The Tower of London

by William Benham

We turn aside a while to record a most daring and sensational crime, namely Colonel Blood’s attempt to carry off the regalia from the Tower. He was a brutal ruffian, said to have been Irish born, half sailor, half highwayman, who had served under Cromwell, and for that reason styled himself Colonel. After the Restoration he became a spy of the Government, and if he could have had his way would have sent some innocent persons to death.

In 1671 Sir Gilbert Talbot held the post of “Master of the Jewel House.” His pay had been lowered, and by way of compensation he was allowed to admit visitors to his treasures and to charge. One day in April, 1671, came an intensely clerical-looking personage to the Martin Tower, with a long cloak, cassock and girdle, accompanied by a woman whom he represented as his wife, who was very anxious to see the regalia. The glorious dazzle made her faint, and the old curator, Talbot Edwards by name, whom Sir Gilbert had placed in charge, called his wife to attend to the sick lady. The restoratives administered were so efficacious that the couple went off overflowing with gratitude and promising to return. And soon the “cleric” came again, bringing a pair of gloves to Mrs. Edwards in return for her kindness to Mrs. Blood. During this visit he announced that he had a nephew just come back from abroad after some prosperous ventures, and that he had set his heart on this nephew marrying Edwards’s daughter, and the negotiations so far advanced that he was invited to bring the nephew to dinner. At dinner he said a long grace with much emotion, and afterwards announced that he should bring two friends next day, who were leaving London, and very anxious to see the crown first. And next day (May 9) they came, all with concealed daggers and pocket pistols, and rapiers hidden in their canes, and directly they were shown into the room Edwards was effectually gagged, enveloped in a thick cloak, and told that if he attempted to give an alarm they would kill him. He could not cry out, but he struggled manfully, and they beat him on the head with a wooden mallet, stabbed him, and left him for dead. Then they turned their attention to their quarry. Blood hid the crown under his cloak, one companion put the orb in his breeches pocket, and another began to file the sceptre in two pieces, as it was too long to carry away without being seen. At this moment advancing steps were heard; Edwards’s son had unexpectedly come back from Flanders, and he heard his father endeavouring to give the alarm. The thieves ran downstairs; young Edwards, accompanied by his brother-in-law, Captain Beckman, who had arrived with him, hurried in pursuit. They had crossed the drawbridge leading to the wharf, Blood firing two pistols as he ran. There were horses waiting for them, but Beckman rushed at him, a fierce struggle followed, in which Blood was worsted and captured, as were his companions. When he dropped the crown some of the gems fell out but were recovered, as was a ruby which was found, having belonged to the sceptre. In fact the treasures were uninjured, but poor Edwards, who was eighty years old, died in a few days. Blood cynically remarked when he was brought a prisoner to the White Tower that “it was a brave attempt, for it was for a crown.”

It is an absolute mystery why Charles II sent for him forthwith, and not only pardoned him, but conferred a pension of £500 a year on him and certain Irish estates. Evelyn, in his diary, expresses his amazement. Some think that Charles, wanting money, had commissioned Blood to steal the treasures and pawn or sell them in Holland, and divide the spoil with him; others suppose that Blood knew some awkward secrets about the king and threatened to reveal them. He often appeared at Court, and returned kindness which the Duke of Buckingham had shown him by a peculiarly atrocious attempt to blackmail him, for which he was fined £10,000. He died in Bowling Street, Westminster, August 24, 1680. His likeness in the National Portrait Gallery quite confirms Evelyn’s description of him, “a villainous unmerciful face, a false countenance.”

Yet even his rascality grows dim beside that of Titus Oates, whose horrible concoction of lies concerning a pretended Popish plot sent nearly forty men to the scaffold. The execution of William Lord Stafford on Tower Hill, December 29, 1680, on the charge sworn to by Oates that he planned to kill the king and place the Duke of York on the throne, was the turning-point in the agitation. When it began Oates was half deified by the excited populace as the deliverer of the country; but as time went on men shook their heads, doubtfully at first, then strongly. Lord Stafford on the scaffold declared his absolute innocence, and the spectators cried out with tears, “We believe your lordship.” Oates had made too rich a harvest to give up his devilish business, but after this he found no more believers. But that there was good reason to expect an endeavour to restore the Roman faith no one doubted. As far back as 1670 the Duke of York had given his adhesion to it, and therefore the “country party,” as it was called, were eager to prevent his accession to the throne. The struggles over the Exclusion Bill need not detain us here; but the failure of that Bill, owing to the “trimming” of some of its chief supporters who loved the favour of royalty, led to a secret project of the earnest Whigs to avert what they held to be a calamity. The leader of this party had been Anthony Ashley, first Earl of Shaftesbury. “Of these the false Ahithophel was first,” wrote Dryden in his great satire. He was joined by Lord William Russell, the Duke of Monmouth, Algernon Sidney, the Earl of Essex, son of Lord Capel, who was beheaded in the early days of the Commonwealth, John Hampden, grandson of the great Parliamentary leader, and Lord Howard. Shaftesbury had been sent to the Tower in 1677 for agitating against the king’s high-handed proceedings against the Corporation of London, but had been released on submission. He now protested against the king holding a Parliament at Oxford and was again lodged in the Tower, but the Whig grand jury threw out the charge. But he soon found that his friends would not take such energetic measures as he called for, so he retired to Holland, where he soon died. His companions formed new projects of insurrection, but could not agree; Sidney and Lord Essex were for a Commonwealth, Monmouth hoped for the crown for himself. Russell and Hampden were attached to the old constitution, and sought for “redress of grievances.” And whilst they were discussing, the “Rye House Plot” was formed by some inferior conspirators of the same way of thinking. The Rye House lay on the road to Newmarket. The owner, Rumbold, was an old Republican, and a plan was formed to kill the king on his way to Newmarket races. It was made known to the Government, and though it was shown that some of the greater men had held meetings at the Rye House in support of their general views, it was also clear that neither Russell, Essex nor Sidney were parties to the assassination scheme. The trial of Lord Russell, and the devotion of his wife furnish a pathetic chapter in history. He was beheaded in Lincoln’s Inn Fields July 21, 1683. On the same day Lord Essex was found in the Tower with his throat cut. Some held that he had been murdered by the king and the Duke of York, but the coroner’s jury brought in a verdict of suicide, and Gardiner and Green both consider this as the most probable view. Sidney followed. He was in principle a republican, though he had refused to accept a seat among the judges of Charles I. He was now condemned on the sole evidence of his companion, Lord Howard, who had turned king’s evidence to save his own life, and on that of some letters of his in which he upheld the lawfulness of resisting tyrants. Jeffreys, who was now Chief Justice, tried him, and persuaded the jury to convict. He was beheaded on December 7.

Charles II and his brother James are said not to have visited the Tower for fifteen years before they came thither at the time of Essex’s death. When Charles died, February 6, 168-⁴⁄₅, the Tower may be said to have ceased to be a royal residence. At the coronation of James II, the usual procession from thence to Westminster was omitted, and has never since been revived. But it continued to be a state prison. There is no need to tell how the unhappy son of Charles II and Lucy Walters, James, Duke of Monmouth, took up arms to obtain the crown, and how he was defeated at the battle of Sedgemoor, the last battle fought on English ground, July 6, 1685. He was captured and brought to London on the 13th, and being allowed an interview with the king, with abject cries supplicated in vain for his life. He was sent to the Tower, and two days later, a bill of attainder having been previously passed against him, he was beheaded on Tower Hill. The Bishops of Ely and Bath and Wells (Turner and Ken) accompanied him to the scaffold, where his head was hacked off after five blows.

But a memorable time was reached in the history of the Church and Nation when “the Seven Bishops” were brought hither as prisoners. The king announced his intention of repealing by his own personal act the Penal Laws against Roman Catholics and Dissenters. The leading Dissenters in reply—Baxter, Howe, Bunyan—rejected such “indulgence,” which they said should be by Act of Parliament, not by an absolute overruling of the law. They saw, of course, clearly what his aim was. He was, as usual, obstinate, published the “Declaration of Indulgence,” which all the clergy were commanded to read in church. Four only did it in London, and when they began the congregations walked out, and a similar spirit was shown in the country. The Archbishop, Sancroft, summoned his brother bishops to Lambeth, and the six who were able to obey him, namely Lloyd of St. Asaph, Ken of Bath and Wells, Turner of Ely, Lake of Chichester, White of Peterborough, and Trelawney of Bristol, joined in a temperate protest, in which they told the King that the declaration was illegal, and asked him to withdraw it. In anger he sent them all to the Tower for “uttering a seditious libel.” They were carried to Traitors’ Gate, the banks of the river thronged with cheering spectators; the very sentinels knelt for their blessing and the soldiers drank their healths. The narrative of their trial in Westminster Hall is perhaps the most splendid chapter in Macaulay’s History. On June 29 they were acquitted, although the jury had been packed and the judges were tools of the Crown, and the roof of Westminster Hall cracked at the tremendous applause which followed the verdict.

A curious episode occurred in the last days of James’s reign. Bevis Skelton was English minister in the Netherlands, and warned James of the designs of the Duke of Orange, whereupon the latter pressed for his recall. James sent him then to Versailles, and he moved Louis XIV to oppose William’s schemes. But King James resented his interference, recalled him, and sent him to the Tower; and then finding that the danger from Orange was imminent, made Skelton governor of the fortress in which he had been a prisoner. When James fled, the keys of the Tower were taken from Skelton and confided to Lord Lucas, who held them for the Prince of Orange. Skelton followed the king across seas and died in his service.

Lucas had not long held his office before he was entrusted with the custody of Judge Jeffreys. That this extraordinary man was violent of temper no one questions; he was also a man of strong convictions; he never in his subservience to his royal master showed any yielding to that master’s faith; he had great natural ability; and as we read of his unrelenting cruelty in his progress through Dorset and Somerset to try the rebels after the Sedgemoor campaign, it is also impossible not to see how skilfully he produced evidence against his prisoners. In that “Bloody Assize” 350 rebels were hanged, more than 800 were sold into slavery beyond sea, and a yet larger number were whipped and imprisoned. Even loyal subjects were appalled at the cruelty, and he was regarded with horror and disgust. James made him Lord Chancellor, and when James fled, Jeffreys knew that his own fall was imminent. He heard the mob shouting his name and disguised himself as a collier, and hid himself in a little house at Wapping until such time as he could escape beyond sea. He was recognized, whilst looking out of window, by a clerk that he had bullied from the bench, was seized and conveyed first to the Mansion House, then to the Tower. And here he died, on April 19, 1689. He was only forty-one years old. He is buried in the chancel of St. Mary, Aldermanbury.

During the twelve years’ joint reign of William and Mary there was only one political execution, namely that of Sir John Fenwick, who was beheaded on Tower Hill, January 28, 1697, for conspiring to assassinate King William. He was a man of irregular life, and there is no doubt of his guilt. But the Tower was constantly receiving fresh captives, partisans of the House of Stuart. Thus in 1690 “Francis Cholmondeley, Esquire, a member of the House of Commons, was committed for refusing to take the oaths of allegiance; and Matthew Crosse, otherwise Long, Colonel John Butler, Major George Matthews, Lieutenant-Colonel Knyvet Hastings and the Earl of Yarmouth, in the same year, ‘for abetting and adhering to their Majesties’ enemies.’ To these may be added Charles Halton, Esquire, for publishing a treasonable libel; Bernard Howard, Esquire; Lord Ross; Arthur, Earl of Torrington; Sir John Gage and Sir Walter Vavasour, for various political offences amounting to high treason. Mr. Stafford, the Earls of Newburgh, Clancarty and Tyrone; with Thomas, Lord Morley and Monteagle; Henry, Earl of Clarendon; George, Lord Dartmouth; Major-General Maxwell; Lord Cahire; Major-General Dorrington and Mr. Maxwell were also prisoners, but the specific charges under which they were committed are unascertained” (Britton).

In 1692, John, Earl of Marlborough, was imprisoned on a charge “of abetting and adhering to their Majesties’ enemies,” as were also Lord Brudenell, the Earl of Huntingdon, Sir Robert Thorold and Colonel Langston. They were, after two months’ confinement, released on bail to reappear if called upon. Charles, Lord Mohun, was also a prisoner in the same year, for having killed William Mountford, the celebrated comedian, in a quarrel on account of Mrs. Bracegirdle, an eminent actress. Readers of Esmond will remember the story. “In February, 1692, Lord Viscount Falkland and Henry Guy, Esquire, suffered a short confinement in the Tower for having, as Members of Parliament, received bribes; and, at various intervals during the year, Colonel John Parker; Bartholomew Walmesley, Esquire; Sir Thomas Stanley; Caryl, Lord Viscount Mollineux; Sir Rowland Stanley; Sir Thomas Clifton; Sir William Gerard; Peter Leigh and William Dicconson, Esquires, were immured in the same prison on charges of adhering to the enemies of the Government, and levying war against their Majesties.”