Old and New London, A Narrative of its History, its People and its Places. Illustrated with Numerous Engravings from the Most Authentic Sources. vol 2
Thornbury, Walter
1872-78
Chapter VI:The Tower.Plan of Tower 1597 Plan of Tower 1681
Chapter VI:The Tower.Plan of Tower 1597 Plan of Tower 1681
[extra_illustrations.2.60.4] has been the background of all the darkest scenes of English history. Its claims to Roman descent we have before noticed. There can be little doubt that the Roman wall that ran along terminated in this fort, within which bars of silver stamped with the name of Honorius have been discovered. Our Saxon chapter showed that Alfred unquestionably built a river-side stronghold on the same site. Alfred has been long forgotten within the Tower walls, but the name of Caesar's Tower Shakespeare has, by a few words, kept alive for ever. This castle--for centuries a palace, for centuries a prison, and now a barrack, a show-place, a mere fossil of the sterner ages--was commenced, in its present form, by Gundulf, the Bishop of Rochester, for that stern represser of Saxon discontent, [extra_illustrations.2.60.5] . This Benedictine friar, who had visited the East, built the White Tower, the , and the Hall (or Jewel) Tower. He lived to the age of , and saw the Tower completed. | |
The next great builder at the Tower was [extra_illustrations.2.60.6] , who erected Corfe, Conway, and Beaumaris Castles. He added to the tall square White Tower the Water Gate, the great wharf, the Cradle Tower, the Lantern (where his bedroom and private closet were), the Galleyman Tower, and the wall of the . He adorned the Chapel, in the White Tower, with frescoes, and gave bells to on Tower Green. In the Hall Tower, from which a passage led through the Great Hall into the Lantern, he built that small private chapel before whose cross, says Mr. Dixon, Henry VI. was afterwards stabbed. | |
and wharf which the Water Gate commanded was Henry's greatest work. The land recovered from the river, and much exposed i to the sweep of the tide, was protected by piles, | |
p.61 | enclosed by a front of stone. The London citizens rejoiced when, in , the Water Gate and wall both fell, under the action of high spring-tides. The next year the fell again, and people said that the spirit of St. Thomas a Becket had appeared, and, indignant at the infringement of |
p.62 [extra_illustrations.2.62.1] | public rights, had struck down the walls with a blow of his crucifix. After wasting more than , the king at last secured a firm foundation, and reared the Water Gate as it now stands. The saints obnoxious to the walls raised against London citizens were propitiated by an oratory called the Confessor's Chapel, the martyr giving his name to the gate itself. |
The whole wharf, feet long, lay open to the Thames, except a patch of ground at the lower end, near the Iron Gate, which led to the Hospital of St. Catherine the Virgin, where sheds and magazines were built (now the docks). To the river-front there were stairs. The Queen's Stairs, where royalty landed, lay beneath the Byeward Gate and the Belfry, with a passage by bridge and postern through the Byeward Tower into . The Water-way passed under St. Thomas's Tower to the flight of steps in , and was generally known as [extra_illustrations.2.62.2] , the entrance for prisoners. The Galleyman Stairs (seldom used) lay under the Cradle Tower, by which there was a private entrance to the royal quarters. | |
Under the Plantagenet kings, says Mr. Dixon, the Tower warden claimed a right, very obnoxious to the London citizens, of putting or weirs filled with nets in front of the Tower Wharf, and, indeed, in any part of the Thames. For sums of money any could buy licences of the Tower wardens to set kiddles in the Thames, Lea, and Medway with nets that stopped even the smallest fish. Ceaseless we the complaints of this intolerable injustice, till Richard I. surrendered the Tower rights on religious grounds, for the salvation of his soul and those of his ruthless ancestors; but the warden soon reasserted his privileges. | |
By Magna Charta all kiddles were to be removed from the Thames. The warden still disregarding these claims of the citizens, the Sheriff of London, on occasion, made a raid, and by force of arms destroyed all the obnoxious nets. In the reign of Henry III. this quarrel assumed a more serious aspect. Enraged at the kiddles placed in the Medway, Jordan de Coventry and a body of armed men proceeded to Yantlet Creek, near Rochester, carried off kiddles, and made prisoners of men of Rochester, men of Strood, and men of Cliff, with other malefactors and threw them into Newgate. The Rochester men resolved to bring the case before the king, and it was tried at his palace at . The justiciar who attended for the Crown was a collateral ancestor of Sir Walter Raleigh. The mayor's defence for putting the Kentish men into gaol was that they were infringing the rights of the city, lessening the dignity of the Crown, and, according to an express clause of Magna Charta, incurring the ban of excommunication. The judges agreed with the mayor, and the prisoners were each fined , and the captured nets were burnt with rejoicings in Westcheape. | |
[extra_illustrations.2.62.3] says the latest chronicler, is feet high, and from to feet thick. It is built in tiers--the vaults, the main floor, the banqueting-floor, and the state floor. Each tier contains rooms, not counting the stairs, corridors, and small chambers sunk in the solid wall. In each storey there is a large west room running north and south the whole length of the tower, an east room lying parallel to the , and a cross chamber at the south-west corner. The rooms are parted by walls never less than feet thick. On each angle of the tower is a turret, of which is round. The vaults have no stairs or doors of their own. Loopholes in the wall let in the damp river air, but little light. The cross-chamber vault, or Little Ease, is darker and damper than its brethren. There is some ground for belief, says Mr. Dixon, that Little Ease was the lodging of Guy Fawkes. On the walls of the vaults are many inscriptions; amongst them is of Fisher, a Jesuit priest mixed up in the Powder Plot. It runs-- That is,
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Out of the north-east vault a door opens into a secret hole built in the dividing wall. This place has neither air not light, and is known as Walter Raleigh's cell. Absurd legend! | |
The main floor consists of large rooms and the crypt. of the rooms was a guard-room. The crypt, a lofty room, was used as a prison for of the Kentish men taken with Sir Thomas Wyat, in Mary's reign. There are niches in the solid wall, and the largest of these is also called Raleigh's cell, though he was never confined there. Mr. Dixon suggests that it may have been often mentioned in old records. The long room on the banquetting-floor was a banquetting-hall, and is the only room in the keep which boasts a fireplace. The cross-chamber, the chapel of St. John the Evangelist, occupied tiers of the Keep. On this tier Bishop Flambard, Prince Griffin, John Baliol, and Prince Charles d'Orleans were confined. | |
p.63 [extra_illustrations.2.63.1] [extra_illustrations.2.63.2] | |
On the state-room floor was the great councilchamber, a lesser hall where the justiciaries sat, and the galleries of [extra_illustrations.2.63.3] from which there was a passage into the royal apartments. The roof is flat, and strong enough to bear the carronades of later times. The largest of the turrets, built for a watch-tower, was the prison of poor Maud Fitzwalter, King John's victim, and was afterwards used as an observatory by Flamstead, Newton's contemporary. | |
The Keep, though a palace, was also a fortress, and security, rather than comfort, was what its builder had in view. It had originally only narrow door, that a single man could defend. well-stair clone connected the vaults with the upper floors. The main floor had no way up or down, except by the same staircase, which could only be approached through a passage built in the wall. The upper tiers had other stairs for free communication with the council-chamber and the parapets. Thus, we still have existing in the White Tower the clearest and most indelible proofs, better than any historian can give, of the dangers that surrounded the Conqueror, and the little real trust he had in the fidelity of those surrounding him. | |
The church of St. Peter was built by Edward I. The bills for clearing the ground are still preserved in the Record Office in . The cost of pulling down the old chapel was fortysix shillings and . | |
The Tower, says Mr. W. Dixon, was divided into parts, the inner and the outer ward. The inner ward, or royal quarter, was bounded by a wall crowned by towers. The points of defence were the Beauchamp Tower, the Belfry, the Garden Tower (now called the Bloody Tower), the Hall Tower, the Lantern, the Salt Tower, the Broad Arrow Tower, the Constable Tower, the Martin Tower, the Brick Tower, the Flint Tower, the Bowyer Tower, and the Devilin Tower. The inner ward contained the Keep, the Royal Galleries and Rooms, the Mint, the Jewel-house, the Wardrobe, the Queen's Garden, , the open Green, and in later days the Lieutenant's house. In the Brick Tower the master of the ordnance resided; in the Lantern turret lights were kept burning at night as river signals. | |
The outer ward contained some lanes and streets below the wall and works which overlooked the wharf. In this ward stood the Middle Tower, the Byeward Tower, the Water Gate, the Cradle Tower, the Well Tower, the Galleyman Tower, the Irongate Tower, Brass Mount, Legge Mount, and the covered ways. Into it opened the Hall Tower, afterwards called the Record Tower, and now the Jewel-house. Close by the Hall Tower stood the Great Hall, the doors of which opened into this outer court. Spanning the ditch on the Thames side was the Water Gate, or St. Thomas's Tower, and under the building was the wide arch so often depicted by painters, and called Traitor's Gate. | |
Into the outer ward, says Mr. Dixon, the Commons had always claimed a free access. On stated occasions the right of public entry to all citizens was insisted on with much ceremonial. The aldermen and commoners met in Barking Church on , and chose sage persons to go as a deputation to the Tower, and ask leave to see the king, and demand free access for all people to the courts of law held within the Tower. They were also to beg that no guard would close the gates or keep watch over them while the citizens were coming or going, it being against their freedom for any but their own guard to keep watch during that period. On the king granting their request the messengers returned to Barking Church, reported progress, and sent the citizen guard to keep the ground. The Commons then elected men of standing to act as spokesmen and presenters. Great care was taken that no person should go into the royal presence who had sore eyes or weak legs, or was in rags or shoeless. Every was to have his hair cut close and his face newly shaved, Mayor, aldermen, sheriff, cryer, beadles, were all to be clean and neat, and every was to lay aside his cape and cloak, and put on his coat and surcoat. | |
The exact site of the courts of justice Mr. Dixon has clearly made out. The King's Bench was held in the Lesser Hall, under the east turret of the Keep. The Common Pleas were held in the Great Hall by the river--a hall long since gone, but which stood near the Hall Tower, to which it gave a name. It seems to have been a Gothic edifice in the style of Henry III. After Henry VI.'s death, Hall Tower was turned into a Record Office. | |
of the prisoners ever lodged in the Tower that Gundulf built for William the Conqueror was Ralph Flambard, Bishop of Durham, the very treasurer and justiciar who had helped by his cruel greediness to collect the very money by which it was built. On the death of William Rufus, this prelate was seized by the Commons and thrown into the Tower, with the consent of Henry I. He was not kept very close, and night, plying the Norman soldiers who guarded him with wine, Flambard, who had had ready a coil of rope sent to him in a wine-jar, let himself down from a window feet from the ground, and escaped safe to France. | |
In the north-east turret of the White Tower King | |
p.64 | John imprisoned Maud, the beautiful daughter of Robert Fitzwalter, Lord of Baynard's Castle, whose untimely fate we have noticed in a former chapter. In the banqueting hall, Edward I. lodged John de Baliol, whom he had stripped of his crown at the battle of Dunbar. It was from this campaign that Edward returned with the coronation-stone of Scotland, on which our own monarchs have ever since been crowned. Baliol, according to existing records, seems to have lived in state in the White Tower, having his chaplain, tailor, pantler, barber, clerk of the chapel, chamberlain, esquires, and laundress in attendance; and his dogs and horses in the stables waiting his commands, at the cost of a day. He remained a prisoner days, after which he was given up to the Papal nuncio, John de Pontissera, on condition of residing abroad. years after another regal Scotchman, David, son of the brave Robert Bruce, was taken prisoner and brought here by Queen Philippa, at the battle of Neville's Cross, while Edward was away chastising France. |
Every new effort to widen England brought fresh prisoners to the Tower, and next came to Flambard's old room, Griffin, Prince of Wales, whom his brother David had surrendered to the English king. Resolute to escape, he tore up his bed-clothes, knotted them into a rope, and dropped feet from the leads of the White Tower Being a heavy man, however the rope unluckily snapped, and he was killed in the fall. His son remained a prisoner, but was afterwards released, returned to Wales, and fought against Edward I. Slain in battle, his head was brought to London, and fixed on the turret of his old prison. | |
Edward II. and his cruel queen, Isabella, kept court in the Tower; and here the Prince Joanna de la Tour was born. John de Cromwell, the Constable, was dismissed from office for having let the royal bed-chamber become so ruinous that the rain penetrated through the roof. Here, in Edward's absence, Isabella fell in love with Roger Mortimer, a Welsh chief, who was then in prison in the Tower. By the connivance, no doubt, of the guilty wife, Mortimer escaped by the kitchen chimney, and down the river, to France. His death and the king's barbarous murder at Berkeley Castle were the result of these fatal days of dalliance in the White Tower. | |
The Beauchamp Tower, on the west wall of the fortress, derives its name from Thomas de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, son of the earl who fought at Crecy and Poictiers. He was appointed by the governor to the young king, Richard II., and his act, in company with Gloucester, Arundel, and other great barons, was to march on London, and seize and put to death the young king's mischievous favourite, Sir Simon de Burley, whose greediness and insolence had rendered him hateful to the nation. This act of stern justice Richard never forgave; and directly he came of age the earl was banished to his own Warwick Castle, where he built Guy's Tower. The king resolved on obtaining despotic power. The earl was invited to dine with the king, and was seized as he was leaving the royal table, where he had been welcomed with special and treacherous hospitality. The king's uncle, the good Duke of Gloucester, was decoyed from his castle of Plasley by the king himself, then hurried over to Calais, and suffocated by his guards. Lord Arundel, another obnoxious lord, was also executed by this royal murderer. Beauchamp, in his trial before the House of Peers, pleaded a pardon he had obtained under the Great Seal for all offences. The Chief Justice declared the pardon had been repealed by the king. Ultimately the earl's castles, manors, and estates were all forfeited, and he was sentenced to be hung; drawn, and quartered. The king, however, afraid to put to death so popular a man, banished him to the Isle of Man, and then recalled him to his old prison in the Tower. years later, on the accession of Henry IV., the earl was released. He was buried in the nave of , Warwick, which he had built. | |
The next captive in the banqueting-hall of the White Tower was that poet-warrior, [extra_illustrations.2.64.1] , grandson of Charles V. of France, and father of Louis XII., a gay knight, whom Shakespeare has glanced at in the play of He had been a rival of Henry (when Prince of Wales) for the hand of Isabella of Valois, the widow of Richard II. She had married him, and died a year after in childbirth. The young prince shortly after, for reasons of state, was induced to marry a wife, Bona; daughter of Bernard, Count of Armagnac. At Agincourt Charles was found sorely wounded among the dead, and carried to England : he was placed in the White Tower, where a ransom of crowns was placed upon his head; for the knights of those days, however chivalrous, drove hard bargains with their prisoners. Orleans was years old then, and he remained in the Tower -and- years. He had a daughter by Queen Isabella, and it was to Henry's interest, as he had married a French princess, and claimed the throne of France, that Orleans should die without having a son. Charles spent the long years of his imprisonment looking out on the Thames and the hills of Surrey, and writing admirable French | |
p.65 | and English verses, which still exist. After Henry's death, and when Joan of Arc had recovered nearly the whole of France, the ransom was raked together, and Charles was released. He then married a wife, Mary of Cleves, and by her had the son who afterwards became the invader of Italy, Louis XII. |
The reign that saw Charles of Orleans enter the White Tower also saw Sir John Oldcastle, brought to the Beauchamp Tower. This Kentish nobleman, who had fought bravely in France and in Wales, was a favourer of the Lollard reformers, and a despiser of the monks. He accepted Wycliffe's doctrines, denied the real presence, read the bible openly, and sheltered Lollard preachers. The great enemy of this bold man was Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had introduced from Spain the savage custom of burning contumacious heretics. Disobeying a citation of the primate, Lord Cobham was sent to the Tower. Before a synod Oldcastle boldly asserted the new doctrines, and was sentenced to be burnt to death. said the old soldier to the synod,
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In the Beauchamp Tower, when the monks spread reports that Cobham had recanted, he issued a bold denial that he had changed his view of of which St. Paul had said to the Corinthians,
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The people were deeply agitated, and night, weeks after, a band of citizens broke into the Beauchamp Tower (with or without the connivance of the guards), released Cobham, and carried him safely to his own house in . There, defying the primate and the monks, Cobham remained for months. The Lollards at last, probably urged forward by the primate's spies, agreed to meet, strong, in Fields, and choose Lord Cobham as their general. The king, enraged at this, collected his barons, closed the city gates, put a white crusader's cross on his royal banner, rode with his spears into Fields, and dispersed the Lollard party, who were waiting for the good lord. For years Cobham wandered through Wales and England, with set on his head. Fisher, a skinner, the leader of the band that released Oldcastle from the Tower, was tried at Newgate, and afterwards hung at Tyburn, and his head stuck on . Eventually, after a hard fight, Oldcastle was betrayed in Wales by a Welsh adherent named Powis. He was brought to London, and without further trial he was burnt in front of his own house, in , the man there burnt for the true faith. | |
In the old monastic plays this brave and consistent man was always represented as a coward and buffoon. Shakespeare himself, following the convention, named his Falstaff at Oldcastle; then, probably having his attention drawn by some better-read friend to the injustice done to the memory of a good man and true Protestant, he changed it to Falstaff, unfortunately, another brave soldier of Cobham's period, whom tradition had unjustly slandered. It is a singular fact that a in the Borough, not that in , had belonged to the great Falstaff of the French wars. The man who wrote in the epilogue to the the words says Mr. Hepworth Dixon, This dictum we hold, nevertheless, to be extremely doubtful, as nearly all the religious passages in Shakespeare's plays point to a great reverence for Roman Catholic traditions; and surely an honest writer can free a good man from slander without necessarily believing in his doctrines. Moreover, Lord Cobham was a Protestant, but by no means a Puritan, and probably as far apart in belief from the later martyrs of as the Lollards were from John Wesley. | |
There is a pretty tradition connected with the Tower in the time of the Wars of the Roses. Sir Henry Wyatt, of Allington Castle, in Kent, father of the poet, and grandfather of the unfortunate rebel, was imprisoned in the Tower for being a resolute Lancastrian. He was thrown into a cold and narrow tower, where he had neither bed to lie on, sufficient clothes to warm him, or enough food to eat. day a cat came into his dungeon, and he laid her in his bosom to warm him, After this the cat would come several times a day, and sometimes bring him a pigeon. The gaoler dressed these pigeons, without inquiring where they came from. Sir Henry Wyatt after this retained an affection for cats, and was always painted with by his side. day, when Wyatt was being tortured with the barnacles, Richard III., who was present, exclaimed with regret, meaning Henry of Richmond, To which Wyatt replied,
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And now came, in due sequence, Gloucester's murder of the princes, his nephews, usually said to have been in the [extra_illustrations.2.66.2] , but the locality of the crime is still uncertain. Bayley, the fullest and best historian of the Tower, thinks it highly unlikely that Gloucester would have sent the young princes to such a mere porter's lodge as the Bloody Tower--a tower, moreover, which, in an official survey of the reign of Henry VIII., is called the Garden Tower, showing that the popular name is of later date. When sent to what was to be their tomb, Edward V. was , and Richard, Duke of York, was . They stood between the Crookback and the crown, but not for long. Their mother was in sanctuary at . The Protector had already thrown out rumours that the children were illegitimate, and a bishop had been base enough, it is said, to have sworn to a previous secret marriage of the licentious Edward. Lord Hastings, under an accusation of witchcraft, had just been dragged from the council-chamber, and beheaded on a block of timber on Tower Green. Murder followed murder fast, and the word soon went forth for the children's death. Brackenbury, the Governor of the Tower, receiving the order, when on his knees in Chapel, refused to obey or to understand it. Gloucester, told of this at midnight in Warwick Castle, instantly rose from his bed, and sent Sir James Tyrrell, his Master of Horse, to London, with power to use the keys and pass-words of the Tower for night. dogged ruffians, John Dighton and Miles Forrest, rode at Tyrrell's heels. It is said that [extra_illustrations.2.66.3] [extra_illustrations.2.66.4] . Tyrrell stood near the gate while the deed was doing, and saw the bodies of the poor children when all was over, then rode back to York to tell Richard. The murderers, helped by an obsequious Tower priest, carried down the bodies, dug a hole near the gateway wall, and threw them in. They were afterwards re-interred, in a fit of superstition, by Richard, behind a staircase in the Keep. In Charles II.'s time the bones were found under the steps, and removed to a royal tomb in Henry VII.'s Chapel, . The last-named king had tried hard to find the bodies, and prove that Perkin Warbeck was not the son of Edward IV.; but the priest who had removed them was dead, and the search was unsuccessful. Sir Thomas More and Lord Bacon both agree that the children were murdered by Richard's command. | |
The pride and cruelty of Henry VIII., his theologic doubts, and his Bluebeard habit of getting rid of his wives, sent many victims to the Tower. of the most venerable of these was John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, a determined opponent of the king's marriage with a Protestant beauty. He was imprisoned in the Belfry Tower, on the ground floor of which lived the Lieutenant. Fisher had professed belief in an hysterical Kentish girl, subject to fits, whom the monks had persuaded to utter rhyming prophecies against the divorce of Queen Catherine. The poor maid of Kent, urged forward by the priests, at last went too far, declaring that, if Henry put away his Spanish wife, he would die in months, and his daughter Mary would ascend the throne. Such prophecies, when spread among fanatics, are apt to produce their own fulfilment. Henry gave the signal, and in a very short time the monks who instigated the nun, and the nun herself, were in a cart bound for Tyburn. Fisher himself was soon arrested, and browbeaten by Cromwell, who told him he believed the prophecies true because he wished them to be true. Fisher was years old, and might have been spared, had not Paul III. at that very time, unfortunately, and against the king's express command, sent him a cardinal's hat. said Henry, with brutal humour, The death-warrant was at once signed. They brought the old man the news that he seemed to have expected, at a.m. He slept till , then rose and donned his bravest suit, for what he called his marriage-day. He passed to the scaffold with the New Testament in his feeble hands. When he opened the book, he read the passage, A few hours after the old grey head fell on it was spiked upon . The room over Coldharbour Gateway, says Mr. Dixon, where the Maid of Kent was imprisoned, was long known as the Nun's Bower. | |
The poet Earl of Surrey was another of Henry's victims, and he passed from the Tower to die on the block for blazoning the Confessor's arms upon his shield. His father, too, the Duke of Norfolk, had a narrow escape from the same block, though he was a near relation of Henry, and the uncle of queens. He was charged a month, and yet complained of having no exercise and wanting sheets enough for his bed. Luckily for him, Henry expired the very night the warrant for his execution was signed, and he escaped. | |
The Beauchamp Tower bears on its walls records of earlier prisoners than the duke-abettors of that | |
p.67 p.68 | very Pilgrimage of Grace which he had helped to put down. This last great struggle of English Popery against the Reformation brought many of the old North country families to this place of durance. |
The royal decree for putting down monastic houses had, in , set all Yorkshire in a ferment. A vast rabble had armed and threatened to march on London, hang Cromwell, weed the Court of evil councillors, restore Queen Catherine, and revive the religious houses; The pilgrims fastened on their breasts scroll displaying the wounds of Christ. Near Appleby a band of these fanatics stopped a lawyer named Aske, who was returning to London from a Yorkshire hunting party, and chose him as their general. Aske determined to make Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, the commander-in-chief. Percy, who had been a lover of Anne Boleyn, was the Warden of the East and Middle Marches. The earl was afraid to join them; but the pilgrims demanded the earl's brothers, Thomas and Ingram, in spite of the tears and remonstrances of their mother. York at once surrendered to the pilgrims. At Pomfret Castle they enrolled Lord Darcy among their band. At Doncaster Bridge, however, the Duke of Norfolk met the wild rout, and by proffered pardon and promises of the changes they desired, soon broke up the host. | |
In the meantime lesser rebellions of the same kind prospered for a while. Foremost among the leaders of these were the Bulmers, of whom had had the command of Norham Castle. Sir John Bulmer brought with him to the camp a dangerous and fanatical woman, named Margaret Cheyne, his paramour, and a bastard daughter of the Duke of Buckingham, whom Henry VIII. had beheaded. When the pilgrimage failed, and the news came that Cromwell was not disgraced, that no parliament was to be held at York, and that the king would place garrisons in Newcastle, Scarborough, and Hull, the Bulmers, urged on by this wild woman and Adam Sedburgh, Abbot of Jervaulx, and the Abbot of Fountains, resolved on a new pilgrimage. Thomas and Ingram Percy had been deprived of their command in the North by Earl Henry, and were ready for any desperate effort. They defied the king's new lieutenant, and prepared for a fresh outbreak. As Norfolk's army approached, the rebels seized Beverley,. and Sir Francis Bigod prepared to fight for the old order of things; but Yorkshire was afraid of the king's power, and a vain attempt on Chillingham Castle, and another on Hull, led to total ruin. A few days more, and the ringleaders were all arrested and packed in the Tower. Aske, Darcy, Bigod, Sir Thomas Percy, the Abbot of Jervaulx, Sir John Bulmer, all perished at Tyburn, and Margaret Cheyne was burnt in . | |
The next prisoners of importance who came to the Beauchamp Tower, the Garden Tower, and the Nun's Bower, were [extra_illustrations.2.68.1] , her young husband, and the ambitious nobles who forced on her the fatal crown to which she was indifferent. The days' reign of poor Lady Jane Grey filled the Tower prisons with the Dudleys, who had driven the mild, tender-hearted girl to usurp the crown on the death of Edward VI. With the Queen came Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland; John, the young Earl of Warwick; Lord Robert, already married to luckless Amy Robsart; Lord Ambrose Dudley, a mere lad; Lord Guildford, the weak youth who had married Lady Jane to gratify his father's ambition; and Lord Henry Guildford, his brother. The duke was shut in the Gate House, Lord Ambrose and Lord Henry in the Nun's Bower, Jane herself in the house of the Deputy-Lieutenant, Lord Robert in the lower tier of the Beauchamp Tower, Lord Guildford in the middle tier. In places, on the north side of his prison, and, in instance, just above the name of the Abbot of Jervaulx, Guildford carved his wife's name,
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Lady Jane Grey's claim to the throne arose in this way. Mary, the sister of Henry VIII., on the death of her husband, Louis XII. of France, married her stalwart lover, Charles Brandon, afterwards Duke of Suffolk. She had issue, princesses, Frances and Eleanor. Frances married Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, and Lady Jane was the eldest of her daughters. When King Edward, that precocious boy, died--as some still think, of poison-at Greenwich Palace, Dudley kept his death secret for a whole day, and then sent for the Lord Mayor and the richest aldermen and merchants of London, and showed them forged letters-patent giving the crown to Lady Jane, who had already married his son. The duke's effort was to seize the Princess Mary, but here he failed; faithful friends had instantly warned her of her danger, and she had already taken flight, to rouse her adherents to arms. Lady Jane was then, against her will, proclaimed queen. She was taken to the Tower from Sion House, and was received as a monarch by crowds of kneeling citizens, her husband walking by her side, cap in hand. She refused, however, to let Guildford be proclaimed king, and the lad cried petulantly at her firmness. Mary's friends fast rising in Norfolk, Dudley was sent against them, with a train of guns and men. As they rode along , the distrusted duke said to | |
p.69 | Lord Grey, In London all went wrong. Ridley, Bishop of London, denounced [extra_illustrations.2.69.1] and Popery, but the crowd was evidently for the rightful heiress. |
The rebellion was soon over. Dudley could do nothing in Norfolk without more men. The great nobles were faithless to the Queen of Days. The day Mary was proclaimed in Cheap, and in . The archers came to the Tower and demanded the keys, which were given up. Grey rushed into his daughter's room, and found [extra_illustrations.2.69.2] sitting, unconscious of her fate, beneath a royal canopy. said the miserable duke; From a throne the poor girl passed quickly to a prison. | |
In the middle room of the Beauchamp Tower, where Warwick and his brother Guildford were confined, Lord Warwick, in the dreary hours, carved an emblematic cipher of the family names, which has never yet been accurately read. bears and a ragged staff stand in a frame of emblems --roses, acorns, geraniums, honeysuckles-which some folks, Mr. Dixon says, fancy to indicate the initial letters of his kinsmen's names--the rose, Ambrose; the geranium, Guildford; the oak, Robert. Lord Robert (reserved for future greatness) carved in the lower room the plain words, When sent to the upper room (probably after Guildford's death), he carved on the wall his emblem, an oak-branch, and the letters
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Lady Jane, with her gentlewomen by her side, spent her time at Deputy Brydges' house, securely guarded, reading the Greek Testament, and mourning for her father's inevitable fate. Norfolk, released from prison, presided in Hall at the trial of his enemy, Dudley. The Duke, Warwick, and Northampton were condemned to death. Dudley and his son turned Roman Catholics, but failed to avert their doom. Wyat's mad rebellion brought Lady Jane and her foolish husband to the block. On the scaffold she declared her acts against the Queen were unlawful; she said, She refused the executioner's help, drew the white kerchief over her own eyes, and said to the kneeling executioner, Kneeling before the block, she felt for it with inquiring hands. As she laid down her fair young head, she exclaimed, and the heavy axe fell. | |
It was while Lady Jane and the [extra_illustrations.2.69.3] were prisoners in the Tower that Wyat's mad rebellion was crushed, and the reckless man himself was locked up in the middle chamber of the Beauchamp Tower. On the slant of the window looking towards can still be seen carved the name of (the cousin of the leader of the rebels). The final break-down of Wyat in his attempt to stop the Spanish match, we have already described in our chapter on , where the last throws of the game were played, and we need not recur to it here. The last moments of Wyat are still to be reviewed. Wyat is described as wearing, when taken prisoner, a coat of mail with rich sleeves, a velvet cassock covered with yellow lace, high boots and spurs, and a laced velvet hat. As he entered the Tower wicket, Sir John Brydges, the Lieutenant, threatened him, and said,
said Wyat, contemptuously, and strode on. | |
In the Tower, out of the moonshine of vanity and display, Wyat for a time faltered. He made a charge against Courtney, son of the Marquis of Exeter, and a descendant of Edward IV.; and even raised a suspicion against the Princess Elizabeth, which Renard, the Spanish Ambassador, used with dangerous effect. Chandos, the Keeper of the Tower, had planned a scene, as Wyat was led td execution, that should draw from him an open accusation of Elizabeth and Courtney. On his way to death he was taken into the Garden Tower, where Courtney lay. The Lord Mayor and the Privy Council were there, Courtney himself was brought in, but Wyat had nothing to allege. On the scaffold Wyat told the people that he had never accused either the Princess or Courtney of a knowledge of the plot; and a priest, eager for fresh victims, reminded him that he had said differently at the Council. replied Wyat; And the axe fell. | |
The Courtney mentioned above was nearly all his life a prisoner in the Tower. His father was executed for treason by Henry VIII. On Mary's accession he was released, and seemed for a time to have persuaded himself that she would accept him as a husband. He was made Earl of Devon, and was called by his friends As the Spanish marriage drew near, people began to mention Courtney as a fine husband for Elizabeth, who seems to have really had some youthful liking for the weak, handsome aspirant. On the outbreak of Wyat's rebellion he was again | |
p.70 | thrown into the Tower. After Mary's marriage, however, he was released and sent abroad. He died suddenly at Padua. On Courtney's death the house of York was represented by the descendants of the Duke of Clarence, Edmund and Arthur, nephews of the Cardinal Pole. For some vague suspicion of encouraging the claim of Mary Queen of Scots to the English throne they were imprisoned for life in the Tower. In the Beauchamp Tower inscriptions by both brothers are still to be seen. Arthur has written, among other inscriptions-
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Among the residents of the Tower, in Mary's cruel reign, were Cranmer, [extra_illustrations.2.70.1] , and Ridley. [extra_illustrations.2.70.2] who had refused to fly when Mary marched to London, proved but faint of heart when thrown into the Garden Tower. He had resolved to stay to own his share in the changes which had been made in the days of Edward VI., but the fireless cell soon brought down his courage, and he trembled for his life. There was more of Peter than of Paul about him. The Tower's solitude led the way to his miserable recantation at Oxford. But he revived when Latimer and Ridley came to share his prison, and they searched the Scriptures together for arguments against Feckenham, the Queen's confessor, whom they met daily at the Lieutenant's, where they dined, and whose last argument was the fire. [extra_illustrations.2.70.3] [extra_illustrations.2.70.4] | |
Footnotes: [extra_illustrations.2.60.4] The Tower [extra_illustrations.2.60.5] William the Conqueror [extra_illustrations.2.60.6] Henry III. [extra_illustrations.2.62.1] Tower Gate [extra_illustrations.2.62.2] Traitor's Gate [extra_illustrations.2.62.3] The White Tower [extra_illustrations.2.63.1] Marten Tower, Interior [extra_illustrations.2.63.2] Fire in Tower 1841 [extra_illustrations.2.63.3] St. John's Chapel [extra_illustrations.2.64.1] Charles of Orleans [extra_illustrations.2.66.2] Bloody Tower [extra_illustrations.2.66.3] one boy. had his throat cut and the other was smothered with a pillow [extra_illustrations.2.66.4] Edward V. [extra_illustrations.2.68.1] Lady Jane Grey [extra_illustrations.2.69.1] Mary [extra_illustrations.2.69.2] Lady Jane [extra_illustrations.2.69.3] Princess Elizabeth [extra_illustrations.2.70.1] Latimer [extra_illustrations.2.70.2] Cranmer [extra_illustrations.2.70.3] Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley and Bradford [extra_illustrations.2.70.4] Burning of Cranmer |