Milton's England

by Lucia True Ames Mead

THE TOWER.—TOWER HILL

xcept Westminster Abbey, no spot in England is so connected with every phase of England’s history as is the Tower of London. A map, printed in the generation before Milton, shows us the ancient moat full of water, and the space within its walls that now is gravelled then covered with greensward. North of St. Peter’s little church, where lay the bones of Anne Boleyn, stretched a row of narrow gabled houses like those seen in the neighbouring London streets. The White Tower, built by William the Conqueror, stands to-day practically as it stood in William’s time and Milton’s. Built of durable flint stones, it has withstood time’s decay as few other buildings erected far more recently have done, when they were of the soft, disintegrating quality of stone so often used in London. True, Christopher Wren faced the windows with stone in the Italian style, and somewhat modernised the exterior, but the interior remains practically as it was built over eight hundred years ago.

As there is no need of duplicating here the main facts about its history, which are to be found in every guide-book, let us confine ourselves to the chief literary and historical associations with it, that must have appealed to the boy and man, John Milton.

One can imagine few things more exciting and stimulating to the mind of an observant boy in 1620 than a visit to the Tower. In the days when circuses were unknown, and menageries of strange beasts were a rare sight, the view of such behind the grated walls of Lion’s Tower must have delighted any London lad. The wild beasts were not very numerous,—only a few lions and leopards and “cat lions,”—but no doubt they were as satisfactory as the modern “Zoo” to eyes that were unsatiated with such novelties. Whether small boys were allowed for sixpence to see the rich display of state jewels is not quite clear, yet it is certain that they were shown to strangers.

Says that indefatigable antiquarian, Stow, whose old age almost touched the babyhood of Milton: “This Tower is a citadel to defend or command the city; a royal palace for assemblies or treaties; a prison of state for the most dangerous offenders; the only place of coinage for all England at the time; the armory for warlike provisions; the treasury of the ornaments and jewels of the Crown; and general conserver of the records of the king’s courts of justice at Westminster.”

In Milton’s boyhood, the royal palace in the southeast corner of the inclosure was standing. But in his manhood, his staunch friend, Oliver, having got possession, it was pulled down. The little Norman chapel of St. John, within the Tower, is one of the best bits of Norman work now extant in England. Its triforium, which extends over the aisles and semicircular east end, probably was used in ancient days to permit the queen and her ladies to attend the celebration of the mass, unseen by the congregation below. The chapel was dismantled before Milton’s time. But doubtless as he entered it he could picture in it, more vividly than we in our later age, that scene when from sunset until sunrise forty-six noblemen and gentlemen knelt and watched their armour, before King Henry IV., on the next day, bestowed upon them the newly created Order of the Bath.

In this chapel, while he was kneeling in prayer, the lieutenant of the Tower received an order to murder the young Edward V. and his brother, and refused to obey it. Here Queen Mary attended mass for her brother, Edward VI.

In the present armory, once the council chamber, King Richard II. was released from prison, and sceptre in hand and the crown on his head, abdicated in favour of Henry IV. Shakespeare thus depicts the scene, and puts the following words into the mouth of the mournful king:

“I give this heavy weight from off my head,
And this unwieldy sceptre from my hand,
The pride of kingly sway from out my heart;
With mine own tears I wash away my balm,
With mine own hands I give away my crown,
With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,
With mine own breath release all duteous oaths,
My manors, rents, revenues I forego;
My acts, decrees, and statutes I deny.
God pardon all oaths that are broke to me,
God keep all oaths unbroke are made to thee.
Make me that nothing have with nothing grieved,
And thou with all pleased that hath all achieved!
Long may’st thou live in Richard’s seat to sit,
And soon lie Richard in an earthen pit!
God save King Henry, unkinged Richard says,
And send him many years of sunshine days!”