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

by Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower

Samuel Pepys has given a description of how Lambert escaped from his prison in the Tower, “The manner of the escape of John Lambert out of the Tower, as related by Rugge:—That about eight of the clock at night he escaped by a rope tied fast to his window, by which he slid down, and in each hand he had a handkerchief; and six men were ready to receive him, who had a barge to hasten him away. She who made the bed, being privy to his escape, that night, to blind the warder when he came to lock the chamber door, went to bed, and possessed Colonel Lambert’s place and put on his night-cap. So, when the said warder came to lock the door according to his usual manner, he found the curtains drawn, and conceiving it to be Colonel Lambert, he said, ‘Good-night, my lord.’ To which a seeming voice replied, and prevented all further jealousies. The next morning, on coming to unlock the door, and espying her face, he cried out, ‘In the name of God, Joan, what makes you here? Where is my Lord Lambert?’ She said, ‘He is gone; but I cannot tell whither.’ Whereupon he caused her to rise and carried her before the officer in the Tower, and (she) was committed to custody. Some said that a lady knit for him a garter of silk, by which he was conveyed down, and that she received £100 for her pains.”

Lambert was, however, retaken by Colonel Ingoldsby in Warwickshire, together with some other Roundhead officers who had joined him, and he was again placed in the Tower. At the Restoration he was banished to Guernsey, where he remained a prisoner until his death in 1683. Lambert had a high military reputation amongst the Roundheads, and had contributed greatly to the victory at Naseby, as well as defeating the Royalists both in Scotland and in the Midlands: his fame was such that Cromwell was supposed to have been somewhat jealous of his successes.

Vaulting in the Cradle Tower

CHAPTER XIV

CHARLES II.

Immediately after the return of Charles II. in the month of May 1660, the trials and executions of the late King’s judges began. The first of the regicides to be sent to the Tower was Major-General Thomas Harrison, who was committed for high treason on 19th May, and on the 11th of the following October, drawn on a hurdle to Charing Cross, and there hanged and quartered. Harrison, who was the son of a Nantwich butcher, and had been bred for the law, had been useful to the Protector in keeping down the Presbyterian faction. He died stoutly asserting the righteousness of the cause for which he suffered. The same fate befell Gregory Clement and Colonel John James, both members of the High Court of Justice which had condemned Charles I. Clement had succeeded in hiding himself in a house near Gray’s Inn, but was discovered and brought before the Commissioners of the Militia, to whom, however, he was not known by sight. He would probably have escaped, when it chanced that a blind man came into the room as Clement was quitting it, and recognised him by his voice, upon which Clement was arrested and sent to the Tower (Ludlow’s “Memoirs”). Among the other regicides confined within the Tower during that summer were Colonel Bamfield, Colonel Hunks, Colonel Phair, Francis Corker, Captain Hewlet, and John Cook, the last of whom had conducted the prosecution against the King. Hewlet was accused of having been one of the masked executioners at Whitehall, but this was never proved.

James Harrington, the author of the political romance called “The Commonwealth of Oceana,” was imprisoned in the Tower early in this reign. He became insane, and was transferred from prison to prison. His book, by which he was made famous, laid down a plea for a lasting republic, the government of which was to be maintained by rotation. This unhappy author died in 1677, and was laid near Sir Walter Raleigh in St Margaret’s, Westminster.

In the same summer of Charles’s restoration, the Marquis of Argyll, who was shortly afterwards beheaded at Edinburgh, was a prisoner in the Tower charged with high treason, and with having sided with Cromwell; with him was the Marquis of Antrim. The Laird of Swinton was another prisoner of this year, being imprisoned upon various charges, one of which was that he intended to kill the King whilst pretending to be touched by Charles for “the evil”—i.e. scrofula; and also for deserting the army at the Battle of Dunbar.

The next illustrious name that one comes to in the portentous annals of the Tower is that of Sir Harry Vane, whose death was a monstrous injustice, Charles confessing as much when he himself said of Vane that “he was too dangerous a man to let live, if we can honestly put him out of the way.” Although Vane had much to do in bringing Strafford to his death, he was not in any way concerned with the execution of Charles I., and had, on the contrary, always been opposed to that great mistake. However, in the month of July 1660, he was sent to the Tower, whence he was taken to be imprisoned in the Scilly Isles, then brought back to the Tower in March 1662, and beheaded on Tower Hill in that same year. At his trial he had pleaded Charles’s promise of a “merciful indemnity to all those not immediately concerned in his father’s death,” which should, at any rate, have saved Sir Harry from the scaffold. But Vane was too good a man for Charles to tolerate, and his execution was a judicial murder of the basest kind. Both Houses of Parliament had voted for an Act of Indemnity in Vane’s favour, but they were overruled by the King and his creatures. Pepys took the trouble to rise early on the morning of the 14th of June to see Vane’s execution. “Up by four o’clock in the morning and upon business in my office. Then we sat down to business, and about eleven o’clock, having a room got ready for us, we all went out to the Tower Hill; and there, over against the scaffold, made on purpose this day, saw Sir Harry Vane brought. A very great press of people. He made a long speech, many times interrupted by the Sheriffs and others there, and they would have taken his paper out of his hand, but he would not let it go. But they caused all the books of those that writ after him (reporters?) to be given to the Sheriffe, and the trumpets were brought under the scaffold that he might not be heard. Then he prayed, and so fitted himself, and received the blow; but the scaffold was so crowded that we could not see it done.” Sir Harry had been a thorn in Cromwell’s flesh, and the Protector’s exclamation, “The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!” is historical.