Although the great fortress-palace was to subsequently acquire a most sinister reputation as a state prison, yet the present is the first recorded instance of the committal of a great and notorious offender to its dungeon cells. Subsequently, however, the severity of the bishop's imprisonment appears to have been somewhat mitigated, for the King ordered him to be allowed the large sum of two shillings a day for his maintenance; so that, although a prisoner, he was enabled to fare sumptuously.
One day after the Christmas of 1101, a long rope having been secretly conveyed to him, concealed in a cask of wine, by one of his servants, he caused a plentiful banquet to be served up, to which he invited his keepers, and having intoxicated them to such a degree that they slept soundly, the bishop secured the cord to a mullion in one of the double windows of the southern wall-gallery in the keep, and, catching up his pastoral staff, began to lower himself down. Having forgotten to put on gloves, and being a heavy, stout man, the rope severely lacerated his hands, and as it did not reach the ground he fell some feet and was severely bruised. His trusty followers had horses in readiness, on one of which they mounted him. The party fled to the coast, took ship, and crossed over to Normandy to seek refuge with Duke Robert.[20] After some time had elapsed, he contrived to make his peace with Henry, who allowed him to return to England, when he regained his See of Durham, of which he completed the cathedral, and also added to the works of the great castle there. The window from which he is supposed to have escaped is over sixty-five feet from the ground, and his evasion was evidently considered at the time a most audacious and remarkable feat, as more than one contemporary chronicler gives a very detailed and circumstantial account of it.
It is not until the Edwardian period of our history that we find castles used as places for the secure detention of captives. In the earlier Norman times dungeons were of little use, their policy being one of ruthless extermination, or of mutilation, in order to strike terror into rebellious populations.[21] Only persons of the most exalted rank, such as Duke Robert of Normandy, Bishops Odo, of Bayeux, and Ralph Flambard, of Durham, Earl Roger, the son of William FitzOsbern, with a few distinguished Saxon captives, underwent a prolonged imprisonment.
The Tower of London as it exists to-day has, by a slow process of gradual accretion round the keep as a nucleus, become what is known as a "concentric" castle, or one upon the concentric plan, from the way in which one ward encloses another; and its architectural history falls, roughly speaking, into three chief periods covered by the reigns of William Rufus, Richard I., and Henry III., all the more important additions to the fortress occurring approximately within these periods, as will be seen later on.
Commencing with the building of the great keep (now called the White Tower), and the small inner or palace ward to the south of it, by William the Conqueror, this at first was probably only enclosed by a stout timber palisade on the top of a raised bank of earth, having a ditch at its base. The first recorded stone wall round the Tower was that of William Rufus, already mentioned, and it is not improbable that the wall marked "v" on the plan (only discovered in 1899 during the erection of the new guard house) may have formed part of his work.
But little is known to have been added by Henry I. The sole remaining Pipe Roll of his reign only records a payment of £17 0s. 6d. "in operatione Turris Lundoniae," without any further mention of what these works were, and as the amount is not very large, it is not probable that they included anything of much importance. That the smaller inner or palace ward to the south of the keep was already completed, is shown by a charter of the Empress Maud, dated Midsummer, 1141, which granted to Geoffrey de Mandeville (then Constable of the Tower, and third of his family to hold that important office) the custody of the Tower, worded as follows: "Concedo illi, et heredibus suis, Turris Lundoniae cum 'parvo castello' quod fuit Ravengeri";[22] and this "little castle" is the before mentioned inner or palace ward, though how or where this was originally entered from the city nothing now remains to tell us—most probably at or near the point subsequently occupied by the Cold Harbour Gate "u," at the south-west angle of the "turris," or White Tower "r," for it is but seldom that the original entrance gates of castle baileys or courtyards are removed, unless in the case of an entire re-arrangement of the plan, with the consequent rebuilding thereby rendered necessary.
Owing to the state of anarchy that prevailed during the troubled reign of Stephen, and the destruction of all the Pipe Rolls and other records that resulted, it is improbable that any extensive works were in progress during that period.
Although the Pipe Rolls of Henry II. record a total amount expended upon works at the Tower of £248 6s. 8d., but little appears to have been added as to which we can speak with any certainty, unless it be the forebuilding of the keep "y" (long since destroyed), the gatehouse of the inner ward "u," and perhaps the basement of the hall or Wakefield tower "l."
As at first constructed, the White Tower (like its fellow at Colchester) had no forebuilding covering the original entrance, which was at the western extremity of its south front, upon the first floor, then some twenty-five feet above the external ground level. The small doorway leading to the flight of stairs in the south wall which ascends to St. John's Chapel, by which visitors now enter the keep, is not, and is far too small in size to have ever been, the original entrance.
On the Pipe Rolls there are frequent entries of sums for the repairs of the "King's houses in the Tower," probably the great hall "x," with its kitchen and other appendant buildings; "of the chapel" (obviously that of St. Peter, as that of St. John in the keep would hardly be in need of any structural repairs at so early a date); and "of the gaol." These last doubtless stood in an outer ward added by Henry I., and at first probably only enclosed by the usual ditch and earthen rampart, furnished with stout wooden palisades.