GENERAL VIEW OF THE TOWER.
To enumerate everything that is curious in the way of arms and armor in this hall would be to make a catalogue. It takes more than a day to merely see (not study) this collection, and then one has his mind overloaded.
The different buildings that make up what is known collectively as the Tower, have all histories, and all bloody ones. There is nothing but blood connected with it. In the White Tower, Sir Walter Raleigh was confined, and near his den is that once occupied by Rudstone, Culpepper, and Sir Thomas Wyat, who were all beheaded on Tower Hill. The Council Room was used by the Kings when they wanted to give some sort of show of law for a murder, and in this the Council sat when Richard III. ordered Lord Hastings to instant execution.
The Bloody Tower (that would be the proper name for all of them) was where Richard III. was supposed to have murdered the two children of Edward IV., his brother, on which event Shakespeare founded his play of that name. Some English historians have endeavored to show that Richard was no such a man as Shakespeare represents. Instead of being a hump backed, distorted villain, such as we see upon the stage, they insist that he was the handsomest man of his time; that he did not even try to murder the Princes, and, moreover, that he was one of the most humane, politic Kings England ever had, and during his short reign of nine months, instituted material reforms, and did more to promote the welfare of England than any King who had preceded or followed him. Also, they deny the story of his drowning his brother Clarence in a butt of Malmsey wine, and likewise his murder of King Henry.