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 IX: The Tower,Visitors to Tower The Rack
Chapter IX: The Tower,Visitors to Tower The Rack
The Constable of the Tower was anciently called
and William I. chose as the Constable of his new fortress Geoffrey de Mandeville, who had fought well at Hastings. The Constable Edward II. received a dole of twopence from each person going and returning by the Thames on a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella. In the reign of Richard II. he received a year, with fees from prisoners for the --for a duke, ; for an earl, ; for a baron, ; for a knight, too shillings. Later, he had wine-tolls, which were taken from passing ships by his officers. Taylor the Waterpoet farmed this office, and naively confesses that he could make no profit of it till he cheated. The Constable's salary is at present about a year. The Duke of Wellington was Constable from till his death, in , and he was succeeded by that brave old veteran, Viscount Combermere. The Lieutenant of the Tower ranks next to the Constable, but the duties of his office are performed by the Deputy-Lieutenant and the Tower Major. The warders' old dress was obtained for them by the Duke of Somerset, after his release from prison in the reign of Edward VI. | |
There are officers, says Bayley, who are now joined in the command and custody of the Tower, with the denomination of DeputyLieu- tenant and Major, both of whom are appointed by commission from the Crown, though the patronage is virtually in the Constable, who exercises the power of recommending. These officers, however, are of very modern date, having both sprung up in the course of the last century. The earliest mention we find of a Deputy-Lieutenant is in the time of Queen Anne, and that of a Major not till many years afterwards. The civil establishment of the Tower also consists of a chaplain, whose appointment is in the king exclusively; the chief porter, now called the gentleman-porter, who has his office by letters patent, at the recommendation of the Constable; a physician and a surgeon, who are appointed by his Majesty's Commission, at the recommendation of the Constable; an apothecary, who holds his place by warrant from the Constable; the gentleman-gaoler, the yeoman-porter, and [extra_illustrations.2.88.3] , all of whom also have their places by warrant of the Constable. | |
Locking--up the Tower is an ancient, curious, and stately ceremony. A few minutes before the clock strikes the hour of --on Tuesdays and Fridays, --the head warder (yeoman-porter), clothed in a long red cloak, bearing a huge bunch of keys, and attended by a brother warder carrying a lantern, appears in front of the main guardhouse, and loudly calls out, The sergeant of the guard, with or men, then turns out and follows him to the or outer gate, each sentry challenging as they pass his post,
The gates being carefully locked and barred, the procession returns, the sentries exacting the same explanation, and receiving the same answer as before. Arrived once more in front of the main guardhouse, the sentry there gives a loud stamp with his foot, and asks,
The yeomanporter then exclaims, The main guard respond, The officer on duty gives the word, The firelocks rattle, the officer kisses the hilt of his sword, the escort fall in among their companions, and the yeoman-porter marches across the parade alone, to deposit the keys in the Lieutenant's lodgings. The ceremony over, not only is all egress and ingress totally precluded, but even within the walls no can stir without being furnished with the countersign. | |
The Tower has a separate coroner, and the public have access to the fortress only by sufferance. When Horwood made his survey of London, , he was denied admission to the Tower, and the refusal is thus recorded upon the map: The Tower is extra-parochial; and in the population was , and the military in barracks . | |
Nor must we forget the now extinct menagerie in the Tower. The royal menagerie in England was at Woodstock, where Henry I. kept some lions and leopards to amuse his ladies and courtiers. | |
p.89 [extra_illustrations.2.89.1] | Henry III. having leopards sent him by the Emperor Frederick II., moved his wild beasts to the Tower, and thus commenced the menagerie which existed there till . Among the national records many orders exist to the sheriffs of London, Bedfordshire, and Buckinghamshire to provide for the animals and their keepers. Thus in (Henry III.) the London sheriffs were. ordered to pay fourpence a day for the maintenance of a white bear, and to provide a muzzle and chain to hold him while fishing or washing himself in the river Thames. In (same reign) they are again desired to build a house in the Tower for an elephant, sent to the king by Louis of France (the ever seen in England since the Roman period). In the reigns of Edward I., Edward II., and Edward III., the lions and leopards were paid for at the rate of sixpence a day, while the keepers received only -halfpence. At later periods the keeper of the Tower lions was a person of quality, who received sixpence a day, and the same sum for every animal under his charge. Henry VI. gave the post to his, marshal, Robert Mansfield, and afterwards to Thomas Rookes, his dapifer. |
The post was often held by the Lieutenant or Constable of the Tower, on condition of his providing a sufficient deputy. Our ancient kings had in their household an official called In a semi-circular enclosure round the Lion Tower, James L and his court used, to come to see lions and bears baited by dogs. In Howel's time there were lions in the Tower, and probably no other animals. In , Strype enumerates lions, leopards or tigers (the worthy historian, it seems, knows not which), eagles, owls, cats of the mountain, and a jackal. In Maitland gives a much larger catalogue. By , however, the Tower menagerie had sunk to a grizzly bear, an elephant, and a few birds. By the diligence of Mr. Cops, the keeper, the collection had increased, in , to the following:--Bengal, lion, lioness and cubs, Cape lion, Barbary lioness, tiger, leopard, jaguar, puma, ocelot, caracal, chetah or hunting leopard, striped hyaena, hyaena dog, spotted hyaena, African bloodhound, wolf, clouded black wolf, jackal, civet or musk cat, Javanese civet, grey ichneumon, paradoxurus, brown coati, racoon, American black bear, and grizzly bear. | |
A century ago, says Cunningham, the lions in the Tower were named after the reigning kings, and it was long a vulgar belief, Addison alludes to this popular error in his own inimitable way:-- he says in the
| |
The Bengal lion of , as the keepers called him, after the reigning king, had been captured when a cub by General Watson, who shot the parents. The general made a goat foster the cubs during the voyage to England. They were at allowed to walk in the open yard, the visitors playing with them with impunity. They used to be fed once a day only, on a piece of beef f or weight. The lioness was perfectly tame till she bore cubs. of the keepers on occasion finding her at large, drove her back into her den, though he was only armed with a stick, and evaded the springs she made at him. The menagerie declining, and the damp position and restricted room being found injurious to the animals, they were transferred to the , , in . he refreshment room and ticket office occupy art of the site of the Lion Tower, but the buildings were not entirely removed until . The on the. used, to be an old London hoax. | |
The Tower Moat, long an offensive and useless nuisance, was finally drained in , and then filled up and turfed as a small for the garrison. Evergreens are planted on the banks; and. on the north-east is a shrubbery garden. | |
In draining the moat the workmen found several stone shot, supposed to be missiles directed at the fortress during the siege of , when Lord Scales held the Tower for Henry VI, and the Yorkists cannonaded the fortress from a battery in . Our readers will remember occasions when the Tower fired on the city: , when the Bastard Falconbridge attacked the bridge under pretence of aiding the king; and again on Evil May Day, in the reign of Henry VIII., when the Constable of the Tower, enraged at the tumult, discharged his cannon on way. In , when there was much popular discontent, several men were employed to repair the Tower fortifications, opening the embrasures, and mounting cannon;. and on the west side of the fortress, a strong barricade was formed of old casks, filled with earth and rubble. The gates were closed at | |
p.90 | an early hour, and no but soldiers allowed upon the ramparts. In , when the Duke of Wellington, the Constable, filled the with water, and cleansed and deepened it, the Radicals declared he was putting the fortress into order in case of the Reform agitation, as very likely he was. |
[extra_illustrations.2.90.1] , situated near to the north-west of the White Tower, was built, or rebuilt, by Edward III.; the private or royal chapel, in the upper part of the keep, having till then been the chief ecclesiastical building within the fortress where so many prisoners have groaned. The earlier church of St. Peter seems to have been large and spacious, fitted up with stalls for the king and queen, and with chancels, adorned | |
| with shrines and sculpture. A letter still existing, and quoted by Strype, of Henry III. (that great builder), desires the keeper of the Tower works to plaster the chancel of St. Peter, and to colour anew the shrine and figure of Mary, and the images of St. Peter, St. Nicholas, St. Katherine, the beam beyond the altar of St. Peter, and the little cross with its figures, and to erect a painted image of the giant St. Christopher carrying Jesus. There were also to be made tables, painted with the stories of the blessed St. Nicholas and St. Katherine, before the altars of the said saints. The king also ordered fair cherubims, with cheerful and joyful countenances, to be made, and erected on the right and left of the great cross in the said | |
p.91 p.92 | church, and also a marble font with pillars, well and handsomely wrought;
|
The interesting old church has been modernised by degrees into a small mean building, with cinquefoil windows of late Gothic, a rude wooden porch, and a small square bell-turret at the west end. In a bird's-eye view of the Tower Liberties, made in , the church is represented as having battlements, and of the windows are bricked up. They continued in that state till after I. It is supposed the old windows were destroyed by fire in the reign of Henry VIII. In the reign of Henry III. there was a small cell or hermitage for a male or female recluse behind the church, the inmate daily receiving a penny of the king's charity. The church now consists of a nave, chancel, and north aisle, the nave and aisle being separated by low pointed arches. | |
In this building lie many great persons whose heads paid forfeit for their ambition or their crimes. There are innocent men and women, too, among them-victims of cruelty and treachery. Many who lie here headless suffered merely from being unfortunately too nearly allied to deposed royalty. In this little Golgotha are interred mighty secrets now never to be solved; for half the crimes of our English monarchs were wrought out on the little plot outside the church-door of St. Peter ad Vincula. | |
of the earliest of the sufferers for state errors who lie in is Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare and Lord Deputy of Ireland, who, committed to the Tower for treasonable practices, died there of a broken heart in . Of the Tower prisoners already mentioned by us there here rest-Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, for vexing Henry VIII. by refusing to deny the Papal supermacy. By his own request he was buried near Sir Thomas More. The next year the body of poor Anne Boleyn was tossed into an old arrowchest, and hurriedly buried here. Katherine Howard, a really guilty queen, though more deserving contempt than death, came next. In the same reign another grave was filled by Cromwell, Earl of Essex, the king's deposed favourite, and Margaret, [extra_illustrations.2.92.1] , mother of Cardinal Pole. The executioner chased this old countess, who refused to lay her head on the block as a traitor, round the scaffold, and killed her at last after many hasty blows. | |
The reign of Edward VI. brought some really evil men to the same burying-place. by they came, after days of greatness and of sorrow. , Thomas Lord Seymour of Dudley, the Lord Admiral, beheaded by order of his brother, the Protector Somerset; then the. bad and ambitious Protector himself. | |
In the reign of Mary were buried here, after execution, that poor unoffending young wife, Lady Jane, the victim of her selfish kinsman's ambition; and then the kinsman himself, John Dudley, Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northumberland. In Elizabeth's mild reign only the Earl of Essex, who so well deserved death, is to be added to the list. | |
In James's shameless reign the murdered Sir Thomas Overbury was interred here; and in the reign of Charles I. his victim, the great-hearted Sir John Eliot. His son begged to be allowed to convey his father's body to Cornwall, to lie among his ancestors; but Charles, cold and unrelenting, wrote at the foot of the petition, After the Restoration, Okey, the regicide, was buried in the same place. The weak Duke of Monmouth lies beneath, the communiontable, and beneath the west gallery are the bodies of Lords Kilmarnock, Balmerino, and that wicked old fox, Simon Lovat. The Dukes of Somerset and Northumberland, Anne Boleyn, and Katherine Howard were buried before the high altar. | |
The monuments in the church are interesting, because the church of St. Peter escaped the Great Fire. At the west end of the north aisle is a fine enriched table-tomb, to the memory of Sir Richard Cholmondeley (that name which is such a stumbling-block to foreigners), Lieutenant of the Tower, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth (early part of Henry VIII.). The knight's recumbent effigy is in plate-armour, with collar and pendant round his neck. His hands are joined in prayer. His lady wears a pointed head-dress, and the tomb has small twisted columns at the angles, and is divided at the sides into square panels, enclosing blank shields and lozenges. The monument formerly stood in the body of the church. In the chancel stands also a stately Elizabethan monument, to the memory of Sir Richard Blount, and Michael his son, both Lieutenants of the Tower. says Bayley, There is also a monument in the chancel to Sir Allan Apsley, a Lieutenant of the Tower, who died in . He was the father of that noble woman, Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, whose | |
p.93 | husband was afterwards confined in the Bloody Tower. On the floor of the nave is a small and humble slab, to the memory of Talbot Edwards, gentleman, who died in , aged years. This was the brave old guardian of the regalia, whom Blood and his ruffians nearly killed, and who had at last to sell his long-deferred annuity of for ready money. There is also a monument to Colonel Gurwood, that brave soldier who led the storming party at Ciudad Rodrigo, who edited the and who died by his own hand, from insanity produced by his wounds. Other officers of the Tower are buried here, and amongst them George Holmes, the Vice-President of the Society of Antiquaries, and Deputy Keeper of the Records in the Tower (died ). On the outside of the church is a monument to the memory of William Bridges, Surveyor- General of the Ordnance under Queen Anne. |
The blood-stained spot where the private executions formerly took place, nearly opposite the door of , is denoted by a large oval of dark flints. Here Anne Boleyn, Lady Jane Grey, and Essex perished. It was an old slander against Raleigh that at the execution of Essex he stood at a window opposite, and puffed out tobacco in disdain of him. But in his speech at the scaffold Raleigh declared, with all the solemnity due to such a moment,
| |
Archbishop Laud, in his superstitious records with fanatical horror the fact, that in the lieutenancy of Alderman Pennington, the regicide Lord Mayor of London, Kem, vicar of Low Leyton, in Essex, preached in this very in a gown over a buff coat and scarf. | |
In the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I. the chaplains of received per annum from the Exchequer. Afterwards the chaplain was turned into a rector, and given a year. In Edward III., however, converted the chapel into a sort of collegiate church, and appointed chaplains to help the rector, granting them, besides the , a rent of from tenements in and Petty Wales. Petty Wales was, an old house in , near the , supposed to be where the Princes of Wales used to reside when they came to the city. The chaplains also received a rent of from the Hospital of St. Katherine, and certain tributes from Thames fishing-boats, together with from the Exchequer, from the Constable of the Tower, from the clerk of the Mint, from the Master of the Mint, and per week from the wages of each workman or teller of coins at the Mint. The church was exempt from episcopal authority till the time of Edward VI. | |
Several interesting discoveries of Roman antiquities within the Tower precincts encourage us to the belief in the old tradition that the Romans built a fortress here. In , workmen digging the foundations of a new office for the Board of Ordnance, after breaking through foundations of ancient buildings, found below the level of the present river-bed a double wedge of silver, inches long, and in the broadest part nearly inches broad. In the centre was the inscription, This ingot is supposed to have been cast in the reign of the Emperor Honorius, A.D. , the Roman emperor who, harassed by the Goths, in A.D. surrendered to its own people, and finally withdrew the Roman troops. The unhappy Britons, then overwhelmed by the Picts and Scots, applied for assistance to the Saxons, who soon conquered the people they had come to assist. With this silver ingot were found gold coins, of Honorius, and of his brother Arcadius. The coins of Arcadius were probably struck at Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern empire. On these coins (reverse) there is a soldier treading a captive under foot. In his left hand the soldier holds the labarum; in the right, a small figure of Victory. In the same spot was also found a square stone, dedicated to the manes of Titus Licinius, and a small glass crown. | |
In the year an elegant little open jewelled crown was found near the east side of the White Tower, leading from . It seems to have been the crown of some image, and was set with emeralds, rubies, and pearls. | |
The Waterloo Barracks, a large modern Gothic building, that will hold men, used as a barrack and armoury, and loopholed for musketry, was completed in , on the site of the Grand Storehouse, burned down in . The stone was laid in by the [extra_illustrations.2.93.1] , a stone statue of whom, by Milnes, stands near the spot. North-east of the White Tower is another modern castellated range of buildings, for the officers of the garrison. South-eastward are the Ordnance Office and storehouses. The area of the Tower within the walls is acres and poles, and the circuit outside the ditch is , yards. The portcullis of the Bloody Tower is of the last complete relics of feudalism, being the only perfect and usable portcullis in England. | |
The Royal Mint had its offices in the Tower till , when the present building on | |
p.94 | was completed. Stow speaks of the Tower as a citadel to defend or command the city, a royal palace for assemblies or treaties, a state prison for dangerous offenders, the only place for coining in England in his time, an armoury for warlike provisions, the treasury of the jewels of the crown, and the storehouse of the records of the king's courts of justice at . Many of our poets have specially mentioned the Tower. Of these, Shakespeare stands pre-eminent. In the tragedy of . he shows us the princes' instinctive horror of the place in which their cruel uncle, the Crookback, wished them to spend the few days before the coronation of the young Edward : |
| |
And in another passage, in , the poet seems to hint at a similar association:-- | |
| |
Gray, in his speaks of-
| |
Before tearing ourselves from the Tower, we may mention a few nooks and corners of interest not generally known to visitors. In the northeastern turret of the White Tower was the observatory of that great astronomical rival of Newton, [extra_illustrations.2.94.1] . Here often he The Ordnance Office gave him a year. The roof of this tower was a promenade for prisoners. In there were barrels of gunpowder stored close to the White Tower. The Record Tower, or Hall Tower, was formerly called the Wakefield Tower, from the Yorkist prisoners confined there after that great battle of the Roses. | |
The most terrible cells of the fortress, such as those over which Mr. Harrison Ainsworth threw a blue fire, are in the [extra_illustrations.2.94.2] , where there is a ghastly hole with a trap-door, opening upon a flight of steps. In the lower chambers of the Devereux Tower are subterranean passages, leading to . In the Beauchamp Tower a secret passage has been discovered in the masonry, where spies could cower, and listen to the conversations and soliloquies of poor unsuspecting prisoners. torture-chamber was called, says Mr. Hewitt, because it was so small that a prisoner could not stand erect, or even lie down at full length. Other cells are said to have been full of rats, which at high water were driven up in shoals from the Thames. Hatton, in , describes the Tower guns as in number; they were on the wharf, and were discharged on all occasions of victories, coronations, festival days, days of thanksgiving, and triumphs. They are now fired from a salutation-battery facing . The prisoner's walks in the Tower, spots of many a mournful hour of regret and contemplation, are specially interesting. There is --a passage on the leads between the (alarm) Bell Tower and the Beauchamp Tower. The walls are carved with names. In the Garden Tower are also leads where prisoners used to pace; and Pepys, visiting the Tower, , in order to see Sir W. Coventry, they visit what was then called at the end of it there was a piece of iron upon the wall with his arms upon it, and holes to put in a peg for every turn made upon the walk. Mrs. Hutchinson especially mentions that her husband was confined in the room of the Bloody Tower where it was said the princes were murdered. The room that led to it was that in which, it is popularly believed, the Duke of Clarence was drowned. says the amiable and faithful wife,
| |
The council-chamber of the Lieutenant's lodgings, where Guy Fawkes was examined, and perhaps tortured, is said to be haunted, and the soldiers of the Tower have a firm belief that a ghost, in some ambiguous and never clearly-defined shape, appeared on occasion to a drunken sentry near the Martin Tower, the old Jewel House. It is said that upwards of prisoners have been groaning together at time in the Tower. The person who believes in the Tower ghost can swallow this too. Bayley mentions that the bones of an old ape, which had hidden itself and died in an unoccupied turret, were set down in his time as those of the murdered princes. | |
During the Spa Fields riot some of the rioters, including Thistlewood, afterwards the desperate leader of the Cato Street conspirators, came to the Tower walls and tried to persuade the soldiers to join them, offering them each, but failed to win over even a single recruit. A few years ago the population of the Tower, including the garrison, was . | |
In old times, says Mr. Dixon, in his book on | |
p.95 | London Prisons, whenever it was found necessary to carry a prisoner through the streets, the sheriffs received him from the king's lieutenants at the entrance to the city, gave a receipt for him, and took another on delivering him up at the gates of the Tower. The receipt of the Governor of the Tower for the body of the Duke of Monmouthhis living body--is still extant. [extra_illustrations.2.95.1] |
Footnotes: [extra_illustrations.2.88.3] yeoman-warders [extra_illustrations.2.89.1] Wellington Barracks [extra_illustrations.2.90.1] The church of St. Peter ad Vincula [extra_illustrations.2.92.1] Countess of Salisbury [extra_illustrations.2.93.1] Duke of Wellington [extra_illustrations.2.94.1] John Flamstead [extra_illustrations.2.94.2] Bowyer Tower [extra_illustrations.2.95.1] Appendix to Chapter IX-The Tower Bridge |
