Close by is the Yeoman Gaoler’s lodging, where probably Lady Jane Grey stood to see her husband taken from Beauchamp Tower to execution on Tower Hill.
Sir Walter Raleigh was three times a prisoner in the Tower, and he was very differently treated each time. In Elizabeth’s reign he could converse with those outside from the walk near the Bloody Tower, which is named after him. In James’s reign he had for a fellow-prisoner Henry, ninth Earl of Northumberland, known as ‘the Wizard Earl.’ The great philosopher Thomas Harriott was allowed to visit the two prisoners, and he travelled on the Thames between the Tower and Sion House, bringing from the latter place books out of the earl’s library for the solace of Northumberland and Raleigh.
With Traitor’s Gate we end this sad eventful history. Samuel Rogers wrote in his poem of ‘Human Life’:—
‘On through that gate misnamed, through which before
Went Sidney, Russell, Raleigh, Cranmer, More.’
These are great names, but there are others. The
Duke of Buckingham in 1521 was taken to Westminster in a barge furnished with a carpet and cushions. After his trial and condemnation for the crime of being too nearly related to the throne he refused the seat of honour on his return to prison, crying: ‘When I came to Westminster I was Lord High Constable and Duke of Buckingham, but now—poor Edward Bohun!’