There were many others imprisoned in the Bloody Tower; but we must pass on.
In walking from one part of the Tower to another we meet some men dressed very curiously in red dresses with velvet caps. These are the Beef-eaters, who guard the Tower, also called the Yeomen of the Guard. Their odd name and odd dress always attract people, and they are such fine men that children sometimes wonder if they are called Beef-eaters because they eat a lot of beef! That is not so. The name is said to come from an old French word buffetier, which means a man who waited at a buffet or sideboard; and in old times the beef-eaters waited on the King and Queen, and they still wear the same costume they wore three hundred years ago. Every night before midnight the chief Beef-eater goes to find the chief warder; the Beef-eater carries the keys of the Tower, and with a guard of men the two go together to lock up the outer gate. When the sentinel who keeps watch hears them, he calls out, 'Who goes there?' and the answer is, 'The Keys!' Then says the sentinel, 'Advance, King George's Keys!' This is a curious old custom. Close by the Bloody Tower is the Jewel House, where the crowns of the King and Queen and other royalties are kept. They are made of gold and set with precious stones, so big that it is difficult to believe that they are real—great rubies and pearls as large as pigeon's eggs, and huge glittering diamonds. In this room there is a man always on watch, day and night. Yet the jewels were once stolen by a daring man called Colonel Blood, who managed to get away from the Tower, but was caught soon after with the King's crown under his cloak. This was in the reign of Charles II.
In the White Tower are rooms full of armour worn by English soldiers—armour of all the different ages, from the time when a man wore so much iron that if he fell down he could not get up again, and sometimes was actually smothered before he could get out of it, up to the present day.
In the White Tower there is one very awful dungeon, a little narrow cell, without a ray of light, no window at all—nothing but dense blackness. There must have been many prisoners kept here, for on the walls there are sad cuttings, now half worn away, which tell how the poor men occupied their time in chipping their names in the stone. Many of the martyrs of Queen Mary's reign must have felt this terrible blackness, for there are texts of which the dates show that they were cut at that time. One of these is, 'Be faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.' The hand that traced out these letters long years ago is still. The martyr has long since passed from the darkness of the narrow cell to the great brightness of eternal light.
The torture instruments are shown in the White Tower too, and many of these brave martyrs felt the torture before they reached the light. The rack was very commonly used. On it men—yes, and women too—were sometimes stretched as on a bed; their wrists were tied with cords above their heads, and their ankles with cords to the other end of the rack. Then a man turned a handle, and the hands and feet were slowly drawn in opposite directions. The poor wretch might shriek and scream, or he might turn as white as death and let never a sound escape him; but it was all the same: the rack moved on. There was a doctor there to feel the victim's heart and say when he could bear no more without dying. And then, when that happened, perhaps he fainted with the agony and was released, and carried away to be allowed to recover a little, only to be brought back another day. Sometimes he would bear it bravely enough the first time, but at the second time his courage would give way, and he would cry out and say he would do whatever it was his persecutors wanted, perhaps change his religion, perhaps reveal the names of his companions in a plot. There were other tortures, too—a kind of iron cage, called the Scavenger's Daughter, with a collar of iron to fasten round a man's neck and irons round his arms and legs, which cramped him up in an awful position, in which he was left for hours, until every bone ached as if it were red-hot. The thumbscrew was a little thing, but caused great agony. It was fixed on to anyone's thumb, and then made tighter and tighter, until sometimes the wretched victim fainted away. Another way that people were tortured was by being hung up by their thumbs, so that the whole weight of their bodies rested on the cords. In this position they were left for hours together.
There is a very beautiful chapel in the White Tower which we must certainly see. Outside in the garden, opposite to another chapel, called St. Peter ad Vincula, is the execution ground, where so many people were beheaded. But I think this is enough for one chapter, and we will learn something more about the Tower in the next.