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

by Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower

Groining in Ceiling of the Bloody Tower.

In early days a building, with towers attached, stood between the Main Guard and the White Tower, which is called in the old plans of the fortress “Cold or Cole Harbour.” When in 1899 the Main Guard was pulled down the old wall of Cold Harbour was laid bare, and at the same time a well with a stone lining to it, and a subterranean passage were discovered. The subterranean passage ran to the east of the Wakefield Tower and opened out towards the river front at the eastern side of St Thomas’s Tower, at a depth of five feet below the actual surface of the ground; it was six feet high, and so narrow that only one person could pass along it.

In Gascoyne’s plan of the Tower, Cold Harbour is shown with two tall circular towers, with a gateway between them, and stands at the south-western side of the White Tower. But as far back as the reign of James II. this building had disappeared. The origin of the name “Cold Harbour or Cole Harbour” has been a puzzle to antiquarians. The name is found in many localities throughout the south of England, and is always found in places near the Roman Road, a circumstance which has given the possible derivation of the name from Collis Arboris or Colles Arborum. And the site of Cold Harbour in the Tower might, with every probability, have been a wooded knoll or hillock by the side of the river when the Romans ruled in Britain. That Cold Harbour, or rather its two towers, were of some height is shown by the complaint made in 1572 against the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Owen Hopton, for allowing his prisoners to meet and walk on the “leads of Cole Harbour.” About the same time Lord Southampton, Shakespeare’s friend, when a prisoner in the Tower, was once seen “leaping upon the tower, his wife being on the opposite side of the ditch,” or the moat as we should call it.

To the left, and facing the Main Guard, lies the Tower Green, known also as the Parade. It has buildings upon its three sides. On the southern side the King’s House,[4] formerly called the Lieutenant’s Lodging, with its old gables, is a conspicuous feature. This building is carried on to the western side of the Green by a row of houses whose fronts have been modernised out of all semblance to their respectable antiquity; the northern end of the Green is closed by the walls of the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula. Homely as is the appearance of the King’s House, it is here that, should the reigning monarch of England ever return to lodge in the fortress, he or she would dwell, for it is the largest of the dwelling-houses within the Tower since the old Palace was pulled down. To those who have had the privilege of being taken over this house by its present occupier, General George Milman, the memory of its quaint old rooms, some panelled with wainscotting, and all made interesting by a collection of prints, and views, and portraits of places and people connected with the history of the fortress, will be a lasting and a pleasant one. No worthier guardian has held the honoured post of Lieutenant of the Tower, or taken a deeper interest in the venerable monument over which his Sovereign placed him, than the present occupant of the post.

The Lieutenant of the Tower ranks next to the Constable of the fortress. In the reign of Richard II. the Lieutenant received twenty pounds a year, and was entitled to the following perquisites. From every prisoner committed to the Tower having property of a hundred marks a year he received, “for the sute of his yrons” forty shillings, and from poorer or richer prisoners in proportion. From every galley coming up the river he received a “roundlett of wine” and of “daynties a certain quantity.” In the time of Elizabeth the Lieutenant received two hundred marks a year; in the eighteenth century this sum was increased to seven hundred pounds a year, besides valuable perquisites. The office of Constable of the Tower ranks high amongst military honours. Its roll of names include, since the death of the Iron Duke in 1852, those of Lord Combermere, Sir John Burgoyne, Sir Fenwick Williams, Lord Napier of Magdala, and Sir Daniel Lysons.

With its many gables, the old flagged court before it, bordered by sycamores, the King’s House forms a pleasing contrast to the blackened walls and towers which are round about it. The building looks a place of ancient peace, and seems rather to be a portion of some venerable college than of a mediæval fortress. The Green, formerly divided into three portions, of which one was a garden, the second a parade ground, and the third (that nearest to St Peter’s Chapel) a burying-ground, is now a single space in which seats are placed for the weary sightseer. It is a pleasant place wherein to pass a few moments day-dreaming on the scene around, and its strange contrast between the past and the present. On the ground floor of the King’s House is kept that interesting relic of the Tower and its story, the processional axe. This is the famous weapon which was carried to and from State trials by the Gentleman Warder. The axe’s head is peculiar in form, 1 foot 8 inches high by 10 inches wide, and is fastened into a wooden handle 5 feet 4 inches long. The handle is ornamented by four rows of burnished brass nails running perpendicularly down the sides, giving the weapon a strong resemblance to the decorated boat-hooks used in Venice for holding the gondolas at the landing-stages.

In the photograph which, by the kindness of General Milman, I was permitted to have taken of the axe, the background is formed by the masonry of the Bloody Tower, which has the appearance of a grisly pile of human skulls, a not inappropriate circumstance. Although the processional axe was only used as an emblem of law and justice, it is closely connected with many a Tower tragedy. It is not known when this axe was first used in those solemn processions when it preceded the prisoner to and from trial, nor is its age certain. It was last used at the State trials of the Jacobite lords in the years 1746 and 1747. It is now kept in the study of the Lieutenant of the Tower, whence it is only removed on such State occasions as the installation of a new Constable.

On the first floor of the King’s House, overlooking the Thames, is the Council Room in which Guy Fawkes was examined before Cecil and the Council of State. It was on this occasion that Cecil wrote to James I. that Guy Fawkes “was no more dismayed than if he were taken for a poor robbery in the highway.” Fawkes was not, as is sometimes stated, tortured in this room, for torture was only applied in the dungeons below the White Tower, which fact should disprove the legend that the cries of the tortured conspirator are heard on stormy nights proceeding from the Council Chamber. But there is another legend connected with this part of the Tower, to the effect that the shadow of an axe is sometimes seen spreading its form on Tower Green, and appearing on the walls of the White Tower. Indeed, a likelier or a more proper place for ghostly visitations of all kinds than the Tower can hardly be found anywhere in the world, if it be true that ghosts “do walk.” For this reason it is disappointing that there are so few legends of apparitions to chronicle, and of these few the following have the best authentication. In Notes and Queries for September 1860, some letters appeared relating to Tower ghosts, and amongst them Mr E. Le Swifte (the same individual, I believe, who so courageously saved the Regalia during the great fire in the Tower in 1841, when the Armoury was destroyed) writes an account of a ghostly visitant which appeared to his wife and himself in the Martin Tower, where the Regalia, of which he had charge, were then placed. Swifte was appointed to the post of Keeper of the Crown Jewels in 1814, which he held until 1852, living with his family in the Martin Tower. One evening in the month of October 1817, whilst at supper, his little son and his wife’s sister were startled at seeing an apparition, “like a glass tube” of the thickness of Mrs Swifte’s arm, which hovered between the ceiling and the supper table. It seemed to contain, adds Swifte, “a clear fluid.” This spectral shape appeared for a few moments, causing the family the greatest alarm. Shortly afterwards, one of the sentinels outside the Martin Tower saw a “huge bear issuing from underneath the door of the Tower.” The man fell down in a swoon and was taken to the guard-house room. The poor fellow actually died of the fright.

The Council Chamber in the Governor’s House.