Traitor’s Gate.
According to John Stow, who wrote in Elizabeth’s reign, the Tower was then “a citadel to defend or command the city; a royal palace for assemblies or treaties; a prison of state for the most dangerous offenders; the only place of coinage for all England at this time; the armoury for warlike provision; the treasury of the ornaments and jewels of the Crown; and general conserver of most records of the King’s courts of justice at Westminster.” All that is changed now. The Tower has long since ceased to be a Royal residence. As a defence of the city it would not last more than a few minutes against modern artillery. Save for the period of the great war, when it held the bodies of numerous spies and traitors and saw the execution of several, it has for many years given up its claim to be a prison. The records which filled the little Chapel of St. John have now been moved to the Record Office, and the making of money goes on at the Mint just across the road. The Crown Jewels still find a home here, in the Wakefield Tower, the prison where Henry VI. came to his violent end. Yet, despite all these changes, the fortress is still the Tower of London—perhaps the city’s most fascinating relic.
CHAPTER EIGHT
How Fire destroyed what the River had made
Leaving the Tower by the Byward Gate, and passing along Great Tower Street and Eastcheap, we come to the spot
“Where London’s column pointing to the skies,
Like a tall bully, lifts its head and lies.”
This is, of course, the Monument, which for many years indicated to all and sundry that the Great Fire of 1666 was the work of the Roman Catholics. Till the year 1831 the inscription, added in 1681 at the time of the Titus Oates affair, perpetuated the lie in stone, but in that year it was removed by the City Council. Now the gilt urn with its flames, which we can see well if we ascend the 345 steps to the iron cage at the top, merely commemorates the Fire itself, without any reference to its cause, as in the original structure. From the top of the Monument we can get perhaps the very finest of all views of London and its River.
