The Tower of London, (Vol. 1 of 2)

by Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower

The White Tower

In the days of the Plantagenets, “La Tour Blanche” owed that appellation to its having been frequently whitewashed. The earliest of these whitewashings took place in the reign of Edward III., since whose reign it is impossible to guess how often the grim old building has been externally whitened. In an illumination taken from an old French MS. made in the reign of Henry V., and preserved in the Harleian collection in the British Museum, of the poems of Charles of Orleans, the vivid whiteness of the old Norman White Tower stands out in bold relief surrounded by the dark towers and walls of the fortress. And after half-a-thousand years of London grime and smoke, the White Tower remains the same “Tour Blanche” of the days of the Plantagenets.

The old Norman keep of the Tower has changed but little in outward aspect since it was limned in the old illumination of the MS. of Charles of Orleans, some six centuries ago. The general features are the same, and even the little leaden roofs of the four turrets at the angles, appeared then much as they do to-day. No one has been able to inform me as to the period when the leaden tops first capped the masonry of this tower. Two great authorities on the history of the Tower—Professor Freeman and Mr Clark—have told us how Norman William, on crossing the Thames, found that London was protected on its landward side by a Roman wall—the defences of ancient Augusta—a wall strengthened by mural towers, and an external moat. Of these relics of ancient Augusta, a fragment is to be seen at the eastern end of the White Tower. According to both historians, the building of the White Tower was commenced in 1078. When a tramway was run from the river wharf, some years ago, to the base of the White Tower for the shipment of stores, the engineers had to excavate some 20 feet of solid masonry into the Norman keep, such was its huge strength and solidity. Freeman always writes with enthusiasm of the Tower—“the mighty Tower of London,” he loves to call it; and when he wrote of the Tower, he had the White Tower in his mind. Regarding the builders of the White Tower, Freeman quotes the following Latin text from Hearner’s “Textus Roffensis”—“Dum idem Gundulfus, ex praecepto Regis Wilhelmi Magni, prœesset operi magnae turris Londoniae, et hospitatus fuisset apud ipsum Ædmerum.” The name Tower, and not Castle, adds Freeman, belonged to the fortress of Gundulfus from the first.

It will be necessary here to give some figures and proportions of this ancient keep. Its height is 90 feet from ground to battlements. The Keep has four turrets, three being circular, and one square. The windows were much modernised by Sir Christopher Wren, but those in the upper storey are the least altered; only one pair of these, however, have been left in their original state. It was from this window that Bishop Flambard is said to have made his escape. A stone staircase, 11 feet wide, and built in the circular turret on the north-east of the Keep, communicates with all the floors and leads to the roof. The basement of the Keep is a little below the level of the soil on the north side, and is flush with it on the south side. The walls are from 12 to 15 feet thick, the internal area being 91 feet by 73 feet. The large chambers have timbered ceilings, and the smaller are stone-vaulted. Formerly, the basement and the prison within it could only be reached from above, by the staircase running through the circular turret. The great western chamber is 91 feet long by 35 feet in width. In the vault or sub-crypt under the Chapel of St John there is a prison called “Little Ease,” and here Guy Fawkes is supposed to have passed his last fifty days on earth. It opens into a great dungeon which is 47 feet long by 15 feet broad. Formerly, this place was in total darkness, and could have had but little air; at its eastern end it terminates in a semicircle. It was here that in the reign of King John some hundreds of Jews were imprisoned with their families. In later times it was fitted up into a powder magazine, and it is not many years since it was cleared of “villainous” saltpetre. Its walls have been coated with brick, and the ceiling refaced and vaulted, whilst passages have been pierced through its eastern and western extremities. A well 6 feet wide, its sides lined with ashlar stone, which may be of Roman origin, has been found in the floor of this vault, near its south-western angle.

Stone Staircase in the White Tower.

On the second floor of the White Tower the walls are 13 feet in thickness, the cross walls being 8 feet. On this floor are five openings communicating between the eastern and the western chambers. The latter is 92 feet long by 37 broad; a vaulted passage 2 feet 10 inches wide being constructed in the thickness of the wall. The eastern chamber is 68 feet long and 30 wide. There is a recess in the north wall which communicates with the exterior of the tower by a double flight of stone stairs facing the river front. And it was at the foot of these steps that the bones, supposed to be those of the little Princes, were discovered in the reign of Charles II. They were subsequently taken to Westminster Abbey. The present stairs are modern. An ancient door, 3 feet in width, opens from this chamber on to a short passage, 5 feet in width, cut in the thickness of the wall, which leads to the well staircase communicating with all the floors. Another door in the south wall leads into the crypt of St John’s Chapel, which is 13 feet 6 inches broad by 39 feet in height; at the east end it is apsidal. Near the apse is a passage 2 feet wide which leads into a vaulted cell 8 feet long by 10 wide. This cell has no windows, and when, in former times, the door, which has been removed, was closed, this dismal prison was plunged in total darkness. It has been asserted, without any foundation, that this cell was that in which Raleigh passed his first imprisonment in the Tower. There is not a shadow of proof to corroborate this. It was probably used in the early years of the fortress as a strong-room for the safekeeping of the church treasure. Although no proof exists as to the imprisonment of Raleigh in this black hole, prisoners were confined here in the days of the sanguinary Queen Mary, as is shown by some half-obliterated inscriptions which can still be seen on the sides of the doorway leading from the crypt to the cell. In one of these the following words have been traced—“He that endureth to the ende shall be saved. M. 10. R. Rudston. Dar. Kent. Ano. 1553.” “Be faithful unto deth, and I wil give the a crowne of life.—J. Fane. 1554.” Also the following:—“T. Culpeper of Darford.” These persons were implicated in the Wyatt insurrection. Lord de Ros mentions rather vaguely in his book on the Tower, an inscription which was discovered about 1867 “in the vault of the White Tower,” of which the following is a copy:—“Sacris vestibus indutus dum sacra mysteria servans, captus et in hoc augusto carcere indusus.—R. Fisher.”

Until some thirty years ago this crypt was used as an armoury, and here many may remember having seen a figure of Queen Elizabeth, mounted on a wooden steed, in a dress supposed to have been worn by her when she returned thanks at St Paul’s for the destruction of the Armada. (This is now in the lower gallery of the White Tower.)

The rooms on this floor of the tower are 15 feet high, with wooden ceilings, which are supported by massive wooden pillars placed in double rows. These wooden columns are comparatively modern, and were probably placed here when the rooms were converted into an armoury, store rooms, and record offices. They are now filled with small-arms, and the roofs are supported by beams strengthened with iron girders. The ancient fireplaces still remain in the eastern wall.

On the second floor of the White Tower are three great chambers. That to the west is 95 feet by 32; that to the east 64 feet by 32; they are 15 feet high. St John’s Chapel, which is on the second floor, forms its cross chamber, and rises through the roof to the top of the tower. A mural passage at the extremity of the western chamber leads to the west end of the south aisle. Mr Clark believes that this was formerly a private entrance from the Palace into the Chapel, being connected with the State rooms of the Tower, one of which is still called the Banqueting Hall.

The fourth floor of the Keep is called the State Floor, and is divided into three chambers 28 feet in height. The room to the west, which is called the Council Chamber, was the scene of that episode at the commencement of the reign of Richard III., immortalised by Shakespeare, when that monarch accused Lord Hastings of treason and had him taken out to instant execution (Richard III. Act iii. Scene 4). This chamber is 95 feet long by 46 wide. Within the exterior walls runs a vaulted passage communicating with the stairs in the north-eastern turret. It was in this passage, which is only 3 feet in width, that the soldiers were concealed when Richard had planned Hastings’s death. In Norman times this chamber was used as a State prison, and it was from one of its windows that Bishop Flambard let himself down by a rope. It was also the prison of Charles of Orleans in the reign of Henry V., and had probably served the same purpose in the reign of Edward III., and may have held in its walls both King John of France and David, King of Scotland; here, too, the brothers Mortimer were probably imprisoned in 1324.

It is not easy to picture in one’s mind the appearance of this place when used as a State prison, or as a Council Chamber, for the only view of the interior of the Tower that has come down to us from the Middle Ages is the little illumination in the Harleian MSS., which has been reproduced in this work, in which Charles of Orleans is seen writing in this chamber surrounded by his guards.

The earliest account of the interior of the Tower occurs in Paul Hentzner’s description of his visit in the reign of Elizabeth. “Upon entering the Tower,” he writes, “we were obliged to quit our swords at the gate and deliver them to the guard. When we were introduced, we were shown above a hundred pieces of arras belonging to the Crown, made of gold, silver, and silk; several saddles covered with velvet of different colours; an immense quantity of bed furniture, such as canopies, and the like, some of them most richly ornamented with pearl; some royal dresses, so extremely magnificent as to raise one’s admiration at the sums they must have cost. We were then led into the armoury.” But I will reserve what Hentzner said about the arms and the armour until later. This intelligent German traveller pertinently remarks: “It is to be noted, that when any of the nobility are sent hither on the charge of high crimes punishable with death, such as treason, etc., they seldom or never recover their liberty.”

With the exception of the Lady Chapel at Durham Cathedral, St John’s Chapel in the White Tower is the most beautiful of the Norman chapels in England, and it was owing to the excellent advice given by the Prince Consort that this splendid relic of Norman times has received, if not its former splendour, something of its pristine condition. Although no attempt has been made to re-decorate its walls and interior, it is now cleansed of the rubbish which covered its floor, until the Prince called attention to the desecration with which it was treated until the middle of the nineteenth century.

Interior of Sᵗ. John’s Chapel.

Inclusive of the semicircular apse at its east end, the Chapel is 55 feet 6 inches long by 31 feet wide. It is divided into a nave and two aisles, which have four massive pillars on either side with varied capitals, supporting thirteen arches. The pillars are 2 feet 6 inches in diameter and 6 feet 6 inches high, not inclusive of their bases, which are 20 inches high, giving the pillars from the floor to the top of the capitals a height of 10 feet. Each capital is cut out of a solid block of stone. The stone ceiling of the nave is barrel shaped. The triforium is 7 feet 6 inches in diameter. The upper gallery was formerly used by the royal family, and communicated with the State rooms of the Palace. It is probable that the walls of this chapel were decorated with mural paintings and hung with tapestry, the windows to the east glowing with figures of saints and angels. Henry III., in 1240, ordered three stained glass windows for the chapel, and in one of these, that looking to the north, was pictured “a little Mary holding her child.” In the two others, looking to the south, “the Holy Trinity, with St John, Apostle and Evangelist.” The rood screen and Cross were also ordered by this King, and “two fair images” to be set up and painted, “et fieri faciatis et depingi duas ymagynes centius fieri possint in capella.” The latter were probably representations of St Edward holding a ring which he presents to the Patron of the Royal Chapel.

When the Reformation came in 1550, St John’s Chapel was despoiled of all its artistic treasures by order of the Government. Its frescoes were coated over with whitewash, its stained glass windows were destroyed, and all its ecclesiastical ornaments were removed; in later times the Chapel became a repository for the Tower records. It was during Lord de Ros’s Governorship in 1857 that the accumulated lumber of centuries was, as has already been said, in consequence of Prince Albert’s wish, cleared away from the Chapel. It had actually been proposed to turn this beautiful building into a military tailor’s warehouse. Such was the honour bestowed on this sacred and beautiful English building comparatively only a few years ago. But in recent years it must be admitted that we have shown a more enlightened regard towards the relics connected with the history of our country, none of which is of greater interest, or more worthy of regard and veneration, than the old Norman Chapel of St John’s in the Tower.

Royal scenes of pomp and mourning this ancient building has beheld within its mighty walls. All our Norman and Plantagenet kings here worshipped a God whose laws they seldom obeyed. Here lay in state the corpse of the White Rose of York, Elizabeth, the Queen of Henry VII.; and here, those upon whom the honour of knighthood was to be conferred, passed their solemn all-night vigil, watching their armour.

The summit of the White Tower covers a space of 100 feet on the eastern side, by 113 on the north and south. The four turrets, the most conspicuous points in any view of the Tower, rise 16 feet above this leaden field, and each is crowned with pepper-box-shaped roofs made of lead. The turret crowning the south-eastern angle contains a chamber traditionally known as the prison of Joan of Kent. In the early years of the eighteenth century it was used as an observatory by Flambard, the Astronomer-Royal, and a contemporary of Isaac Newton, some years before the great Observatory was built at Greenwich.

Although cannon were mounted on the roof in Tudor days, the platform could not have supported very heavy artillery, as it was only built of shingle. As I have said elsewhere, no record has come down to us of the time when the turrets with their little pepper-castor tops were first placed there, but the Harleian MSS. prove that similar ones existed as far back as the reign of Henry V.

There is much difference of opinion as to the original mode of entrance into the White Tower. Probably the principal entrance lay on the south and river side of the Keep, near its western angle, for on the second floor there is a large opening on the exterior of the masonry which has parallel sides, and was doubtless formerly used as a doorway. Near this opening, and on the eastern side of the Keep, is a small door opening into the base of the well staircase. Both Mr Clark and Mr Birch believe that these doors formerly communicated with a building which stood on the south of the White Tower, having its outer entrance at the east end. This building would probably date back to the days of the Normans.

The main entrance of the White Tower opened out on the first floor of the Keep, whence a turnpike staircase led up to the second floor, and downwards to the basement with its dungeons. The mural corridors or passages in the thickness of the walls which encircle the State rooms, are so narrow that only one person could pass along them at a time, which would have been of great advantage in case of an attack on the building, for a small number of men could have defended the White Tower against a host of besiegers. The Normans showed a rare skill in the strategic construction of their strongholds. For instance, in the ruined Castle of Arques near Dieppe, a contemporary building, the plan of its Keep resembles in structure that of the White Tower. These Normans were master builders, and the skilful manner in which they concealed the entrances to their fortresses is well worth study. Their keeps were generally rectangular, and in no instance is the entrance of these towers on the ground floor, or in a conspicuous part of the building. At the Castle of Arques the entrance to the Keep is carefully concealed, as was the case with the White Tower, and is fully 30 feet above the level of the ground, besides being hidden and protected by a massive and lofty wall which forms a part of the Keep. A tortuous passage leads into the heart of the building, but before it could be entered, a very long and almost perpendicular staircase had to be mounted. This staircase commenced in the thickness of the wall of one of the outer counter-forts, placed at the northern angle of the fortress, which wound along the inner face of the Keep, giving access to a landing, beyond which was the passage that led into the fortress. Before the kernel of the Keep could be reached, another narrow passage, cut out of the thickness of the wall, had to be passed; this passage was on the level of the first floor. This style of defensive construction was introduced by the Conqueror and his clerical architect, the quondam monk of the Abbey of Bec in Normandy, who ended his life as Bishop of Rochester; and to these two men we owe the solidity and time-defying strength of the great Norman White Tower.

In order to complete this Norman system of defensive architecture it was necessary to suppress all unnecessary openings, such as windows, in the lower stages of the massive square towers. Consequently, the Norman windows, which were only narrow slits in the masonry, called by the significant name of meurtrières, from the use made of them by the besieged to hurl missiles or pour boiling oil, or lead, upon the enemy beneath, were always restricted in numbers, and were always placed in the upper parts of the Keep. For this reason Sir Christopher Wren, by placing the large windows with their stone facings, now in the White Tower, completely destroyed one of the most characteristic features of its Norman workmanship, an extraordinary act of vandalism for so great an architect. In our day Salvin restored some of the Norman windows on the western side of the White Tower—those belonging to St John’s Chapel—and one regrets that he did not carry out the restoration throughout the building, for in looking at any representation of the White Tower taken before the Great Fire, one sees how much the old Norman Keep has lost in character by Wren’s tasteless substitution of Carolean for Norman windows.

Of the prisoners of State who passed weary years within the White Tower, mention has already been made of Charles of Orleans. Stevenson’s description in his “Familiar Studies of Men and Books,” relating to the imprisonment of the Duke, gives a perfect word-picture: “In the magnificent copy of Charles’s poems, given by our Henry VII. to Elizabeth of York on the occasion of their marriage, a large illumination figures at the head of one of the pages which, in chronological perspective, is almost a history of his imprisonment. It gives a view of London with all its spires, the river passing through the old bridge, and busy with boats. One side of the White Tower has been taken out, and we can see, as under a sort of shrine, the paved room where the Duke sits writing. He occupies a high-backed bench in front of a great chimney: red and black ink are before him, and the upper end of the apartment is guarded by many halberdiers, with the red cross of England on their breasts. On the next side of the tower he appears again, leaning out of the window and gazing on the river. Doubtless, there blows just then ‘a pleasant wind from out the land of France,’ and some ships come up the river, ‘the ship of good news.’ At the door we find him yet again, this time embracing a messenger, while a groom stands by holding two saddled horses. And yet further to the left, a cavalcade defiles out of the Tower; the Duke is on his way at last towards ‘the sunshine of France.’”

Referring to his imprisonment in England at the trial of the Duke d’Alençon, the Duke said, “I have had experience myself, and in my prison of England, for the weariness, danger, and displeasure in which I then lay, I have many a time wished I had been slain at the battle where they took me.”

It was one of Joan of Arc’s hallucinations that could Charles of Orleans be delivered from his captivity in England and restored to France, that country would be delivered from its conquerors. She declared that he was specially favoured by the Almighty, and longed with all the strength of her great heart to restore him to her native land, and said that if there was no other way of freeing him, she would herself cross the sea and bring him back with her. When, after many years, Charles of Orleans was released, the heroic girl had met her martyrdom nine years before. It is a strange coincidence that whilst the Keep of the Tower held the French poet prince within its walls, another Royal captive, James the First of Scotland, was whiling away the days of his imprisonment by writing verses in the Keep of Windsor Castle.

Until quite recently, the collection of arms and armour stored in the White Tower and the adjacent galleries was in a disgraceful state of neglect, and even in a worse condition than that of mere neglect, for the custodians, in their ignorance, gave names and titles to the arms and armour which must have caused infinite amusement to visitors who possessed any knowledge of the subject. The middle-aged may recall the rows of so-called English kings, beginning with the Plantagenets and ending with the Stuarts, seated on wooden horses. If I mistake not, one of these was dubbed Edward I., and yet another mythical gentleman on his wooden steed played the rôle of a “Royal Crusader.” These things were as genuine as Mrs Jarley’s Waxworks. “Previous to the year 1826,” write Britton and Brayley in their history of the Tower, “nothing could present a more incongruous mass of discordant materials than the Horse Armoury of the Tower of London. Armour of the time of Edward the Sixth was ignorantly appropriated to that of William the Conqueror: foot soldiers were ranged between the horsemen, and those humble ciceroni, the warders, ascribed to the various implements of war names and uses, alike unknown, either in ancient or modern warfare.” But better times were at hand, and a great authority on ancient armour, and the owner of the finest collection of it in England, Dr S. R. Meyrick, undertook to arrange the armour in the Tower. Another expert in armour, J. R. Planché, Somerset Herald, and author of an able history of British costume, as well as of many clever burlesques and extravaganzas, drew up a catalogue. But a huge mass of rubbish and spurious armour were allowed even then to remain amongst the historic and genuine specimens. It is only since Lord Dillon undertook the great task, on which he is still engaged, of entirely re-arranging and re-cataloguing the arms and armour in the White Tower, that it can be properly studied and appreciated. The new catalogue, which will be a work of historic importance, is still unpublished, but from the accounts Lord Dillon has written of the collection, and which is published in the excellent “Authorised Guide” to the Tower and its contents, I am indebted for much of the following information.

Horse and Foot Armour (XVIᵗʰ. Century)

Although not to compare in extent or importance with the great collections of Madrid, Vienna, or Turin, the armour in the White Tower must be, to an Englishman, of great interest, for, although none of the suits of armour date further back than the fifteenth century, and but very few single pieces are of an earlier epoch, there are among the former, suits of great beauty and of high historic value, and it is the only national collection of armour that England possesses. As far back as the year 1213 arms and military stores were kept in the White Tower. In that year Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, was commanded to surrender with the fortress “the arms and other stores within”; in the second year of Henry the Third’s reign, a mandate was issued to the Archdeacon of Durham to send to the Tower “twenty-six suits of armour, five iron cuirasses, one iron collar, three pair of iron fetters, and nine iron helmets.” In the reign of Edward II. we find that a certain “John de Flete, Keeper of the Wardrobe in the Tower,” was ordered to deliver up all the armour therein to John de Montgomery. This armour had belonged to Montgomery’s father.

Various documents are extant relating to armour in the Tower during the reign of Richard II., and in those of the fourth, fifth, and sixth Henrys. There is, in the library of the Society of Antiquaries, an inventory in MSS. of the arms and ammunition kept in different castles in the kingdom, written in the first year of the reign of Edward the Sixth. In this work particular mention is made of some “brigandines” in the Tower. These were military jackets. Other offensive and defensive weapons are enumerated, such as targets, pole-axes, “great holy water sprinklers” (a kind of stave with a cylindrical-shaped end, “and with a spear-point at the top,” according to Meyrick). In the reign of Elizabeth, we hear of cross-bows and arrows in the Tower, of “bow-stones” and of “slurbowes,” as well as half-a-dozen different kinds of armour.

At the beginning of this notice of the White Tower, I mentioned Paul Hentzner’s description of the armour he saw. He writes as follows:—“We were next led into the armoury, in which are these peculiarities: spears, out of which you may shoot; shields, that will give fire four times; a great many rich halberds, commonly called partuisans, with which the guard defend the royal person in battle; some lances, covered with red and green velvet, and the body-armour of Henry VIII. Many and very beautiful arms, as well for men as for horses in horse fights—(Hentzner probably means tournaments);—the lance of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, three spans thick; two pieces of cannon—the one fires three, the other seven balls at a time; two others made of wood, which the English had at the siege of Boulogne, in France. And by this stratagem, without which they could not have succeeded, they struck a terror into the inhabitants, as at the appearance of artillery, and the town was surrendered upon articles; nineteen cannons of a thicker make than ordinary, and in a room apart, thirty-six of a smaller; other cannon for chain shot, and balls proper to bring down masts of ships; cross-bows, bows and arrows, of which to this day the English make great use in their exercises; but who can relate all that is to be seen here. Eight or nine men, employed by the year, are scarce sufficient to keep all the arms bright.”

German Armour (XVIᵗʰ. Century.)

One cannot help wishing that Hentzner had told us more about the Tower itself as it looked in Elizabeth’s days, and less about the armour.

Charles the First had a survey written of the arms and armour in the Tower when he succeeded to the Throne, but during the Civil War much of it disappeared, in common with most of the Royal possessions in that troubled time. After the Restoration, William Legge, Lord Dartmouth, who had been deprived by the Commonwealth of his post of “Master of the Armouries,” was reinstated, and he had an inventory of the armour in the Tower drawn up in 1660. There is an interesting list in Britton and Brayley’s Tower book of the different officers to whom the making of the military stores in the Tower had been entrusted, up to the time of Charles II., when the employment of the following ceased:—There was first the “Balistarius,” who lodged in the Bowyer Tower, and who provided the cross-bows. In the reign of Henry III. this officer received a shilling a day and “a doublet and surcoat furred with lambskin” once a year. The “Attiliator Balistarum” provided the harness and accoutrements for the cross-bows: and received “seven pence halfpenny per diem and a suitable robe every year.” Then came the “Bowyer,” an inferior Balistarius; he also received a robe annually. After him came the “Fletcher,” or maker of the flêches or arrows. This craftsman supplied arrows to the whole army. To him succeeded the “Galeator,” the maker of helmets and head-pieces, and after him the Armourer, who made and supervised all the armour and military accoutrements in the Tower. But the greatest of these was the Master of the King’s Ordnance, who, as far back as the reign of Edward the Fourth, provided all warlike stores for the Army and also the Navy. He received eleven shillings per diem, and his clerk and valet were each paid sixpence per diem, which, according to the present value of money, would be about five pounds a day for the master, and five shillings for the two men. At the close of the reign of George the Third the following officers formed the Board of Ordnance:—First came the Master-General, chosen from among the Generals of the Army, “who by virtue of his office was Colonel-in-Chief of the Artillery and Engineers.” Next to him came the Surveyor-General, the head of all the store departments. Beneath him ranked the Clerk of the Ordnance; then the Store-keeper, the Clerk of the Deliveries; and, closing the list, a Treasurer and a Paymaster, both attached to the Ordnance Office.

Returning to the White Tower and its memories, the changes and revolutions that its massive walls have witnessed, rise before the mind. Merely glancing at the changes of fashion, as seen in the suits of armour in its armoury, one is carried back to the Middle Ages. And although the armour is all of a later time, the Norman barons in their steel-ringed surcoats and pointed helmets, as they are portrayed on the Bayeux tapestry, have been seen here. All the chivalry of England, from the time of the Normans down to our present Guardsmen with their bearskin head-dresses, are closely bound up with the old Norman fortress, and it should be remembered that from the end of the eleventh century up to the present day the Tower has always retained the rank and position of chief fortress and depository of arms in the realm, and so may still be regarded as the “Arx Palatina” of the British Empire.

The oldest armour in the Tower are some “bassinets” of the second half of the fourteenth century. Until the death of Henry VIII., the royal collection of armour was kept in the Palace at Greenwich, and the possessions of that monarch now form by far the finest portion of the Tower Armoury, consisting of several splendid suits of armour given him by the Emperor Maximilian. The best armour was made in Italy and Germany, and Henry, who loved a fine suit of armour almost as much as a handsome woman, had a number of skilled armourers sent to England to work for him. As we see by Hentzner’s narrative, foreigners of distinction were shown the collection of armour in the Tower as one of the principal sights of London. During the Civil War a great deal of the armour was carried away from the Tower, and but little of it was returned, even when the Restoration had become an accomplished fact.

Nuremberg Armour (XVIᵗʰ. Century.)

The collection now occupies the two upper floors of the White Tower. On the lower floor are kept the more modern weapons and the Oriental armour, of which there is a great quantity. On the upper floor the far more interesting of the earlier weapons, and all the suits of foot and horse armour, are ranged along the walls and in rows down the middle of the hall, making an imposing show of mounted and unmounted mail-clad figures of men and horses.

In the lower floor we will only take a glance at the Indian and Oriental arms and at the modern European weapons, as these are of little historical interest. There are, however, amongst them some relics of the so-called “good old days” worthy of inspection. These consist of a grim collection of instruments of death and torture. Here, for instance, are the thumbscrews, the bilboes, and the Scavenger’s Daughter—in the last the victim was almost bent double in its iron embrace. Here, too, is an iron collar, very massive, with a row of iron spikes within its ring, which, when fastened round the sufferer’s neck, must speedily have caused death. This horrible instrument is incorrectly stated to have been taken in one of the ships of the Armada, but Lord Dillon vouches for its having been used in the Tower long before the Spanish ships were seen in the Channel. Here, too, is a small model of the rack, the most general form of torture employed in the Tower during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when even women were cruelly torn almost limb from limb by its cords and pulleys. This toy rack does not give so vivid an impression of the torture as does a small wood-cut from Fox’s “Book of Martyrs.” Here is also the block, with the axe. The latter was kept here as far back as the year 1687, so it is uncertain whether it is the axe that was used for the execution of the Duke of Monmouth and William, Lord Russell, but it is probable that it was the one used for beheading the rebel lords after the two Jacobite risings in Scotland, and it was undoubtedly used for decapitating Lord Lovat in 1747.

As regards the block, it appears to have been the custom for a new one to be made for each State execution, and although there is more than one mark made by the axe on the top of this block, it does not follow that it was used for more than one execution.

The upper floor is reached by a staircase in the south-eastern corner of the Tower. On reaching this upper floor a collection of spears of all sorts and sizes is seen. Among these is a formidable-looking weapon called a “holy water sprinkler,” which consists of a staff with a wooden ball at the top, covered with long iron spikes. Another sinister-looking weapon is the “Morning Star,” so named by the Germans, and certainly calculated to raise up many a star before the eyes of anyone who had the misfortune to be struck by it. Besides these there is a goodly array of partisans, halberds, and pole-axes. In the centre of this gallery is an equestrian figure clad in sixteenth-century armour which was made at Nuremberg, where the best armour in Germany was manufactured. The whole of the knight’s armour, as well as the panoply of the horse, is ornamented with that quaint device, the Burgundian cross “ragule,” and also the flint and steel pattern, the same that appears on the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece: from these ornaments and devices it follows that this armour was made for one of the Burgundian princes, perhaps for the Emperor Maximilian, it having been given to Henry VIII. by that monarch.

There are many suits of armour which, until Lord Dillon re-arranged and classified the collection, passed as genuine, and among them is a sham suit of armour worn by Lord Waterford at the famous Eglinton tournament—a tourney which ended by the competing knights taking shelter from the rain under their umbrellas. Another splendid specimen of the German armourers’ work is the fluted suit for man and horse belonging to the early part of the sixteenth century. Two other suits of armour which are placed in the centre of the gallery belonged to Henry VIII.; they are of prodigious weight, and as they were intended for fighting on foot, it must have required considerable physical strength to walk when clad in this ponderous habiliment: it certainly would have been impossible for its wearer to run away with it upon his back. Lord Dillon believes that both these suits are of Italian or Spanish workmanship; one of them is made up of 235 separate pieces. Besides these, two other suits of Henry VIII.’s armour are in the collection; one of them still retains traces of gilding, and must have shone resplendently when worn by the bluff king.

Horse and Foot Armour (XVIIᵗʰ. Century.)

Regarding the equestrian suit of armour in the centre of the gallery, Lord Dillon thinks “that it is one of the finest in existence.” It was made at Augsburg by the famous German armourer Conrad Sensenhofer, and was given to Henry by the Emperor Maximilian in 1515. It is covered with devices, such as roses, pomegranates, and portcullises—the badges of Henry and Catharine of Arragon—the letters H and K stand out in bold relief on the horse armour. Engraved within panels are representations of scenes from the lives of St George and St Barbara. No finer example of the great German’s art workmanship than this truly Imperial suit can be seen, not even in the great German, Spanish, and Italian collections.

Close to this stands a curious shield, one of eighty similar ones made for Henry VIII., with a pistol in the middle. Worthy of note is a helmet with a mask attached, also a gift to Henry from Maximilian. It was formerly known as Will Somers’s mask (the King’s Jester), but recent research does not show that Somers ever used this ugly vizor. Here, also, is a very gorgeous suit of gilt armour which belonged to the Earl of Cumberland, one of Elizabeth’s smartest courtiers, who fitted out at his own expense no less than eleven expeditions against the Spaniards. Noticeable, too, are the quaint double weapons—staves with pole-axes and gun-barrels attached; one of these has three barrels, a kind of gigantic early revolver which was called King Harry’s Walking-Stick. Here are also ancient saddles used for tournaments. One of these belonged, and was probably used by Charles Brandon, Henry VIII.’s brother-in-law: much horse armour besides these tilting saddles is to be seen here,—“chaufons” and “bards” made of leather, known by the name of “cuir bouall,” and “vamplates,” worn when tilting to protect the hand, and into which the tilting spear was fastened. More suits of armour for men and horses are those which belonged to the Earl of Worcester in Elizabeth’s time, and a still richer one, once worn by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, bearing all over it the badge of the rugged staff, and the double collars of the English order of the Garter and the French one of St Michael. The armour of another of Elizabeth’s favourites is here, a suit which is believed to have belonged to Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. To come to later times, and the House of Stuart, the most conspicuous of the armour of that period is a gilt suit which belonged to Charles I., but very inferior in workmanship and artistic excellence to the earlier work of the German armourers. There is also a small suit of armour made for Charles I., when a child. Here, too, are models of cannon made for Charles II., when he was Prince of Wales, and a richly decorated suit of armour given to Henry, Prince of Wales, by the Prince de Joinville.

Of all this display of arms and armour in the Tower, of which I have but touched upon the chief objects of historical and artistic interest, the “processional” axe is, to my mind, by far the most interesting in regard to the Tower and its history, for it is the outward and visible sign of the part the “great axe,” as Shakespeare called it, has played in our country’s history, the symbol of its highest justice, whether it appeared with its edge turned towards or turned away from the prisoner: and what scenes in English history has not that steel reflected in its impassive surface. This axe is in itself an epitome of the history of the Tower, and consequently of England.

Horse and Foot Armour (XVIIᵗʰ. Century.)

Beneath the western wall of the White Tower is a varied park of artillery. Here, placed side by side, are cannon taken from out the wreck the Mary Rose, a warship lost off Spithead in 1545, with others from the Royal George, which sank in the same place in 1782. Here is a Portuguese cannon made in 1594 and taken at the siege of Hyderabad in 1843; and guns made for Napoleon at Avignon, with the crowned N engraved upon them. What is curious amongst the old English cannon of the sixteenth century, is their being made of iron bars welded together and bound round with iron hoops. One of these belonged to the Mary Rose, and still holds within its barrel a stone shot. Here is also a breech-loading cannon made early in the sixteenth century, and two triple brass guns made for Louis XIV. bearing his device of the sun and the motto, “Ultima ratio regum.” The old French and English mortars are also of interest, the earliest of the latter being dated 1686; one was used by William III. at the siege of Namur in 1695. There is a French mortar made by Keller, Louis’s gun-founder at Douai, in 1683. In 1708 there were sixty-two guns on Tower Green and the river wharf: the latter were fired on festivals; they are now used for saluting from “Salutation Battery,” which faces Tower Hill. Amongst these weapons of destruction one is almost certain to find a pair of venerable ravens hopping about; they are a pair of weird and eerie fowls, and one might imagine the spirit of some guilty wretch had been re-incarnated under their black feathers.

In Mr W.H. Hudson’s book, entitled “Birds of London,” these and other birds are described as follows:—“At the Tower of London robins occasionally appear in autumn, but soon go away. The last one that came, settled down and was a great favourite with the people there for about two months, being very friendly, coming to window-sills for crumbs, and singing every day very beautifully. Then one day he was seen in the General’s garden wildly dashing about, hotly pursued by seven or eight sparrows, and, as he was never seen again, it was conjectured that the sparrows had succeeded in killing him. The robin is a high-spirited creature, braver than most birds, and a fair fighter, but against such a gang of feathered murderous ruffians, bent on his destruction, he would stand no chance.

“The Tower sparrows, it may be added, appear to be about the worst specimens of their class in London. They are always at war with the pigeons and starlings, and would gladly drive them out if they could. It is a common thing for some foreign bird to escape from its cage on board ship and to take refuge in the trees and gardens of the Tower, but woe to the escaped captive and stranger in a strange land who seeks safety in such a place! Immediately on his arrival the sparrows are all up against him, not to ‘heave half a brick at him,’ since they are not made that way, but to hunt him from place to place until they have driven him, weak with fatigue and terror, into a corner where they can finish him with their bludgeon beaks.”

It is worthy of notice that no mention is made of the Tower in Domesday Book, London being altogether omitted from that work. Of all the Norman strongholds and castles which rose in London along the river-side, of Montfichet, Baynard’s Castle, the old Palace at Blackfriars, or of Tower Royal, Stephen’s palace in Vintry Ward, no trace remains, and of them all the great Norman keep of the Conqueror remains little altered in outward form from what it was eight centuries ago.

Horse and Foot Armour (XVIIᵗʰ. Century.)