The proclamation addressed to the Mayor and Sheriff runs thus: ‘We, wishing to preserve the said keepers and the beast from injury and grievance, do command you that in the city aforesaid and the suburbs thereof, where you shall deem most expedient, you do cause public proclamation to be made, and it on our behalf strictly to be forbidden, that any person, native or stranger, of whatsoever condition he may be, on pain of forfeiting unto us as much as he may forfeit, shall have the audacity to do any damage, violence, misprision or grievance unto the said keepers or to the beast, which we have so taken under our protection and especial defence, or to any of them, or shall presume to intermeddle for getting a sight of the said beast, against the will of them, the keepers thereof. And if you shall know anyone to attempt the contrary hereof, then you are so to punish them that the same punishment may deter all others from attempting the like; and to answer unto us as to such forfeiture, in manner as is befitting.’[101]
In later times the collection of wild beasts must have been considerable, and Stow relates in his Chronicle how trials of strength between the animals were exhibited before the royal family. On the 23rd of June 1609 ‘the King, Queene, and Prince, the Lady Elizabeth and the Duke of Yorke, with divers great lords and manie others, came to the Tower to see a triall of the lyon’s single valour, against a great fierce beare, which had kild a child, that was negligently left in the beare-house. This fierce beare was brought into the open yard, behind the lyon’s den, which was the place for fight.’ Two mastiffs let into the yard passed the bear and attacked the lion. Then a stallion and six dogs were introduced. The dogs worried the horse till three stout bear-wards drove them off, the bear and lion looking on. The latter was allowed to escape to his den, and other lions were brought out, but none would attack the bear. On the 5th of July this same bear was baited to death.
On the 10th April 1610 Prince Henry and attendant nobles went privately to the Tower to see a fight between the great lion and four dogs. The dogs got the better of the lion, and another lion and lioness were brought to see if they would help the first lion, but they would not, and all three were glad to escape to their dens.[102] The few animals that remained in the menagerie in the nineteenth century were removed to the Zoological Gardens in Regent’s Park in 1834.
The Tower as a Prison.—It is as a State prison that the Tower is most associated in our memories. Here have been confined some of the noblest of English men and women, but besides these there were others who have richly deserved their fate. Some of the prisoners lodged here only for a time, but the majority found it to be merely the threshold of death.
The first prisoner was Ralph Flambard, Bishop of Durham, the hated Minister of William Rufus. On that King’s death, Henry I., with the advice of his Council, shut the bishop up in one of the topmost chambers of the White Tower. Flambard was not very carefully guarded, and he used the liberal allowance put aside for him in providing drink for his keepers. He received a rope in a flagon from friends outside, and while his gaolers were drunk, he managed to escape by its means on the night of 4th February 1101. Although the rope proved too short, and he was injured by his fall, he reached Normandy safely.
Five years after this, the Count of Mortain, who was taken prisoner by Henry I., was imprisoned in the Tower, as we learn from the testimony of Eadmer.
The Jews in large numbers were thrown into the Tower in 1282. The Welsh next furnished victims, and then the Scots. The Battle of Dunbar in 1296 caused many prisoners, including the King, John Balliol, and a host of his nobility to fall into the hands of Edward I. In 1303 the King’s treasury was robbed while Edward I. was in Scotland, and suspicion fell upon the Abbot and Monks of Westminster. The sacristan, sub-prior and others were imprisoned in the Tower. The whole affair is very difficult to understand, but it was fully investigated by order of the King, and there can be no doubt that some members of the monastery were deeply implicated. It created a great scandal, and was one of the most remarkable crimes ever committed. Mr. L. O. Pike gives a full account of the incidents in his History of Crime in England, 1873 (vol. i.), and says: ‘It is quite evident that an enterprise which required more than four months for its accomplishment could not have been successful had there been no collusion within the abbey gates. The findings of the various juries point to a deep-laid conspiracy between some persons in the abbey and others in the neighbouring palace.’
Wallace in 1305 found a prison here before he was drawn through Cheapside and executed in Smithfield.
The Order of the Knights Templar was abolished in 1313, and all the members south of the Trent were imprisoned in the Tower, where the master died.
The earliest drawing of the Tower which has come down to us contains a curious picture of the building, and a representation of the incidents of the captivity of Charles,