, coped, indented, and cressed with Caen stone to the extent of 500 feet.” The cost is given as £3,593 14s. 10d.

A Tournament.

From a MS. of the Romance of the Sire Jehan de Saintré.
British Museum, Nero D. IX.

But we have perforce to return to the tragical records. We have already recorded how the Earl of Suffolk, Edmund de la Pole, was beheaded in 1513. Edward Stafford, third Duke of Buckingham, was the great grandson of Humphrey Stafford, son of Anne, daughter of Thomas of Woodstock, son of Edward III. Humphrey Stafford had received his dukedom for his services under Henry VI, had tried in vain to reconcile Queen Margaret with the Yorkists, and was slain at the battle of Northampton. His grandson was executed at Salisbury by Richard III in 1483. The Duke with whom we are now concerned was sworn a Privy Councillor in 1509, and was for a while high in favour with Henry VIII. But he hated Cardinal Wolsey, and the hatred was returned, and the Cardinal appears to have brought before the King some boasting speeches of the Duke about his royal lineage, implying a claim to the throne. For this he was sent to the Tower, was tried for high treason, and on May 17, 1521, was beheaded on the Green. Shakespeare gives us several pathetic touches in his Henry VIII. Half a dozen Augustinian friars, in gratitude for the many kind deeds which the Duke had done to poor religious men in his lifetime, took up his body and buried it in the Church of Austin Friars.

We come to scenes of revelry again in May, 1533, when the King brought hither his new wife Anne Boleyn; painful enough to read in connexion with the rest of the history. He had gone through a marriage service with her in the previous January, before his divorce from Katharine had been pronounced. Anne was now some months advanced in pregnancy. She was brought to the Tower preparatory to a stately march to Westminster for her coronation, and it was all very magnificent to look at, but the people viewed it in sullen silence; enthusiasm there was none. What was yet worse, the King’s passion for her was already on the wane. She gave birth to the future Queen Elizabeth on September 7, 1533, had a miscarriage the next year, and a still-born child in January, 1536, only three weeks after the death of Katharine of Aragon. On Mayday following she was charged with unfaithfulness to the King, was brought a prisoner to the Tower next day, tried in the Great Hall on the 15th, beheaded on Tower Green on the 19th. This is not the place to discuss the question of her guilt or innocence. The twenty-five peers who tried her gave a unanimous verdict against her; the President of the Court was her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. Mr. Gairdner expresses his opinion that the evidence against her was not conclusive, but that her conduct had long been indecorous.

But between her coronation and execution two illustrious victims had passed away. John Fisher, who as a College Principal had done splendid service in the way of advice and assistance to the munificent works of the “Lady Margaret,” Countess of Richmond, Henry VII’s mother, was raised in 1504 to the bishopric of Rochester. He was a man of saintly life, and eager to promote learning. There seems to have been a mutual distrust between him and Wolsey, which Burnet bluntly attributes to Fisher’s grief at the Cardinal’s lax morality. When the question of King Henry’s divorce was raised Fisher expressed himself firmly against it, and when, further, the doctrine of the royal supremacy was proposed to Convocation, he declared that the acceptance of it would “cause the clergy of England to be wiped out of God’s holy Catholic Church.” When it was carried in Convocation, it was he who procured the addition of the saving clause “quantum per Dei legem licet.” Unfortunately he compromised himself by giving countenance to Elizabeth Barton, “the nun of Kent,” when the soi-disant prophetess threatened calamity to the King for his marriage with Anne Boleyn. In April, 1534, he and Sir Thomas More were summoned to Lambeth to take the oath to the Act of Succession. They both agreed to that portion of the Act which fixed the succession to the offspring of the King and Anne, but firmly objected to call the Princess Mary illegitimate, and to the words denying faith, truth, and obedience to the Roman Church. The commissioners were anxious, Cranmer at the head of them, to accept the submission as sufficient for the occasion, but they were both sent to the Tower; and when the Act of Supremacy was passed in November, 1554, Secretary Cromwell read it to Fisher, with the clause making it high treason to deny the King’s right to the claim. Fisher declined to subscribe to it. Henry was unwilling to proceed to extremities, but at this very moment Pope Paul III, ignorant (as he afterwards declared) of the unhappy relations between King and bishop, and desirous of rewarding learning, made Fisher a Cardinal. Henry broke out into ungovernable fury when he heard it, and declared that the red hat might come, but that there should be no head on which to place it. The bishop was brought to trial at Westminster and beheaded on Tower Hill June 15, 1535. “There is in this realm no man,” said Sir Thomas More, “in wisdom, learning, and long approved virtue together, meet to be matched and compared with him.” He died with perfect calmness and dignity. The head was fixed on London Bridge, and the body lay exposed to insult all day. In the evening it was buried without ceremony in the Church of Allhallows Barking.

A fortnight later Sir Thomas More shared the same fate, and on the same charge. His brilliant abilities, wit, and virtue have made his name illustrious. Many of his noble friends visited him in confinement and did all they could to persuade him to yield, but in vain. Not only his firmness, but his cheerfulness remained undiminished. When he was brought through Traitors’ Gate the porter, according to ancient custom, demanded his uppermost garment as his fee. More handed him his cap, telling him that this was his “uppermost garment,” and that he wished it was of more value. When he ascended the scaffold he observed that it was somewhat insecure. “Prythee, good fellow,” he said to one of the guards, “help me up; when I come down let me shift for myself.” And when the headsman prayed his forgiveness, “I forgive thee, good fellow, with all my heart,” he said as he laid his head on the block. Immediately after he raised it for a moment to remove his beard. “That,” he said, “has not committed treason; pity it should be cut.”

Every succeeding year of this darkening reign brought more prisoners to the Tower. Thence Lord Howard was sent with his wife, the King’s niece, because they had married without the royal consent. Here the husband died and then the widow was released. She afterwards became the mother of Darnley.

“The Pilgrimage of Grace,” in other words the series of insurrections which broke out in the North because of dissatisfaction at the promulgation of the reformed doctrines and the dissolution of the religious houses, filled the Tower dungeons with prisoners. Among them were the Lords Darcy and Hussey, Sir Robert Constable, Sir John and Lady Bulmer, Sir Francis Bigot, Sir Thomas Percy, brother of the Earl of Northumberland, Sir Stephen Hamilton, William, son of Lord Lumley, Nicholas Tempest and Robert Aske; also the Abbots of Rievaulx, Fountains and Jervaux, and the Prior of Bridlington. All were convicted of treason and put to death in 1536.

In 1538 Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, Sir Edward Neville, Sir Nicholas Carew and others were accused of holding a traitorous correspondence with Cardinal Pole, and were imprisoned in the Tower; as were also the Cardinal’s brothers, Lord Montague and Sir Geoffrey Pole, their mother the Countess of Salisbury, the Marchioness of Exeter, Sir Adrian Fortescue and Sir Thomas Dingley. Reginald Pole, who had never hesitated in his conferences with the King to condemn the divorce, had been entrusted by Henry to go on a mission to the Pope to make peace if possible. Pope Paul IV had made him a Cardinal, to Henry’s indignation, and he was still on the Continent. The Marquis of Exeter was a grandson of Edward IV, and Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, was the daughter of his brother, the Duke of Clarence. The King was roused to fresh anger against them because Charles V and Francis I had laid aside their enmity and become friends, and the Pope, looking to them for assistance, had issued a bull of excommunication against him. Geoffrey Pole saved his life by giving evidence against the plotters. Exeter and Montague were beheaded, December 9, 1538, Carew on March 3 following. Lady Exeter was pardoned, but the Countess of Salisbury was kept in confinement for two years longer, when she was brought to the scaffold on the fatal Green. Froude thinks it was because she was found to be still secretly corresponding with her son the Cardinal against the King, and there were fresh alarms of a rising in the North under Sir John Neville. Froude discredits the story told by Lingard, that the aged Countess refused to lay her head on the block on the ground that she was no traitor, and that the headsman hacked it off as he best could; and Mr. Gairdner evidently does not believe it.

Of the King’s chief adviser in these terrible doings we have as yet said nothing, but it becomes necessary to do so now. Thomas Cromwell, who had risen from low estate, and whose early history is almost a blank to us, after a youth spent on the Continent, was appointed by Wolsey collector of his revenues of the see of York, entered Parliament in 1523 and became a member of Gray’s Inn. Wolsey leaned much upon him, made him one of the commissioners appointed (1525) to inquire into the conditions of the smaller monasteries—and in this work he acted with great harshness—and he also managed the work of the foundation of the Cardinal’s Colleges at Oxford and Ipswich. He seems to have remained faithful to Wolsey to the end, but it was he more than any one who persuaded Henry VIII to make himself supreme head of the Church by way of facilitating his divorce from Katharine, and he rose high in favour with the King and became Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1535 he was made Vicar-General for a general visitation of churches, monasteries and clergy, was rewarded with large gifts of confiscated church lands, and was made Lord Chamberlain in 1539. This was the culmination of a career clever and wary, but tyrannical and oppressive to the English nation and utterly unprincipled towards foreign powers. His fall, which had long been desired by the Catholic party in England, was hastened by his negotiating the King’s marriage with Anne of Cleves. Henry’s disgust at his first sight of his affianced bride would not have sufficed to cause the agent’s ruin, but the alliance with German Protestants, of which the marriage was to be the seal, was unpopular, and as it had served its purpose, nothing more was to be got out of it. For arranging the marriage he was created Earl of Essex April 1540, and on June 10 following the Duke of Norfolk denounced him as a traitor at the Council board, and he was at once sent to the Tower, charged with receiving bribes wholesale, selling commissions, secretly dispersing heretical books, and designing to marry the Princess Mary and make himself King. He was not tried but proceeded against by attainder. Archbishop Cranmer vainly tried to stem the tide. He was beheaded on Tower Green July 28, 1540. It was one sign of a Catholic reaction. The Tower and other metropolitan prisons were crowded with Protestant heretics, who were dragged away on hurdles and burnt in Smithfield, as were also some Catholics at the very same period for denying the King’s supremacy.

Anne of Cleves was married to Henry on January 6, 1540, and divorced in July following. She lived the rest of her life in England with a pension, quite content, and rode in the procession along with the Princess Elizabeth at Queen Mary’s coronation. She was buried in Westminster Abbey, August 1557.

Immediately after this divorce Henry married Katharine Howard, niece of the Duke of Norfolk, and for a while all seemed bright. The royal pair next year went on a tour through the North. At Hampton Court they kept All Saints’ Day, 1541, with much solemnity, and the King gave directions to the celebrant, the Bishop of Lincoln, to return thanks to God “for the good life which he hoped to lead after sundry troubles.” Next day after mass Archbishop Cranmer sorrowfully handed the King a paper which gave evidence of Katharine’s unchastity both before and after marriage. She was confined for a while at Syon House, on February 10 was brought to the Tower, and beheaded on the Green three days later. It was a strange request which she made, and which was complied with—that the block might previously be brought to her cell that she might learn how to place her head upon it aright. With her died Lady Rochford, who had connived at her immoralities.

Anne Askew, our next prisoner, presents a strange contrast. She was the daughter of a Lincolnshire gentleman, who married in early life a Mr. Kyme, an ardent Roman Catholic. Anne’s friends in London were equally ardent believers in the Reformed faith; among these friends was Queen Katharine Parr. Anne’s husband, who for some time had neglected her, charged her with heresy, resting his charge on the recently passed “Six Articles” Act, which ordained that denial of Transubstantiation should be punished with death by burning. It was in 1545 that she was charged. Bishop Bonner appears to have been so moved by the sight of her simple beauty as to try to save her, but the Chancellor, Wriothesley, pressed her with questions, and she was firm in her answers, and was condemned. Her first place of confinement was Newgate, but she was sent to the Tower to be racked. The rack, says Lord de Ros, was regarded with such horror by the people as to be applied only in secrecy, and there might have been an outbreak in the city had all this become known. The application of the torture was in order to force her to incriminate the ladies who had supported her, but she resolutely closed her lips, first declaring that she was grateful to all her friends and would not betray them, and that it was her faithful maid who had kept her from starvation by going out and begging for her “of the prentices and others she met in the streets.” Wriothesley himself worked the rack until she was nearly dead. She was taken off the machine, but was no longer able to walk, so she was carried in a cart to Smithfield and burned. Queen Katharine appears to have been in danger, but the King’s sympathies were moved by the accounts which reached him of the sufferer’s noble constancy, and when Wriothesley came to him to excite him against the Queen, Henry called him a beast and a fool and drove him out of the room.

One more cheerful record remains of this terrible reign. In 1546, in honour of the peace which had been made between France and England, the former country sent its Lord High Admiral, the Bishop of Evreux, and some other nobles on an embassy to England. They landed at Greenwich and thence were conducted to the Tower, where a splendid banquet awaited them; thence to Lambeth Palace, and finally to Hampton Court, where the treaty was signed.

And still we have two more illustrious prisoners to name in this reign. The Duke of Norfolk was now seventy-four years old: He had commanded the victorious army at Flodden, had led another victorious campaign in Scotland, and had done good service in France. He was a son-in-law of King Edward IV, and two of his nieces had been Queens of England. The jealousy of Henry was aroused; he knew himself to be nearing his end, and feared that the Duke and his son, the Earl of Surrey, had designs upon the crown. He appointed Lord Hertford, his son’s uncle, to be his guardian during his minority, and sent to Parliament a complaint that Norfolk and his son were plotting to seize the government. Surrey was accused of quartering the arms of King Edward the Confessor on his shield, after the manner of an heir-apparent, and also (it is shocking to have to record it) of having persuaded his sister, the widow of the King’s natural son, the Duke of Richmond, to become Henry’s mistress, of course with a view to ruling his movements. Surrey was tried by jury January 13, 1547, and perished six days later on Tower Hill. The Duke of Norfolk was condemned by bill of attainder, and would have died in like manner, had not the King himself died January 28, 1547, a few hours before the appointed time of execution. The Duke remained a prisoner until the accession of Mary, when he was released. He presided at the trial of the Duke of Northumberland, and died in his bed in 1554, aged eighty-one.

The young Edward, now ten years old, was at Hatfield when his father died. Next day his uncle, the Earl of Hertford, brought him up to the Tower with great pomp and ceremony. Here he received knighthood by the accolade of his uncle, and in return conferred on him the title of Duke of Somerset. On February 24 the coronation took place at Westminster with the usual pageants.

Almost immediately disturbances began. Thomas, Lord Seymour, Somerset’s younger brother, was sent to the Tower on the charge of aspiring to the kingdom by offering marriage to the Princess Elizabeth. He had secretly married Queen Katharine Parr on King Henry’s death, and when she died (Sept. 5, 1548) he made this new move. Other acts of ambition were charged against him, as well as of using his office of Lord High Admiral for privateering. He was beheaded on Tower Hill March 20, 1549, and though he was not worthy of much sympathy, public opinion was indignant against the heartlessness of his brother the Protector, and advantage was taken of it by the Catholic party to form a faction against him. He was accused, not unjustly, of accumulating vast riches by seizing property of the Church and Crown. A leader of the opposition to him was found in Dudley, Earl of Warwick. A meeting of his opponents was held in Ely Place in October 1549, with the result that the Tower was seized and Somerset was shut up in it. He was deposed from the Protectorate, and in February 1550 was pardoned and re-admitted to the Privy Council. But in October 1551 he was again arrested on the charge of plotting to raise the country and murder Warwick. On this charge he was tried and beheaded on Tower Hill. He was the first Protestant ruler of England, “a rank Calvinist,” and was, in fact, in close communication with Calvin. It was certainly his influence which led to the changes between the two English prayer-books of 1549 and 1552. His royal nephew, apparently, was, as Burnet puts it, “not greatly concerned” for him. This is his entry in his diary: “January 22, the Duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon Touer Hill between eight and nine a cloke in the morning.” His fall involved the ruin of some of his principal supporters. Thus Sir Ralph Vane (or Fane; he belonged to the still existent Westmoreland family), though he had distinguished himself in the army, had offended the Duke of Northumberland. He was charged with complicity with Somerset and hid himself in a stable at Lambeth, but was arrested. Before the Privy Council he showed a bold front, and on his condemnation declared that his murder would make Northumberland’s pillow uneasy. He was hanged, and the royal diary recording his “felony” and death adds that on his trial he “answered like a ruffian.” Sir Miles Partridge was also hanged; Sir Thomas Arundel and Sir Michael Stanhope were beheaded; the Earl of Arundel, Lords Grey and Paget were acquitted.

Edward VI’s was a short reign, but a terrible amount of blood was shed on the scaffold, through the machinations of evil counsellors.

CHAPTER V
THE TUDOR QUEENS

Grave Difficulties as to the Right of Succession—Statement of the Various Claims—Duke of Northumberland’s Selfish Scheme—Its Failure—His Arrest and Execution—Lady Jane Grey—Triumph of Mary—Her Coronation—Sir Thomas Wyatt’s Rebellion—Execution of Lady Jane and her Husband—Execution of Duke of Suffolk and Sir Thomas Wyatt—Accusation against the Princess Elizabeth—Her Imprisonment and Liberation—Death of Mary and Accession of Elizabeth—Her Coronation—Religious Troubles—Lord and Lady Hertford—Plots in Favour of the Queen of Scots—Hopes of the King of Spain—Hatred of Spain in the English Nation—Execution of the Duke of Norfolk, the First for Fourteen Years—Fresh Prisoners owing to the Jesuit Activity against the Queen—Execution of the Queen of Scots at Fotheringhay, and Results—Sir Walter Raleigh’s Imprisonment and Liberation—Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex—His Prosperity, Folly, Downfall—Death of the Queen.

There had been no doubt about the succession when Henry VIII died. Jane Seymour, the mother of Edward, was Henry’s lawful wife beyond question, for Queens Katharine and Anne were both dead when he married Jane. But on the death of Edward the matter looked very complicated in many eyes. Let us take the possible claimants in order. First, there were the two sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, who had both been declared illegitimate on the ground that their mothers had never been lawful wives. King Henry, it is true, in his later years, had received them as his daughters, and as possible heirs, though the Statute disqualifying them had not been repealed. Next, Henry VII had left two daughters. The elder, Margaret, married James IV of Scotland, who was killed at Flodden. His son, James V, was father of Mary Queen of Scots, but she was excluded from right of succession by the Alien Act, having been born on a foreign soil. But further, Margaret, within a year of King James’s death, had married the Earl of Angus, and a wretched marriage it was. He had a wife already, but a papal brief decreed that, as she had married in good faith, her child Margaret was legitimate.

Henry VII’s second daughter, Mary, married Louis XII of France, but he died in his honeymoon. She then married Charles Brandon, afterwards created Duke of Suffolk, he having a wife alive. Their eldest daughter, Frances, was given in marriage to Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, the greatgrandson of Sir John Grey, first husband of Elizabeth Woodville. Edward IV, on marrying her, made her son a peer. It is a miserable fact to have to record that the Marquis of Dorset, who now married the daughter of Brandon and Queen Mary, had put away his lawful wife in order to do so, the Lady Catherine FitzAlan, sister of the Earl of Arundel. No wonder that the latter, who had been an affectionate brother-in-law, became Dorset’s fierce enemy, and nursed his wrath in secret. Grey was created Duke of Suffolk on account of his royal spouse, and perhaps thought that the injury he had done was forgotten in his prosperity. His wife Frances, a lady of amiable temper, brought him three daughters, the eldest being the Lady Jane Grey, and out of all this crooked dealing came a great tragedy.

The Duke of Northumberland, who had risen victorious over the Seymour family, and was apparently in the plenitude of power at King Edward’s death, was an able, bold, and unprincipled man. He had wedded his fourth son, Lord Guildford Dudley, to the Lady Jane, and caused the dying Edward to declare her his legitimate successor. Obviously this was not the case, for her mother was yet alive, and would under any circumstances have had first claim. The poor girl was only sixteen years old. All accounts agree in making her both learned and amiable. She had no ambitions, but was told that duty lay upon her. The Duke for some hours kept the King’s death secret, while he took measures for securing the person of Mary, and brought the Lady Jane to the Tower, and also a large number of influential peers, to swear homage to her. But the Londoners were silent, “not a single shout of welcome or Godspeed was raised as they passed through the silent crowd on their way to the Tower,” writes Machyn in his diary. The Duke was hated for his arrogance, and the interference of France and Spain was to be looked for if Mary’s rights were interfered with. And Jane’s husband, a poor, wretched, selfish creature, whined and sulked because he had expected to be declared King Consort. Northumberland, having had Jane duly proclaimed, went forth to encounter Mary, and soon saw that the game was up. The fleet off Yarmouth had declared in Mary’s favour, so had the soldiers which he had sent against her. And so in the street at Cambridge he threw his cap up in the air with the cry, “God save Queen Mary!” But it availed him nothing. The Earl of Arundel, who had been forced by Northumberland to offer allegiance to Jane, but who waited his opportunity, came forward with a warrant for his arrest, signed by Mary, and on July 25, nineteen days after Edward’s death, he was brought a prisoner to the Tower; on August 18 he was tried and condemned for high treason in Westminster Hall, the Duke of Norfolk presiding as Lord High Sheriff. He was taken back to the Beauchamp Tower, and inscriptions which were cut by him and his sons may still be read on the walls. Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, had been a prisoner there under King Edward; he was now restored to his dignity, and he paid a visit to Northumberland, who, in the hope of saving his life, declared himself a Catholic. Gardiner naturally took the opportunity; Mass was celebrated in the White Tower Chapel, and the Duke received after making recantation. Next day he was beheaded on Tower Hill, still clinging desperately to the hope of life, and making profession all the way to the scaffold of the fervency of his faith. Sir John Gates and Sir Thomas Palmer, both implicated in the same treason, perished with him.

Meanwhile the “nine days’ reign” of the hapless Lady Jane was at an end. She was consigned to the Lieutenant’s Lodging, called the King’s House, and her husband to the Beauchamp Tower, where the one word “Jane,” carved on the wall by him, is still to be seen. All through the month of September Jane was allowed to walk in the garden, and her husband and his brother Henry to promenade the outer walk on the wall which leads from the Beauchamp to the Bell Tower.

Queen Mary was crowned with great splendour on October 1. She was accompanied by her half-sister Elizabeth.

On November 13 a procession went forth from the Tower Gate to the Guildhall. First the Gentleman Chief Warder, carrying the axe, next Archbishop Cranmer, followed by Lord Guildford Dudley and Lady Jane, the last-named accompanied by two of her ladies. They were arraigned for high treason, the Lord Mayor presiding, with the Duke of Norfolk as High Sheriff. They pleaded guilty, received sentence, and were taken back to the Tower.

It is possible that Mary may have had it in her mind to spare Lady Jane’s life, but there came a new event, namely, Wyatt’s ill-starred rising against the projected marriage of Queen Mary with Philip of Spain. The opinion of the nation was strongly against it, and Wyatt was certainly moved with an honest purpose. I would not venture to say as much for his fellow-conspirator, the Duke of Suffolk, Lady Jane’s father, who probably renewed his hopes of setting his daughter on the throne. He undertook to head a rising in Leicestershire, as Sir Peter Carew did in Devon. With the details of this unhappy expedition we have little to do here. Wyatt started from Maidstone, after publishing a declaration against the Queen’s marriage, and advanced with a numerous force to Rochester, where he defeated the Duke of Norfolk and Sir Henry Jerningham, who had been sent against him. Then he moved on to Gravesend, where he was met by some members of the Privy Council, who exhorted him to make known his grievances in a less disorderly manner. He assented, provided “the custody of the Tower and the Queen within it” were entrusted to him. This condition being declined, he went on towards London. Mary was exhorted to take refuge in the Tower, but cowardice was not one of her faults; she refused, and offered a reward of a hundred pounds a year to any man who would bring her Wyatt’s head; she also gave out to the citizens of London that she would not marry Philip if the match should be disagreeable to the nation. Wyatt, too, unappalled by his perilous situation, appeared at Southwark, opposite the Tower, fired upon it and was fired upon by the garrison, on both sides without effect, but the fact is to be noted as the last time in its history that the Tower was ever attacked. How he went on, crossed the river at Kingston, found himself more and more deserted, but still came forward with the courage of despair until he was captured between Temple Bar and Ludgate Hill, we all know. Now let Holinshed take up the narrative: “As for the principals of this faction, Thomas Wyat, William Knevet, Thomas Cobham, two brethren named Mantells, and Alexander Bret, were brought by Sir Henry Jerningham by water to the Tower, prisoners, where Sir Philip R. Denny received them at the bulworke, and as Wyat passed he said: ‘Go, traitor, there never was such a traitor in England’; to whom Sir Thomas Wyat turned and said, ‘I am no traitor, I would thou shouldst well know that thou art more traitor than I, it is not the point of an honest man to call me so,’ and so went forth. When he came to the Tower gate, Sir Thomas Bridges, the Lieutenant, took him through the wicket, first Mantell, and said, ‘Ah thou traitor, what hast thou and thy companie wrought.’ But he, holding downe his head, said nothing. Then came Thomas Knevet, whom Master Chambeleine, gentleman porter of the Tower, tooke in. Then came Alexander Bret, whome Sir Thomas Pope tooke by the bosome, saying, ‘Oh traitor, how couldest thou find in thy heart to worke such a villanie, as to take wages, and being trusted ouer a band of men, to fall to hir enemies, returning against hir in battell.’ Bret answered, ‘Yea I have offended in that case.’ Then came Thomas Cobham, whome Sir Thomas Poines tooke in, and said, ‘Alas, Maister Cobham, what wind headed you to worke such treason’; and he answered, ‘Oh sir, I was seduced.’ Then came in Sir Thomas Wyat, whom Sir John Bridges tooke by the collar and said, ‘Oh thou villen and unhappie traitor, how couldest thou find in thy hart to worke such detestable treason to the queenes maiestie, who gaue thee thy life and liuing once alreadie, although thou diddest before this time beare armes in the field against hir and now to yeeld hir battell. If it were not (saith he) but that the lawe must passe upon thee, I would sticke thee through with my dagger.’ To the which, Wyat holding his arms under his side, and looking grieuously with a grim looke upon the Lieutenant, said, ‘It is no maisterie now’; and so passed on. Thomas Wyat had on a shirt of maile, with sleeues verie faire, thereon a veluet cassocke, and a yellow lace, with the windlace of his dag hanging thereon, and a paire of boots on his legs, and on his head a faire hat of veluet, with a broad bone worke lace about it. William Kneuet, Thomas Cobham, and Bret, were the like apparelled.”

Wyatt was confined in the first floor of the great keep, his adherents in the crypt beneath. It is hardly to be wondered at that this fixed the fate of poor Lady Jane. Her father was imprisoned on February 10. Two days before Feckenham, the Queen’s confessor, afterwards Abbot of Westminster, was sent to bid her and her husband prepare for death, and to exhort them to embrace the Roman faith; but on this point they were both firm in their refusal, and the 12th was fixed for the fatal day. It was originally intended that they should both die on Tower Hill, but the fear that Jane’s beauty, simplicity, and sweetness would excite popular sympathy, induced the authorities to change the place of her suffering to the Tower Green. When Lord Guildford was told this he requested a final interview with her, but she declined it, lest it should change their constancy. On the day appointed he was led forth, and as he passed the window of “Master Partridge’s House,” where she was confined, she waved her farewell to him. At the Bulwark Gate, the sheriffs met him and conducted him to the scaffold, where he met his fate with firmness. The body was conveyed on a litter to the Tower Chapel, and Jane saw it on its way thither. “O Guildford, Guildford!” said she, “the antepast is not so bitter that thou hast tasted, and which I shall soon taste, as to make my flesh tremble: it is nothing compared to the feast of which I shall partake this day in Heaven.” When the Lieutenant of the Tower came to conduct her to her death, and asked her for some small present which he might keep in memory of her, she gave him her tablets on which she had just written three sentences, Latin, Greek, and English. At the scaffold she addressed the bystanders, protesting that she had erred through bad advice, in the belief that she was serving the interests of the country, and that she submitted to the consequences of her error without murmuring. She prayed fervently, and then—but let us hear Holinshed once more—“stood vp and gaue hir maid (called Mistress Ellin) her gloues and handkercher, and hir booke she also gaue to Maister Bridges, (brother of) the Lieutenant of the Tower, and so untied hir gowne: and the executioner pressed to helpe hir off with it, but she desired him to let hir alone, and turned hir toward hir two gentlewomen, who helped hir off therewith, and with hir other attires, and they gaue hir a fair handkercher to put about hir eies. Then the executioner kneeled downe and asked hir forgiuenesse, whom she forgaue most willinglie. Then he willed hir to stand vpon the straw, which doone, she saw the blocke, and then she said, ‘I pray you dispatch me quicklie.’ Then she kneeled downe, saiing, ‘Will you take it off before I laie me downe?’ Whereunto the executioner answered, ‘No, Madame.’ Then tied she the handkercher about hir eies, and, feeling for the blocke, she said, ‘Where is it? where is it?’ One of the standers-by guided hir thereunto, and she laid downe hir head vpon the blocke, and then stretched forth hir bodie, and said, ‘Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit,’ and so finished hir life.”

Eleven days later her father, the Duke of Suffolk, was beheaded, and many other participators in the ill-concerted rebellion were also put to death; three were hanged at Maidstone, three at Sevenoaks, more than fifty died in the City on the block or the gallows, the gates and London Bridge were disfigured with clusters of rotting heads, in several of the principal streets gibbets bore their ghastly burdens in chains, and the air was tainted far and wide. In the midst of this time Mary was married to Philip at Winchester.

Wyatt, who was put to death on April 11, had used some expressions which were held to implicate, among others, the Princess Elizabeth. The latter was lying sick, in semi-custody, at Ashridge in Herts, and a strong guard was sent to escort her to London, which performed its duty so zealously as to force admission into her bedchamber. She was brought, in spite of her remonstrances, by easy stages to London, and remained for a fortnight in close confinement at Whitehall, and was then conveyed to the Tower. Her angry protestations made a scene as she was landed at Traitors’ Gate on Palm Sunday, that day being fixed upon because the citizens were strictly ordered to Church, and it was feared that popular disaffection would be exhibited if the Princess was conducted through the city. Whilst in the Tower, her confinement was of the most rigid character; the Mass, though offensive to her, was constantly said in her apartment; at first she was not allowed to pass the threshold of her room, and when afterwards she obtained the privilege, through the intercession of Lord Chandos, she was constantly attended by the Lieutenant and Constable of the Tower, with a guard. “Queen Elizabeth’s Walk” is still the name of the path she daily promenaded. She was frequently examined by the Council, but nothing against her could be found, and Wyatt with his dying breath declared her innocence. On May 19 she was liberated from the Tower, and conveyed, under the charge of Sir Henry Bedingfield, to Woodstock. In the old London Tavern in Leadenhall Street is preserved a heavy pewter meat dish and cover, which it is said was used at the meal which she took after leaving the Tower. And there is another tradition that the bells of some of the city churches were joyously rung on her release, and that to these churches on her accession she gave silken bell-ropes.

There still remained many prisoners in the Tower who had been concerned in the Lady Jane attempt and Wyatt’s subsequent rebellion. A large number of these were now released. The Earl of Warwick and his three brothers, Ambrose, Robert and Dudley, were in the Beauchamp Tower, but the Earl died in October, 1554, and his brothers were liberated next year. There was a strong desire to win popular favour and make the Spanish marriage less unpopular. The Archbishop of York, who had been imprisoned for refusing to attend Queen Mary’s coronation, and some twenty other knights and gentlemen were set free.

With the religious persecutions which followed for three years and a half we have no concern here. There was one more rising against the increasing authority of the Spaniards; Thomas, the second son of Lord Stafford, landed at Scarborough and took the castle, but was defeated by the Earl of Westmoreland, and a large number of prisoners were brought to the Tower. Stafford was beheaded on Tower Hill, and the others were hanged at Tyburn. Queen Mary died on November 17, 1558, and the accession of Elizabeth was certainly hailed with joy by the English nation.

Elizabeth was at Hatfield when her sister died. On November 28 she came to London, and entered, amidst general acclamations, the fortress where she had been so rigorously imprisoned. It is no wonder if it found no charms for her; on December 5 she retired first to Somerset House, then to Whitehall, where she remained until the eve of her coronation, when she came back to the Tower again. The procession from hence to the Abbey was more splendid than any that had been recorded. Seated in an open chariot all glittering with gold, herself blazing with jewels, she was carried through streets strewn with flowers, with banners and tapestry on the houses, the conduits running wine, and the city companies manning the streets in their gorgeous liveries. A young woman called Deborah stood under a palm-tree in Fleet Street, and prophesied great prosperity to the nation.

Though the horrors of the stake were at an end, religious persecution was not; and the Tower seldom appears in the reign of Elizabeth save as a State prison. The Reformers were only too ready to retaliate on the Roman party, and so the Bishop of Winchester (Gardiner), who had rendered himself obnoxious under Mary, was soon in durance here, and was followed by the Archbishop of York, the Bishops of Ely, Lincoln, Worcester, Exeter, and Bath, and by Feckenham, Abbot of Westminster, and other Church dignitaries, for denying the Queen’s supremacy.

And there were fresh prisoners of State. Lady Catherine Grey, one of Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting, Lady Jane’s sister, married in 1560 Lord Hertford, eldest son of the Duke of Somerset, but secretly, as it was known that the Queen would not approve of the match. He was twenty-two, and she twenty. The young people walked from Whitehall to Lord Hertford’s house in Fleet Street, and here the marriage took place, though they could not remember the name of the minister who thus clandestinely united them. When in due time the union could no longer be concealed they were in a terrible fright, Lady Catherine being of near kin to the Queen. Lord Hertford could not face her majesty’s anger, and fled across sea, leaving his poor wife to do the best she could for herself. This was not much, for when she threw herself at her royal mistress’s feet and begged for pardon, Elizabeth in a fury sent her off to the Tower, where, soon after, her child was born.[3] Lord Hertford, returning to England, was sent also, and remained there many a long year, in the deeper disgrace because he could produce no proof of his marriage. He was separated from her, but bribed the keepers and gained access to her chamber, the result of which was the birth of another child. Elizabeth, we need hardly say, was more furious than ever; she declared, and probably thought, that there had been no marriage, dismissed summarily the Lieutenant, Warner, and had Hertford brought before the Star Chamber, where he was fined £15,000 and sent back to his prison, where he lay for nine years longer. During that time Lady Catherine died (1567). After his liberation he married again, but proved the validity of his first marriage in 1606 by discovering the minister who had performed it (Collins’s Peerage).

The Earl of Lennox was imprisoned in 1561, on suspicion of privately corresponding with the Queen of Scots, but was released next year. His wife, however, being a near kinswoman of Elizabeth, was continually suspected by her, and was imprisoned three times, “not for any crime of treason,” says Camden, “but for love matters; first when Thomas Howard, son of the first Duke of Norfolk of that name, falling in love with her, was imprisoned and died in the Tower of London; then for the love of Henry, Lord Darnley, her son, to Mary, Queen of Scots; and lastly for the love of Charles, her younger son, to Elizabeth Cavendish, mother to the Lady Arabella, with whom the Queen of Scots was accused to have made up the match.” In the King’s House there is an inscription in one of the rooms recording the second of these imprisonments.

The struggle between Elizabeth and the Queen of Scots was long and fierce. Before it closed on the scaffold at Fotheringhay, February, 1587, it had brought many prisoners to the Tower. Among the earliest were two more members of the Pole family, Arthur and Edmund, great grandchildren of the Duke of Clarence. They were imprisoned in the Beauchamp Tower in 1562 on the charge of conspiring to set Mary Stuart on the English throne. Inscriptions on the wall may still be seen, bearing their names. There can be no question that Elizabeth’s position was one of great danger. England was half ruined when she came to the throne—no army, no fleet, a huge debt, and the whole country containing a population less than that of London to-day. And Spain was rich and populous, with the finest army and navy in the world. Philip expected England to buy his support against her neighbour, France, by becoming a dependency of Spain. But he misjudged not only the courage of the Queen, but the indomitable determination of her nation. They had had enough of Spain. Unjustly, no doubt, they attributed all the miseries and disasters of Mary’s reign to the Spanish alliance, and it was the special feature which so wonderfully marked the reign of Elizabeth that her people rallied round her in the hour of danger as people had never done to a sovereign before. We have to bear this in mind when thinking of the high-handed doings of Burleigh and the astute diplomacies of Walsingham. A suspicion of conspiracy was a most serious matter then. In 1569 Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, son of the ill-fated Surrey, was brought in on the charge of high treason, his overt act being the proposal to wed the Queen of Scots. Others implicated in the conspiracy to place Mary on the throne were the Earls of Arundel and Southampton, Lord Lumley, Lord Cobham, and his brother Thomas. A batch of letters, written by an Italian banker named Ridolfi, resident in London, on the same business, got into the hands of the government, with the result that a fresh haul of prisoners was brought in. They furnished evidence that the Duke of Alva was laying plans for the murder of Elizabeth, prior to Norfolk’s marriage with Mary. These prisoners were distributed in the various towers, and a young man named Charles Bailly, who was seized at Dover with a number of treasonable letters in his possession, was placed in the Tower, and under torture gave evidence against many prisoners. There are several inscriptions by him in the Beauchamp Tower. The Duke of Norfolk was beheaded on Tower Hill June 2, 1579, the first execution there for fourteen years. The old scaffold had become rotten, and a new one was set up for the occasion. John Leslie, Bishop of Ross, when put on his trial for the same crime, pleaded that, being an ambassador, he was not amenable to criminal trial. And on this plea he was put back, kept prisoner for two years longer, and then dismissed the kingdom, to which he never returned. Some more executions took place, and a great many culprits were fined and set at liberty.

For the next few years the Tower held but few captives. Peter Burchet, a member of the Middle Temple, was committed in October, 1573, for attempting to murder Hawkins, the celebrated admiral, whom he mistook for the Chancellor Hatton. During his confinement, he struck to death a man left in charge of him, who was quietly reading the Bible at the window. His hand was first struck off for striking a blow in a royal palace, after which he was hanged at Temple Bar. In 1577 a gentleman named Sherin was drawn on a hurdle from hence to Tyburn and hanged for denying the Queen’s supremacy, and six others were carried to Norwich for the like fate for coining.

But it was in 1580 that the cells again became filled with Roman Catholic prisoners. It is easy to account for this. The breach with Rome was complete; the Papal Bull had been issued for the dethronement of Elizabeth, and the newly-established Order of Jesuits was sending forth its missionaries to carry out the decree. And so it was war to the knife. Thus, in June 1580, we have William and Robert Tyrwhitt sent to the Tower for attending Mass at their sister’s marriage; the Archbishop of Armagh, the Earls of Kildare and Clanricarde, with other nobles, for being concerned in the Earl of Desmond’s insurrection in Ireland; and before the year was out, six Catholic priests and three laymen are added. Next year it appears as if a system of torture was established; some were confined in “Little Ease,” a dungeon twenty feet below the level, in which they could neither stand upright nor lie down at length; some were racked, some placed in the “Scavenger’s Daughter,” an iron instrument which held bound the head, hands and feet. Add to these the thumbscrew and the boot. The most conspicuous prisoner in 1581 was Father Campion, an eloquent Jesuit who had worked hard to raise sedition in various parts of the country. He was dragged off with two other seminary priests to ignominious death, so were seven more priests that year; in 1583 a Warwickshire gentleman named Somerville strangled himself to avoid the ghastly dismemberment, but his father-in-law Arden suffered it. In 1584 five seminary priests suffered, as did Francis, the eldest son of Sir John Throckmorton, convicted of treasonable correspondence with the Queen of Scots. In January, 1585, a clearance was made of those prisoners charged with religious offences, and twenty-one of them were shipped off to France. But their places were occupied by others, charged with complicity with the treasonable practices of Throckmorton. Among them were the Earls of Northumberland and Arundel. The former killed himself in the Tower to prevent that bitch, as he called the Queen, from getting possession of his estates by his attainder. Arundel was tried and condemned to death in 1589, but Elizabeth delayed the execution, though she gave very strict orders about his confinement. He might “walk in the Queen’s garden two hours in the day, with a servant of the Lieutenant’s to attend him, the garden door being shut at the time of his walking.” This severity, coupled with the strictest religious austerities which he constantly practised, hastened his death (Nov. 19, 1595). A memorial of his piety, graven with his own hand, may be seen in the Beauchamp Tower. William Parry, instigated from Rome, arranged with Edmund Neville to shoot the Queen when she was out riding. But the Earl of Westmoreland died in exile. Neville was his next heir, and hoped that by revealing the plot he might recover the forfeited estates. The result was that Parry died a traitor’s death and Neville was kept close prisoner for many years. Many prisoners were brought in in 1586, charged with being concerned in Babington’s conspiracy. So was Davison, the Secretary of State, who was charged with sending the warrant for the death of the Queen of Scots without Elizabeth’s sanction. This is generally considered to have been a crafty device of the Queen to screen herself from the odium. He exculpated himself, but was kept in the Tower, and ruinously fined by the Star Chamber. In 1598 Sir John Perrot, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, whose righteous endeavours had done much to restore tranquillity to that country, having incurred the enmity of Lord Chancellor Hatton, was recalled home and sent to the Tower on a charge of treason. He was a hot-tempered man, and had used some disrespectful words against the Queen. This was the only charge proved against him, but on it he was condemned. On being conveyed to the Tower he said to the Lieutenant in great anger that the Queen was “suffering her brother to be offered up as a sacrifice to his strutting adversaries.” He was said to be an illegitimate son of King Henry VIII. Whether or not, when this speech was reported to the Queen, she refused to sign the warrant for his execution, and declared that his accusers were all knaves. He died in the Tower six months afterwards, broken-hearted.

An illustrious name comes before us in the annals of 1592. Sir Walter Raleigh was lodged here, having incurred the Queen’s displeasure by his amour with Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, the celebrated statesman. He soon regained his liberty, however, by using the most fulsome adulation of his royal mistress. Here is just one specimen, an extract from a letter which he wrote to Cecil, of course in order that it might be shown to her Majesty:—“My heart was never broken till this day, that I hear the Queen goes away so far off [she was about to start on her annual progress], whom I have followed so many years with so great love and desire in so many journeys, and am now left behind her in a dark prison, all alone. While she was yet near at hand, that I might hear of her once in two or three days, my sorrows were the less, but even now my heart is cast into the depth of all misery. I, that was wont to behold her riding like Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking like Venus, the gentle wind blowing her fair hair about her pure face like a nymph, sometimes sitting in the shade like a goddess, sometimes singing like an angel, sometimes playing like Orpheus.”

Elizabeth was always open to flattery, but in this case her “love-stricken swain” was further assisted by the arrival at Dartmouth of his good ship The Roebuck, which had taken a great Spanish treasure ship off Flores, with a treasure which Raleigh estimated at half a million pounds. The Queen gave him his liberty and sent him off to arrange the disposal of his capture, and of course got the lion’s share of it. He returned to Court fresh as ever, and this return was a fatal event in the fortunes of another brilliant courtier, in fact the most brilliant, of Elizabeth’s surrounding, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. He and Raleigh were bitter enemies. Ireland was again giving trouble. Raleigh advised that the disturbers should remorselessly be trampled out, Essex that justice and good-will should be shown. The discussion between them was firm on both sides, and when we remember that both men were high-spirited, full of ambition, jealous of each other as to the royal favour, we can understand how their selfwill and egotism proved the ruin of them both. Essex was strikingly handsome, brilliant both at Court and in the field. His father had been a personal friend of the Queen, the Earl of Leicester was his step-father, Sir Francis Knollys his grandfather, Walsingham his father-in-law, Lord Burleigh his guardian, Shakespeare his friend. He was now sent to Ireland with the task before him of subduing the factions which kept the country in continual insurrection, and he failed, whilst his enemies traduced him at home. Enraged at learning this, and in despair at his continued illfortune, he returned after two years to England unbidden, hoping to justify his actions in the presence of the Queen. But several charges of misconduct were proved against him, and he was deprived of his offices and banished from Court. The Queen had said that an unruly horse must be kept short of provender, and when this was repeated to him he retorted that the Queen’s mind was as crooked as her body, and it is difficult to imagine a speech which would anger her more. Then, instigated by his secretary, Cuffe, he formed the desperate resolution of breaking in upon the Court, removing by force the courtiers, and so ruling the Queen by force. A terrible blunder to make. He was perhaps the most popular noble in London, but the citizens had no idea of imperilling their lives and fortunes by countenancing such a harum-scarum idea as this. Nobody came to his call, and after a short siege in his own house in the Strand he was captured, along with the Earl of Southampton, and conveyed through the fatal Traitors’ Gate. This was on February 6, 1601; on the 19th he was adjudged a traitor, and on the 25th beheaded. The execution took place within the Tower, some say because Essex was so popular that there was a fear of a demonstration in his favour if it had been on Tower Hill, others that it was his own wish to die within the walls. He was buried in St. Peter’s Chapel. He was only thirty-five years of age! There is a story that the Queen expected a ring which he was to send her when in trouble, and which was to win him forgiveness; that he had entrusted it to Lady Nottingham, who kept it back; but this story is certainly untrue. Elizabeth, as one can quite understand, was unwilling to sign the warrant, considering the favour in which she had once held him, and after its execution she fell into a terrible fit of despondency, from which in fact she never recovered. Raleigh, who was never popular with the Londoners, was hooted in the streets for his enmity towards Essex, so was Bacon as one of his judges. Four of Essex’s fellow-conspirators were beheaded; Cuffe was hanged at Tyburn. Southampton was kept in close confinement, but liberated by special command of James I in 1603. Essex’s son, born 1593, lived to lead the Parliamentary army against Charles I.

Sad enough are the accounts of the last days of the great Queen, her loneliness and terror. No doubt the nature of her disease produced fits of delirium. She seemed to have no one near her to whom she could look for a loving or tender word. But she was a great monarch, and under her rule England rose out of weakness, confusion, distraction. Elizabeth had triumphed over all her enemies. Her bitterest foe, Philip of Spain, had gone to his grave five years before her, but not until he had seen his “Invincible Armada” beaten all to pieces. England was now in the first rank of the nations.

CHAPTER VI
THE STUARTS