the Tower, Elwes, with Mrs. Turner and the two murderers, were all put to death. Somerset and his Countess were imprisoned in the room in the Bloody Tower, where Overbury had died; they were eventually pardoned and “lived in seclusion and disgrace.”
Another victim, who died in this tower during Charles I.’s reign, was Sir John Eliot, a man of great abilities and at one time Vice-Admiral of Devon. He had already been imprisoned, and released, before his entry to the Tower in 1629, and he passed away, in his cell, in 1632. Mr. Trevelyan has said of him, “His letters, speeches, and actions in the Tower reveal a spirit of cheerfulness and even of humour, admirable in one who knows that he has chosen to die in prison in the hands of victorious enemies.” During his last months he contracted consumption in his unhealthy quarters and suffered harsh treatment. Even when Sir John had died the hard-hearted King refused to allow his body to be given to his relatives for burial, and commanded him “to be buried in the parish in which he died.” He was laid to rest in the Chapel on Tower Green, which may be called the parish church of the Tower.
Felton, the murderer of Buckingham, was thrown into this tower in 1628 and Archbishop Laud was prisoner here from December 16, 1640, to January 10, 1644. Here, also, in July, 1683, Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex “cutt his own throat,” as the Register of St. Peter ad Vincula shows. The infamous Judge Jeffreys came here as prisoner in 1688, having been “taken” in a low ale-house in Wapping, and is reported to have spent his days in Bloody Tower “imbibing strong drink,” from the effects of which employment he died in 1689. This old tower has tragedy and misery enough in its records to deserve its name, and it is a mistake on the part of Tower authorities to allow so interesting a building to be closed altogether to the public. The narrow chamber above the archway on the south side still contains all the machinery for raising and lowering the portcullis which, when down, would at one time have prevented all access to the Inner Ward. This is believed to be the only ancient portcullis in England that is still in working order.
The Wakefield Tower.—The lower portion of this tower is, with the White Tower, one of the oldest portions of all the buildings, and was laid down in Norman times. Henry III. rebuilt the upper part, and it served as the entrance to his palace, which lay to the east. During the Commonwealth the great hall in which Anne Boleyn was tried, and which was attached to this tower, was demolished. The name “Wakefield” was given to the tower after the battle of Wakefield in 1460, when the captive Yorkists were lodged here. In former times the tower had been called the Record Tower and the Hall Tower. In the octagonal chamber where the Crown Jewels are now kept, the recess to the south-east was at one time an oratory. In Tower records of the thirteenth century it is so spoken of. Here tradition asserts that Henry VI. was murdered by Duke Richard of Gloucester, who, entering the chamber from the palace, found Henry at prayer and treacherously stabbed him to death. To the dungeon beneath this tower the men who were “out in the Forty-Five,” and who were taken captive after that rebellion which was crushed at Culloden, were brought and huddled together with so little regard for the necessity of fresh air that many of them died on the damp earthen floor of the cell. The walls of this dungeon are thirteen feet thick; from floor to vaulted roof, within, there is only ten feet space. Those men who survived even the terrors of this place, and whose hearts remained true to the royal house of Stuart, were shipped off to the West Indies, and so ended “an auld sang.” The wonder, the bravery, the sacrifice and sadness of it all is set down for after ages to marvel at in Waverley. Happy those who fell at Culloden, for they, at least, rest under the heather; they escaped the miserable English dungeons and the wickednesses of the plantations.
As we leave the Wakefield Tower we pass down under the archway of the Bloody Tower, and, in going eastwards and turning to the left a few yards farther on, come to the foot of the grassy slope at the top of which stands the great White Tower, tinkered at by Wren, but otherwise, to-day, much as the Conqueror left it. In this now open ground, where has been placed the gun-carriage on which the body of Queen Victoria was carried from Windsor railway station to St. George’s Chapel on that memorable 2nd of February, 1901, rose, in Plantagenet and Tudor days, the Royal Palace in the Tower, and the Hall in which the Courts of Justice sat. The Court of Common Pleas was held in this great hall by the river, a Gothic building, dating, probably, from the reign of Henry III.; the Court of King’s Bench being held in the Lesser Hall “under the east turret of the Keep”—or White Tower. At certain times “the right of public entry” of all citizens to the Tower was insisted on. But a certain ceremonial had to be observed beforehand. The “aldermen and commoners met in Allhallows Barking Church, on Tower Hill, and chose six sage persons to go as a deputation to the Tower, and ask leave to see the King, and demand free access for all people to the courts of law held within the Tower.” It was also “to be granted that no guard should keep watch over them, or close the gates”—a most necessary precaution. Their request being granted by the King “the six messengers returned to Barking Church ... and the Commons then elected three men of standing to act as spokesmen. Great care was taken that no person should go into the royal presence who was in rags or shoeless. Every one was to have his hair cut close and his face newly shaved. Mayor, aldermen, sheriff, cryer, beadles, were all to be clean and neat, and every one was to lay aside his cape and cloak, and put on his coat and surcoat.”
The White Tower or Keep.—This is the very heart and centre of the Tower buildings, and all the lesser towers and connecting walls, making the Inner and Outer Wards, and the broad moat encircling all, are but the means of protection and inviolable security of this ancient keep. Within its rock-like walls a threatened king could live in security. Here were provided the elementary necessaries of life—a storehouse for food, a well to supply fresh water, a great fireplace (in the thickness of the wall), and a place of devotion, all within the walls of this one tower. The doorway by which we enter, after passing the ridiculous ticket-box and unnecessary policeman, was cut through the solid wall in Henry VIII.’s time. At the foot of the stairs giving access, the bones of the murdered Princes were found in a small chest, some ten feet below the ground, during Charles II.’s reign.
The winding stairway within the wall leads us to the western end of the Chapel of St. John, which is, with the possible exception of the Lady Chapel at Durham, the finest Norman chapel in England. It has a beautiful arcading, with heavy circular pillars, square capitals and bases, and a wide triforium over the aisles. Here is a perfect Norman church in miniature. The south aisle at one time communicated with the royal palace, and the gallery with the State apartments of the keep. It is only within recent years that the sanctity of the place has been again observed, and now visitors behave here as in any other consecrated building; but it was for many years used as a sort of store chamber, and the authorities at one time proposed turning it into a military tailors’ workshop! That was in the mid-nineteenth century, when England in general had fallen into a state of artistic zopf and the daughters of music were brought low. So low, too, had the guardians of the nation fallen in their ideas that this beautiful building meant nothing more to them than a place, a commodious place, of four stone walls, that was lying idle and might be “put to some practical use”! The Prince Consort made timely intervention and the desecration was not persisted in. It was in this chapel that the rabble in Richard II.’s time found Archbishop Sudbury at prayer; at prayer, too, in this chapel, knelt Brackenbury when the messenger from King Richard III. brought demands for the Princes’ murder; here Elizabeth of York, Queen of Henry VII., lay in state after death; here Queen Mary, after the death of her brother, Edward VI., attended Mass and gave thanks for the suppression of revolt; and here the vacillating Northumberland, father-in-law of Lady Jane Grey, declared himself a Roman Catholic lest he should lose his life, but without the effect he desired. In this solemn place, too, those who aspired to knighthood watched their arms at the altar, passing the night in vigil before the day when the king would elect them to the order. This was the place of worship of our Norman and Plantagenet kings. Could any other building in the country claim like associations? Yet these things slip the mind of a generation, and then is the hallowed ground made desolate.
The large rooms entered from the chapel are the former State apartments, now given over to the housing of a collection of weapons and armour which is described on the show-cases, and therefore need not be detailed here. In these rooms Baliol in the reign of Edward I., and King David of Scotland in that of Edward III., were kept prisoners, but not in the strictest sense. Other notable captives here were King John of France (after the battle of Poitiers), Prince (afterwards King) James of Scotland, and Charles, Duke of Orleans—all of whom have been spoken of in the previous chapter. Several models of the Tower buildings, made at various periods, will be found in these rooms. The larger—western—apartment,
