Drawn by Schnebbelie.
REMAINS OF LONDON WALL, TOWER HILL, 1818
The house that was burned down in 1718 was again rebuilt and pulled down in 1787, when the Corporation removed to Tower Hill.
Lastly, in this group of streets, we arrive at Tower Hill. The memories of this place are summed up by Stow and others.
“From and without the Tower ditch west and by north is the said Tower Hill, sometime a large plot of ground, nowe greatly strengthened [straitened] by means of incrochments (unlawfully made and suffered) for gardens and houses.... Upon this Hil is alwayes readily prepared, at the charges of the Citie, a large scaffold, and gallows of timber, for the execution of such traitors or other transgressors as are delivered out of the Tower, or otherwise to the sheriffes of London, by writ, there were to be executed.... On the north side of this hill is the said Lord Lumley’s house.”
The scaffold was removed about the middle of the 18th century.
Many were the disputes between the King and the City as to the setting up of scaffold and gallows, which the King claimed to do, as Tower Hill was in the Liberties of the City and not the City itself. Among notable persons executed there are the names of:
Bishop Fisher, June 22, 1535; Sir Thomas More, July 6, 1535:
Going up the scaffold, which was so weak that it was ready to fall, he said hurriedly to the Lieutenant, “I pray you, Master Lieutenant, see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself.”—Roper’s Life.
Cromwell, Earl of Essex, July 28, 1540; Margaret, Countess of Shrewsbury, mother of Cardinal Pole, May 27, 1541; Earl of Surrey the poet, January 21, 1547; Thomas, Lord Seymour of Sudeley, the Lord Admiral, beheaded March 20, 1549, by order of his brother the Protector Somerset; the Protector Somerset January 22, 1552; Sir Thomas Wyatt, 1554; John Dudley, Earl of Warwick and Northumberland, 1553; Lord Guildford Dudley (husband of Lady Jane Grey), February 12, 1553-54; Sir Gervase Elways or Helwys, Lieutenant of the Tower, hanged for his share in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury; Earl of Strafford, May 12, 1641; Archbishop Laud, January 10, 1644-45; Sir Harry Vane, the younger, June 14, 1662 (“The trumpets were brought under the scaffold that he might not be heard”); William Howard, Lord Viscount Stafford, December 29, 1680, beheaded on the perjured evidence of Titus Oates and others; Algernon Sidney, December 7, 1683: