Beyond the Bell Tower a broad window, with balcony, will be noticed in the adjacent King’s House. This gives light to a room known as the Council Chamber, in which Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators were tried and condemned to the rack. Above the fireplace in this room an elaborate carving preserves the features of the first Stuart who sat on the English throne, and, near by, the many virtues—lest their existence should be doubted by unbelievers—of that amiable monarch are set forth for all to read who may. In this room Pepys “did go to dine” (February 1663-4) with Sir J. Robinson, then Lieutenant of the Tower, “his ordinary table being very good.” James, Duke of Monmouth, taken as a fugitive after Sedgemoor, was imprisoned in this house (1685) till his execution, and here he parted from his wife and children during the last sad hours.
Traitor’s Gate and St. Thomas’s Tower.—If any were asked what impressed them most during their visit to the Tower, or what they desired to see when planning that visit, I think that they would name the Traitor’s Gate. It is certainly the best preserved of the Tudor portions, has been least spoiled by intrusion of irrelevant things, and is left in its quietness to the doves that incessantly flit in and out of the crevices of its stones and rest upon the bars of its massive gateway. Above it rises the great arch, sixty-two feet span, supporting St. Thomas’s Tower, built, as has already been stated, by Henry III., and named after St. Thomas of Canterbury. This “Watergate,” as it was at one time called, was the only direct way of entering the Tower from the river, and, before the draining of the moat, the gate here was always partly covered by water, and boats were brought right up to the steps in front of the Bloody Tower. They were moored to the heavy iron ring that is still to be seen at the left of the archway of the tower just mentioned. The older steps will be noticed beneath the more modern stone-facings laid upon them, and those steps have been trodden by some of the most famous men and women in our history. It will be remembered that between these steps and the
gloomy archway leading up to Tower Green, the condemned Sir Thomas More met, on his way to the Bell Tower, his daughter, who, in a frenzy of grief, thrust her way through the guards and flung herself on her father’s neck, crying, in despair, “O my father, my father!” Those who record the scene say that even the stern warders were moved to tears when the father gave his child his last blessing and she was led away from him. To these steps came Anne Boleyn; Cromwell, Earl of Essex; Queen Katherine Howard; Seymour, Duke of Somerset; Lady Jane Grey, Princess Elizabeth, Devereux, Earl of Essex; the Duke of Monmouth, and the Seven Bishops. In the room above the Gate, Lord Grey de Wilton died (1614), after eleven years of imprisonment on the mere accusation of wishing to marry Arabella Stuart, “without permission of King James I.” St. Thomas’s Tower at one time, as is evident from the old piscina discovered there, contained a chapel; the tower has been carefully restored, without and within, and is now the residence of the Keeper of the Crown Jewels.
The Bloody Tower.—In Henry VIII.’s reign this was known as the Garden Tower, and took its name from the Constable’s garden, now the Parade in front of the King’s House; but since Elizabeth’s time it has been called the Bloody Tower, owing, it is surmised, to the suicide therein of Henry Percy, eighth Earl of Northumberland, in 1585. But that is the least of its mysteries. It was within this tower that the young Princes disappeared in July, 1483. They had been removed from the royal palace near this tower when Richard assumed kingship, and placed within these grim chambers. They were closely watched; all help from without would be offered in vain; their spirits drooped, and the feeling crept upon them that they would never leave their prison-house alive. Sir Robert Brackenbury had become Lieutenant of the Tower: to him Richard, who was riding towards Gloucester, sent a messenger with letters asking him if he would be willing to rid the King of the Princes. This messenger had delivered his papers to the Lieutenant as he knelt at prayer in the Chapel of St. John in the White Tower. Brackenbury refused the King’s request, and said he would be no party to such an act even if his refusal cost him his life. The messenger returned in haste, spurring his horse westward, and overtook Richard at Warwick. The King finding Brackenbury obdurate, sent off Sir James Tyrrell with a warrant to obtain possession of the keys of the Tower for one night. The keys were given to him, and he assumed command of the place for the time. Two ruffians, John Dighton and Miles Forrest—some say a third was there, reminding one of the mysterious third murderer in Macbeth—crept into the bedroom of the sleeping boys and smothered them with the bedclothes. Shakespeare has painted the scene so vividly that, though the actual manner of death is unknown, this one is accepted as probably nearest the truth. Tyrrell saw the dead bodies, gave orders that they should be buried secretly “at the foot of the stairs,” then, resigning the keys, rode off to give the news to Richard. Tyrrell came himself to death on Tower Hill in later years, and his accomplices died in misery. In Charles II.’s days two skeletons were found “under the steps,” not of this tower but of the White Tower, and were laid in Westminster Abbey.
Sir Walter Raleigh was a captive in the Bloody Tower from 1604-1616, and in its chambers he wrote the portion of his History of the World that he was able to finish before his later troubles and death put an end to his labours. It is pleasant to hear of Raleigh spending his days, with his great work to cheer him, at one time sitting in the Constable’s garden, at another conversing from the walls with those who passed to and fro below. But his writings were not sufficient to satisfy the energies of this son of an energetic age. He set up a laboratory, with retorts and furnaces, and made chemical experiments; and so it happened that at this time, to quote the elder Disraeli, “Raleigh was surrounded, in the Tower, by the highest literary and scientific circle in the nation.” These men of mark in the earlier years of the first Stuart King came as guests to the Tower, or had the misfortune to be detained there “during the King’s pleasure.” Raleigh’s wife and son lived with him, and they had their own servants to wait on them. But the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir George Harvey, with whom Raleigh had spent long evenings and with whom he had made warm friendship, was succeeded by Sir William Waad, who seems to have taken a personal dislike to Sir Walter, and contrived to make his life as miserable as possible. In 1610 Raleigh was kept a close prisoner for three months, and his wife and child, no longer allowed to share his captivity, were “banished the Tower”—a decree that would prove only too welcome to many—and lived for some time in a house on Tower Hill. In 1615 the King consented to release Raleigh, and allow him to command an expedition to El Dorado, which set off in 1617. What the result of that unfortunate voyage was all know: mutiny and despair may best describe its end. The King was furious; his greed for Spanish gold was unsatisfied; Spain demanded the head of “one who had been her mortal enemy.” A decision had to be made whether Raleigh should be delivered to the Spaniard or put back in the Tower. His wife planned escape for the husband she had sacrificed every comfort to aid. On a Sunday night, when Sir Walter was detained in the City—in his wife’s house in Broad Street—he put on disguise, crept through the narrow lanes to Tower Hill, went down by Allhallows Church to Tower Dock, where a boat was waiting to receive him and take him to a ship at Tilbury. But when the watermen put out into the river they saw a second boat following them closely; Sir Walter was betrayed by a man he had trusted, and found himself a prisoner in the Tower once again. He was shut up in the Brick Tower, where he awaited his trial, then removed to the Gate House, by Westminster Hall. When his sentence was passed and he had but a few days to live, his wife remained with him, and they parted at the midnight before execution. In the morning the Dean of Westminster gave him his last Communion, and at eight o’clock he went out to Old Palace Yard, cheerfully prepared for what was to follow.
In the Bloody Tower Sir Thomas Overbury was poisoned in 1613. This is one of the blackest crimes that stain Tower history. Overbury had been a friend of Raleigh’s, and had often visited him in his confinement; now Sir Thomas himself, because he had condemned the marriage between the Earl of Somerset and Lady Frances Howard, was brought to the same tower. Lady Frances determined to have Overbury put out of the way, and a notorious quack and procuress of the period, Mrs. Turner, had been hired to administer the drug. But this slow-poisoning proving too lengthy a process, two hired assassins ended Overbury’s sufferings by smothering him, at night, with the pillows of his bed. Some time afterwards, by the confession of a boy who had been at the time in the employment of the apothecary from whom the drugs were bought, the crime was disclosed. Horror and indignation caused a public outcry for vengeance: the Lieutenant of
