Directly in the rear of St. George’s is Albert Memorial Chapel, the most interesting feature, as well as the most artistic and costly creation at Windsor. The chapel was begun by the pious, though much married, Henry VIII, who soon abandoned it for Westminster. Constancy was, perhaps, not one of Henry’s strong points. Wolsey, who was Henry’s pope and aspired to be the real one, begged and obtained the chapel for himself, but fell from Henry’s favor, as the ladies had done, before he could finish it. When the Parliamentary forces obtained possession of Windsor, they desecrated it as usual, and sold its plunder for $3,000. Wolsey’s sarcophagus, which escaped, was removed by George III, three hundred years later, to St. Paul’s, where it now holds the dust of Nelson.
It is well known that Victoria decided to convert this chapel into a memorial for the Prince Consort after his death. No expense was spared, and when it was completed in 1874, its interior rivaled the most splendid ecclesiastical structures in the world.
The fourteen windows, with panels beneath thirteen of them, are dreams of art. The windows contain portraits and arms of various kings, queens and princes, and some symbolical figures. The panels beneath picture scenes from the Old and New Testaments, suggestive of various virtues and religious truths. The chapel contains in the center, besides the Prince’s cenotaph, the tombs of the Dukes of Albany and Clarence.
The Round Tower is the most picturesque feature of the castle. Nothing is so interesting as a tower. Not a modern tower—a mere imitation—but a real tower, with dungeons, where prisoners have clanked their chains in despair, with great halls where knights in armor foregathered, with secret passages and musty mysteries in every corner—a tower that has lived on to see this age of civilization superimposed upon its own rough, ready and bloody past.
VICTORIA TOWER AND SOUTH SIDE.
The tower is over three hundred feet in circumference and is built on the top of a high mound in a most commanding situation. It is reached, after one passes through the Norman Gate, by a long flight of steps, which is continued up through the structure till the base of the turret is reached. This flight is commanded by a cannon placed at the head of the stairs. The turret, a good-sized tower itself, is built upon the top of the old tower of George III. Within the turret, the stairs wind around a massive bell, brought from Sevastopol.
Finally the top is reached, three hundred and twenty-five feet from the ground, and we walk round the ample promenade—the turret is twenty-five feet wide—dumb in the presence of the loveliness before us. How beautiful is an English landscape, with its living green, threaded here and there by the silver sparkle of a stream. West and south we looked out over Windsor forest and parks, while in the north Eton College was plainly visible with the inevitable cricketers, dressed in white flannel, moving to and fro over the matchless sward, or facing the “crease,” which is, I believe, the “correct” name for the “pitcher’s box.”
How much history and mystery might not the walls of this old tower, built by Edward III, teach us, could they but speak! This tower once contained the great round table of the Knights of the Garter and was the home of the constable-governors, who were responsible for the safe keeping of the state prisoners, among the most famous of whom have been John, of France, and David, of Scotland.
As illustration of the possible mysteries that may still lurk about the tower, I will mention a recent discovery. While investigating a stone cover with an iron handle, the mouth of a well was uncovered. It was found to descend one hundred and sixty-four feet, to the level of the Thames, and was lined up with masonry most of the way.