Coining operations had been carried on in the Tower here ever since the Norman Conquest, if not long before. It was not, however, the only place. In the reign of Charles I there seem to have been fifteen mints, but an edict of the reign of Edward III enacted that all moneys, wherever coined, should be made uniform with those of the Tower. After the Restoration, small rolling-mills were set up in the Tower, driven by horse and water power, and a great improvement was hereby effected—milled instead of hammered coins. The workshops were between the inner and outer walls, and the road which runs between St. Thomas’s Tower and the Bloody Tower was formerly called Mint Street. In 1696 an Act was passed, calling in the old hammered coinage, to be melted down in a furnace at Westminster, and sent in ingots to the Tower, to reappear in milled form. Sir Isaac Newton, Master of the Mint, made many more improvements. In 1810 the Mint was removed outside—to Little Tower Hill, where it is at this day.

Though it did not belong to the Tower, nor was within its limits, the Royal Hospital of St. Katharine’s by the Tower cannot be passed over without mention. It was founded in 1148 by Matilda, wife of King Stephen, for the repose of her two children, for the maintenance of a master and several poor brothers and sisters. Eleanor, Henry III’s widow, augmented it in 1273, “for a master, three brethren, chaplains, three sisters, ten bedeswomen, and six poor scholars.” The foundation was placed under the especial patronage and jurisdiction of the Queen Consorts of England, and, with all changes, has so remained to the present day. The office of Master is the only preferment in the gift of the Queen Consort or Queen Dowager. Queen Philippa, Edward III’s wife, gave houses in Kent and Herts for its additional support. Thomas de Bekington, Master in 1445, afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells, obtained a charter of privileges, by which the precincts of the hospital were decreed free of all jurisdiction, civil or religious, except that of the Lord Chancellor, and to help the funds an annual fair was to be held on Tower Hill, to last twenty-one days from the Feast of St. James.

Henry VIII and Katharine of Aragon founded here a guild of St. Barbara, among the governors of which was Cardinal Wolsey. He did not suppress it with the other religious houses, in compliment to Anne Boleyn, whom he had lately married.

The Church was in the Decorated style, very close to the Iron Gate of the Tower, properly St. Katharine’s Gate. Stow, writing in 1598, describes it as “enclosed about and pestered with small tenements and homely cottages.” When the royal assent was given to the making of St. Katharine’s Docks in 1825, the hospital was removed to Regent’s Park. There were some interesting monuments in the old church. The first President of the Royal Society, Lord Brouncker, was buried here, and Ducarel the Antiquary. The fine tombs of John Holland, Duke of Exeter, his duchess, and his sisters, were removed to the Regent’s Park. The Duke, who died in 1447, was High Admiral of England and Ireland and Constable of the Tower.

CHAPTER II
GENERAL SURVEY OF THE BUILDINGS

A Walk round Tower Hill—The Moat—The Outward Ballium—The Legge and Brass Mount Batteries—Develin, Well, Cradle, and St. Thomas’s Towers—Traitors’ Gate—The Inner Ward, its Shape—Bell, Beauchamp, Devereux—Towers on the West; Flint, Bowyer, Brick, Martin, on the North; Constable, Broad Arrow on the East; Lanthorn, Wakefield and Bloody on the South—The Great Keep, its Construction—The Chapel—Armoury—Little Ease—The Ancient Palace, now removed—Church of St. Peter ad Vincula—The King’s House—Officers of the Tower—The Yeomen of the Guard.

Here we may conveniently pause; the building is substantially completed, the great keep, the two enclosures, the Inner and Outer Ballium. Subsequent changes are all within these, and we shall have occasion to notice them at later dates, but now that we have seen the fortress completed, and used, partly as a Royal residence, partly as a State Prison, we will survey the whole in detail. And I ask attention to the Plan opposite p. 104, which will make each point clear. I propose, then, first to take a walk round the outside and start from the bottom of Tower Hill by the main entrance, where the visitors are busy buying their tickets of admission. The modern building where they are doing this is the site of the old Lion Tower. Facing us is the Middle Tower, the gateway which leads over the Moat into the fortress itself. But as I am keeping outside I pass this and ascend the hill. To-day the whole of the bank of the Moat on the western and northern side is laid out as a flower garden, and the many seats among the trees are well occupied with loungers, mostly poor, some asleep and some reading the newspaper. The Moat, which is as old as the Tower itself, was deepened by Bishop Longchamp while he held the place for Richard I, and again by Henry III, the water of course being supplied from the Thames, which flowed in at what we call Traitors’ Gate. Its greatest width is about a hundred feet. It is said that bathing in it in the days of the Plantagenets was a capital offence, but some one suggests that this simply means that it was so unsanitary as to be likely to prove fatal. There can be no doubt that the water splashing upon the walls and bastions added greatly to the picturesqueness; you see that in all the old pictures, but the changes of Time put aside its usefulness, and after eight centuries of its ebb and flow, the Duke of Wellington, when he was Constable, had it filled up to its present level and the communication with the river cut off. So now we look down upon a smooth level, on the west side gravelled, a place for recreation, and sometimes also a drying-ground of the Tower laundry. On the other sides, when we get to them, we see great portions laid down for garden ground. On the other side of the Moat is the Outward Wall, built by Henry III. Surveying it from this western side we see first the Byward Tower, which, as a glance at the plan will show, is opposite the Middle Tower, and forms the land entrance into the fortress. On the opposite end of this western side is the “drum bastion,” segment of a circle about 80 feet diameter, called Legge’s Mount Battery, probably after George Legge, Earl of Dartmouth, who had charge of it in the seventeenth century.