Palace and Hovel; Or, Phases of London Life

by Daniel Joseph Kirwan

One dark night during the first years of the reign of Henry I, before the Traitor's Gate had attained such a terrible fame as it afterward obtained from the number of the victims who have passed under its grimy arch, never to pass out except to the block on Tower Hill, a shallop with two men whose arms lie between their feet at the bottom of the boat, and a third whose arms are bound, stops at the wall where the Water Gate is now shown, and in reply to the summons of one of the armed men, the portcullis is hoisted, and Ralph Flambard, the fighting, choleric, and rebellious Bishop of Durham, passes under the arch a prisoner to the King, and the massive iron gates, rusty even then, are shut firmly ere the sound of the boat's oars have been heard by the wardens in the Inner Tower.

In a few days he makes a number of friends among the officials of the Tower by his merry temperament, and as state prisoners were always allowed to furnish their own tables in the fortress, the jolly bishop has many a heavy carouse. Tun after tun of hippocras, canary, and sack is conveyed to him, and he dispenses those medieval beverages to the knights and men-at-arms—pages and guards, with no stinted measure. One evening the Bishop receives a long and strong coil of rope in a puncheon of Malmsley, and that very night, after he had drank all the knights, men-at-arms and wardens under the oaken tables, the jolly bishop flies to the ramparts, lowers himself down into the ditch, and like the plucky prelate that he was, escapes from Henry's wrath.

One fine summer day when Henry III is King of England, Cardinal Pandulph, the Legate of the Pope, presents himself and a long train of attendants, with sumpter and service mules, at the land postern of the Tower, and after a loud flourish of trumpets to announce his arrival, the Cardinal is admitted to the presence of the King; and throws a bag of Rose nobles on the table before the young monarch, for in those days the Majesty of Britain did not scorn to borrow 200 marks of Cardinal Pandulph, and one hundred marks of Henry, Abbot of St. Albans. The money market was very tight in those days, and Kings often held dealings with pawn-brokers, for we find Henry VIII pledging or melting down nearly all the crown regalia to satisfy his creditors.

COUNCIL CHAMBER OF THE TOWER.

There is an apartment of very large and fine proportions in the third story of the White or Main Tower, supported by two rows of beams. The timber ceiling is flat, and the walls are pierced with windows on one side and heavy arches appear on the other side; the whole structure being of the rudest construction, yet grand looking withal; and this is the great Council Chamber of the Tower, in which some of the most startling and memorable scenes in English history have occurred.

It is Monday, September 29, 1399. The day, which was overcast in the early morning, has turned out fair and bright, and the Council Chamber and all the approaches to it are crowded with the highest nobles, temporal and spiritual, in the land; steel clad knights, mitred abbots, proud bishops, grave judges in cap and ermine, peers and lackeys, stand on the stairs and in the ante-rooms, to catch a word or get a look at the coming grand historical farce which is to end at last in a terrible tragedy.

It is the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel, and as the sun streams through the stained glass of the oriel windows, and the shouts of the London prentices at their games of ball, are wafted to the warder on the battlements, who carries his partisan to and fro; a deputation from each house of Parliament, headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and other great Nobles, enters the Council Chamber to hold a conference with the reigning Monarch Richard II, now about to resign his Crown to the Protector Bolingbroke, who afterward as Henry IV, will encounter more vicissitudes and suffering than the monarch he is about so cruelly to depose.

The nobles seat themselves, the Protector enthrones himself, and a ghastly figure, that of Richard II, stalks moodily into the Chamber, clad in kingly robes, his sceptre in his hand, the Crown upon his head, and there is silence for a moment among all present. Then Richard says in a broken voice, but distinctly, "I have been King of England, Duke of Aquitaine, and Lord of Ireland about twenty-one years, which Seigneury, Royalty, Sceptre, Crown and Heritage, I now clearly resign here to my cousin, Henry of Lancaster, and I desire him here, in this open presence, in entering of the same possession, to take the sceptre;" "and so," says Froissart, "he delivered it to the Duke, who took it," and kept it, also, he might have added.

Before a year had elapsed the unfortunate monarch was put to death in Pontefract Castle by order of his successor, Henry IV.