In 1354 the city ditch is ordered to be cleansed and prevented from flowing into the Tower ditch, and, according to the Liber Albus, the penalty of death was promulgated against anyone bathing in the Tower ditch, or even in the Thames adjacent to the Tower!
In 1347 the Tower received, in the person of David, King of Scotland, the first of a long line of royal prisoners, and in 1358 the large sum of £2 12s. 9d. was paid for his medicine. John, King of France, Richard II., Henry VI., Edward V., Queens Jane Dudley, Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, and Princess Elizabeth complete the list.
The Great Wardrobe, "z," adjoining the Wardrobe tower, "s," the Beauchamp tower, "b," the upper story of the Bowyer tower, "e," and perhaps the Constable and Broad Arrow towers, "h" and "i," are probably of this period.
Mr. Clark attributes the Bloody Tower gate, "m," to this reign, but an entrance existed there long before. Most probably it was remodelled, and the vaulting and portcullis were inserted about this time, or early in the reign of Richard II., to whom he also attributes the rebuilding of the Byward tower postern, "H."
There is but little to record in the way of new works after this. Edward IV., in 1472, built an advanced work, called the Bulwark Gate, "A," and nothing further transpires till the reign of Henry VIII., who ordered a survey of the dilapidations to be made in 1532. The repairs of this period, being mostly in brickwork and rough cast, with flint chips inserted in the joints of the masonry, are easily recognised, as are those of Wren by his use of Portland stone.
The buildings of the old palace being much out of repair, the quaint old timber-framed dwelling, "n," adjoining the Bell tower, "a," was built about this time. It is now called the "Lieutenant's Lodgings," but was first known as the "King's House." It contains a curious monument commemorating the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, of which it gives an account, and enumerates the names of the conspirators, and of the Commissioners by whom they were tried.
The quaint storehouses of the Tudor period were replaced in the reign of William III. by an unsightly building, destroyed by fire in 1841, the site of which is now occupied by the Wellington barracks.
The old palace buildings have long since vanished entirely. Towers have been rebuilt or restored, and in 1899 a new guard house has been built between Wakefield tower, "l," and the south-west angle of the keep. The hideously ugly effect of its staring new red brick in contrast with the old and time-worn stone of the ancient fortress must be seen to be realized, its sole redeeming feature being the impossibility of future generations mistaking it for a building of any earlier period. During the clearance of the site for its erection, two discoveries were made—one of a Norman well, "w," which was found to have its top completely hidden by modern brickwork; the other, a remarkable subterranean passage, "9," of which the presence was only detected by its being accidentally broken into. This, when cleared out, was found to terminate in a horrible subterranean prison pit under the south-west angle of the keep (with which, however, it has no means of communication), that doubtless served as the oubliette of the Tower. The pit was empty, but the passage was found to contain bones, fragments of glass and pottery, broken weapons, and many cannon balls of iron, lead, and stone, relics probably of Wyatt's unsuccessful attack in 1554. Leaving the pit, the passage dips rapidly, and, tunnelling under both wards and their walls, emerges a little to the east of Traitors' Gate (see [plan]), where its arched head may now be seen from the wharf, though formerly several feet below the level of the water in the moat. As it traverses the site of the Hall, there is some reason to suppose that the lower end served as a sewer, for there was a similar one, dating from 1259, at the old Palace of Westminster, so that this may likewise be attributed to Henry III.[56]
It will be seen that the blood-curdling description of the horrors of the rat-pit in Harrison Ainsworth's immortal romance is by no means devoid of some foundation of fact, though when he wrote its existence was unknown. Rats from the river would be attracted to the sewer mouth by the garbage from the palace kitchens, and if any wretched prisoner had been placed in this dreadful dungeon he would speedily have been devoured alive![57]
The presence of a single subterranean passage at the Tower ought not to have aroused so much surprise, for such "souterrains" were a not infrequent feature of the mediæval fortress. They may be found at Arques, Chateau Gaillard, Dover, Winchester, and Windsor (three), while Nottingham has its historic "Mortimer's Hole." Sometimes they led to carefully masked posterns in the ditches, but they were generally carried along and at the base of the interior faces of the curtain walls, with the object of preventing attempts at undermining, at once betrayed to listeners by the dull reverberations of pickaxes in the rocky ground. There were doubtless others at the Tower, now blocked up and forgotten; indeed, Bayley mentions something of the kind as existing between the Devereux and Flint towers.[58]