"A little learning is a dangerous thing,
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring."
The Pipe Roll of 2 Richard I. discloses an expenditure, "ad operationes turris Lundoniae," amounting to no less than £2,881 1s. 10d., in itself a sufficiently large sum, but one which, when multiplied twenty-fold in order to bring it up to its present-day value,[25] is increased to £57,621 16s. 8d. of our modern money!
The custody of the Tower was entrusted by Longchamp to one of his dependents, William Puinctel, who seems to have acted as Constable and superintendent of the new works, according to the Pipe Roll of 2 Richard I.
It is well known that all the contributions levied in the King's name do not invariably appear set out in full in the records, and there were certainly other sources of revenue open to the Chancellor, of which he doubtless took the fullest advantage.[26] The difficulty in this case is not so much his raising the funds needed for carrying out these works (which he undoubtedly did), but to account for their rapid completion in so short a time.
If, however, it was possible, only seven years later, for Richard himself to build, in a far more inaccessible situation, the entire castle of Chateau Gaillard in the short space of a single year, it need not have been so difficult for Longchamp to carry out in two or three years the works we are about to describe, especially when we consider that he had practically unlimited funds at his disposal.[27]
Until the period of which we write, the area enclosed by the Tower fortifications lay wholly within, and to the west of the ancient city wall, which had been utilized to form its eastern curtain. The perimeter was now to be largely increased by the addition of a new outer ward, "W," extending entirely round the fortress, having a new curtain wall of stone, furnished with two large bastions (now entirely re-modelled and modernised), known as the "Legge Mount" and "Brass Mount" towers, "S" and "T." The so-called "North Bastion," capping the salient angle of the wall between them, being a purely modern work of recent date, has been intentionally omitted from the plan.
The inner ward now received a large addition. To the east of the White Tower, the old Roman city wall, where it crossed the line of the new works (see [plan]), was entirely demolished, and a new wall, some one hundred and eighty feet further to the east, and studded with numerous towers at frequent intervals, took its place, and on the north, west, and south replaced the former palisaded bank and ditch. Most of these towers, as at first constructed, were probably open at the gorge, or inner face, and not until a later period were they raised a stage, closed at the gorge, and in several instances had the early fighting platforms of timber replaced by stone vaulting.
When the remains of the Wardrobe Tower "s" were exposed some years ago by the removal of the buildings formerly known as the "Great Wardrobe," "z" about sixteen feet of the Roman city wall was found to have been incorporated with it; and so recently as 1904 several excavations were made immediately to the south of it in order to ascertain, if possible, whether any traces of the continuation southwards towards the river of the line of the Roman wall could be found, or any foundations indicating the point at which it turned westwards; but the demolitions and rebuildings upon the site have been so numerous and so frequent that all traces have been obliterated, nor is it probable that any other remains of the Roman wall will ever be laid bare within the Tower area.[28]
A plain outer wall, devoid of towers, faced the river, and some kind of an entrance gateway must have been erected at the south-west angle of the new outer ward, where now stands the Byward Gate, "F." The inner ward was probably entered by a gate, now replaced by the Bloody Tower Gate, "m." A wide and deep ditch was also excavated round the new works, which the Chancellor appears to have expected would be filled by the Thames; but inasmuch as it was not provided with any dams or sluices for retaining the water when the tide was out (a work carried out successfully in a later reign), the chroniclers record with great exultation that this part of Longchamp's work was a comparative failure.[29]
The level of the greater part of the inner ward, "7," is (as will be seen by the figures upon the plan, which represent the heights in feet above the mean sea-level) some fifteen feet above that of the outer ward, and but little below that of Great Tower Hill. It seems probable that much of the clay from the ditch excavated by Longchamp was piled up round the western and northern sides of this inner ward, thus completely burying the base or battering plinth of the keep (now only visible at the south-eastern angle), while at the same time it served as a revetment to the curtain wall, and strengthened the city side of the fortress against any attack.