The Tower of London, (Vol. 1 of 2)

by Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower

During the Commonwealth the Crown was broken up and the Crown jewels dispersed. At the Restoration, Sir Gilbert Talbot was the Keeper of the Jewels, and it was then, for the first time, that the public were allowed to see the Regalia. Whilst Talbot was Keeper and Edwards sub-Keeper, Blood’s almost successful attempt to carry off the Crown occurred. Far more interesting than the Regalia is the chamber in which it is placed. It is octagonal in shape, 30 feet in diameter, with bays opened into the walls. The beautiful carved ceiling is a modern copy of the original. In the bay on the north-eastern side are two deep recesses, that under an archway being the original entrance into the chamber and connecting it with the palace; it is now walled up. The recess to the south-east was formerly an oratory, and is mentioned in the Tower records in the year 1238.

Tradition points to this room as being the scene of the murder of Henry VI. by Richard III., who is supposed to have entered through the passage from the Palace, and finding Henry praying in the oratory stabbed him to death, “punching his anointed body full of deadly holes,” as Shakespeare puts it in “Henry VI.”

Before describing the Inner Ward, which is entered after passing under the Bloody Tower, of which the black portcullis still shows its jagged teeth, one would do well to turn and look back from under the curiously groined roof of the old gateway, with lions’ heads carved in the spandrels, towards Traitor’s Gate. This is perhaps the most suggestive view of any within the Tower, the least changed, and full of historical reminiscences. Through this archway have passed all the State prisoners that the old fortress has drawn into its grim maw—prelates, queens, and princes, statesmen, judges, courtiers, and soldiers of all degrees—the patriot willing to lay down his life for the “old cause,” as Algernon Sidney called his policy—and the favourite of some fickle royal master, thrown aside and allowed to perish by a Henry, an Elizabeth, or a Charles. For five centuries this old Tower has seen pass beneath its black walls many who have helped to make the history of our race; this pathway has been their Via Crucis.

A very old tradition, dating certainly as far back as the reign of Elizabeth, gives the epithet of “bloody” to this tower. It has always been known as the place where the sons of Edward IV. were murdered by their uncle Richard in 1483. Although there is no historical evidence to prove that this was the scene of that event, local tradition in a place like the Tower is not a factor to be despised, for the story of the crime and its locale cannot have been handed down at an interval of less than a hundred years from the time of the occurrence. Until the reign of Elizabeth the Bloody Tower was called the Garden Tower, from a garden which lay on its western side, belonging to the Constable’s House or Lodging, to give its old style, the building now known as the King’s or Governor’s House; this garden has long ceased to exist.

The Bloody Tower.
looking towards Traitor’s Gate.

The Bloody Tower is a building of three storeys, with an elevation of 47 feet. Worthy of notice is the portcullis which, like that of the Byward Tower, is still in working order: these two are said to be the only remaining portcullises in England still capable of being used. Mrs Hutchinson, the wife of the Parliamentary Colonel, refers to this portcullis. She shared her husband’s imprisonment here in 1663, “in a room,” she writes, “where it was said the two young princes, Edward V. and his brother, were murdered; the room that led to it was a great dark room with no window, where the portcullis to one of the inner gates was drawn up and let down.” Among other prisoners who have lingered in the Bloody Tower were Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, Jane Grey’s father-in-law, Archbishop Cranmer, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Sir Thomas Overbury, who was slowly poisoned. It was from the window over the gateway on the north side that Archbishop Laud, himself a prisoner, gave Strafford his supreme blessing as the great Earl was led out to die; and in this tower the brutal Judge Jeffreys died of delirium caused by drink and despair. The only prisoner here now is a small bird whose cage hangs from out a window of this gloomy gaol.

Of all the illustrious prisoners who have been immured here Sir Walter Raleigh is the most interesting. The steps which lead to the first floor of the prison tower open on an arched door, through which he must often have passed; they are as old as the Tower itself, which dates back to Richard III. or Richard II. In the Elizabethan survey of the Tower a walled garden is shown on the plan, facing the north. This was the garden which helped to soften the long imprisonment passed by Sir Walter, and here he whiled away many of the weary hours of his long captivity tending his flowers, or distilling essences in a little garden house which he had built himself. These occupations and the composition of his huge fragment, the famous “History of the World,” which he wrote in the Tower, must have been Raleigh’s greatest consolations during the fourteen long years he passed in the fortress. Raleigh also had the company of his family during one period of his imprisonment, and he was also allowed to have some of the natives he had brought back from Guiana to attend upon him. As the years of his imprisonment increased so did his troubles, and he suffered cruelly from rheumatism and palsy whilst in the Bloody Tower, and in 1606 it was found necessary, if his life was to be preserved, to change his prison. For Raleigh’s memory, among other reasons, the interior of the Bloody Tower is well worth visiting, although the rooms have been modernised. They are now occupied by one of the warders and his family. One chamber is pointed out as that in which the little York princes were smothered. This room has been divided into two, but there is nothing to show that the walls and the ceiling are not the same as those which were there when the murderers entered, having presumably passed through a window at the end of a passage which opens out on to the terraced wall overlooking the river.

Within the Inner Ward, by the side of the Wakefield Tower, stood, until the summer of 1899, an ugly building called the Main Guard, and it is in front of this building that the ceremony of receiving the Tower keys takes place nightly. Every evening just before midnight the Chief Warder and the Yeoman Porter meet together and proceed to the main guard-room. The Yeoman Porter carries in his hand his bunch of great keys, and on arriving at the guard-room he asks for “The escort of the keys.” This escort consists of a Beefeater (a sergeant) and six private soldiers. The sergeant carries a lantern, and the whole party then proceeds to the outer gate, where the soldiers assist the Yeoman Porter to close it. The latter then takes his keys and locks the gate, after which the procession is reformed for the return. As the party passes the sentinels on its way back, the latter challenges it with, “Who goes there?” The Yeoman Porter makes answer “The keys!” To this the sentry calls out “Advance King Edward’s Keys!” and the escort proceeds onward to the Main Guard. When this is reached the same ceremony is gone through, at the conclusion of which the officer of the guard and the escort salute the keys by presenting arms, after which the Yeoman Porter cries “God preserve King Edward!” The keys are then carried by the same guardian to the King’s House, or, as it is sometimes called, the Governor’s House, and placed for the night in the Constable’s office. Probably few know that, with the exception of the Sovereign and the Constable of the Tower, the password of the fortress is known only to the Lord Mayor of London, the word being sent to the Mansion House, quarterly, signed by the monarch. This is a survival of an ancient custom.