32. The City Barges at the Tower Stairs.
From a drawing on stone by W. Parrott.
Gardner Collection.
Arthur O’Connor and three other “United Irishmen” were charged with high treason in 1798; they were accused of holding a traitorous correspondence with the French Directory. They were acquitted, but O’Connor lay in the Tower for some time; he was then discharged and went to France, where he received a commission from Napoleon. Sackville Tufton, Earl of Thanet, was also tried for attempting to release O’Connor, and was sentenced to be imprisoned for a year in the Tower and to pay £1000 fine.
In April, 1810, Sir Francis Burdett, M.P. for Westminster, who had laboured unselfishly and conscientiously on behalf of liberty of speech and Parliamentary reform, made a speech in the House of Commons demanding the discharge from custody of a radical orator who had been imprisoned for objecting to the exclusion of strangers from the debates. He was defeated by a large majority, 153 against 14. Thereupon he printed and published his speech. This was declared a breach of privilege, and Speaker Abbot issued a warrant for his arrest. He shut himself up in his house, and there was great excitement on the question whether it might be forcibly entered. The soldiers were called out, and after four days’ excitement the house was entered and Burdett was conveyed to the Tower, with many thousands of soldiers guarding the town. He remained in prison till Parliament was prorogued, when he was released and went quietly home by water, much to the disgust of the mob, who wanted to have a great demontration. He pursued his steady course of promoting reforms, but still declared that he was not a party man, and his disapproval of the speeches of O’Connell drove him into union with the Tories in his later years. He was a generous and kindly man, a perfect type of a country gentleman.
In March, 1820, Arthur Thistlewood, Richard Tidd, James Ings, John Harrison, William Davidson, James Brunt and John Monument entered into a plot to assassinate all the Ministry at a Cabinet dinner at Lord Harrowby’s, in Grosvenor Square. This is known as the Cato Street Conspiracy, from the place where the meetings were held. It was divulged in time, and the cut-throats were arrested and placed in the Tower, and tried at the Old Bailey. All the above, except Monument, were hanged outside Newgate. This is the last time that the Tower was ever used as a State prison. Thistlewood, who had held a commission in the Militia, was confined in the Bloody Tower, the others in the Middle, Byward and Salt Towers.
It remains to chronicle two events in the history of the great fortress in the reign of Queen Victoria. The ugly Armoury which had been begun by James II and completed by William III caught fire on October 30, 1841, from the Bowyer Tower, on which it abutted. The latter building was set ablaze by an overheated flue. The whole building was destroyed, as were 150,000 stands of small arms piled up within it. A policeman named Pierce, at the risk of his life, broke the bars of the cage in which the regalia were kept and handed them out, with the result that not one was missing, though the cloth in which some of them were wrapped was charred. The only relic of much interest which was destroyed was the wheel of Nelson’s ship Victory. The site is now occupied with the barracks, built under the direction of the Duke of Wellington, and reaching from the end of St. Peter’s Church to the East Wall, loopholed for musketry, and capable of holding a thousand men. The Iron Duke’s primary idea of the place was as a fortress.
On January 24, 1885, a plan was concocted by Fenians for a simultaneous threefold outrage in London. Explosive packages were placed at 2 p.m. in St. Stephen’s Chapel, the Inner House of Commons, and the Tower of London. In the first case a lady saw it, and, suspecting mischief, told a constable on duty. Constable Coles rushed into the chapel and picked up the packet, but almost as soon as he reached Westminster Hall he was obliged to let it fall, and it went off with a terrific explosion, blew holes both in the floor and the roof, and smashed windows. In the House itself a few minutes later the explosion tore off doors and brought down the Speaker’s and Peers’ gallery, and injured two constables badly. At the Tower the miscreants chose the middle storey of the White Tower, used as a storehouse for modern arms. The chief damage was done to the large Hall and St. John’s Chapel. The Armoury caught fire, but it was extinguished in about an hour. Two boys and three girls were badly injured. The perpetrator in this case was caught, and proved to be an old hand at like outrages. He was sentenced to fourteen years’ hard labour.
So ends our history. From the nature of the case, it has mainly dealt with crime and punishment, but we all feel that it would be unfair and untrue to call it a history of gloom. The history of suffering contains elements of sublime beauty, of courage, and self-denial, and faith, and patient endurance. “The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain,” but it does so in faith, sometimes in blindness, always looking for and striving after the revelation of the Perfect Will, the Visible Kingdom of God. I have thought so continually in writing these records, constant war and bloodshed, too often the offspring of unholy ambition and selfish greed. But there was always a King above the waterfloods, and therefore our national history is a history of God subduing the wrath of man and turning it to His praise. Norman, Plantagenet, Tudor, Stuart—the Tower has memorials of evil deeds wrought by each one in turn; but there is not one of them all which has not left beneficent and abiding results. We have seen how More and Fisher died the death of heroes in defence of the Roman faith, and how Anne Askew was burned for rejecting it, and who will deny her the name of faithful martyr also? But one or the other must be wrong, I may be told. And I answer, Neither was wrong; each was clinging to the truth which God was revealing to the soul. A fragment of truth, no doubt, but real in its measure. “Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, and then shall each have praise from God.”