Hatton, however, describes Tower Hill in the reign of Queen Anne as “a spacious place extending round the west and north parts of the Tower, where there are many good new buildings, mostly inhabited by gentry and merchants.”
The Sheriffs of London and Middlesex were responsible for State prisoners so long as they were within the City and county boundaries, and when such prisoners were taken through the streets of London from the Tower, the Sheriffs received them from the Lieutenant of the Tower at the entrance to the City, and gave a receipt for their persons.
The City officials, too, were responsible for the scaffold on Tower Hill, but in the reign of Edward IV. this scaffold was erected at the charge of the King’s officers. Constant quarrels and disputes, however, arose on the subject of the boundaries between the City and the Lieutenant of the Tower, until the charge of Tower Hill was finally vested in the City. In the view of the Tower and its surroundings, to which I have so often referred, made by Haiward and Gascoyne in 1597, the scaffold is shown standing some distance to the north of Tower Street: its site is now a pleasant garden, the place of execution being recorded by an inscription on a tablet placed on the grass plot within the railings.
Tower Hill is almost entirely associated with the shedding of blood, with the masked executioner, his block and axe, and has little historical interest besides, save that Lady Raleigh lodged in a house on the Hill with the child born to her in the Tower, after James I. refused to allow her to share her husband’s imprisonment. William Penn, the Quaker, and founder of Pennsylvania—which he mortgaged for £6600 in his old age—was born on Tower Hill in 1644; Otway the poet died at the Bull public-house, it is supposed of starvation; and it was at a cutler’s shop on Tower Hill that Felton bought the knife with which he mortally stabbed George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, at Portsmouth.
Stained Glass in the Tower
Of all the richly coloured windows placed in the chapel of St John in the White Tower by Henry III. and the brilliant glass in the church of St Peter ad Vincula, very little now remains, and the only coloured glass to be found in the Tower at the present day, as it was originally placed, is in the window of a little room used as the library for the Tower warders close to the Byward Tower—this room in one respect resembles the most famous library in the world, that of the Vatican, from the fact that no books are visible, they being all put away in cupboards—and this consists only of two royal badges in coloured glass. These royal arms appear to be of the time of James I., and although they have been much restored, that containing the three feathers of the Prince of Wales retains much of its old glaze and is a good example of emblazoned glass of the period. It may possibly have been intended for the cognisance of Prince Henry, or Charles I., when Prince of Wales.
A quantity of stained glass panels were found in the crypt of St John’s Chapel, in which some interesting and valuable fragments, mostly incomplete in themselves, of heraldic glass of the sixteenth century and of small pictorial subjects, were mixed with modern and valueless glass of subordinate design. The whole was carefully examined by Messrs John Hardman, who separated the ancient from the modern glass, and using delicate leads to repair the numerous fractures of the former, and setting the various fragments in lozenges of plain glass, filled the right windows of the chapel with the following subjects:—
The first window in the south front, entering from the west, a coat of arms, with the words “Honi soit qui mal y pense” around it on the upper portion; a sepia painting in the centre, representing the Deity and two angels appearing to a priest, with flames rising from an altar. In the lower portion is another sepia painting with the Deity depicted with outstretched arms, one hand on the sun, the other on the moon, and the earth rolling in clouds at the feet. This is generally supposed to be emblematical of the Creation, but has been suggested as representative of the Saviour as the Light of the World.
The second window has a head and bust near the top, with a peculiar cap and crown. The centre is a sepia representing the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and the guardian angel. At the bottom there is another sepia, depicting a village upon a hill, probably a distant view of Harrow.
The third window has at the top a figure of Charles I. in sepia; in the centre a knight in armour, skirmishing, and at the bottom what appears to be a holly-bush with the letters H. R.