We know of no historical incident of any interest connected with the Middle Tower; but in the Bell Tower adjoining, Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, is said to have been imprisoned. How much this venerable bishop must have suffered before he wrote as follows to Cromwell we know not: “I beseech you to be good, master, in my necessity; for I have neither shirt nor yet other clothes that are necessary for me to wear, but that be ragged and rent too shamefully. Notwithstanding, I might easily suffer that, if they would keep my body warm. But my diet also, God knoweth how slender it is at many times. And now in mine age [poor old man, he was nearly eighty] my stomach may not away but with a few kind of meats, which if I want, I decay forthwith.”
How we feel to hate the brutal Defender of the Faith, whose supremacy he refused to acknowledge, while perusing the catalogue of the venerable prelate’s sufferings.
The martyr and the murderer have long since gone to render an account of their good and evil deeds.
The Lieutenant’s lodgings contain a few old paintings, together with a bust of James I., and a marble monument recording the names of those who were examined regarding the Gunpowder Plot.
The Bloody Tower is supposed to have been the place in which the sons of Edward IV. were murdered; but of this we have no proof; neither in the discovery of the bones (which were found, in 1674, at the foot of the staircase near the chapel in the White Tower,) any proof that the princes were murdered in that part of the fortress. That they should be buried near the White Tower chapel bespeaks a reverence for their remains.
There is something ominous and gloomy about the grim gateway, with its grated portcullis and grinning iron teeth, that leads to the Bloody Tower, which even now seems to chill the blood as we pass beneath it. Nor is this feeling at all diminished by the recollection that one of the Earls of Northumberland either committed suicide or was privately murdered within those very walls. It was at this gate where Sir John Bridge seized Wyatt by the collar and shook him, when he was made prisoner after the insurrection. “But that the law must pass upon thee,” said the angry lieutenant, “I would stick thee through with my dagger.” To which Wyatt replied, holding his arms under his side, and looking grievously with a grim look upon the lieutenant, “It is no mastery now,” and so passed on.
The Salt Tower is remarkable for a curious engraving on the walls representing the signs of the Zodiac, the work of Hugh Draper, of Bristol, who was a prisoner in this turret in 1560. What a glimpse we obtain of the superstitious ignorance of this period, when recalling the “crime” he was committed for—that of practising the art of sorcery against Sir William Lowe and his lady. The Brick Tower, on the north-east side, near the mount, is said to be the spot in which Lady Jane Grey, the “nine-days’ Queen,” as she is called by the old chroniclers, was imprisoned.
In the Bowyer Tower, which stands behind the barracks, it is said the Duke of Clarence was murdered, by being drowned in a butt of his own favourite drink. The upper portion of this tower is modern, and the whole was again greatly impaired in the fire which burnt down the great storehouse in 1841, which also injured the Flint and the Brick Towers.
We next come to the Beauchamp or Wakefield Tower, in which are deposited so many records. “This is perhaps the most interesting building of the whole range, the White Tower not excepted,” says Mr. Howitt, in his Tower of London. “Employed for many years as a ‘prison lodging,’ its walls are covered with the carved memorials of its unfortunate occupants. Among those who have thus recorded their sorrows are John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, 1553; Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, 1578; Charles Baily, a Fleming, and agent of Mary Queen of Scots; Arthur and Edmund Poole, grandchildren of George, Duke of Clarence, brother to King Edward IV.; Thomas Fitzger, son of the Earl of Kildare, 1534; Sedburn, Abbot of Joreval, 1537; Dr. Abel, chaplain of Queen Catherine of Arragon; Thomas Cobham, son of Lord Cobham, 1555; Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the favourite of Queen Elizabeth; Sir Ingram Percy, son of the Earl of Northumberland, 1537; Eyremot Radclyffe, son of the Earl of Sussex, 1576; with many others. Couplets, maxims, or allegories are sometimes added, as—
‘By torture strange my truth was tryed,
Yet of my liberty denied.’—1581, Thomas Myagh.