It is probable that towards the close of this reign vaultings of stone replaced wooden floors in several of the towers, and other improvements were made in them. The clay from the ditch was sold by the Constable to the tile-makers of East Smithfield. In the first year it only yielded 20s., but during the twelve years the work was in progress it contributed £7 on the average every year to the exchequer, a large sum when the relative value of money is considered, and equal to more than £100 a year of the present currency![49]
In 1278 no less than 600 Jews were imprisoned in the Tower on a charge of clipping and debasing the coin. Many of them are said to have been confined in that gloomy vault now called "Little Ease," where, from the entire absence of sanitary accommodation and proper ventilation, their numbers were rapidly thinned by death.[50]
The Tower of London.
The mural arcade of the inner curtain wall between the Bell tower, "a," the Beauchamp tower, "b," and the Devereux tower, "c," is probably of this period. In spite of much patching and alterations to adapt it for the use of firearms, it bears a close resemblance in its design to those of Caernarvon Castle and Castle Coch, near Cardiff. The great quay, "O," does not appear to have been walled through; it had its own gates, "P," at either end. Two small towers (now removed) protected the drawbridges of the two posterns, "H" and "K." The outer curtain wall, "R," commanded the ditch and wharf, and was in its turn commanded by the more lofty inner curtain, "8," and its towers, and these again by the keep, while the narrow limits of the outer ward effectually prevented any attempts to escalade them by setting up movable towers, or by breaching them with battering rams. Any besiegers who succeeded in entering the outer ward would be overwhelmed by the archery from these wall arcades at such point-blank range that even plate armour would be no protection, while, should they succeed in carrying the inner ward, the remnant of the defenders might retreat to the keep, and, relying upon its passive strength, hold out to the last within its massive walls in hope of external succour, before famine or a breach compelled a surrender.
The Scotch wars of Edward I. filled the Tower with many distinguished prisoners, among whom were the Earls of Ross, Athol, and Menteith, and the famous Sir William Wallace. They seem to have experienced a varying degree of severity: some were ordered to be kept in a "strait prison in iron fetters," as were the Bishops of Glasgow and St. Andrew's (though they were imprisoned elsewhere); others are to be kept "body for body," that is to say, safely, but not in irons, with permission to hear mass; while a few are to be treated with leniency, and have chambers, with a privy chamber or latrine attached.[51]
In 1303 the King (then at Linlithgow) sent the Abbot of Westminster and forty-eight of his monks to the Tower on a charge of having stolen £100,000 of the royal treasure placed in the abbey treasury for safe-keeping! After a long trial, the sub-prior and the sacrist were convicted and executed, when their bodies were flayed and the skins nailed to the doors of the re-vestry and treasury of the abbey as a solemn warning to other such evildoers,[52] the abbot and the rest of the monks being acquitted.
No works of any importance can be assigned to the reign of Edward II., the only occurrences of importance being the downfall of the Knights Templars and the imprisonment of many of them at the Tower, where the Grand Prior, William de la More, expired in solitary confinement a few months after the close of the proceedings that marked the suppression of the order; and the escape of Roger Mortimer from the keep (which reads almost like a repetition of Flambard's), the consequences to the constable being his disgrace and imprisonment.[53]
The Tower was the principal arsenal of Edward III., who in 1347 had a manufactory of gunpowder there, when various entries in the Records mention purchases of sulphur and saltpetre "pro gunnis Regis."[54]
A survey of the Tower was ordered in 1336, and the Return to it is printed in extenso by Bayley.[55] Some of the towers are called by names (as for example, "Corande's" and "la Moneye" towers, the latter perhaps an early reference to the Mint) which no longer distinguish them. The Return shows that these—the Iron gate tower, "N," the two posterns of the wharf, and Petty Wales, "P.P.," the wharf itself, and divers other buildings—were all in need of repair, the total amount for the requisite masonry, timber, tile work, lead, glass, and iron work being £2,154 17s. 8d.!