Once through the Byward Gateway and we are between the inner and outer defences. Leaving on our left the Bell Tower, a strong, irregular, octagonal tower, which gets its name from the turret whence curfew bell rings each night, we walk along parallel to the River, past the frowning gateway of the Bloody Tower on our left, with its low arch which originally gave the only entrance to the Inner Ward, and on our right, and exactly opposite, the Traitor’s Gate, the riverside passage through the outer walls. Skirting the Wakefield Tower, we pass through a comparatively modern opening, and so come upon the amazing Norman Keep of William the Conqueror.
This Keep is not quite square, though it appears to be, and no one of its four sides corresponds to any other. Its greatest measurements are from north to south 116 feet, and from east to west 96 feet. Inside, three cross walls, from 6 to 8 feet thick, divide each floor into three separate apartments of unequal sizes. It is a building complete in itself, with everything required for a fortress, a Royal dwelling, and a prison. Probably, as you walk about the cold, gloomy chambers, you will say to yourselves that you can understand the fortress and the prison parts, but that you could never imagine it as a dwelling. But you must remember that with coverings on the floor and with the bare walls hung with beautiful tapestries, as was the custom in early days, and with furniture in position, the apartments must have presented a much more comfortable appearance.
The first story, or main floor, was the place where abode the garrison—the men-at-arms and their officers; and above on the other two floors were the State apartments—St. John’s Chapel and the Banqueting Hall on the second story, and the great Council Chamber of the Sovereign on the third floor. Beneath were great dungeons, terrible places without light or ventilation, having in those days no entrance from the level ground, but reached only by that central staircase which rose from them to the roof.
In these days the Keep is largely used as an armoury; and we can gain a fine idea of the different kinds of armour worn in different periods, and of the weapons used and of the cruel implements of torture. It also contains several good models of the Tower at different times, and a short study of these will do much to get rid of the confusion which most folk feel as they hurry from tower to tower without any general idea of the place.
Leaving the ancient Keep, we cross the only wide open space of the fortress, a paved quadrangle which keeps its antique and now inappropriate name of Tower Green, where in bygone days some of the Tower’s most famous prisoners have paraded in solitude on the grass. Here, marked by a tablet, is the site of the scaffold where died Lady Jane Grey, Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard, and other famous prisoners of State. It is a quiet, moody spot, where the black ravens of the Tower, as they stand sentinel beneath the sycamore trees, at times seem the only things in keeping with the sadness of the place.
To our right is the little Church of St. Peter ad Vinculam, which will be shown to us by one of the quaintly garbed “Beef-eaters” (if one can be spared from other duties), the famous Yeomen of the Guard who still wear the uniform designed in Henry the Eighth’s days. Concerning this little sanctuary Lord Macaulay wrote: “There is no sadder spot on earth.... Death is there associated with whatever is darkest in human nature and in human destiny, with the savage triumph of implacable enemies, with the inconstancy, the ingratitude, the cowardice of friends, with all the miseries of fallen greatness and of blighted fame. Thither have been carried through successive ages, by the rude hands of gaolers, without one mourner following, the bleeding relics of men who had been the captains of armies, the leaders of parties, the oracles of senates, and the ornaments of courts.”
Close together in a small space before the Altar, raised slightly above the level of the floor, lie the mortal remains of two Queens, Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, Margaret of Salisbury, last of the proud Plantagenets, Lord and Lady Rochford, the Dukes of Somerset, Northumberland, Monmouth, Suffolk, and Norfolk, the Earl of Essex, Lady Jane Grey, Lord Guilford Dudley, and Sir Thomas Overbury.
As we pass on and come to the Beauchamp Tower, and later to the Bloody Tower, we see the tiny prisons where these unfortunates, and many others, languished in confinement, waiting their tragic end, whiling away the weary hours by carving quaint inscriptions on the stone walls; and, in the latter, we are shown the tiny apartment where perished the little Princes at the instigation of their uncle, Richard III.
From our point of view there remains just one more thing to consider, and that is the Tower’s connection with the River. Probably few of us, as we try to think back through the centuries, realize how important the Thames was even as a highway. We know from our reading that London’s streets were narrow, crooked, and of very little use for a big amount of traffic; yet we do not see in our mind’s eye the great waterway which everybody, rich and poor, used in those days, alike for business and pleasure. And, of course, the Tower contributed very largely to this water traffic, for the King, his nobles, and all who had business at Westminster, travelled constantly to and fro in the great painted barges which made the River a gayer and brighter place than it is in our days. For the purpose of such travellers there was provided the Queen’s Steps at the Tower Wharf, in order to avoid the use of the sinister Traitor’s Gate—that low, frowning archway, which gave entrance from the River, and through which very many famous persons, innocent and guilty alike, passed to their doom, brought thither by water at the behest of the Sovereign.
