As a palace, the Tower can boast of an almost continuous use by the English sovereigns for five hundred years, ending with the accession of Charles II. Stephen is the first King who is recorded to have held his Court within the Tower. This was in 1140, when his affairs were not in a prosperous state, and the security of the Tower offered him a great temptation. John was also a frequent resident here, and on his death Prince Lewis, the Dauphin of France, made his abode at the Tower previous to renouncing all claim to the throne of England. Henry III., during his minority, constantly kept his Court here, celebrating the religious festivals with great pomp. These were held in the chapel in the White Tower, perhaps the most perfect Norman building existing in England; a chaplain, who received a yearly salary of fifty shillings, conducting daily service. The three Edwards who succeeded Henry on the throne, seldom resided in their London fortress, but its dungeons were filled with their foreign prisoners of highest rank. Richard II. visited the Tower to prepare for his coronation procession. On the preceding day he was welcomed in great state and with brilliant pageantry by the Mayor, Aldermen, and citizens, and this city reception became from this time an established custom. Froissart gives a brilliant description of the grand tournament held in London by Richard in 1390, when the King entertained in the Tower a large number of distinguished foreign guests. It witnessed a very different scene nine years later, also chronicled by Froissart, when Richard abdicated the throne in favour of Bolingbroke. In the following year his body was brought from Pontefract to London, and carried on a bier from the Tower to Cheapside, where it lay for two hours, while 20,000 people, says Froissart, came to gaze upon his face. It was then carried to King’s Langley, and interred in the church of the Dominican Friars; but was removed by Henry V. to the tomb which Richard had prepared for himself in Westminster Abbey. Neither Henry IV. nor Henry V. lived much in the Tower, but Charles, duke of Orleans, and his brother John, count of Angoulême, who were taken prisoners at Agincourt, suffered many years’ imprisonment here. Among the Harleian manuscripts is a copy of the poems of the Duke, which contains the beautiful illumination, already mentioned, representing the Tower and London Bridge, with the intervening buildings, at the time of the Duke’s captivity. It is reproduced in our frontispiece.

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The Funeral of Richard II.
From a MS. of Froissart’s Chronicles. British Museum, Harl. 4380.

With the reign of Henry VI. begins the series of royal tragedies connected with the Tower. As king and prisoner alternately, the unfortunate monarch spent here most of his life, until after the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury in 1471, which finally crushed his cause, he entered the Tower once more, where, a few weeks later, he was found dead, not without grave suspicion of foul play on the part of the Duke of Gloucester, the brother of his successor, Edward IV. Gloucester’s brotherly regard, whether real or assumed, ceased with the King’s death, and he found no words too black in which to paint the character of the late monarch, and so pave the way for his own accession to the throne. No obstacle was allowed to interfere with his ambition, and the murder of the two young princes is the saddest and most closely associated of all the historical events which give the walls of the old fortress an almost sacred character. From this cruel crime the Bloody Tower takes its name.

In the records of its later years the Tower kept up its tradition of violence and bloodshed; the little church of St. Peter ad Vincula close by bears sad witness to the dangers besetting the path which those must tread who seek for high estate.

CHAPTER VI.

THE PASSING OF MEDIÆVAL LONDON.