we are told that he and his guards “went in solemn procession, the attendants preceding us with lighted candles because the place was underground and very dark, especially about the entrance. It was a place of immense extent, and in it were ranged divers sorts of racks, and other instruments of torture. Some of these they displayed before me and told me I should have to taste them.” Gerard was led to “a great upright beam, or pillar of wood” in the centre of the torture chamber, and there hung up by his hands, which were placed in iron shackles attached to an iron rod fixed in the pillar. The stool on which he had stood while this was being done was taken away from under his feet and the whole weight of his body was supported by his wrists, clasped in the gauntlets. As he was a tall, stout man his sufferings must have been terrible indeed. While he hung thus he was again questioned as to his associates in the “plot,” but he refused to betray any one. He has left on record his sensations as he hung against the pillar of torture. “I felt,” he says, “that all the blood in my body had run into my arms and begun to burst out at my finger-ends. This was a mistake, but the arms swelled until the gauntlets were buried in the flesh. After being thus suspended for an hour I fainted; when I came to myself I found the executioners supporting me in their arms.” They had replaced the stool under his feet, and poured vinegar down his throat; but as soon as he recovered consciousness the stool was withdrawn and Gerard allowed to remain hanging in agony for five hours longer, during which he fainted eight or nine times. For three days he was put to this torture on the pillar, and Sir William Waad, then Lieutenant of the Tower, exasperated at the victim’s fortitude, exclaimed at last, “Hang there till you rot!” and he was left hanging till his arms were paralysed. Each evening the victim, “half dead with pain, and scarce able to crawl,” was taken back to his cell in the Salt Tower. A few days later Gerard was again brought before the Council, and again refused to compromise others. Waad thereupon delivered him to the charge of the chief of the torturers—a dread official indeed—with the injunction, “You are to rack him twice a day until such time as he chooses to confess.” Once more he was led down into the dungeon beneath the White Tower and strapped up to the pillar as before, his swollen arms and wrists being forced into the iron bands which could now scarce go round them. Still he refused to give the name of a single friend, and Waad saw the futility of torturing him to death. Gerard was locked up in the Salt Tower again and lay on the floor of his chamber with maimed arms, wrists, and hands, terrible to look upon. Yet he remained firm, and the pains of the body could not, it seemed, affect his spirit. It happened that in the Cradle Tower, standing to the south-west of the Salt Tower, on the outer wall and close by the Wharf, another Roman Catholic prisoner, John Arden, was kept in confinement. Gerard, when sufficiently recovered to be able to walk about again, obtained leave of his jailor to visit Arden. Together they planned escape. They wrote to friends in the City with orange juice, which writing was invisible unless subjected to a certain treatment whereby it became legible. Gerard, by the help of these friends, secured a long piece of thick string with a leaden weight attached, and with this came a written promise that upon a certain night a boat would lie beside the Wharf just under the Cradle Tower. On the evening of the day appointed Gerard stayed longer than usual with Arden, but dreading lest at any moment he should be sent for and taken back to the Salt Tower. But night came and he was still in the Cradle Tower, looking out anxiously across the moat towards the riverside. At last the boat approached, and was moored opposite the tower, from which Arden threw his line, and both prisoners saw, with joy, that the leaden weight had cleared the moat and fallen on the Wharf. It was picked up by the boatmen, and a strong rope was fastened to the cord. This rope Arden hauled up into his cell and made it fast. Gerard then swarmed down the tightened rope to the Wharf, suffering acute pain owing to the condition of his arms and wrists. It was five months after his torture before the sense of touch was restored to his hands. Arden followed, and both got away safely to the steps beside London Bridge, where they were met by the friends who had cheered them in their captivity, and were taken to a place of safety.
The Cradle Tower is seen best from the Wharf. This broad riverside embankment constructed by Henry III. makes a delightful promenade. It is reached from the level of the Tower Bridge approach by descending a flight of steps on the eastern side of the roadway and passing under the bridge by the archway at the guard-room. When this arch is passed under, on the immediate right, beyond the trees, is seen the Galleyman or Develin
Tower, and the Well Tower to the left of it The Galleyman, or Galligman Tower—to give it the name under which it appears in a plan of 1597—was in former times a powder store and gave access to the “Iron Gate,” now demolished. It will be noticed that five towers stand closely together at this corner of the defences. The south-eastern portion of the fortress had always been considered that most exposed to attack; the protecting ditch, too, is narrower at this point than elsewhere, hence the need for additional fortification. Beside the Cradle Tower a modern drawbridge has been constructed giving access for stores. Within the outer and inner walls here, lay the Privy Garden, one of the most peaceful and secluded nooks in the fortress—a place of old-world flowers and southern sunshine. The Cradle Tower is so named from the existence there in former times of a “cradle,” or movable bed by means of which boats could be hoisted from the moat, and, within the grated doorway in the tower wall, raised on to a dry platform there. The principal entrance to the Outer Ward lay, in early days, through this gateway in the Cradle Tower, and prisoners were landed here as well as through Traitor’s Gate. In 1641 it was described as “Cradle Tower—a prison lodging.” The round Lanthorn Tower rising above and dwarfing the Cradle Tower was in Tudor days known as the New Tower, and commanded the King’s Bedchamber, and the Queen’s Gallery. Towards the end of the eighteenth century this tower was burnt down, and the walls, from the lower portions and vaults, were rebuilt. In Henry III.’s reign this tower was a place of great importance; its chambers were hung with ornate tapestry, and the inner walls decorated with frescoes. This tower, being attached to the royal apartments, was never used as a prison, and so may be said to be happy in having no history of suffering attached to it. It has been so admirably restored, by Salvin, and again by Taylor in 1882, that it has lost little of its original appearance.
From the Wharf the massive St. Thomas’s Tower can be examined more closely and the outer side of the Traitor’s Gate is open to view. The guns on the Wharf, near the Byward Tower, are those that are used for the firing of salutes on days of royal anniversary.
CHAPTER V
TOWER HILL
The garlands wither on your brow;
Then boast no more your mighty deeds;
Upon Death’s purple altar now
See where the victor-victim bleeds:
Your heads must come
To the cold tomb;
Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust.
J. Shirley.