Tower Hill
Tower Hill, which lies to the north-west of the Tower, is more closely allied with the history of the fortress than any other spot within the City boundaries, and the short space intervening between it and the entrance gate of the Tower was, in most cases, the final journey of the State prisoners condemned to death. Writing of Tower Hill, Stow, the antiquary, says it was “sometime a large plot of ground, now greatly straightened by encroachments (unlawfully made and suffered) for gardens and houses. Upon the hill is always readily prepared at the charge of the City, a large scaffold and gallows of timber, for the execution of such traitors or transgressors are as delivered out of the Tower, or otherwise, to the Sheriffs of London, by writ, there to be executed.”
Hatton, however, describes Tower Hill in the reign of Queen Anne as “a spacious place extending round the west and north parts of the Tower, where there are many good new buildings, mostly inhabited by gentry and merchants.”
The Sheriffs of London and Middlesex were responsible for State prisoners so long as they were within the City and county boundaries, and when such prisoners were taken through the streets of London from the Tower, the Sheriffs received them from the Lieutenant of the Tower at the entrance to the City, and gave a receipt for their persons.
The City officials, too, were responsible for the scaffold on Tower Hill, but in the reign of Edward IV. this scaffold was erected at the charge of the King’s officers. Constant quarrels and disputes, however, arose on the subject of the boundaries between the City and the Lieutenant of the Tower, until the charge of Tower Hill was finally vested in the City. In the view of the Tower and its surroundings, to which I have so often referred, made by Haiward and Gascoyne in 1597, the scaffold is shown standing some distance to the north of Tower Street: its site is now a pleasant garden, the place of execution being recorded by an inscription on a tablet placed on the grass plot within the railings.
Tower Hill is almost entirely associated with the shedding of blood, with the masked executioner, his block and axe, and has little historical interest besides, save that Lady Raleigh lodged in a house on the Hill with the child born to her in the Tower, after James I. refused to allow her to share her husband’s imprisonment. William Penn, the Quaker, and founder of Pennsylvania—which he mortgaged for £6600 in his old age—was born on Tower Hill in 1644; Otway the poet died at the Bull public-house, it is supposed of starvation; and it was at a cutler’s shop on Tower Hill that Felton bought the knife with which he mortally stabbed George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, at Portsmouth.