The Tower of London

by Arthur Poyser

Once more the curtain falls on tragedy, and on its rise we see the Tower decked out for revelry. In 1546 a “great banquet” was given in honour of the peace between France and England, and the French High Admiral, the Bishop of Evreux, and others came on embassy to England, and were welcomed, amid much rejoicing, to the feast. For a space the Tower remembered there was laughter in life as well as tears. However, it rejoiced with difficulty, and very soon had returned to gloomy dignity and sadness. On paltry evidence the Duke of Norfolk, who had led to victory at

Flodden Field, and was now seventy-four years of age, was, with the Earl of Surrey, imprisoned in the Tower. Surrey, tried by jury in January 1547, on the 19th of the month was led out of the Tower gate to execution on Tower Hill. Thus was sent to death England’s first writer of blank verse and one of her most excellent poets. “Surrey’s instinct for prosody was phenomenal,” says Mr. Edmund Gosse, and “he at once transplanted blank verse from a soil in which it could never flourish [it had recently been invented in Italy], to one in which it would take root and spread in full luxuriance.” Yet the sweet singer who lit the torch that was handed on to Shakespeare was brought to the block with the tyrant and the malefactor. Norfolk would have shared a like fate, had not the King himself died a few hours before the time appointed for the Duke’s removal to Tower Hill. He was set free when Mary came to reign, and died in his own home in 1554 at the good old age of eighty-one.

Young Edward VI. was brought up to the Tower with great ceremony, and began his reign when but a boy of ten. In the Tower he was made a knight, and rejoicings in anticipation of his coronation made the old walls ring again to gladness. The State procession from the Tower to the Abbey was conceived and carried through in a spirit of regal magnificence, and from Eastcheap to Westminster the streets were bedecked in a manner expressive of the joy of the people that Henry’s reign of terror had ended. The boy King had not long been on the throne, when, under the guidance of Protector Somerset, in whose hands was all the power of an actual ruler, bloodshed began afresh. Thomas, Lord Seymour, brother of Somerset and uncle of the King, was immured in the Tower, and, accused of ambitious practices, beheaded on Tower Hill on March 20, 1549. This act brought down the rage of the populace upon Somerset, who was already unpopular by reason of his seizure of Church property. By his ill-gotten gains he had built the magnificent Somerset House, and in order to clear the ground for it he had demolished a church and scattered the human remains found there—an act of desecration that the citizens regarded as a crime. The Earl of Warwick headed the opposition, seized the Tower, and the Protector was lodged in the Beauchamp Tower. Later, however, he was pardoned, and the young King records in his diary that “My Lorde Somerset was delivered of his bondes and came to Court.” But the feud soon came to a head again, and in 1551 Somerset was shut up in the Tower once more, and his wife with him, on a charge of high treason. He was taken, by water, to his trial at Westminster Hall, where he was “acquitted of high treason,” but condemned “of treason feloniouse and adjudged to be hanged.” The King, who appears to have written a full account of events in his diary, notes that “he departed without the axe of the Tower. The people knowing not the matter shrieked half-a-dozen times so loude that from the halle dore it was heard at Charing Crosse plainely, and rumours went that he was quitte of all.” But, far from being “quitte of all” he was conveyed back to the Tower, and while some maintained that he was to be set at liberty, others with equal heat asserted that he was to die speedily. The dispute was set at rest by his execution on Tower Hill, “at eight of ye clok in the morning.” The boy Edward seems to have had some of the callousness of his father in his nature, for he signed the death warrants of both his uncles with calmness, and in his commentary on their executions he betrays no emotion whatever, taking it all as very commonplace happening. “The Duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon Touer Hill” is the entry in the royal manuscript book. At the time of the Protector’s committal to the Tower there came with him, as prisoners, his supporters the Earl of Arundel, Lords Grey and Paget; also Sir Thomas Arundel, Sir Ralph Vane, Sir Miles Partridge and Sir Michael Stanhope—these latter being executed. Edward’s short reign of six years had seen as many noble lives sacrificed as any six years of his father’s reign had seen, and with the Queen who succeeded him the tale of bloodshed was not less full of sudden tragedy.

Mary Tudor was preceded by the nine-days’ “Queen,” Lady Jane Grey, who had been named his successor by the dying Edward, at the instigation of the Duke of Northumberland. Lady Jane had been wedded to Northumberland’s fourth son, Lord Guildford Dudley; she was only sixteen years old; she began and ended her “reign” in the Tower, to which she was conveyed by her father-in-law, who was keeping Edward’s death secret until his plans were complete. But Mary had been proclaimed without the Tower if Lady Jane had been proclaimed within. The weaker was pitted against the stronger, and Northumberland, whom we hear of at Cambridge trying to go over to the side of the stronger by shouting “God save Queen Mary!” in the public highway, was arrested in spite of his proper sentiments and was brought prisoner to London and lodged within the Tower, where only a few weeks before he had been in command. He suffered on August 22. In the September sunshine Lady Jane was allowed to walk in the garden attached to the Lieutenant’s house, “and on the hill,” and to look out upon the river and the roofs of the city from the walk behind the battlements which connects the Beauchamp and Bell Towers. In the Beauchamp her husband was held in bondage, and there he carved the word “Jane” on the wall, where it is to be seen to this day. In October Mary was crowned, and in November a sad procession wended its way up Tower Hill, through Tower Street and Eastcheap, to the Guildhall. At the head walked the Chief Warder, carrying the axe; following, came Archbishop Cranmer, Lord Guildford Dudley, and Lady Jane Grey. At their trial they pleaded guilty to high treason, were sentenced, and returned to the Tower, the Warder’s axe showing, by the direction in which the blade pointed, what their doom was to be. To her father Lady Jane wrote, from her prison-house: “My deare father, if I may, without offence, rejoyce in my own mishaps, herein I may account myselfe blessed that washing my hands with the innocence of my fact, my guiltless bloud may cry before the Lord, Mercy to the innocent!... I have opened unto you the state wherein I presently stand, my death at hand, although to you perhaps it may seem wofull yet to me there is nothing that can bee more welcome than from this vale of misery to aspire, and that having thrown off all joy and pleasure, with Christ my Saviour, in whose steadfast faith (if it may be lawfull for the daughter so to write to her father) the Lord that hath hitherto strengthened you, soe continue to keepe you, that at the last we may meete in heaven with the Father, Sonne, and Holy Ghost.—I am, your most obedient daughter till death, Jane Dudley.” It is possible that Queen Mary might have spared the life of this sweet and gentle maid, happier in her books and her devotions than in the intrigues of State, but a rising of the men of Kent, under Wyatt, who demanded the “custody of the Tower and the Queen within it,” brought matters to a crisis. Wyatt appeared on the Southwark bank of the Thames and was fired upon from Tower walls. This is the last time in its annals that the fortress was attacked, and that it was called upon to repel an enemy. Wyatt, captured at Temple Bar after a night march from Kingston, where he had crossed the river, was soon in the Tower, and with him was led many a noble prisoner. All hope that Lady Jane would be spared had now gone. Her father was seized and brought to the Tower on February 10; her husband was seen by her on his way to death on Tower Hill on the morning of the 12th, and she looked out again upon his headless body, as it was brought back on a litter, very soon afterwards, and taken to the chapel. A contemporary chronicle describes the preparations made for her own death on that day: “There was a Scaffolde made upon the grene over against the White Tower for the saide Lady Jane to die upon.” She was led forth from her prison to the Green by Sir John Bridges, then Lieutenant, and mounted the scaffold with firm step. The hangman offered to help her to take off her gown. “She desyred him to let her alone, turning towards her two gentlewomen who helped her off therewith ... giving to her a fayre handkerchief to knytte about her eyes.... Then she sayd, ‘I pray you despatch me quickly.’ She tied the kercher about her eyes, then feeling for the block, saide, ‘What shal I do, where is it?’ One of the standers by guyding her thereunto, she layde her head downe upon the block, and stretched forth her body, and said, ‘Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit,’ and so she ended.” Fuller has said of this noble girl, “She had the birth of a Princess, the life of a saint, yet the death of a malefactor, for her parent’s offences, and she was longer a captive than a Queen in the Tower.” Her father and Wyatt, before many days had passed, were both beheaded on Tower Hill; many luckless ones who had taken part in the Kentish rising were put to death with every form of cruelty; and, shortly after these terrible days of bloodshed in London, Mary was married to Philip of Spain at Winchester.

Princess Elizabeth had, meanwhile, been brought to the Tower in custody, and was landed, on Palm Sunday, at Traitor’s Gate. She was closely guarded but was allowed to walk on the open passage-way, where Lady Jane Grey had paced up and down before her, which is now known as “Queen Elizabeth’s Walk.” Towards the middle of May, being set free of the Tower, she is said to have taken a meal in the London Tavern—at the corner of Mark Lane and Fenchurch Street—on her way to Woodstock. The pewter meat-dish and cover which she used are still preserved. The city churches rang joyous peals when it was known she was out of Tower walls, and to those churches that gave her welcome she presented silken bell-ropes when Queen of England.

Queen Mary’s days were darkened again by busy work for the headsman, and by religious persecution. Thomas, second son of Lord Stafford, defeated in an attempt to capture Scarborough Castle, was brought to the block on Tower Hill, and a large band of prisoners was put in Tower dungeons. To make room for these, many of the captives already there were released. Mary died on November 17, 1558, and then began to dawn those “spacious times of great Elizabeth” when England moved to greater glory than she had ever known before.

Queen Elizabeth, on her accession, came again to the Tower, spending the time until the coronation within its walls, but she had too many memories of captivity there to retain much love for the prison which had now become her palace. Seated in a golden chariot, the new Queen, ablaze with jewels, passed on her way to Westminster through a city decked out in all manner of magnificence, and through a crowd shouting themselves hoarse with delight at her coming. The Tower appears in the records of Elizabeth’s reign almost wholly as a State prison. An attempt was made to smooth out religious difficulties by committing a number of Church dignitaries to its keeping, among them the Archbishop of York, and Feckenham, Abbot of Westminster. Then came Lady Catherine Grey, Lady Jane’s sister, who had offended the Queen by marrying Lord Hertford in secret. Her husband, also, was soon afterwards a prisoner. He lay for over nine years in his cell, but was released at the end of that time, while Lady Hertford died in the Tower. The Countess of Lennox was imprisoned three times within the walls, “not for any treason, but for love matters.” Thomas Howard, son of the first Duke of Norfolk, was shut up here “for falling in love with the Countess,” and died in captivity. It is interesting to find that Cupid could forge Tower shackles as well as make a wedding ring, and that to enter his service without the Queen’s permission was almost a capital offence.

In 1562 a suspected conspiracy to set the Queen of Scots—ill-fated Mary—on the English throne was the cause of Arthur and Edmund de la Pole, great-grandchildren of the murdered Duke of Clarence, being put into the Beauchamp Tower, where, when we reach that portion of the buildings on our rounds, we shall see their inscriptions on the walls. The brothers were fated never to leave their place of confinement alive. After fourteen years of respite, Tower Hill again claimed a victim, the Duke of Norfolk suffering there in June 1579. In the following year Roman Catholic prisoners were brought, one might say in droves, to Tower cells. Many of them were subjected to torture either by the rack, the “Scavenger’s Daughter,” the thumbscrew, or the boot. In 1581 Father Campion, a Jesuit, was hurried to death, and in 1583 we hear of one captive committing suicide in order to escape the awful fate of dismemberment that many of his fellow-prisoners had suffered. It seems as if the sanity of life, the sweet wholesomeness we associate with the Merrie England of Shakespeare’s time, had not pierced the solid crust of Tower tradition. To lay down a comedy of the great dramatist and take up contemporary records of the Tower is as if one had stepped out of the warm sunshine and fragrant air of mid-June into a dark, damp vault whose atmosphere stings with the chill of a November night.