Memorials of Old London Part 4

In 1278 no less than 600 Jews were imprisoned in the Tower on a charge of clipping and debasing the coin. Many of them are said to have been confined in that gloomy vault now called "Little Ease," where, from the entire absence of sanitary accommodation and proper ventilation, their numbers were rapidly thinned by death.[50]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TOWER OF LONDON.]

The mural arcade of the inner curtain wall between the Bell tower, "a," the Beauchamp tower, "b," and the Devereux tower, "c," is probably of this period. In spite of much patching and alterations to adapt it for the use of firearms, it bears a close resemblance in its design to those of Caernarvon Castle and Castle Coch, near Cardiff. The great quay, "O," does not appear to have been walled through; it had its own gates, "P," at either end. Two small towers (now removed) protected the drawbridges of the two posterns, "H" and "K." The outer curtain wall, "R," commanded the ditch and wharf, and was in its turn commanded by the more lofty inner curtain, "8," and its towers, and these again by the keep, while the narrow limits of the outer ward effectually prevented any attempts to escalade them by setting up movable towers, or by breaching them with battering rams. Any besiegers who succeeded in entering the outer ward would be overwhelmed by the archery from these wall arcades at such point-blank range that even plate armour would be no protection, while, should they succeed in carrying the inner ward, the remnant of the defenders might retreat to the keep, and, relying upon its pa.s.sive strength, hold out to the last within its ma.s.sive walls in hope of external succour, before famine or a breach compelled a surrender.

The Scotch wars of Edward I. filled the Tower with many distinguished prisoners, among whom were the Earls of Ross, Athol, and Menteith, and the famous Sir William Wallace. They seem to have experienced a varying degree of severity: some were ordered to be kept in a "strait prison in iron fetters," as were the Bishops of Glasgow and St. Andrew's (though they were imprisoned elsewhere); others are to be kept "body for body,"

that is to say, safely, but not in irons, with permission to hear ma.s.s; while a few are to be treated with leniency, and have chambers, with a privy chamber or latrine attached.[51]

In 1303 the King (then at Linlithgow) sent the Abbot of Westminster and forty-eight of his monks to the Tower on a charge of having stolen 100,000 of the royal treasure placed in the abbey treasury for safe-keeping! After a long trial, the sub-prior and the sacrist were convicted and executed, when their bodies were flayed and the skins nailed to the doors of the re-vestry and treasury of the abbey as a solemn warning to other such evildoers,[52] the abbot and the rest of the monks being acquitted.

No works of any importance can be a.s.signed to the reign of Edward II., the only occurrences of importance being the downfall of the Knights Templars and the imprisonment of many of them at the Tower, where the Grand Prior, William de la More, expired in solitary confinement a few months after the close of the proceedings that marked the suppression of the order; and the escape of Roger Mortimer from the keep (which reads almost like a repet.i.tion of Flambard's), the consequences to the constable being his disgrace and imprisonment.[53]

The Tower was the princ.i.p.al a.r.s.enal of Edward III., who in 1347 had a manufactory of _gunpowder_ there, when various entries in the Records mention purchases of sulphur and saltpetre "pro gunnis Regis."[54]

A survey of the Tower was ordered in 1336, and the Return to it is printed _in extenso_ by Bayley.[55] Some of the towers are called by names (as for example, "Corande's" and "la Moneye" towers, the latter perhaps an early reference to the Mint) which no longer distinguish them. The Return shows that these--the Iron gate tower, "N," the two posterns of the wharf, and Petty Wales, "_P.P._," the wharf itself, and divers other buildings--were all in need of repair, the total amount for the requisite masonry, timber, tile work, lead, gla.s.s, and iron work being 2,154 17s. 8d.!

In 1354 the city ditch is ordered to be cleansed and prevented from flowing into the Tower ditch, and, according to the _Liber Albus_, the penalty of death was promulgated against anyone bathing in the Tower ditch, or even in the Thames adjacent to the Tower!

In 1347 the Tower received, in the person of David, King of Scotland, the first of a long line of royal prisoners, and in 1358 the large sum of 2 12s. 9d. was paid for his medicine. John, King of France, Richard II., Henry VI., Edward V., Queens Jane Dudley, Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, and Princess Elizabeth complete the list.

The Great Wardrobe, "z," adjoining the Wardrobe tower, "s," the Beauchamp tower, "b," the upper story of the Bowyer tower, "e," and perhaps the Constable and Broad Arrow towers, "h" and "i," are probably of this period.

Mr. Clark attributes the b.l.o.o.d.y Tower gate, "m," to this reign, but an entrance existed there long before. Most probably it was remodelled, and the vaulting and portcullis were inserted about this time, or early in the reign of Richard II., to whom he also attributes the rebuilding of the Byward tower postern, "H."

There is but little to record in the way of new works after this. Edward IV., in 1472, built an advanced work, called the Bulwark Gate, "A,"

and nothing further transpires till the reign of Henry VIII., who ordered a survey of the dilapidations to be made in 1532. The repairs of this period, being mostly in brickwork and rough cast, with flint chips inserted in the joints of the masonry, are easily recognised, as are those of Wren by his use of Portland stone.

The buildings of the old palace being much out of repair, the quaint old timber-framed dwelling, "n," adjoining the Bell tower, "a," was built about this time. It is now called the "Lieutenant's Lodgings," but was first known as the "King's House." It contains a curious monument commemorating the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, of which it gives an account, and enumerates the names of the conspirators, and of the Commissioners by whom they were tried.

The quaint storehouses of the Tudor period were replaced in the reign of William III. by an unsightly building, destroyed by fire in 1841, the site of which is now occupied by the Wellington barracks.

The old palace buildings have long since vanished entirely. Towers have been rebuilt or restored, and in 1899 a new guard house has been built between Wakefield tower, "l," and the south-west angle of the keep.

The hideously ugly effect of its staring new red brick in contrast with the old and time-worn stone of the ancient fortress must be seen to be realized, its sole redeeming feature being the impossibility of future generations mistaking it for a building of any earlier period. During the clearance of the site for its erection, two discoveries were made--one of a Norman well, "w," which was found to have its top completely hidden by modern brickwork; the other, a remarkable subterranean pa.s.sage, "9," of which the presence was only detected by its being accidentally broken into. This, when cleared out, was found to terminate in a horrible subterranean prison pit under the south-west angle of the keep (with which, however, it has no means of communication), that doubtless served as the _oubliette_ of the Tower.

The pit was empty, but the pa.s.sage was found to contain bones, fragments of gla.s.s and pottery, broken weapons, and many cannon b.a.l.l.s of iron, lead, and stone, relics probably of Wyatt's unsuccessful attack in 1554.

Leaving the pit, the pa.s.sage dips rapidly, and, tunnelling under both wards and their walls, emerges a little to the east of Traitors' Gate (see plan), where its arched head may now be seen from the wharf, though formerly several feet below the level of the water in the moat. As it traverses the site of the Hall, there is some reason to suppose that the lower end served as a sewer, for there was a similar one, dating from 1259, at the old Palace of Westminster, so that this may likewise be attributed to Henry III.[56]

It will be seen that the blood-curdling description of the horrors of the rat-pit in Harrison Ainsworth's immortal romance is by no means devoid of some foundation of fact, though when he wrote its existence was unknown. Rats from the river would be attracted to the sewer mouth by the garbage from the palace kitchens, and if any wretched prisoner had been placed in this dreadful dungeon he would speedily have been devoured _alive_![57]

The presence of a single subterranean pa.s.sage at the Tower ought not to have aroused so much surprise, for such "_souterrains_" were a not infrequent feature of the mediaeval fortress. They may be found at Arques, Chateau Gaillard, Dover, Winchester, and Windsor (three), while Nottingham has its historic "Mortimer's Hole." Sometimes they led to carefully masked posterns in the ditches, but they were generally carried along and at the base of the interior faces of the curtain walls, with the object of preventing attempts at undermining, at once betrayed to listeners by the dull reverberations of pickaxes in the rocky ground. There were doubtless others at the Tower, now blocked up and forgotten; indeed, Bayley mentions something of the kind as existing between the Devereux and Flint towers.[58]

There is an allusion to them in the narrative by Father Gerard, S.J., of his arrest, torture in, and escape from the Tower in 1597;[59] but the history of the many ill.u.s.trious captives who have suffered within these walls would in itself suffice for a large volume, while so much, and from so many pens, has already been written thereon, that I have contented myself with few allusions thereto, and those necessarily of the briefest.

It is much to be regretted that military exigencies have rendered it needful to remove from the walls of the various prison cells many interesting inscriptions with which their inmates strove to beguile the monotony of captivity, and as far as possible to concentrate them in the upper room within the Beauchamp tower, with which many of them have no historic a.s.sociation whatever; but as the public would otherwise have been debarred from any sight of them, this is far from being the unmixed evil it might otherwise appear, while they have been fully ill.u.s.trated and carefully described by Bayley.

About the time of Edward I. a Mint was first established in the western and northern portions of the outer bailey, where it remained until, in 1811, it was removed to the New Mint in East Smithfield, and the name "Mint Street," given to that portion of the bailey, now commemorates this circ.u.mstance.

When, about 1882, the extension of the "Inner Circle" Railway was in progress, the site of the permanent scaffold on Great Tower Hill, upon which so many sanguinary executions took place, was discovered in Trinity Square, remains of its stout oak posts being found imbedded in the ground. A blank s.p.a.ce, with a small tablet in the gra.s.s of the Square garden, now marks the spot.

In a recent work upon the Tower, an amazing theory has been seriously put forward "of State barges entering the ditch, rowing onto a kind of submerged slipway at the Cradle tower, when, _mirabile dictu_, boat and all were to be lifted out of the water and drawn into the fortress!"

Such things are only possible in the vivid imagination of a writer devoid of the most elementary knowledge of the purpose for which this gateway was designed. It suffices to point out that no long State barge could have entered the ditch without first performing the impossible feat of sharply turning two corners at right angles in a s.p.a.ce less than its own length, and too confined to allow oars to be used, while there are no recorded instances of such mediaeval equivalents of the modern floating and depositing dock! The Cradle tower gate is too short and narrow to admit any such a lift with a large boat upon it, nor does it contain the slightest trace of anything of the kind, or of the machinery necessary for its working. Although prior to the restoration in 1867 there were side openings to Traitors' Gate as well as that from the river, not only were they too low and narrow to admit a boat, but they were fitted with sluice gates for the retention of the water in the moat when the tide was out, which were used until, in 1841, the moat itself was drained and levelled, and the Thames excluded by a permanent dam.

The Cradle tower was, as already stated, a postern, leading from the wharf to the Royal Palace, and derived its name from its cradle or drawbridge that here spanned the waters of the moat.

When, in the time of Henry VIII. and his successors, the water gate, "I," ceased to be a general entrance, and was only used as a landing-place for State prisoners on their way to and from trial at Westminster, it first received the less pleasing appellation it still bears of "Traitors' Gate."

The procedure when the Queen or any distinguished person visited the Tower by water was as follows: They alighted from the State barge at the Queen's stairs, "Q," on the river face of the quay, "O," and traversing this on foot or in a litter, entered the Tower by the Cradle tower postern, "K," which afforded the readiest and most direct access to the Palace in the inner ward, while it was entirely devoid of any sinister a.s.sociations.

In conclusion, it only remains for me to express my thanks to the Major of the Tower, Lieutenant-General Sir George Bryan Milman, K.C.B., for the permission so courteously accorded to visit and examine portions of the fortress closed to the general public, and to the officials of the Tower for facilities kindly afforded me to do so on several occasions.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The _Saxon Chronicle_ (Thorpe), vol. i., pp. 156, 157. (Subsequently cited as "_Sax. Chron._").

[2] _Ibid._, vol. i., pp. 240, 241, 262, 263, 280, 281.

[3] _Archaeologia_, vol. lii., p. 615.

[4] See dotted line on plan.

[5] "The Conqueror's Footsteps in Domesday." _English Historical Review_, vol. xiii., p. 17.

[6] _Sax. Chron._, vol. i., p. 339.

[7] Orderic Vitalis, _History of England and Normandy_, book iv., chap. i.

[8] _Norman Conquest_ (Freeman), vol. v., Appendix N., "Castles and Destruction in the Towns."

[9] _Introduction to Domesday Book_ (Ellis), vol. i., pp. 116-122.

[10] _Sax. Chron._, vol. i., p. 351.

[11] The _Custumale Roffense_ (Thorpe), p. 128; the _Registrant Roffense_ (Thorpe), p. 481.

[12] "Conventios inter Gundulfum Episcopum et Eadmerum Anhoende Burgensem Lundoniae. Dum idem Gundulfus ex praecepto Regis Wilhelm magni _praesset operi magnae turris Lundoniae_ et hospitatus fuisset apud ipsum Eadmerum," etc., from the _Registrum Roffense_ (Thorpe), p. 32.

[13] The present entrances on the north face of the keep are entirely modern.

[14] _Sax. Chron._, vol. i., p. 363.

[15] The "turris," or keep, of Colchester is referred to in a charter of Henry I. in 1101, which recites that the King's father and brother had previously held the castle.

[16] _Anglia Sacra_, vol. i., p. 338.

[17] Stow's _Survey of London_, "Of Towers and Castles."

[18] _Norman Conquest_ (Freeman), vol. iii., Appendix, note PP.

[19] William of Malmesbury's _English Chronicle_, book v.; and _Sax.

Chron._, vol. i., p. 365.