Among other prisoners there at this time was Thomas, Lord Buller of Moor Park, incarcerated for having challenged the Duke of Buckingham to a duel, and also the Marquis of Dorchester, for “quarrelling with and using ill language to that duke”; the latter was likewise in the Tower, and not for the first time. On this occasion Buckingham was charged with treasonable correspondence and with stirring up a mutiny in the Army. Few persons of the time were so frequently made acquainted with the prison chambers of the Tower as this roystering ne’er-do-well, “that life of pleasure, and that soul of whim,” George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who was, in all, five times confined in the Tower, his first visit having been paid during the Protectorate because he had married Fairfax’s daughter, an event that greatly enraged Cromwell. In 1666 he was imprisoned for insulting Lord Ossory, the son of the Duke of Ormond, in the House of Lords. But he was never a prisoner for long, the last occasion being when, together with Shaftesbury, Wharton, and Salisbury, he opposed the “Courtiers’ Parliament.” All four were sent to the Tower, but Buckingham, after making a humble apology, was released. On leaving the Tower he passed under Shaftesbury’s windows; the latter had refused to submit. “What,” said Shaftesbury to Buckingham, “are you leaving us?” “Why, yes,” answered Buckingham, “such giddy fellows as I am can never stay long in one place.”
Constantly in trouble, Buckingham was so boon a companion of the King’s that Charles could not long let him remain out of his sight, whatever the follies of which the Duke might have been guilty. Another of these brilliant but dissipated friends and courtiers of Charles II. who was sent to the Tower, was the infamously famous John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. He was there in 1669 for having abducted Elizabeth Mallet, “la triste héritière,” as Grammont calls her. Ultimately Rochester married the lady, and she made a most devoted wife to a most worthless and unfaithful husband.
Charles had been greatly irritated by the preference of the beautiful Frances Stuart, “la Belle Stewart” of Grammont, for the Duke of Richmond, and his rival had to pass three weeks in the Tower in consequence of the Royal jealousy. The Duke, however, had his way, and married the fair Frances after eloping with her. Another of Charles’s courtiers was placed in the fortress in 1665, Lord Morley, for having killed a Mr Hastings. Morley was a noted duellist, and also what was afterwards termed a “Mohawk,” and aided by one, Bromwich, had murdered his victim in a street brawl.
Pepys, we have noted, was often in and about the Tower during these years, but the most interesting entry in his diary relating to the fortress, belongs to the year 1662. Under the date of the 20th October he writes: “To my Lord Sandwich, who was in his chamber all alone, and did inform me that an old acquaintance hath discovered to him £7000 hid in the Tower, of which he was to have two for the discovery, my lord two, and the King the other three, when it is found; and the King’s warrant to search, runs for me and one Mr Lee. So we went, and the guard at the Tower Gate making me leave my sword, I was forced to stay so long at the alehouse close by, till my boy run home for my cloak. Then walked to Minchen Lane, and got from Sir H. Bennet the King’s warrant for the paying of £2000 to my lord and other two of the discoverers. After dinner we broke the matter to the Lord Mayor, who did not, and durst not, appear the least averse to it. So Lee and I and Mr Wade were joined by Evett, the guide, W. Giffin, and a porter with pickaxes. Coming to the Tower, our guide demanded a candle, and down into the cellars he goes. He went into several little cellars and then out-of-doors to view, but none did answer so well to the marks as one arched vault, where after much talk, to digging we went, till about eight o’clock at night, but could find nothing, yet the guides were not discouraged. Locking the door, we left for the night, and up to the Deputy Governor, and he do undertake to keep the key, that none shall go down without his privity. November 1st. To the Tower to make one trial more, where we staid several hours, and dug a great deal under the arches, but we missed of all and so we went away the second time like fools. To the Dolphin Tower. Met Wade and Evett, who do say that they had from Barkstead’s own mouth.” Pepys and his fellow treasure-hunters then paused in their operations, but on the 17th December we read in this Diary, “This morning were Lee, Wade, and Evett, intending to have gone upon our new design upon the Tower, but it raining, and the work being done in the open garden, we put it off to Friday next.” And this is the last we hear of the Tower treasure, and for all that we know that £7000 is still under some vault in the old building, hidden in the “butter firkins” in which it was supposed to have been placed.
Castrum Royale Londinense, vulgo the Tower.
The Tower in the time of Charles II.
(From an etching by Hollar.)
Three years after the Great Fire, Pepys gives an account of a visit he paid to his friend Sir William Coventry on the 11th of March 1669, when he went to see him in what was then called “My Lord of Northumberland’s Walk,” a place not now to be identified, which had at its end an iron shield with the Earl’s arms engraved upon it and holes in which to place a peg for every turn made by the pedestrian during his walk: this must have been the prison exercise of the so-called “Wizard Earl,” Raleigh’s friend.
Pepys visited his friend Sir William Coventry very frequently when the latter was imprisoned in the Tower. Sir William had, through the medium of Henry Savile, challenged the Duke of Buckingham to a duel in March 1669, and three days after the challenge Savile was committed to the Gate House Prison, and Coventry to the Tower.
Savile was a gentleman of the Duke of York’s, who, being indignant at the slight put upon him by being sent to the Gate House, asked if he might not be sent to the Tower, and his wish was granted. Pepys was unremitting in his attentions to his old friend Coventry, although by constantly seeing him he was placing himself in the black books of Charles and the Duke of York. We find him calling, on March 4th, upon Coventry in his prison in the Brick Tower when he was in charge of a son of “Major Bayly’s, one of the officers of the Ordnance,” again on the following day he visits him and finds Coventry, “with abundance of company with him.” The visits were continued on the following days until the 16th of the same month, after which Coventry was liberated. The stir his imprisonment had made, and the number of visitors who called upon him—in one day some sixty coaches stood waiting outside the Tower Gates for those who called on Sir William—had much annoyed the King, the Duke of York, and Buckingham. Sir William Coventry, of whom Bishop Burnet writes that he was “a man of great notions and eminent virtue; the best speaker in the House of Commons, and capable of bearing the chief ministry, as it was once thought he was very near it, and deserved it more than all the rest did,” after this quarrel with Buckingham and his imprisonment in the Tower retired from public affairs, going to Minster Lovel in Oxfordshire, and dying at the age of sixty, in 1686. He had been Secretary of the Admiralty, and twice member for Yarmouth, and in 1667 had been one of the Commission of the Treasury.