Richard II. began his reign amid great rejoicings and feastings, and the Tower rang with revelries. On the day of his Coronation the King left his palace-fortress in great state, clad in white robes, and looking, as one account has it, “as beautiful as an archangel.” London seemed to have lost its sense of humour—if the sense had been at all developed at that time—for in Cheapside we are told a castle had been erected “from two sides of which wine ran forth abundantly, and at the top stood a golden angel, holding a crown, so contrived that when the King came near she bowed and presented it to him. In each of the towers was a beautiful virgin ... and each blew in the King’s face leaves of gold and flowers of gold counterfeit,” while the populace yelled blessings on their new monarch, and the conduits ran wine. But scarcely was the wine-stain out of the streets when the Wat Tyler rebellion broke out, and it seemed likely that the cobbles would be soon stained red again, but not with wine. Richard and his mother sought refuge in the Tower while the yells beyond the walls were no longer those of acclamation but of detestation. Froissart likens the mob’s cries to the “hooting of devils.” Richard set out on the Thames to a conference with the leaders of the insurgents at Rotherhithe, but taking alarm before he had gone far down the river returned hurriedly to the Tower steps. With him in his place of security were Treasurer Hales and Archbishop Simon of Sudbury, for whose heads the mob shouted. Mayor Walworth suggested a sally upon the infuriated crowds, but this remedy was considered too desperate, and abandoned. The mob on Tower Hill demanded Sudbury; Sudbury was to be delivered to them; give them Sudbury. The awful glare of fire shone into the Tower casements, and the King looked out and saw the houses of many of his nobles being burnt to the ground. The Savoy was on fire, Westminster added flames to colour the waters of the Thames, and fire was seen to rise from the northern heights. Richard was but a boy, and so hard a trial found him almost unequal to the strain it imposed. What was to be done? The King being persuaded to meet his rebellious subjects at Mile End, conceded their demands and granted pardons. There was a garrison of 1200 well-armed men in the Tower, but they were panic-stricken when, on the departure of the King, the rebel mob, which had stood beyond the moat, rushed over the drawbridges and into the very heart of the buildings. Archbishop Sudbury was celebrating Mass when the mob caught him, dragged him forth from the altar, and despatched him on Tower Hill. Treasurer Hales was also killed, and both heads were exposed on the gateway of old London Bridge. Yet, two days later, Tyler’s head was placed where Sudbury’s had been, and the Archbishop was buried with much pomp in Canterbury Cathedral. In 1387 Richard again sought refuge in the Tower. The Duke of Gloucester and other nobles had become exasperated at the weak King’s ways, and a commission appointed by Gloucester proceeded to govern the Kingdom; Richard’s army offering opposition was defeated. Subsequently, a conference was held in the Council Chamber of the White Tower, and Richard, on some kind of agreement being reached, left the Tower for Westminster. The King’s greatest friend, Sir Simon Burley, was led to death on Tower Hill and his execution Richard swore to avenge. His opportunity came. Three years later another State procession left the Tower, with the King, as before, the chief personage in the midst of the brave show. Richard had married Isabel, daughter of Charles VI. of France. She had been dwelling in the Tower until the day of her coronation. In the midst of the festivities that celebrated the joyous event Gloucester was seized by the King’s orders, shipped off to Calais, and murdered; the Earl of Arundel was beheaded on Tower Hill. Warwick the King dared not kill, as he had done so much for his country in the wars with France, but after confinement in the Beauchamp Tower, he was sent to the Isle of Man, and there kept in prison for life. But Richard, in planning the fall of these men, brought destruction upon himself. He lost all self-control, and Mr. Gardiner believes that “it is most probable, without being actually insane, his mind had to some extent given way.” Parliament was dissolved—the King would rule without one; he would assume the powers of an autocrat. Events moved swiftly. John of Gaunt’s son, Henry of Lancaster, landed in England in 1399; Richard was taken prisoner, and, on September 2 of that year, was brought to the Tower, a prisoner. In the White Tower—Shakespeare, however, lays the scene in Westminster Hall—he resigned his crown, and, shadowy king that he always was, vanished into the dark shadow that shrouds his end.
Henry IV. began his reign with a revival of Tower festivities. On the eve of his coronation, after much feasting and rejoicing, a solemn ceremonial took place in the Norman chapel of St. John, where forty-six new knights of the Order of the Bath watched their arms all night. With Henry’s reign begins, also, the list of State prisoners in the Tower, which was becoming less of a palace and more of a prison. The first captives were Welshmen—Llewellyn, a relation of Owen Glendower, being brought here in 1402. In the following year the Abbot of Winchelsea and other ecclesiastics were committed for inciting to rebellion, but Henry’s most notable prisoner was Prince James of Scotland. This lad of eleven was heir of Robert III., after the death of Rothesay, whose sad end is described in The Fair Maid of Perth. King Robert died, it is said, of a broken heart when he heard of his son’s captivity, and James became de facto King of Scotland while unjustly immured in Henry’s prison-house. He remained a prisoner for eighteen years, two of which were spent in the Tower; from there he was removed to Nottingham Castle, and his uncle, the Duke of Albany, acted as Regent of the northern kingdom. It is interesting to learn, from some English and Scottish records, that his expenses in the Tower were 6s. 8d. a day for himself and 3s. 4d. for his attendants.
Henry V., on becoming King in 1413, was, according to the Chronicles of London, “brought to the Tower upon the Fryday, and on the morowe he rood through Chepe with a grete rought of lordes and knyghtes, the whiche he hadde newe made in the Tower on the night before.” About this time the Tower was full of persecuted followers of Wycliffe, the most famous being Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham. He had been a trusted servant of Henry IV.; to him was allotted the task of quelling insurrection in Wales at the time of the battle of Shrewsbury, and he then stood in high favour with the King and his son, now Henry V. A severe law had been passed with regard to those who held the principles of Wycliffe, and at the time of Henry V.’s accession, Oldcastle was found to favour the condemned Lollard doctrines. Not long afterwards, by virtue (to quote J. R. Green), of “the first legal enactment of religious bloodshed which defiled our Statute Book,” Sir John was a captive in the Tower, and the King, forgetting old friendship, allowed matters to take their course. But Oldcastle, who evidently had friends and unknown adherents within the Tower walls, mysteriously escaped, and the Lollards, encouraged, brought their rising to a head. It was said that they had plotted to kill the King and make Oldcastle Regent of the kingdom; but their insurrection was quelled, the more prominent Lollards were either burnt or hanged, and Sir John, after wanderings in Wales, was caught, brought back to the Tower, and in December 1417, some say on Christmas Day, was hung in chains and burnt “over a slow fire” in Smithfield. He is the original of Shakespeare’s Falstaff, but had very little in common with that creation of the dramatist’s fancy. Shakespeare admits this in an epilogue where he says, “For Oldcastle died a martyr and this is not the man.” In Tennyson’s poem, Sir John Oldcastle, this brave old man exclaims, “God willing, I will burn for Him,” and, truly, he suffered a terrible death for his convictions. After Agincourt we have another notable prisoner in the Tower in the person of Charles, Duke of Orleans, who was sent to the White Tower “with a ransom of 300,000 crowns on his head.” This captive, as did James of Scotland before him, passed many of the weary hours of captivity writing poetry. In the British Museum there is preserved a manuscript volume of his poems which is invaluable as containing the oldest picture of the Tower which is known to exist. This picture, beautifully coloured, shows the great keep of William the Conqueror whitewashed—hence its present name—and, in the background, the steep grassy slope of Tower Hill, old London Bridge, and the spires and towers of ancient London. It is a remarkable work of art, and is accessible to all in its many reproductions. Charles was liberated in 1440, in the reign of Henry VI.
The early days of the sixth Henry were not marked in Tower annals by events of great interest, and during the later Wars of the Roses the number of captives sent here was small, for most of them were murdered in cold blood, on the battlefields. Little quarter was given after those fights-to-the-death, and during the weary years of warfare the peerage, as one writer has it, “was almost annihilated.” The Cade rebellion broke out in 1450, in which year William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, who had been charged with supporting it, was murdered. He was one of the most distinguished noblemen in England, yet the tragedy that ended his life was a sordid one. Upon a wholly unsubstantiated charge of treason he was shut up in the Tower; as he could not be proven guilty, he was released and banished the country. He took ship at Dover to cross to Calais, but was captured in the Channel by the captain of a vessel named Nicholas of the Tower. This was a name of ill-omen to Suffolk, to whom it had been told, in prophecy, that could he avoid the “danger of the Tower” he should be safe. As captive he was brought back to Dover, and his last moments are described in King Henry VI., Part II., Act iv., Scene 1, with realism.
In the summer of 1450 Lord Say was sent to the Tower by the King “to propitiate the rebels,” and they had him forth and beheaded him in Cheapside. Cade and his followers were attacking the fortress from Southwark, but at nightfall a sortie was made from the Tower, London Bridge was barricaded, and, a truce being called, the rebellion gradually subsided. Cade’s capture in a garden in Kent is told by Shakespeare in the tenth scene of the fourth act of the play just mentioned.
Towton Heath was fought and lost by the Lancastrians; the Battle of Hexham crushed the remnant of the King’s army; the valiant Queen Margaret fled, taking her young son with her; and, very soon afterwards, poor Henry himself was led captive, and placed in the Wakefield Tower where, in the room in which the regalia is shown at the present day, he was murdered, we are told, by Richard of Gloucester or, more probably, by his orders, on May 21, 1471. But before his death, Warwick—that king-maker slain at Barnet in 1471—had given orders for Henry to be led on horseback through the city streets “while a turncoat populace shouted ‘God save King Harry!’” This was a poor and short-lived triumph. The weary-hearted King, “clad in a blue gown,” soon returned to the walls he was fated never again to leave alive. The city was flourishing under Yorkist rule and was not minded to seek Lancastrian restoration. It was the pull of prosperity against sentiment; the former won, as it usually contrives to do, and along with sentiment down went King Henry. Queen Margaret had meanwhile been brought to the Tower. Though she and her husband were both within Tower gates they did not meet again. The Queen was imprisoned for five years—for part of that time at Windsor—and then was allowed to return to her own country. We meet her once again in Scott’s Anne of Geierstein.
Cannon, that had, as has been said, come into use for the first time at Crecy, were during Henry’s reign used by the Yorkists to “batter down” the walls of the Tower, but unsuccessfully. In 1843, when the moat was dried and cleared out, a large number of stone cannon-balls were discovered, and in all probability were those used at this bombardment.
Edward IV. had given the customary feast at the Tower on the coronation-eve and “made” thirty-two knights within its walls. These Knights of the Bath, “arrayed in blue gowns, with hoods and tokens of white silk upon their shoulders” rode before the new King on his progress from the Tower to Westminster Abbey on his coronation day. The King began his reign by sending Lancastrians to the Tower and beheading two, Sir Thomas Tudenham and Sir William Tyrrell, on Tower Hill. The Tower had come upon its darkest days. Though Edward favoured the fortress a good deal as a place of residence, rebuilt its fortifications and deepened its moat, he also used it
