In this year (1643), Sir John Conyers was in command of the fortress, having received the charge from the Parliament in the hope that he would be gained over to that side. On being asked to take the command of the Parliamentary army, Conyers, however, declined, his refusal causing so much annoyance to the leaders of that party that he thought it more prudent to resign his charge of the Tower, being, as Clarendon puts it, too conscientious, “to keep His Majesty’s only fort which he could not apply to his services.” His place, as has already been said, was given to Sir Isaac Pennington, Lord Mayor of London.
In 1644, Sir John Hotham, and his son, Captain Hotham, who had been imprisoned in the Tower in the preceding summer on the charge of intending to surrender the town of Hull to the King, were both beheaded on Tower Hill. Hotham may be described as the Bazaine of the Parliament. The town of Hull was the greatest magazine of arms and ammunition in England. Charles had in vain summoned Hotham, who was the Governor for the Parliament, to surrender the town, and on his refusal had declared him a traitor. There is little doubt that both Hotham and his son were Royalists at heart, and both were convicted of having entered into a correspondence with the King’s party in order to come to terms for the surrender of the town and arsenal to the Royalist forces.
Another governor—Sir Alexander Carew, who held Plymouth for the Parliament—was beheaded in the same month as the Hothams for a like “intention.” Carew is said to have been decapitated with the same axe with which Strafford was killed, and it was reported that at the time of Strafford’s trial, Carew had said that sooner than not vote for the Earl’s death, he would be ready to be the next man to suffer on the same scaffold, and with the same axe: a wish which was literally fulfilled. (Dugdale’s “Short View of the Late Troubles.”)
By one of those strange vagaries of fortune which are the characteristic of the history of this period, and in which the Tower played its accustomed part of imprisonment, George Monk, the future Duke of Albemarle, and one of the makers of our history, was imprisoned in the Tower for three years after his capture by Fairfax at the siege of Nantwich. He was a colonel at the time, and only regained his freedom by consenting to take the command of the Parliamentary forces sent to Ireland (Ludlow’s Memoirs).
Two of Monk’s fellow-prisoners, Lord Macquire and Colonel MacMahon, who had both been fighting on the Royalist side in Ireland, made a desperate attempt to escape from the Tower in this same year (1644). They succeeded in sawing through their prison door and lowered themselves by a rope, which they had been enabled to find through directions written on a slip of paper that had been placed in a loaf of bread, sent to them by some of their friends. They got down into the moat, across which they swam, but were taken on the other side and hanged at Tyburn in February 1645, although Macquire pleaded that, as an Irish peer, he had the right of dying by the axe and not by the halter. For allowing the escape of these officers from their prison chamber the Lieutenant of the Tower was fined heavily.
That splendid cavalier, “Old Loyalty,” as he was proudly called, John Paulett, Marquis of Worcester, who had defended Baring House so long and so well, came a prisoner into the Tower in this same year, accompanied by Sir Robert Peake, who had aided him in the defence of his home, and who had also been taken prisoner after the storming of the place. They were followed by Sir John Strangways, who had been taken at the siege of Cardiff. In 1647 Sir John Maynard, Serjeant Glynn, the Recorder of London, and the Lord Mayor, Sir John Gayre, with some of his aldermen and sheriffs, were in the Tower, and amongst the Royalists who were brought to the fortress as Charles’s fate was closing over him, were the Earl of Cleveland, Judge Jenkins, Sir Lewis Davies, and Sir John Stowell.
At the time of the King’s death on the scaffold in front of the Banqueting House at Whitehall, many of his most devoted adherents were close prisoners in the Tower, among them being James, Duke of Hamilton, one of Charles’s closest friends, who had made a rash attempt to invade England in 1648, and, meeting Cromwell, was defeated and made prisoner at Uttoxeter. For fellows in misfortune the Duke had George Goring, Earl of Norwich, Lord Capel, and the Earl of Holland—taken after the surrender of Colchester Castle—and Sir John Owen. The imprisonment of captured Royalists by the Parliament was but too often the prelude to their execution, but before the Duke and Lord Holland were beheaded, much interest was made to save them—more particularly Lord Holland; but Cromwell was obdurate, and they were both put to death in New Palace Yard. Lord Capel had succeeded in getting out of his prison. There is an interesting account of his escape and recapture given by Lord Clarendon in his “History,” and, although lengthy, may be quoted here as throwing an interesting light upon those times of revolution. “The Lord Capel, shortly after he was brought prisoner to the Tower from Windsor Castle, had, by a wonderful adventure, having a cord and all things necessary conveyed to him, let himself down out of the window of his chamber in the night, over the wall of the Tower, and had been directed through what part of the ditch he might be best able to wade. Whether he found the right place, or whether there was no safer place, he found the water and the mud so deep, that if he had not been by the head taller than other men, he must have perished, since the water came up to his chin. The way was so long to the other side, and the fatigue of drawing himself out of so much mud so intolerable, that his spirits were near spent, and he was once ready to call out for help, as thinking it better to be carried back to the prison, than to be found in such a place, from whence he could not extricate himself, and where he was ready to expire. But it pleased God that he got at last to the other side, where his friends expected him, and carried him to a chamber in the Temple, where he remained two or three nights secure from any discovery, notwithstanding the diligence that could not be used to recover a man they designed to use no better. After two or three days a friend whom he trusted much, and who had deserved to be trusted, conceiving he might be more secure in a place to which there was less resort, and where there were so many harboured who were every day sought after, had provided a lodging for him in a private house in Lambeth Marsh; and calling upon him in an evening when it was dark, to go thither, they chose rather to take a boat they found ready at the Temple Stairs, than to trust one of that people with their secret, and it was so late that there was only one boat left there. In that the Lord Capel (as well disguised as he thought necessary) and his friend put themselves, and bid the waterman to row them to Lambeth. Whether, in their passage thither, the other gentleman called him ‘my lord,’ as was confidently repeated, or whether the waterman had any jealousy by observing what he thought was a disguise, when they were landed, the wicked waterman undiscerned followed them, till he saw into what house they went; and then went to an officer and demanded: ‘What he would give him to bring him to the place where Lord Capel lay?’ And the officer promising to give him ten pounds, he led him presently to the house, where that excellent person was seized upon, and the next day carried to the Tower.”
Lord Capel was after this sentenced to be hanged, but this was commuted to his being beheaded, the sentence being carried out in front of Westminster Hall on the 9th March 1649. Clarendon writes of him as being, “the noblest champion his party possessed; a man in whom the malice of his enemies could discover very few faults, and whom his friends could not wish better accomplished.” Arthur Capel had been created Baron Capel of Hadham in Hertfordshire by Charles I., and his son, Arthur, was created Earl of Essex by Charles II., coming, as we shall see, to a tragic end in the Tower in that monarch’s reign.
Sir John Owen, that gallant Welsh knight, who had fought long and valiantly for the Royal cause, was taken prisoner at the engagement near Llandegas, and was imprisoned with the Duke of Hamilton and his fellow-Cavaliers at Windsor Castle before going to the Tower. At his trial Owen told his judges “that he was a plain gentleman of Wales, who had been taught to obey the King; that he had served him honestly during the war, and finding that many honest men endeavoured to raise forces whereby he might get out of prison, he did the like.” When he was condemned to be beheaded, he made his judges a low bow and said: “It was a great honour to a poor gentleman of Wales to lose his head with such noble lords; for, by God,” he added, “he was afraid they would have hanged him.” But the gallant old Cavalier did not lose his head, for Ireton stood up in the House and said that although the noble lords who had been condemned to death had many advocates, plain Sir John Owen had not one to speak for him. Ireton interceded so well, that Sir John was pardoned, and after a few months’ imprisonment in the Tower, was released. He went back to his beloved country, where he died in 1666, and rests in the church of Penmorven, in his native county of Carnarvonshire.
The execution of the other Cavaliers caused much indignation, and, as was the fashion of the times, some pamphlets were written on the subject against those in power, Colonel John Lilburne being the most prominent of the pamphleteers. He, with three other writers, Walwayn, Prince, and Overton, were sent to the Tower by order of the Parliament for writing against its authority. Lilburne was banished the country, the others were liberated. The Colonel, who was known as “Freeborn John,” was a born pamphleteer, and no amount of prisons or pillories stopped his output of what was certainly seditious matter. There is a strong resemblance between “Freeborn John” and the French pamphleteer, Rochefort, of our own time, for whatever Government was in power he opposed it by his writings. In later life he became a Quaker, because he was determined to enjoy what he considered “Christian Liberty.”