It is not known how this castle came to the Crown, but certain it is that on its being consumed by fire in 1428 (Henry VI.), it was rebuilt by Humphrey, the good duke of Gloucester. On his death it was made a royal residence by Henry VI., and by him granted to the Duke of York, his luckless rival, who lodged here with his factious retainers during the lulls in the wars of York and Lancaster. In the year 1460, the Earl of March, lodging in Castle Baynard, was informed that his army and the Earl of Warwick had declared that Henry VI. was no longer worthy to reign, and had chosen him for their king. The earl coquetted, as usurpers often do, with these offers of the crown, declaring his insufficiency for so great a charge, till yielding to the exhortations of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Exeter, he at last consented. On the next day he went to St. Paul's in procession, to hear the Te Deum, and was then conveyed in state to Westminster, and there, in the Hall, invested with the sceptre by the confessor.
At Baynard's Castle, too, that cruel usurper, Richard III., practised the same arts as his predecessor. Shakespeare, who has darkened Richard almost to caricature, has left him the greatest wretch existing in fiction. At Baynard's Castle our great poet makes Richard receive his accomplice Buckingham, who had come from the Guildhall with the Lord Mayor and aldermen to press him to accept the crown; Richard is found by the credulous citizens with a book of prayer in his hand, standing between two bishops. This man, who was already planning the murder of Hastings and the two princes in the Tower, affected religious scruples, and with well-feigned reluctance accepted "the golden yoke of sovereignty."
Thus at Baynard's Castle begins that darker part of the Crookback's career, which led on by crime after crime to the desperate struggle at Bosworth, when, after slaying his rival's standard-bearer, Richard was beaten down by swords and axes, and his crown struck off into a hawthorn bush. The defaced corpse of the usurper, stripped and gory, was, as the old chroniclers tell us, thrown over a horse and carried by a faithful herald to be buried at Leicester. It is in vain that modern writers try to prove that Richard was gentle and accomplished, that this murder attributed to him was profitless and impossible; his name will still remain in history blackened and accursed by charges that the great poet has turned into truth, and which, indeed, are difficult to refute. That Richard might have become a great, and wise, and powerful king, is possible; but that he hesitated to commit crimes to clear his way to the throne, which had so long been struggled for by the Houses of York and Lancaster, truth forbids us for a moment to doubt. He seems to have been one of those dark, wily natures that do not trust even their most intimate accomplices, and to have worked in such darkness that only the angels know what blows he struck, or what murders he planned. One thing is certain, that Henry, Clarence, Hastings, and the princes died in terribly quick succession, and at most convenient moments.
Henry VIII. expended large sums in turning Baynard's Castle from a fortress into a palace. He frequently lodged there in burly majesty, and entertained there the King of Castile, who was driven to England by a tempest. The castle then became the property of the Pembroke family, and here, in July, 1553, the council was held in which it was resolved to proclaim Mary Queen of England, which was at once done at the Cheapside Cross by sound of trumpet.
Queen Elizabeth, who delighted to honour her special favourites, once supped at Baynard's Castle with the earl, and afterwards went on the river to show herself to her loyal subjects. It is particularly mentioned that the queen returned to her palace at ten o'clock.
The Earls of Shrewsbury afterwards occupied the castle, and resided there till it was burnt in the Great Fire. On its site stand the Carron works and the wharf of the Castle Baynard Copper Company.
Adjoining Baynard's Castle once stood a tower built by King Edward II., and bestowed by him on William de Ross, for a rose yearly, paid in lieu of all other services. The tower was in later times called "the Legates' Tower." Westward of this stood Montfichet Castle, and eastward of Baynard's Castle the Tower Royal and the Tower of London, so that the Thames was well guarded from Ludgate to the citadel. All round this neighbourhood, in the Middle Ages, great families clustered. There was Beaumont Inn, near Paul's Wharf, which, on the attainder of Lord Bardolf, Edward IV. bestowed on his favourite, Lord Hastings, whose death Richard III. (as we have seen) planned at his very door. It was afterwards Huntingdon House. Near Trigg Stairs the Abbot of Chertsey had a mansion, afterwards the residence of Lord Sandys. West of Paul's Wharf (Henry VI.) was Scroope's Inn, and near that a house belonging to the Abbey of Fescamp, given by Edward III. to Sir Thomas Burley. In Carter Lane was the mansion of the Priors of Okeborne, in Wiltshire, and not far from the present Puddle Dock was the great mansion of the Lords of Berkley, where, in the reign of Henry VI., the king-making Earl of Warwick kept tremendous state, with a thousand swords ready to fly out if he even raised a finger.
And now, leaving barons, usurpers, and plotters, we come to the Dean's Court archway of Doctors' Commons, the portal guarded by ambiguous touters for licences, men in white aprons, who look half like confectioners, and half like disbanded watermen. Here is the college of Doctors of Law, provided for the ecclesiastical lawyers in the early part of Queen Elizabeth's reign by Master Henry Harvey, Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, Prebendary of Ely, and Dean of the Arches; according to Sir George Howes, "a reverend, learned, and good man." The house had been inhabited by Lord Mountjoy, and Dr. Harvey obtained a lease of it for one hundred years of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, for the annual rent of five marks. Before this the civilians and canonists had lodged in a small inconvenient house in Paternoster Row, afterwards the "Queen's Head Tavern." Cardinal Wolsey, always magnificent in his schemes, had planned a "fair college of stone" for the ecclesiastical lawyers, the plan of which Sir Robert Cotton possessed. In this college, in 1631, says Buc, the Master of the Revels, lived in commons with the Judge of the High Court of Admiralty, being a doctor of civil law, the Dean of the Arches, the Judges of the Court of Delegates, the Vicar-General, and the Master or Custos of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury.
Doctors' Commons, says Strype, "consists of five courts—three appertaining to the see of Canterbury, one to the see of London, and one to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralties." The functions of these several courts he thus defines:—
"Here are the courts kept for the practice of civil or ecclesiastical causes. Several offices are also here kept; as the Registrary of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Registrary of the Bishop of London.