There is an allusion to them in the narrative by Father Gerard, S.J., of his arrest, torture in, and escape from the Tower in 1597;[59] but the history of the many illustrious captives who have suffered within these walls would in itself suffice for a large volume, while so much, and from so many pens, has already been written thereon, that I have contented myself with few allusions thereto, and those necessarily of the briefest.
It is much to be regretted that military exigencies have rendered it needful to remove from the walls of the various prison cells many interesting inscriptions with which their inmates strove to beguile the monotony of captivity, and as far as possible to concentrate them in the upper room within the Beauchamp tower, with which many of them have no historic association whatever; but as the public would otherwise have been debarred from any sight of them, this is far from being the unmixed evil it might otherwise appear, while they have been fully illustrated and carefully described by Bayley.
About the time of Edward I. a Mint was first established in the western and northern portions of the outer bailey, where it remained until, in 1811, it was removed to the New Mint in East Smithfield, and the name "Mint Street," given to that portion of the bailey, now commemorates this circumstance.
When, about 1882, the extension of the "Inner Circle" Railway was in progress, the site of the permanent scaffold on Great Tower Hill, upon which so many sanguinary executions took place, was discovered in Trinity Square, remains of its stout oak posts being found imbedded in the ground. A blank space, with a small tablet in the grass of the Square garden, now marks the spot.
In a recent work upon the Tower, an amazing theory has been seriously put forward "of State barges entering the ditch, rowing onto a kind of submerged slipway at the Cradle tower, when, mirabile dictu, boat and all were to be lifted out of the water and drawn into the fortress!" Such things are only possible in the vivid imagination of a writer devoid of the most elementary knowledge of the purpose for which this gateway was designed. It suffices to point out that no long State barge could have entered the ditch without first performing the impossible feat of sharply turning two corners at right angles in a space less than its own length, and too confined to allow oars to be used, while there are no recorded instances of such mediæval equivalents of the modern floating and depositing dock! The Cradle tower gate is too short and narrow to admit any such a lift with a large boat upon it, nor does it contain the slightest trace of anything of the kind, or of the machinery necessary for its working. Although prior to the restoration in 1867 there were side openings to Traitors' Gate as well as that from the river, not only were they too low and narrow to admit a boat, but they were fitted with sluice gates for the retention of the water in the moat when the tide was out, which were used until, in 1841, the moat itself was drained and levelled, and the Thames excluded by a permanent dam. The Cradle tower was, as already stated, a postern, leading from the wharf to the Royal Palace, and derived its name from its cradle or drawbridge that here spanned the waters of the moat.
When, in the time of Henry VIII. and his successors, the water gate, "I," ceased to be a general entrance, and was only used as a landing-place for State prisoners on their way to and from trial at Westminster, it first received the less pleasing appellation it still bears of "Traitors' Gate."
The procedure when the Queen or any distinguished person visited the Tower by water was as follows: They alighted from the State barge at the Queen's stairs, "Q," on the river face of the quay, "O," and traversing this on foot or in a litter, entered the Tower by the Cradle tower postern, "K," which afforded the readiest and most direct access to the Palace in the inner ward, while it was entirely devoid of any sinister associations.
In conclusion, it only remains for me to express my thanks to the Major of the Tower, Lieutenant-General Sir George Bryan Milman, K.C.B., for the permission so courteously accorded to visit and examine portions of the fortress closed to the general public, and to the officials of the Tower for facilities kindly afforded me to do so on several occasions.