The Tower of London

by William Benham

James I, arrival at the Tower—Lady Arabella Stuart—George Brooke—Sir Walter Raleigh—His Liberation—Fresh Imprisonment—Execution—The Gunpowder Plot—Sir Thomas Overbury—Carr, Earl of Somerset—Ascendency of Buckingham—Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex—Charles I—His Avoidance of the Tower—Sir John Eliot—Felton, Assassin of Buckingham—Lord Loudoun—Earl of Strafford—Archbishop Laud—Tower passes into power of Parliament when the Civil War begins—Imprisonments under the Commonwealth—Lord Capel—The Restoration—Execution of the Regicides—Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham—Colonel Blood’s Attempt to Steal the Crown—The Mystery of his Pardon—Titus Oates—Lord Stafford—The Rye House Plot—Accession of James II—The Duke of Monmouth—The Seven Bishops—Bevis Skelton—Judge Jeffrey—William and Mary, only one Execution in the Tower all the Reign—But many Prisoners.

When King James arrived from Scotland he took up his residence and held his first Court in the Tower, but the plague was in London and there was no procession to Westminster at his Coronation, though the Londoners had made preparations for it. At the close of the year (1603) a conspiracy to place the crown on the head of Lady Arabella Stuart caused the imprisonment of many eminent men, among them Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham, his brother George Brooke, Thomas, Lord Grey of Wilton, and Sir Walter Raleigh. Lady Arabella was the daughter of Charles Stuart, Earl of Lennox, Darnley’s brother, and was therefore King James’s first cousin; she was also, as we have already had occasion to note, related to the Tudors, and this double relationship was the great misfortune of her life. At the trial of Lord Cobham it was clearly proved that she had no share in the scheme to make her queen. She had had many suitors, Henry IV of France and the Archduke Mathias of Austria among them, but had fallen in love with William Seymour, grandson of the Earl of Hertford, and for this Queen Elizabeth had kept her in close confinement. In 1609 King James heard that she was about to marry some foreign prince; his jealousy was aroused, and he sent her to the Tower, but finding that his fears were groundless, he gave his consent to her marrying one of his subjects. She took him at his word, and married Seymour. In wrath the king sent her to Lambeth Palace as prisoner, and her husband to the Tower. From Lambeth she was ordered to Durham, to be under the Bishop, but at Highgate pleaded illness and remained there, and planned an escape for herself and husband. She obtained a male disguise and got to Blackwall, where her husband was to meet her, he having got out of the Tower by dressing like a labourer and following a cart of firewood. When he reached the appointed meeting-place he found that Arabella had sailed away in a French boat. He could not follow her, as the wind was against him, and he had to go to Ostend. Meanwhile an alarm was raised, Arabella was pursued, caught in mid-strait, and brought back to the Tower, which she never left again until her death, September 25, 1615. She had been for some years insane. She is buried beside Mary Queen of Scots in Westminster Abbey. Her husband survived her for nearly fifty years, and married a second wife, a sister of the famous Parliamentary general, the Earl of Essex, son of Queen Elizabeth’s Essex. In 1660 he became Duke of Somerset, and lived just long enough to welcome Charles II.

But in following Arabella’s fortunes I have greatly anticipated. We must go back to the conspiracy. George Brooke and two priests were the first to be tried and executed. His brother, Lord Cobham, and Lord Grey de Wilton were also condemned and actually brought out to be executed, but a respite had been previously signed, and it was produced at the block in a coup de théâtre. They were sent back to their prison, and for fifteen years longer Cobham lay in confinement. Then, his health failing, he was allowed to visit Bath in the custody of gaolers, after which he returned to his prison. Whether he died in the Tower or was allowed, as some accounts imply, to retire to an obscure house in the Minories, is uncertain. He died in January, 1619. There was much underhand dealing about his estates and those of his brother, by which Cecil gained possession of the greater part of them; and this entered into the soul of William Brooke, George’s son, who became one of the most determined foes of Charles I, and died fighting against him at Newbury. Lord Grey of Wilton, a brilliant young man who might have served his country well, languished in the Brick Tower till his death in 1617.

Again disregarding contemporary events for awhile, we take up the history of Sir Walter Raleigh. He was detained for twelve years, mostly in the Bloody Tower, in rooms not uncomfortably furnished, was allowed two servants, and his wife and son could visit him. He had also the liberty of the garden which lay between his prison and the lieutenant’s house, and in it he constructed a little room for chemical experiments. And during this time he wrote his History of the World. In conception it was a colossal book, but he only completed his plan as far as the end of the second Macedonian war. It is a torso, one of the most wonderful books in literature, a great folio, very scarce; in fact, hardly ever to be seen except in old libraries, but full of learning, wit, shrewdness, when you get the opportunity of perusing it. In the early days of his captivity Sir George Harvey was lieutenant of the Tower. They were personal friends, and Raleigh often spent the evening with him. But when Harvey was succeeded by Sir William Wade things were changed. The new lieutenant had a personal dislike to Raleigh, and seems to have taken much trouble to curtail his privileges and make his life irksome. Henry, Prince of Wales, was partial to him, and frequently visited him, and the queen is said to have entreated the king to set him free. But James personally disliked him; partly, it is said, because he had heard that Raleigh made jests on his ugly face and uncouth gestures and accent. But, further, he was hated by Spain for his labours to make the English fleet the most powerful on the seas, to extend the English colonial possessions, and destroy the Spanish supremacy; and the Spanish ambassador, Gondomar, was the most powerful minister at the English court. Prince Henry died in 1612, a heavy loss to Raleigh, but he got his liberty in 1616 by bribing Villiers, who went to the king and roused his cupidity by explaining that if Raleigh were allowed to make a fresh expedition to the West Indies he might gather great spoils, the lion’s share of which would go to the king. And so the warrant for his liberation was signed in March, 1616, at the time when Shakespeare was dying at Stratford-on-Avon. The wretched king at the same time not only gave a pledge to Gondomar that if Raleigh touched any Spanish person or property he would hand him over to the Spanish Government to be hanged at Seville, but also showed him a private letter of Raleigh, stating the exact number of his ships and men, as well as the spot on the banks of the Orinoco where he expected to find a great silver mine. As the Spaniards claimed the whole of that territory, the vileness of the treachery becomes apparent. He started from Plymouth in March, 1617, with fourteen ships and nine hundred men. Continual disaster is the summary of the expedition. His eldest son was killed fighting gallantly in Guiana. In August, 1618, he returned a ruined man, and was again lodged in the Tower. The king was burning to get rid of him, but what should the pretext be? The Council of State was in uttermost perplexity. Bacon advised acting on the former sentence. Raleigh pleaded that the commission sending him to America was a reversal of that sentence both in law and reason, but the Lord Chief Justice Montagu gave his judicial opinion that it held good, and so on October 24 the warrant was signed, and on the 29th he was beheaded in Old Palace Yard.

Again we have to retrace our steps. In 1604 the penal laws against the Roman Catholics were re-enacted. On November 5, 1605, Guy Fawkes was seized in the vaults of the Houses of Parliament and conveyed to the Tower, as were also Thomas and Robert Winter, Robert Keyes, Thomas Oates, John Grant, Ambrose Rookwood, and Sir Everard Digby. They were placed in the dungeons beneath the White Tower. The room is still shown in the King’s House in which Guy was brought before the Council of State. And, moreover, in the subterranean dungeon are the bases of the rack on which he was tortured He is said to have been kept in “Little Ease” for fifty days. He was put to death, along with Thomas Winter, Rookwood and Keyes, in Old Palace Yard on January 31, 1606. Digby, Rookwood and Keyes suffered the same horrible death in Old Palace Yard.

But there were other persons who were implicated and brought in prisoners, of whom some account must be given, among them Henry Percy, the aged Earl of Northumberland, Lords Mordaunt and Stourton, and three Jesuit priests, Garnet, Oldcorne, and Gerard. Northumberland had to pay an enormous fine and remained a prisoner here for sixteen years; Mordaunt and Stourton were also heavily fined and kept in durance. Fathers Garnet and Oldcorne were put to death in the usual horrible manner, one in St. Paul’s Churchyard, the other at Worcester. With Gerard it was different. He was questioned in the King’s House about Garnet’s knowledge of the plot and refused to answer, whereupon he was taken into the subterranean chamber and hung up by his wrists, he being a heavy man. In this position he was pressed with questions for an hour, and several times fainted. When he still refused to open his mouth Wade, the lieutenant, cried out in a rage, “Hang there, then, till you rot.” However, when the tolling from the Bell Tower gave notice to the Commissioners to quit the fortress for the day, the poor priest was suffered to crawl to his prison room at the top of the Salt Tower. Next day the same torture was renewed, and when he fainted he was restored by having vinegar poured down his throat. It was of no use, and he was again carried back to his prison, where he lay fifty days. Another Roman Catholic named Arden was confined in the Cradle Tower, some hundred feet off; they could see one another, and could even exchange a few words across the Privy Garden. Gerard persuaded his gaoler to let Arden visit him, and they planned an escape. They wrote a letter with orange juice, which is invisible until it is subjected to a process known to the initiated, and got it sent to co-religionists outside, who came opposite with a boat, and to them the prisoners threw a thin cord across the moat by means of a leaden weight attached to it. The boatmen fastened a stout rope to this, and it was hauled up and made fast within the chamber, and down it the two men “swarmed,” though Gerard was in agony from his swollen arms. But they succeeded and got away safely, Gerard to Rome, where he wrote a full account of his trial and escape.

We pass on to one of the foulest records in the history of our great fortress. Thomas Overbury, the son of a judge, was sent by his father “on a voyage of pleasure” to Edinburgh in 1601, and there made acquaintance, which ripened into intimate friendship, with one Robert Carr, page to the Earl of Dunbar. On the accession of King James to the English throne he showed Carr great favour, and brought him to London. Carr, conscious of his own defective education and training, leaned much on Overbury’s ability, who thus to some extent shared his prosperity and was knighted in 1608. Carr was made Earl of Rochester in 1610. Their intimacy continued so close that men about court cringed to Overbury with a view to gaining Rochester’s favour, but now came a bitter feud. Rochester involved himself in a liaison with the Countess of Essex, a woman of altogether abandoned character, and she obtained a divorce with a view of marrying Rochester. But against this marriage Overbury raised an indignant protest, and entreated his friend to abandon the idea. Rochester resented his interference, and the countess in wrath excited him to retaliate. Rochester hesitated—probably Overbury was in possession of secrets which it was not desirable to bring out—and tried to persuade him to accept a diplomatic appointment abroad. He steadily refused all offers, and the Earl of Northampton, the countess’s uncle, who was keen for the match, persuaded the king, who was already prejudiced against Overbury, to send him to the Tower, on a charge of having spoken disrespectfully of the queen. Rochester regarded this imprisonment as a temporary expedient only; but far other was the idea of the countess. After making one or two proposals to officers to assassinate Overbury, she procured the dismissal of Wade from the governorship, and put in a tool of her own, Sir Gervase Helwys, by whose management the wretched captive was slowly and skilfully poisoned, September 15, 1613, three months and seventeen days after his first committal. A few weeks later Rochester was created Earl of Somerset. Nearly two years later a boy in the employment of one of the apothecaries revealed the crime. Investigations were made and proofs were abundantly forthcoming. Helwys and the attendants were hanged. The Earl of Northampton, it was clearly proved, had been an accomplice, but he had died. The Earl and Countess of Somerset were arrested, tried and convicted in May, 1616, but were pardoned and released from the Tower in 1621. Public opinion was much outraged; there were demonstrations in the streets, and it was even broadly intimated that King James must have been privy to the murder. There was a tradition that Mrs. Turner, one of the principal agents employed in this crime by Lady Essex, appeared at her trial in a stiffened ruff which was all the fashion, and which we constantly see in portraits of that time, and in the same decoration was hanged (March, 1615), the result being that these ruffs immediately went out of fashion.

There were other occupants of the Tower during the reign of James I, and the records are miserable enough; intrigues and plots among rival aspirants to power frequently ended in imprisonment of the defeated. The rise of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, is undoubtedly a notable fact of the ignoble reign, but can only be touched upon here as connected with the imprisonment of Sir John Eliot, Sir Edward Coke, and Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex. Cranfield, a creation of Buckingham, was one of the foremost accusers of Bacon for corrupt practices. He had been made Master of the Wardrobe and Lord High Treasurer. He was convicted of robbing the magazine of arms, of pocketing bribes and selling offices, and of making false entries of the royal debts. He was condemned to pay a fine of £50,000, and to be imprisoned for life. He was released, however, in a few weeks, lived in retirement for the rest of his life, and remained neutral during the Civil War. He died in 1645. Two sons in succession succeeded him, after which the family became extinct.

The schemes and intrigues concerning the proposed marriage of Charles with the Infanta of Spain and the tortuous policy of the Duke of Buckingham have not come within our scope. But it has to be noted that Sir John Eliot, who had by reason of his great ability been appointed Vice-Admiral of Devon, had got into trouble during Buckingham’s absence in Spain, by arresting a notorious pirate named Nutt, who was under the secret patronage of Calvert, the Secretary of State, and Eliot was sent to prison on false charges. He was liberated after some months and got a seat in Parliament in 1624, where he almost immediately displayed remarkable power of oratory. Buckingham had now broken with Spain, and in this Eliot heartily went with him, but his feeling was altogether based upon the rights of the House of Commons and the popular feeling against any Spanish alliance. He was one of the leaders also of the impeachment of the Earl of Middlesex. Soon there appeared serious signs of his divergence from the king’s policy. He was no Puritan, having a strong antipathy to Calvinism; but he urged enforcement of the recusancy laws against the Roman Catholics, because religion “made distractions among men.” As Mr. Gardiner puts it, his creed was “the monarchy of man.... There must be unity and purity of faith, and that faith must be one which brought man face to face with his Maker” (vol. v., p. 343). In those same early days he was in conflict with another man who was to become one of the most prominent politicians of his day—Thomas Wentworth, presently Lord Strafford. Wentworth too, according to his light, was a patriot. He was sincerely desirous for the prosperity of the country, but held that strength is the essence of good government, had a contempt for constitutional forms, and in his arrogance, knowing his own good intentions, paid no respect to those who opposed him. Eliot stood at the opposite pole. Parliament was to him the voice and the majesty of the nation. He earnestly and strenuously opposed the entrance of Wentworth into the House of Commons, on the ground that his election had been a forced one and was a sham: and he carried his point.

Further alienation followed. Buckingham’s war with Spain was a failure. Eliot, after some hesitation on account of old friendship, spoke bitterly against him in King Charles’ first Parliament of 1626; an impeachment followed, of which Eliot was one of the managers, and for this the king sent him and Sir Dudley Digges to the Tower. But the cleavage between king and parliament had grown serious; the Commons refused to proceed to business until their members were freed, and it was done, but he was dismissed from offices which he held. The third parliament met in 1628, and again Eliot spoke against Buckingham and against arbitrary taxation, and it was mainly by his energy that the Petition of Right was carried. Next year Buckingham was murdered by Felton. Eliot next directed his energies against Archbishop Laud, who had expressed his intention of raising Church ceremonial, and excluding Puritan teachers from office in the Church, and thus, according to Eliot, of making war upon the religious convictions of the nation. In the midst of an angry debate the king prorogued parliament, Eliot was again sent to the Tower, and parliament was dissolved (March 10, 1629). When examined as to his conduct he refused to answer, on the ground that it would be yielding up the privilege of parliament. The Crown lawyers had much difficulty in meeting this contention, but they managed to secure his conviction in the Court of King’s Bench, on the ground that he had calumniated the minister of the Crown, and he was fined £2,000. A word of acknowledgment from him that he had been in the wrong would have procured his liberty, but he would not speak it, for to surrender the privileges of parliament would have been in his eyes to betray the liberties of the nation. So he lay in prison writing the treatise which he called The Monarchy of Man, which had a profound effect on public opinion and the change in the balance of forces. He showed signs of consumption, and petitioned for leave to go into the country to recruit his health. But it was refused, and he died November 27, 1632. His family petitioned that he might be buried with his ancestors, but this also was refused, and he was laid in St. Peter’s chapel.