outside the Tower gate, and the King’s janitor was to be on the inside. They further had an ‘ostiarius’ outside the door of the hall when the pleas were held, to introduce the barons, and the King had an ‘ostiarius’ inside. Mr. Clark supposes the hall to have been the building afterwards superseded by the office of Ordnance, ‘and the entrance to which is thought to have been by the modernised doorway close east of the Wakefield Tower.’[100]
St. John’s Chapel is one of the most interesting ecclesiastical buildings in England. It is a singularly fine example of Early Norman architecture, and many historical events are associated with it. The triforium was used as a gallery, and it is supposed that the Queens and their maids of honour sat there at the services.
It is traditionally reported that in front of the old altar (now replaced by a new one) Brackenbury, when kneeling at prayer, was tempted by the emissaries of Richard of Gloucester to make away with the young Princes—a suggestion which he indignantly repudiated. Here also Mary I. was betrothed to Philip of Spain.
One important appanage of the palace was the menagerie of wild beasts, which was placed near the entrance at a very early date. Henry I. kept lions and leopards, and Henry III. added to the collection. Stow tells us that in the year 1235 Frederick the Emperor sent to Henry III. three leopards in token of his regal shield of arms wherein those leopards were pictured, since the which time those lions and others have been kept in a part of this bulwark, now called the Lion Tower, and their keepers there lodged. In 1255 the sheriffs built a house ‘for the King’s elephant,’ which was brought from France and was the first seen in England.
Edward II., in the twelfth year of his reign, ‘commanded the Sheriffs of London to pay to the keeper of the King’s leopard sixpence the day for the sustenance of the leopard, and three halfpence a day for diet of the said keeper.’
Edward III. appears to have taken much pride in his menagerie, and in 1364 a proclamation was issued by the King for the safe keeping of a beast called an ‘oure,’ which was in danger from certain persons who threatened to do grievous harm to the keepers, ‘and atrociously to kill the said beast.’ Mr. Riley, who prints the proclamation in his Memorials, supposes the animal to be either the urus, aurochs or bison, from the east of Europe, or the Ihrwy from Morocco.