THE office of Constable of the Tower dates from the Conquest. One of the first on record was Geoffrey de Mandeville, a famous warrior, who came over with William the Conqueror and received from him large possessions in various parts of England.

His grandson, created Earl of Essex by King Stephen, and appointed by him to the government of the Tower, was confirmed in that post by the Empress Maud.

The office of Constable was not confined to military persons in the earlier reigns. Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, was Constable in Richard I.'s time, and was succeeded by , Archbishop of Rouen. In the reign of John, we find Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, holding this office. In Henry I.'s time, Pandulph, Bishop of Norwich, and William, Archbishop of York, appear in the list of Constables, and also Walter, another Archbishop of York. In Edward II.'s reign, Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter, became Constable, but he appears to have been the last clerical dignitary to whose custody the Tower was confided.

To notice a few of the most celebrated and remarkable on the List of Constables. Mandeville, Earl of Essex, who was Governor of the Tower in Henry II.'s reign, surrendered his office to the King, and deliberately adopted the life of an outlaw, robbing abbeys, and committing dreadful outrages in all directions, till, encouraged by success in his restless career, he laid siege to a Royal Castle at Burwell, in Cambridgeshire. While making a reconnaissance of this fortress, the heat of the weather induced him to take off his helmet, when an archer from the battlements sent an arrow through his head, and killed him on the spot. As Mandeville had been excommunicated by the Pope, none of his followers dared to bury him; but the Knights Templars of London, from regard to his rank, and some services he had rendered to their Order, brought his corpse to the Temple, clothed in the habit of a Templar, and, placing it in a leaden coffin, slung it up with ropes, to some trees in their garden, till an opportunity occurred for interring it privately, in front of the west door of their Church.

Hubert de Burgh, whose long and eminent services to his country should have secured for him the support of his Sovereign Henry II. against the malice of his enemies, was forced to seek sanctuary in the Priory of Merton, upon a false accusation of treason made against him by the Bishop of Winchester. But the King, in his fury, sent an armed force to drag him from the Altar, causing him to be brought to London, with his legs tied, like a malefactor, under his horse's belly, and threw him into a dungeon. This outrage of the right of sanctuary

Hugh le Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, Earl Mareshal of England, and Constable of the Tower in Henry III.'s reign, was one of those turbulent nobles who held the royal authority of such small account, that on the King's desiring him to lead a body of troops on a foreign expedition he flatly refused. " Fore G-, Sir Earl," said the King, "you shall go, or hang !" "Fore G-," replied the sturdy Earl, "I will neither go nor hang !" nor did the monarch venture to urge him further.

Bishop Stapleton, who was Constable in Edward II.'s reign, paid dearly for his misconduct in the exercise of his high office. As Constable of the only fortress of London, he had many opportunities for oppression and exaction. Besides the fines and fees

De la Beche, who was Constable in Edward III.'s time, was in so much favour with the King, that he confided the royal children to his charge, while he was absent a the wars in France. De la Beche proved unworthy of

The King, returning to the prosecution of his wars in France, soon afterwards filled the Tower with prisoners of distinction from that country, including John de Vienne, the brave defender of Calais. Charles of Blois was added to the list of captives; and John, King of France, with his son Philip, captured at Poictiers in 1358, after being imprisoned at the Savoy and at Windsor, were eventually transferred, for safer custody, to the Tower, and detained close prisoners till the peace of Bretigni, which was concluded two years afterwards.

To go through the whole succession of Constables would not be of sufficient interest, but in Richard II.'s

The privilege peculiar to the office of Constable, of which Sir Thomas had on this occasion availed himself, was that of access to the Sovereign at any hour of day or night. Of this privilege the latest instance on record is that of Sir William Balfour, in Charles I.'s reign, who, at the entreaty of Lord Loudon, one of the Scotch Covenant Commissioners discovered in a treasonable correspondence with the King of France, and lying prisoner in the Tower, proceeded late at night to Whitehall, accompanied by the Marquis of Hamilton, to seek an interview with the King, and make a last intercession for Lord Loudon's life, carrying with him the warrant for his execution, which had that evening reached his hands at the Tower.

Sir William, having gained admission to the Royal presence as Lieutenant of the Tower, though the King had retired to bed, fell on his knees, and urgently represented the uproar that would arise in Scotland if one of their Commissioners should be put to death, in spite of the protection with which his mission vested him. The King at first refused to hear these arguments, declaring that Loudon was a traitor, and the warrant must have its course. But the Marquis now came forward, having obtained

Among the first disputes between Charles I. and his Parliament, the custody of the Tower was a sorely contested point, and the greatest jealousy was shown concerning it by the Commons. Not content with having driven the King, by their remonstrances, to displace Lunsford, whom he had appointed Governor of the Tower, they never ceased to press him, till he had also removed Sir John Biron, a man of character and loyalty, and replaced him by Sir J. Conyers, in whom alone they declared they could place confidence for so important a trust. In 1647 the Parliament appointed Fairfax

In George II.'s time, Charles, third Duke of Bolton, was for a short time Constable. This nobleman is mentioned by Sir C. Hanbury Williams in one of his political satires, with his usual bitterness towards his political adversaries :

"Now Bolton comes with beat of drum,

Though fighting be his loathing,

He much dislikes both pike and gun,

But relishes the clothing."

Lord Cornwallis was appointed. Constable of the Tower in 1770, and upon his resignation of this office in 1783, Lord George Lennox, brother of the third Duke of Richmond, and a general officer at the time, was nominated by George III. to succeed the Duke.

Upon his appointment a question was raised in the House of Commons, by Lord Maitland, "whether the acceptance of the office of Constable did not render it incumbent upon Lord George Lennox to vacate his seat for Sussex, for which county he was one of the members ? Several speakers on the Opposition side of the House supported Lord Maitland, who moved for the reading of Lord Cornwallis's warrant; and, as it appeared by the wording of that document, that the Constable drew his pay from the " Exchequer," Lord Maitland and his supporters argued, that it must be regarded as a "Civil

But here Mr. Steele, who was Secretary to the Treasury, interposed, and declared to the House, that, strange as it might seem, the wording of Lord Cornwallis's warrant was altogether wrong, and that all the warrants of his predecessors for the last eighty years had been drawn under the same error; for the Constable's salary was not payable from the Exchequer at all, but had been, for the whole of the above period, invariably included in the vote for garrisons. Mr. Pitt then rose, and in a few pithy sentences, showed the manifest inconvenience and absurdity of requiring Lord G. Lennox to resign his seat, since the appointment was plainly military (though derived straight from the Crown, and not through the Commander-in-Chief); for, said he, " if such a precedent were once established, you might have a regimental Captain called upon to vacate his seat, preparatory to his promotion to a Majority. From this debate, and from an examination of the List of Constables, it would appear however, that Mr. Pitt was not quite correct in arguing that the appointment was exclusively military, because certainly neither Lord Carlisle, Lord Lincoln, Lord Northampton, nor Lord Leicester, all of whom had been Constables within the eighty years quoted by Mr. Steele, were military men. The fact of drawing their salaries from the military purse of the country, could no more convert them into military men, than it makes the Chaplains of the army regimental officers. The effect,

The Duke of Wellington, who was Constable from , regarded the office of the Constable to be by no means a mere honorary position, and set himself seriously to reform and correct many abuses, which the neglect of his predecessors had permitted to accumulate at the Tower. One of the most notorious of these abuses was the mode of selecting and appointing the Warders. These places of trust used formerly to be sold, as vacancies occurred, for 3ooL. each, which sum was paid by the purchaser to the Constable. Therefore the more death vacancies occurred in the year, the more purchase-money the Constable received, and young Most of the Warders and able-bodied men were rarely allowed to become purchasers. were in consequence unfitted by age and

The Duke at once stopped the purchase of Warderships, at a loss to himself of from 900L to 1200L. a year, and presented these appointments to the Household Cavalry, Foot Guards, and Regiments of the Line, as rewards for non-commissioned officers of merit and good service, to be recommended direct from those regiments, without intervention of private influence.

He also established the present low price of tickets to view the Tower (6d. a head), and granting a liberal allowance of 5s. 6d. to each Warder on such days as it is his turn to conduct visitors, entirely stopped the vexatious system of fees. So greatly has the abolition of fees increased the number of visitors, that for several years they have averaged 1000 persons a week, and since the new armouries and Norman Chapel in the White Tower have been restored and added to the exhibition, this number has considerably increased, producing 1200L. or 1300L. a year, which is paid into the Exchequer by the Store Department of the War Office.

On the decease of the Duke of Wellington, Lord Combermere, one of his oldest and most distinguished followers, whose discretion and judgment, when commanding the cavalry of the army in the Peninsula, had obtained the highest approval and confidence of the I)uke, was named by the Queen to succeed him as Constable. The pay of the post of Constable was continued