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

by Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower

The Parliament met with considerable opposition from the Lord Mayor of the city. In 1648 Lord Mayor Sir Abraham Reynardson was kept prisoner in the Tower for two months, because he refused to publish in the city the Ordinance of the House of Commons, abolishing the title of King. Sir Abraham was one of the city worthies. He had been Master of the Merchant Taylors Company in 1640–41, and had filled the highest civic post in the city for six months prior to his imprisonment, and had valiantly resisted the “turbulent disorders,” and the tyranny of the Rump Parliament, which had tried in vain to force the Corporation of London to follow its commands. Sir Abraham was not only imprisoned, but was also fined £2000, and degraded from the office of Lord Mayor. Reynardson’s generosity was great, and he is reported to have spent £20,000 whilst he was Lord Mayor, not inclusive of the heavy fine. But his loyalty to the Crown was unshaken, and he most willingly suffered both loss of office and fortune in the Royalist cause. His portrait, recently acquired by the Company of Merchant Taylors, is one of the most interesting features of their splendid hall. Sir Abraham was re-elected to the Lord Mayoralty on the return of Charles II. (see C. M. Clode’s “Memoirs of Sir A. Reynardson”). The list of Royalist prisoners gained additions almost every month. At this time an agent of the young King’s, named Penruddock, was in the Tower with Sir John Gell, Colonel Eusebius Andrews, and Captains Benson and Ashley. Colonel Andrews, an old Royalist, was beheaded on Tower Hill; Gell, who was a Parliamentary General, and who left some interesting memoirs of the Civil War, was released after an imprisonment of two years. Benson was hanged at Tyburn, and Ashley was liberated. All these were suspected of plotting against the Parliament, and to them may be added Lords Beauchamp, Bellasis, and Chandos, committed to the Tower by the Council of State, “upon the suspicion of designing new troubles.” Lord Howard of Escrick and a minister named Love were in the Tower at the same period—the former, who was a member of Parliament, being imprisoned on a charge of bribery whilst contesting the city of Carlisle; he was dismissed the House and fined £10,000. The minister, Christopher Love, had been a preacher at St Anne’s, Aldersgate, and St Lawrence’s, Jewry, and was the author of many theological works. After the death of Charles the First he became as violent a Royalist as he had been a republican, and was found to be in correspondence with Charles the Second. His pardon was eagerly begged by many London parishes, and by no less than fifty-four of the clergy, but all they could get was a respite for a month, and Love was beheaded in July 1651. His execution caused much stir, as is proved by the fact that a Dutch allegorical engraving was made of the scene, an engraving which, after those of the executions of Strafford and Laud, is the earliest representation of an execution on Tower Hill in existence. Lord Clarendon writes that “when Love was on the scaffold he appeared with a marvellous undauntedness.” In the same year, after the Battle of Worcester, the Tower was filled with the captured Royalists from that disastrous fight. With these came the Earls of Lauderdale, Kelly, and Rothes, General Massey and General Middleton, the earls being soon removed to Windsor Castle, where they remained prisoners until the Restoration. The two generals were enabled to escape from the Tower, and joined Charles in Paris, “to the grief and vexation of the very soul of Cromwell,” writes Clarendon. These constant escapes from the Tower during the power of the Parliament and the Commonwealth would seem to point to great laxity in its protection, or to sympathy on the part of its guardians with the prisoners.

In the September of the following year the famous Edward Somerset, Marquis of Worcester, and Earl of Glamorgan, was a prisoner of the Commonwealth in the Tower. It was he who, with much show of probability, is supposed to have come within reasonable distance of inventing the steam-engine. He published in 1665 a book with a long title, which may be abbreviated into “A Century of Invention,” which Horace Walpole unkindly called “an amazing piece of folly.” Worcester died in 1667, and the model of his steam-engine is supposed to have been buried with him.

During the closing years of the Protectorate most of the State prisoners in the Tower were those implicated in schemes for assassinating Cromwell. One of these schemes, in 1654, brought Lord Oxford, Sir Richard Willis, Sir Gilbert Gerrard, and his brother, John Gerrard, with other Cavaliers, to the fortress, charged with belonging to a set of conspirators who aimed at taking the Protector’s life. It was proved that they had met at a tavern where it was proposed to kill Cromwell, seize the Tower, and proclaim Prince Charles king. One of the conspirators, named Fox, turned what would now be called king’s evidence, with the result that two of his fellow-conspirators were executed—Vowel, who was hanged at Charing Cross, and John Gerrard, who was beheaded on Tower Hill.

In the following year Cromwell made a raid among the officers of the Cavalier party, many of whom were seized and cashiered, Major-General Overton being sent to the Tower. Two other generals came there to bear him company in the same year, Generals Penn and Venables. They had made a disastrously unsuccessful expedition to the West Indies, which so exasperated Cromwell that on their return he ordered both of them to be imprisoned. A year later the Lieutenant of the Tower was ordered to release “one that goes by the name of Lucy Barlow, who for some time hath been a prisoner in the Tower of London. She passeth under the character of Charles Stuart’s wife; and hath a young son whom she openly declareth to be his; and it is generally believed; the boy being very like him; and both the mother and child provided for by him” (“Mercuris Politicus,” 1656). This Lucy Barlow was better known later on as Lucy Walters, and her son, who was then, and for some time to come, known by the name of James Crofts, became Duke of Monmouth.

Clarendon describes at some length the strange story of the death in the Tower, in 1657, of Miles Syndercombe, once an intimate friend of Cromwell’s, but who for some unknown reason became involved in one of the many plots for assassinating the Protector. Syndercombe was sentenced to death, and it being expected that an attempt at his rescue might take place, he was most carefully guarded in his prison. On the morning of the day fixed for the execution, however, Syndercombe was found dead in his bed, but nevertheless the corpse was dragged at a horse’s tail to the place of execution, a stake being driven through it after it was buried: Cromwell’s enemies accused him of having caused his former friend to be poisoned.

Cromwell, who, with all his natural courage lived in constant terror of assassination, in 1658 ordered all Royalists to live twenty miles away from London, and sent Colonel Russell, Sir William Compton, and Sir William Clayton, together with Henry Mordaunt, Lord Peterborough’s brother, to the Tower. Mordaunt had been in the young King’s employment, and, with a Dr Hewet, was put upon his trial for conspiracy. Mordaunt was acquitted, but Hewet was found guilty, and beheaded on Tower Hill. Another eminent Royalist, Sir Henry Slingsby, a great Yorkshire magnate who had fought for Charles, was also beheaded in the same year.

During the short interval that elapsed between the death of Cromwell in September 1658 and the return of Charles II. in May 1660, the Tower contained many important prisoners. Among them were Lady Mary Howard, the daughter of the Earl of Berkshire, and another lady, a Mrs Sumner, both of whom appear to have been mixed up in Mordaunt’s conspiracy against Cromwell, as well as a Mr Ernestus Byron and a Mr Harlow for the same cause. Other Royalists then in the fortress were Lord Falkland, Lord Delaware, the Earl of Chesterfield, Lords Falconbridge, Bellasis, Charles Howard, and Castleton, who had all taken part in a Royalist rising in Cheshire under the leadership of Sir George Booth. None of these, however, suffered more than a short imprisonment.

While the faction of the Parliament was making a desperate stand against the military party in the government of the country, an attempt was made by the former to seize the Tower. “The Lieutenant, Colonel Fitz, had consented that Colonel Okey, with 300 men, should be dispersed in the vicinity prepared for the enterprise, promising that on a certain day he would cause the gates to be opened at an early hour for the passage of the Colonel’s carriage, at which time Colonel Okey with his men, embracing the opportunity, might seize the guards and make themselves masters of the place. This plot, however, was discovered, and on the night before its intended execution Colonel Desborough being despatched from the Army, with a body of horse, changed the guards, seized the Lieutenant, and placed a fresh garrison in the Tower under the command of Colonel Miller” (Ludlow’s “Memoirs”).

Shortly after this episode, and during a disturbance amongst the soldiers there, Lenthal, the Speaker of the House of Commons, proceeded to the Tower, and removing the Lieutenant, who had been appointed by the Committee of Safety, conferred the government of the fortress upon Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper. But when General Monk declared for the King, that officer seized the fortress in the name of his royal master, released many of the prisoners, and placed in it a garrison commanded by Major Nicholson.

It was now the turn of the Royalists, and in the month of March 1660, Sir Arthur Hazelrigge and Colonel John Lambert were placed in the Tower because they had opposed Monk’s design for the restoration of the King, an event which showed the other members of the Committee in which direction the wind was blowing, and they made an attempt to secure the Tower by victualling the fortress, with the intention of standing a siege if it were necessary. Ludlow proposed that a force of two thousand men should join Colonel Morley’s regiment in the Tower, that the building itself should be stored with provisions for six months, and that two thousand sailors should also be placed within its walls as an additional security for its defence. This scheme, however, came to nothing.