Before the west end of London was built the Tower was in the important part of London. All that could then be called London clustered round it. In those days, when the country was unsettled and enemies appeared suddenly outside a town, and might burn and destroy houses, and steal all that they could lay hands on, it was necessary to have a wall all round the city. This wall was very strong and high, and could be defended by men with spears and arrows. It ran right round the city on three sides, and on the fourth was the river.
In the reign of William the Conqueror there was no strong castle or palace for the King in London, but only an old fortress on one side of this wall, the east side, quite near to the river. This fortress had stood there for a long time. No one knew when it had been built. King William ordered it to be pulled down, and in its place he caused a strong castle to be built. Part of the city wall was pulled down to make room for this castle, and so began the Tower of London.
If we, living in the West End, want to get to the Tower, we must take an omnibus or train and go right through the City until, at the place where the City and the East End meet, we shall find the Tower.
It is a very fine building, with a great square tower in the middle. Round it are the gardens, and round the gardens, again, there is another line of buildings, which have smaller towers set here and there upon them at intervals. Circling round the outermost walls is a huge, deep ditch, as big and broad as a river. This was once a moat full of water. The water from the Thames ran into it and filled it, and it formed a strong barrier of defence for the Tower, and attacking forces would have found it a difficult matter to swim across that water with the archers and soldiers shooting down from the walls above, with flights of arrows as thick as flights of pigeons. And, of course, the enemies would never have been allowed to put a boat on the water, for the archers would have shot them while they were doing it. In old times the kings who lived here must have felt very safe with their huge thick stone walls and the great rolling stream of gray water all round. The windows were made very small, so that arrows could not get into them easily to wound the people inside the rooms, and the staircases were of stone, very narrow, and they wound round and round up into one of the towers. They were made so because then, if ever the enemies did manage to get inside the Tower and tramped upstairs, they would find that only one, or perhaps two, of them could get up the steps together to fight, and the men who were guarding the tower could keep them back for a long time. As I said also, the gardens are inside the Tower, so the people who lived there could walk safely in them surrounded by the great gloomy high stone walls.
ST. MARY-LE-STRAND AND BUSH HOUSE.
Oh, how many stories that Tower has to tell! Every stone of it must have heard something interesting. But saddest of all must have been the groans and cries of sorrowful prisoners, for besides being the King's palace, as I have told you, it was also a prison. That seems very odd to us now. Fancy if we made part of Buckingham Palace, where the King lives, into a gaol! But in old times palaces and prisons were often in one building, partly because it was necessary for both to be very strong and to resist force, and it was not easy to build two strong buildings in one place, so they made one do for both. When William the Conqueror died he had not finished his building, and William Rufus, his son, went on with it. Rufus finished the square building in the middle, which has four little corner towers, and this is called the White Tower, not that it is white at all, though it may have been when first built. Now it has been blackened by many centuries of smoke. It was not until the reign of Richard Cœur de Lion that the moat was made, and by that time the Tower had grown very much, and was a strong place. John, Richard's brother, who tried to get the throne for himself while Richard was away fighting in the Holy Land, knew that the stronger he could make the Tower the better, for if he could hold it he would be King in London, and no one could seize him and punish him. We shall hear something more about John later. The moat was made when Richard was away in the Holy Land.
When we draw near we see the White Tower standing up above all the rest. To cross the moat we have to go over a bridge, once a drawbridge—that is, a bridge which could be drawn up and let down again as the people in the Tower liked.