To mention the Warders of the Tower necessitates something more than a passing allusion to that most worthy body of veterans, since the Warders of the Tower of London belong to the most interesting of the old fortress’s institutions. Yeomen-Warders is the proper designation of the forty or so old soldiers who guard the Tower, who show and describe its different parts to visitors, and whose civility and patience are matters for the highest encomium. Originally these guardians were employed by the Lieutenant of the Tower to guard the prisoners committed to the State prison under his charge. But in the reign of Edward VI. the Duke of Somerset, after his liberation from the Tower, caused those warders who had had charge of his person during his imprisonment to be appointed, as a reward for their attention, extra Yeomen of the Guard. And from that period dates, with some modifications, the costume still worn by the Tower Yeomen. The Warders of the Tower are all picked men, and have all been appointed to their posts for good service in the Army. In the old days when the State trials were held at Westminster Hall the “Gentleman-Gaoler”—as that Warder was named whose affair it was to escort and guard the State prisoner to and from his trial, and who carried the processional axe (still kept in the Queen’s House) before the prisoner with the edge turned away from him on the journey to Westminster, and almost always with its edge towards him as he returned, as a sign that he was condemned to die—was the principal of the Tower Warders. The office is still maintained, inasmuch as he takes the front place on State occasions of ceremony, when the old axe is taken from its honoured repose in the Lieutenant’s study in the Queen’s House.
The Warders of the Tower must not, however, be confounded with the Yeomen of the Guard, the latter of whom are more usually known by the name of Beefeaters, and who, in their picturesque and striking uniform, make so effective a display on State occasions, such as the Levées at St James’s Palace, and State balls and concerts at Buckingham Palace. Whether the designation “Beefeater” originated from a supposed, but non-existent French word “buffetier” or not is a matter of no importance; but what is interesting is the fact that this body of men, with the exception of the Pope’s Swiss bodyguard, are the only set of attendants belonging to a European Court who retain a costume similar to that worn by their predecessors over three centuries ago.
Passing under the Byward Tower the Inner Ward is reached, into which entrance was gained from the river by Traitor’s Gate, the steps to that famous portal running below St Thomas’s Tower. Formerly cross walls, guarded with strong gates, defended the Inner Ward, but these have long since disappeared, together with the grated walls which shut in the passage across the Ward from Traitor’s Gate to the Bloody Tower.
As recently as the year 1867 this portion of the Inner Ward was covered with storehouses, engine-rooms and the lodgings of the warders, and most of these buildings, according to Lord de Ros, were in a state of total dilapidation, “the result of many years of neglect on the part of the former Board of Ordnance.” Since that time a great improvement has been made here, as well as in other parts of the fortress: of these improvements a list is given in the Appendix.
Yeoman Porter of the Tower.
Bounded by the Bloody and St Thomas’s Towers ran a narrow street called Mint Street, from the adjoining building occupied by the offices of the Mint, which consisted of a row of mean houses that hid and defaced the fine old Ballium wall of the fortress. Regarding this Ballium wall, Lord de Ros, in his account of the Tower, explains the word “Ballium” as “a military term,” but wishing for some further knowledge as to the meaning of the word, I referred to my learned friend Mr W. Peregrine Propert of St David’s, who informed me that it was probably derived from the French term “bailler,” meaning “to deliver possession, to lease, to hold, keep, contain.” The Latin form Ballium would accordingly mean something that is held, contained, or enclosed. Castles in ancient times were usually enclosed by several circuits of walls, fences, or ramparts. Sometimes there was a ditch or moat built outside these defences, as was the case in the Tower of London. The space between these walls was called the “Ballium.” On the site of the prison of Newgate stood a Roman fortress which was no doubt surrounded by ramparts, and the space so defended has retained its old appellation Ballium in the present term Old Bailey. “It is quite natural,” adds Mr Propert, “to suppose that if one wall disappeared the remaining wall would be called the ballium popularly: in the same manner a wall in the Tower of London might be called a Ballium, though not correctly according to its etymology.”
The Ballium wall at its highest is some forty feet high, and dates probably as far back as the Conquest; it is, therefore, one of the most ancient parts of the Tower, and coeval with the White Tower. It commences at the Main Gate of the outer rampart at the Bell Tower, and forms the angle of the Queen’s or Governor’s House, whence it runs for some fifty yards to the north-west until it joins the Beauchamp Tower: this tower forms a bastion near the centre of the Ballium wall. To the right the restored Tower of St Thomas overlaps the Traitor’s Gate. This tower dates back to the reign of Henry VIII., and was entirely rebuilt in 1866 by Salvin, only a portion of the interior retaining the walls of the original building.
Among a crowd of dingy wine-shops, offices, storehouses, and buildings which, according to good authority, were mostly “in a condition of ruin and dilapidation,” stood the old Mint, of which some account must here be given:
In the twenty-first annual account of the Deputy Master of the Mint for the year 1890 is the following account of the Mint when it was still within the Tower walls:—