This is one of Grinling Gibbons’s most spirited designs, graceful in its lines, sharp and refined in its moulding. This sculpture is all that remains of the great Store House, built in the reign of William III. and destroyed by fire in 1841.
Beyond the Martin Tower, the Ballium wall takes a slanting course to the south and river side of the fortress, to where, about 100 feet south of the Martin Tower, stands the Constable Tower, modern from roof to base. It was so named in the reign of Henry VIII. because it was occupied by the Constable of the Tower. During the reign of Charles I. it was used as a prison. “In form,” writes Brayley, “it closely corresponds with the Beauchamp Tower, but it is of rather smaller dimensions; the interior has been modernised, and the windows greatly enlarged.” South of the Constable Tower, and next to it, is the Broad Arrow Tower, which in Tudor times was known as “the tower at the east end of the Wardrobe.” Until some thirty years ago this tower was entirely hidden by an ugly row of barracks. It was used as a prison throughout the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth, and there are a few signatures still to be seen on the walls of a room on the first floor. Unfortunately, repeated coats of whitewash have almost obliterated all the inscriptions. A list, however, of these as they appeared in 1830 is given by Britton and Brayley. Amongst them are the names of “John Daniell, 1556”; “Giovani Battista, 1556”; “Thomas Forde, 1582”; “John Stoughton, 1586”; and “J. Gage, January 1591.” Little is known of any of the above men except that Daniell was mixed up in a plot against the Queen, and to rob the Exchequer, in the reign of Mary, and was hanged on Tower Hill. Forde was a priest, and was executed for denying Elizabeth’s supremacy in the Church; and Stoughton and Gage are also supposed to have been priests. Of the Italian, Battista, no record has come to us. Near the top of this tower a small doorway opens on to the platform that runs along the Ballium wall. Close to this doorway is a narrow cell 6 feet deep and 3½ feet wide, with only one small loophole to admit air and light.
The building known by the name of the King’s Private Wardrobe stood close to this tower, as well as another tower called the Wardrobe. Both these buildings were cleared away before the reign of James II., their sites being now covered with offices or stores. The Royal robes, armour, and probably the Royal upholstery, such as tapestry, hangings, etc., were kept in the Wardrobe buildings, which were connected with the Palace.
The Salt Tower forms the south-east angle of the Inner Ward. In the reign of Henry VIII. it was called Julius Cæsar’s Tower, although it had no more connection with Julius Cæsar than with Sardanapalus. It is circular in shape, and has three floors, which are connected by a small winding staircase. Upon the first floor is a fine chimney-piece decorated with scroll mouldings. The upper storey was used as a powder store; but, having fallen into decay, it was restored in 1876. The Salt Tower is probably one of the oldest buildings in the Tower, dating as far back as the reign of William Rufus. It possesses a vaulted dungeon with deep recesses in the walls. In a prison on the first floor are some inscriptions cut into the wall, and amongst them is a very elaborate device representing a sphere intersected by lines radiating from the signs of the Zodiac. Above the sphere is this inscription, “Hew: Draper : of Brystow: made : thys : Spheer : the : 30 : day : of : Maye : Anno : 1561.” Draper was imprisoned on a charge of sorcery and magic.
One of the most interesting escapes from the Tower is closely connected with this place, and although the story of adventures that befell a poor Jesuit priest named Father Gerard, in the reign of Elizabeth, is a long one, it deserves being told in some detail, for the manner of his escape from the fortress is one of the most curious records of prison-breaking. Father Gerard, together with many other Roman Catholic priests, was hunted down as a criminal of the deepest dye, and being captured, was clapped into the Salt Tower, in a prison on its upper floor, the charge against him being that he was concerned in a plot against the life of the Queen. He was examined on the day of his arrival in the Tower by the Lords of the Council in the Governor’s Lodging—now the King’s House, and in the same room in which Guy Fawkes was afterwards interrogated. Amongst Father Gerard’s judges were the Attorney-General, Sir Edward Coke, Sir Francis Bacon, and Sir William Waad. Questioned as to the plot, in which another priest, Father Garnet, was involved, Gerard refused to give any information. He was told that if he persisted in his silence he would be tortured, and an order was produced by which they were given permission (for torture has always been illegal in England) if necessary “to prolong the torture from day to day as long as life lasted.” The threat failing in its effect Gerard was taken to “the place appointed for the torture,” and, to quote his own words, “We went in a sort of solemn procession, the attendants preceding us with lighted candles because the place was underground (the subterranean passage under the White Tower) and very dark, especially about the entrance. It was a place of immense extent, and in it were ranged divers sorts of racks, and other instruments of torture. Some of these they displayed before me, and told me that I should have to taste them. They led me to a great upright beam or pillar of wood, which was one of the supports of this vast crypt.”
Father Gerard was then hung up by his hands, these having first been placed in iron gauntlets which were attached to an iron rod fixed in the pillar. A stool upon which he stood was taken from under him, and he hung by his wrists, the whole weight of his body depending from them. He was a heavy man, and his sufferings were acute. Whilst in this position the Commissioners looked on, pressing the suffering man with questions, but receiving no reply they left him, and for the next hour the wretched priest hung suspended by his tortured wrists. He fainted several times from the anguish; later in the afternoon Sir William Waad returned and again tried to obtain some confession from Gerard, but when nothing could be wrung from him, Waad turned on his heel in a rage, crying, “Hang thou then, till you rot.” Raleigh’s description of the Lieutenant of the Tower as “that beast Waad” had certainly some justification. When the tolling of the bell in the Bell Tower gave the signal that the fortress would be closed, the Commissioners were obliged to leave the Tower, and the poor, tortured, half-dead priest was taken down, and, scarcely able to crawl, was led back to his prison in the Salt Tower. On the following day Gerard was again taken to the Lieutenant’s Lodging, where Waad informed him that he had been with “Master Secretary Cecil,” who knew for a fact that Father Gerard had been mixed up with other plotters in schemes against Elizabeth’s life, and that more details would have to be given by him on this matter. Again Gerard refused to say anything that could compromise others, upon which Waad summoned a terrible personage, the chief superintendent of the torturers of the prison, to whom Sir William said, “I deliver this man into your hands. You are to wrack him twice a day until such time as he chooses to confess.” Thereupon, says Father Gerard, they went down again to the torture chamber with the same solemnity as on the previous day, and he was again subjected to the torture of the gauntlets, made additionally painful from the swollen state of his hands and wrists. He swooned repeatedly, and was revived with some difficulty. All through these hours of agony he refused to give one name, or to make any kind of confession of guilt, and Waad swore and raged in vain. As long, Gerard declared, as he lived he would say nothing. For the third time he was tortured and hung up by the wrists. But when Waad at length saw the futility of torturing him to death he ordered him to be taken back to his prison, whence, as we shall see, he effected his escape.
Another Roman Catholic, named John Arden, who was a fellow-prisoner of Gerard’s at this time, was confined in the Cradle Tower, a small tower in the Outer Ward standing on the Ballium wall some 100 feet south of the Salt Tower and facing the Thames. The two prisoners were sufficiently near to see each other from their respective prison windows, the space between the two towers being then occupied by the Privy garden of the Palace. Father Gerard persuaded his gaoler to allow him to pay Arden a visit in his prison, and the two men, laying their heads together, concocted the following plan. By writing to their friends outside the tower in orange juice, which caused the letters to be invisible unless subjected to a treatment known to the initiated, Father Gerard succeeded in getting a thin cord with a leaden weight attached to one end. It was further planned that upon a certain night a boat should be brought to a certain place by the river bank opposite the Cradle Tower. On this particular evening Father Gerard lingered late in Arden’s prison, and when the pre-arranged hour came they slung the lead at the end of the line across the moat. This was caught by their friends in the boat, and a stout rope having been fastened to the line, the two prisoners hauled it over the roof of the Cradle Tower from the boat, and made it fast. Gerard was the first to descend from the roof, swarming along the rope in the darkness; and he reached the boat in safety. For three weeks after the torture of the gauntlets, his hands were paralysed, and it was five months before the sense of touch returned to them.
Next to the Salt Tower in the Inner Ward stands the Lanthorn Tower, which has been entirely rebuilt. In former days this tower communicated with the exterior rampart by an embattled gateway; it faces the river and stands half-way between the Salt and the Wakefield Towers. In Henry VIII.’s time the Lanthorn Tower was called the New Tower, and then formed the end of the Queen’s Gallery in the Palace, “over the Kyng’s bede-chamber and prevy closet,” as the survey taken in that reign describes it. This tower had been almost destroyed in a fire in 1788, and what remained was removed, only the basement vault being left. This basement was used as a cellar by the keeper of the soldiers’ canteen, which stood on the opposite side of the way: to such base uses had the old tower of the Palace adorned by Henry III. fallen. Henry III. built the Ballium wall and fortified it with this tower, which he fitted up splendidly for his own habitation, and whose chambers he decorated with frescoes; the subject of one of these was the story of Antiochus. The tower was circular in shape, and surmounted by a small turret, as can be seen by referring to Haiward and Gascoyne’s plan. After the fire of 1788 a huge unsightly warehouse was built on its site, blocking out the fortress from the river front. This monstrosity was only removed some five-and-twenty years ago. The present building is as nearly as possible a reproduction of the original tower of Henry the Third, by Salvin, who also carried out the building of the handsome curtain wall of the Inner Ward, commencing at the Salt Tower and terminating at the Wakefield Tower.
In an interesting article in the Nineteenth Century, Mr A. B. Mitford says that, although it was impossible to give back the stones that prated of the wars of the Roses, “the old towers and walls rose again as nearly as possible similar to their predecessors as the skill of man could make them,” under Salvin’s superintendence. There is a view of the old Lanthorn Tower before its destruction in 1788, in a rare print of the early part of the eighteenth century, which is here reproduced.
The Outer Ward
The Outer Ward forms a strip of ground varying in breadth from 20 to 100 feet, its wall forming the scarp of the moat. It is defended by bastions to the north-east and north-west, which are 80 feet in diameter, that to the north-east being called the Brass Mount Battery, that to the north-west, Legge’s Mount, so named from George Legge, first Earl of Dartmouth, who was Master-General of Ordnance in the reign of Charles II. The Brass Mount probably derived its name from the cannon with which it was mounted. Between these bastions is a more modern one, called the North Bastion. These three bastions defend the north side of the fortress. Of the five towers which protected the Palace on the river front, the Byward and St Thomas’s Towers have already been described. There remain the Cradle, the Well, and the Develin Towers to notice.
The Cradle Tower stands parallel with the Well Tower on the outer or curtain wall. It was through an archway in the Cradle Tower that the principal entrance from the river lay in former times. From the top of the tower a square-shaped turret rises on the western side. The Cradle Tower dates from the reign of Henry III., and prisoners were landed here as well as at Traitor’s Gate, entering the fortress over a drawbridge. Its upper chambers, which were in the form of the letter ⏉, are believed to have formed part of the Palace. The present tower is altogether modern, having been rebuilt from the foundations in 1878. The next tower on the curtain wall is the Well Tower, also entirely rebuilt. It is rectangular, and forms a portion of the curtain wall. Its basement lies below the level of the Inner Ward, and within it is a vaulted chamber 11 feet high by 14 feet wide, from which a well staircase leads to an upper room, and thence on to the rampart.
The last of these towers at the eastern end of the fortress is the Develin Tower. In 1549 it was known as Galligman’s Tower, and in the plan of the Tower in 1597 it is called the “tower leading to the Inner Gate.” Formerly, it was used as a powder magazine.
The White Tower
In the days of the Plantagenets, “La Tour Blanche” owed that appellation to its having been frequently whitewashed. The earliest of these whitewashings took place in the reign of Edward III., since whose reign it is impossible to guess how often the grim old building has been externally whitened. In an illumination taken from an old French MS. made in the reign of Henry V., and preserved in the Harleian collection in the British Museum, of the poems of Charles of Orleans, the vivid whiteness of the old Norman White Tower stands out in bold relief surrounded by the dark towers and walls of the fortress. And after half-a-thousand years of London grime and smoke, the White Tower remains the same “Tour Blanche” of the days of the Plantagenets.
The old Norman keep of the Tower has changed but little in outward aspect since it was limned in the old illumination of the MS. of Charles of Orleans, some six centuries ago. The general features are the same, and even the little leaden roofs of the four turrets at the angles, appeared then much as they do to-day. No one has been able to inform me as to the period when the leaden tops first capped the masonry of this tower. Two great authorities on the history of the Tower—Professor Freeman and Mr Clark—have told us how Norman William, on crossing the Thames, found that London was protected on its landward side by a Roman wall—the defences of ancient Augusta—a wall strengthened by mural towers, and an external moat. Of these relics of ancient Augusta, a fragment is to be seen at the eastern end of the White Tower. According to both historians, the building of the White Tower was commenced in 1078. When a tramway was run from the river wharf, some years ago, to the base of the White Tower for the shipment of stores, the engineers had to excavate some 20 feet of solid masonry into the Norman keep, such was its huge strength and solidity. Freeman always writes with enthusiasm of the Tower—“the mighty Tower of London,” he loves to call it; and when he wrote of the Tower, he had the White Tower in his mind. Regarding the builders of the White Tower, Freeman quotes the following Latin text from Hearner’s “Textus Roffensis”—“Dum idem Gundulfus, ex praecepto Regis Wilhelmi Magni, prœesset operi magnae turris Londoniae, et hospitatus fuisset apud ipsum Ædmerum.” The name Tower, and not Castle, adds Freeman, belonged to the fortress of Gundulfus from the first.
It will be necessary here to give some figures and proportions of this ancient keep. Its height is 90 feet from ground to battlements. The Keep has four turrets, three being circular, and one square. The windows were much modernised by Sir Christopher Wren, but those in the upper storey are the least altered; only one pair of these, however, have been left in their original state. It was from this window that Bishop Flambard is said to have made his escape. A stone staircase, 11 feet wide, and built in the circular turret on the north-east of the Keep, communicates with all the floors and leads to the roof. The basement of the Keep is a little below the level of the soil on the north side, and is flush with it on the south side. The walls are from 12 to 15 feet thick, the internal area being 91 feet by 73 feet. The large chambers have timbered ceilings, and the smaller are stone-vaulted. Formerly, the basement and the prison within it could only be reached from above, by the staircase running through the circular turret. The great western chamber is 91 feet long by 35 feet in width. In the vault or sub-crypt under the Chapel of St John there is a prison called “Little Ease,” and here Guy Fawkes is supposed to have passed his last fifty days on earth. It opens into a great dungeon which is 47 feet long by 15 feet broad. Formerly, this place was in total darkness, and could have had but little air; at its eastern end it terminates in a semicircle. It was here that in the reign of King John some hundreds of Jews were imprisoned with their families. In later times it was fitted up into a powder magazine, and it is not many years since it was cleared of “villainous” saltpetre. Its walls have been coated with brick, and the ceiling refaced and vaulted, whilst passages have been pierced through its eastern and western extremities. A well 6 feet wide, its sides lined with ashlar stone, which may be of Roman origin, has been found in the floor of this vault, near its south-western angle.
On the second floor of the White Tower the walls are 13 feet in thickness, the cross walls being 8 feet. On this floor are five openings communicating between the eastern and the western chambers. The latter is 92 feet long by 37 broad; a vaulted passage 2 feet 10 inches wide being constructed in the thickness of the wall. The eastern chamber is 68 feet long and 30 wide. There is a recess in the north wall which communicates with the exterior of the tower by a double flight of stone stairs facing the river front. And it was at the foot of these steps that the bones, supposed to be those of the little Princes, were discovered in the reign of Charles II. They were subsequently taken to Westminster Abbey. The present stairs are modern. An ancient door, 3 feet in width, opens from this chamber on to a short passage, 5 feet in width, cut in the thickness of the wall, which leads to the well staircase communicating with all the floors. Another door in the south wall leads into the crypt of St John’s Chapel, which is 13 feet 6 inches broad by 39 feet in height; at the east end it is apsidal. Near the apse is a passage 2 feet wide which leads into a vaulted cell 8 feet long by 10 wide. This cell has no windows, and when, in former times, the door, which has been removed, was closed, this dismal prison was plunged in total darkness. It has been asserted, without any foundation, that this cell was that in which Raleigh passed his first imprisonment in the Tower. There is not a shadow of proof to corroborate this. It was probably used in the early years of the fortress as a strong-room for the safekeeping of the church treasure. Although no proof exists as to the imprisonment of Raleigh in this black hole, prisoners were confined here in the days of the sanguinary Queen Mary, as is shown by some half-obliterated inscriptions which can still be seen on the sides of the doorway leading from the crypt to the cell. In one of these the following words have been traced—“He that endureth to the ende shall be saved. M. 10. R. Rudston. Dar. Kent. Ano. 1553.” “Be faithful unto deth, and I wil give the a crowne of life.—J. Fane. 1554.” Also the following:—“T. Culpeper of Darford.” These persons were implicated in the Wyatt insurrection. Lord de Ros mentions rather vaguely in his book on the Tower, an inscription which was discovered about 1867 “in the vault of the White Tower,” of which the following is a copy:—“Sacris vestibus indutus dum sacra mysteria servans, captus et in hoc augusto carcere indusus.—R. Fisher.”
Until some thirty years ago this crypt was used as an armoury, and here many may remember having seen a figure of Queen Elizabeth, mounted on a wooden steed, in a dress supposed to have been worn by her when she returned thanks at St Paul’s for the destruction of the Armada. (This is now in the lower gallery of the White Tower.)
The rooms on this floor of the tower are 15 feet high, with wooden ceilings, which are supported by massive wooden pillars placed in double rows. These wooden columns are comparatively modern, and were probably placed here when the rooms were converted into an armoury, store rooms, and record offices. They are now filled with small-arms, and the roofs are supported by beams strengthened with iron girders. The ancient fireplaces still remain in the eastern wall.
On the second floor of the White Tower are three great chambers. That to the west is 95 feet by 32; that to the east 64 feet by 32; they are 15 feet high. St John’s Chapel, which is on the second floor, forms its cross chamber, and rises through the roof to the top of the tower. A mural passage at the extremity of the western chamber leads to the west end of the south aisle. Mr Clark believes that this was formerly a private entrance from the Palace into the Chapel, being connected with the State rooms of the Tower, one of which is still called the Banqueting Hall.
The fourth floor of the Keep is called the State Floor, and is divided into three chambers 28 feet in height. The room to the west, which is called the Council Chamber, was the scene of that episode at the commencement of the reign of Richard III., immortalised by Shakespeare, when that monarch accused Lord Hastings of treason and had him taken out to instant execution (Richard III. Act iii. Scene 4). This chamber is 95 feet long by 46 wide. Within the exterior walls runs a vaulted passage communicating with the stairs in the north-eastern turret. It was in this passage, which is only 3 feet in width, that the soldiers were concealed when Richard had planned Hastings’s death. In Norman times this chamber was used as a State prison, and it was from one of its windows that Bishop Flambard let himself down by a rope. It was also the prison of Charles of Orleans in the reign of Henry V., and had probably served the same purpose in the reign of Edward III., and may have held in its walls both King John of France and David, King of Scotland; here, too, the brothers Mortimer were probably imprisoned in 1324.
It is not easy to picture in one’s mind the appearance of this place when used as a State prison, or as a Council Chamber, for the only view of the interior of the Tower that has come down to us from the Middle Ages is the little illumination in the Harleian MSS., which has been reproduced in this work, in which Charles of Orleans is seen writing in this chamber surrounded by his guards.
The earliest account of the interior of the Tower occurs in Paul Hentzner’s description of his visit in the reign of Elizabeth. “Upon entering the Tower,” he writes, “we were obliged to quit our swords at the gate and deliver them to the guard. When we were introduced, we were shown above a hundred pieces of arras belonging to the Crown, made of gold, silver, and silk; several saddles covered with velvet of different colours; an immense quantity of bed furniture, such as canopies, and the like, some of them most richly ornamented with pearl; some royal dresses, so extremely magnificent as to raise one’s admiration at the sums they must have cost. We were then led into the armoury.” But I will reserve what Hentzner said about the arms and the armour until later. This intelligent German traveller pertinently remarks: “It is to be noted, that when any of the nobility are sent hither on the charge of high crimes punishable with death, such as treason, etc., they seldom or never recover their liberty.”
With the exception of the Lady Chapel at Durham Cathedral, St John’s Chapel in the White Tower is the most beautiful of the Norman chapels in England, and it was owing to the excellent advice given by the Prince Consort that this splendid relic of Norman times has received, if not its former splendour, something of its pristine condition. Although no attempt has been made to re-decorate its walls and interior, it is now cleansed of the rubbish which covered its floor, until the Prince called attention to the desecration with which it was treated until the middle of the nineteenth century.
Inclusive of the semicircular apse at its east end, the Chapel is 55 feet 6 inches long by 31 feet wide. It is divided into a nave and two aisles, which have four massive pillars on either side with varied capitals, supporting thirteen arches. The pillars are 2 feet 6 inches in diameter and 6 feet 6 inches high, not inclusive of their bases, which are 20 inches high, giving the pillars from the floor to the top of the capitals a height of 10 feet. Each capital is cut out of a solid block of stone. The stone ceiling of the nave is barrel shaped. The triforium is 7 feet 6 inches in diameter. The upper gallery was formerly used by the royal family, and communicated with the State rooms of the Palace. It is probable that the walls of this chapel were decorated with mural paintings and hung with tapestry, the windows to the east glowing with figures of saints and angels. Henry III., in 1240, ordered three stained glass windows for the chapel, and in one of these, that looking to the north, was pictured “a little Mary holding her child.” In the two others, looking to the south, “the Holy Trinity, with St John, Apostle and Evangelist.” The rood screen and Cross were also ordered by this King, and “two fair images” to be set up and painted, “et fieri faciatis et depingi duas ymagynes centius fieri possint in capella.” The latter were probably representations of St Edward holding a ring which he presents to the Patron of the Royal Chapel.
When the Reformation came in 1550, St John’s Chapel was despoiled of all its artistic treasures by order of the Government. Its frescoes were coated over with whitewash, its stained glass windows were destroyed, and all its ecclesiastical ornaments were removed; in later times the Chapel became a repository for the Tower records. It was during Lord de Ros’s Governorship in 1857 that the accumulated lumber of centuries was, as has already been said, in consequence of Prince Albert’s wish, cleared away from the Chapel. It had actually been proposed to turn this beautiful building into a military tailor’s warehouse. Such was the honour bestowed on this sacred and beautiful English building comparatively only a few years ago. But in recent years it must be admitted that we have shown a more enlightened regard towards the relics connected with the history of our country, none of which is of greater interest, or more worthy of regard and veneration, than the old Norman Chapel of St John’s in the Tower.
Royal scenes of pomp and mourning this ancient building has beheld within its mighty walls. All our Norman and Plantagenet kings here worshipped a God whose laws they seldom obeyed. Here lay in state the corpse of the White Rose of York, Elizabeth, the Queen of Henry VII.; and here, those upon whom the honour of knighthood was to be conferred, passed their solemn all-night vigil, watching their armour.
The summit of the White Tower covers a space of 100 feet on the eastern side, by 113 on the north and south. The four turrets, the most conspicuous points in any view of the Tower, rise 16 feet above this leaden field, and each is crowned with pepper-box-shaped roofs made of lead. The turret crowning the south-eastern angle contains a chamber traditionally known as the prison of Joan of Kent. In the early years of the eighteenth century it was used as an observatory by Flambard, the Astronomer-Royal, and a contemporary of Isaac Newton, some years before the great Observatory was built at Greenwich.
Although cannon were mounted on the roof in Tudor days, the platform could not have supported very heavy artillery, as it was only built of shingle. As I have said elsewhere, no record has come down to us of the time when the turrets with their little pepper-castor tops were first placed there, but the Harleian MSS. prove that similar ones existed as far back as the reign of Henry V.
There is much difference of opinion as to the original mode of entrance into the White Tower. Probably the principal entrance lay on the south and river side of the Keep, near its western angle, for on the second floor there is a large opening on the exterior of the masonry which has parallel sides, and was doubtless formerly used as a doorway. Near this opening, and on the eastern side of the Keep, is a small door opening into the base of the well staircase. Both Mr Clark and Mr Birch believe that these doors formerly communicated with a building which stood on the south of the White Tower, having its outer entrance at the east end. This building would probably date back to the days of the Normans.
The main entrance of the White Tower opened out on the first floor of the Keep, whence a turnpike staircase led up to the second floor, and downwards to the basement with its dungeons. The mural corridors or passages in the thickness of the walls which encircle the State rooms, are so narrow that only one person could pass along them at a time, which would have been of great advantage in case of an attack on the building, for a small number of men could have defended the White Tower against a host of besiegers. The Normans showed a rare skill in the strategic construction of their strongholds. For instance, in the ruined Castle of Arques near Dieppe, a contemporary building, the plan of its Keep resembles in structure that of the White Tower. These Normans were master builders, and the skilful manner in which they concealed the entrances to their fortresses is well worth study. Their keeps were generally rectangular, and in no instance is the entrance of these towers on the ground floor, or in a conspicuous part of the building. At the Castle of Arques the entrance to the Keep is carefully concealed, as was the case with the White Tower, and is fully 30 feet above the level of the ground, besides being hidden and protected by a massive and lofty wall which forms a part of the Keep. A tortuous passage leads into the heart of the building, but before it could be entered, a very long and almost perpendicular staircase had to be mounted. This staircase commenced in the thickness of the wall of one of the outer counter-forts, placed at the northern angle of the fortress, which wound along the inner face of the Keep, giving access to a landing, beyond which was the passage that led into the fortress. Before the kernel of the Keep could be reached, another narrow passage, cut out of the thickness of the wall, had to be passed; this passage was on the level of the first floor. This style of defensive construction was introduced by the Conqueror and his clerical architect, the quondam monk of the Abbey of Bec in Normandy, who ended his life as Bishop of Rochester; and to these two men we owe the solidity and time-defying strength of the great Norman White Tower.
In order to complete this Norman system of defensive architecture it was necessary to suppress all unnecessary openings, such as windows, in the lower stages of the massive square towers. Consequently, the Norman windows, which were only narrow slits in the masonry, called by the significant name of meurtrières, from the use made of them by the besieged to hurl missiles or pour boiling oil, or lead, upon the enemy beneath, were always restricted in numbers, and were always placed in the upper parts of the Keep. For this reason Sir Christopher Wren, by placing the large windows with their stone facings, now in the White Tower, completely destroyed one of the most characteristic features of its Norman workmanship, an extraordinary act of vandalism for so great an architect. In our day Salvin restored some of the Norman windows on the western side of the White Tower—those belonging to St John’s Chapel—and one regrets that he did not carry out the restoration throughout the building, for in looking at any representation of the White Tower taken before the Great Fire, one sees how much the old Norman Keep has lost in character by Wren’s tasteless substitution of Carolean for Norman windows.
Of the prisoners of State who passed weary years within the White Tower, mention has already been made of Charles of Orleans. Stevenson’s description in his “Familiar Studies of Men and Books,” relating to the imprisonment of the Duke, gives a perfect word-picture: “In the magnificent copy of Charles’s poems, given by our Henry VII. to Elizabeth of York on the occasion of their marriage, a large illumination figures at the head of one of the pages which, in chronological perspective, is almost a history of his imprisonment. It gives a view of London with all its spires, the river passing through the old bridge, and busy with boats. One side of the White Tower has been taken out, and we can see, as under a sort of shrine, the paved room where the Duke sits writing. He occupies a high-backed bench in front of a great chimney: red and black ink are before him, and the upper end of the apartment is guarded by many halberdiers, with the red cross of England on their breasts. On the next side of the tower he appears again, leaning out of the window and gazing on the river. Doubtless, there blows just then ‘a pleasant wind from out the land of France,’ and some ships come up the river, ‘the ship of good news.’ At the door we find him yet again, this time embracing a messenger, while a groom stands by holding two saddled horses. And yet further to the left, a cavalcade defiles out of the Tower; the Duke is on his way at last towards ‘the sunshine of France.’”
Referring to his imprisonment in England at the trial of the Duke d’Alençon, the Duke said, “I have had experience myself, and in my prison of England, for the weariness, danger, and displeasure in which I then lay, I have many a time wished I had been slain at the battle where they took me.”
It was one of Joan of Arc’s hallucinations that could Charles of Orleans be delivered from his captivity in England and restored to France, that country would be delivered from its conquerors. She declared that he was specially favoured by the Almighty, and longed with all the strength of her great heart to restore him to her native land, and said that if there was no other way of freeing him, she would herself cross the sea and bring him back with her. When, after many years, Charles of Orleans was released, the heroic girl had met her martyrdom nine years before. It is a strange coincidence that whilst the Keep of the Tower held the French poet prince within its walls, another Royal captive, James the First of Scotland, was whiling away the days of his imprisonment by writing verses in the Keep of Windsor Castle.
Until quite recently, the collection of arms and armour stored in the White Tower and the adjacent galleries was in a disgraceful state of neglect, and even in a worse condition than that of mere neglect, for the custodians, in their ignorance, gave names and titles to the arms and armour which must have caused infinite amusement to visitors who possessed any knowledge of the subject. The middle-aged may recall the rows of so-called English kings, beginning with the Plantagenets and ending with the Stuarts, seated on wooden horses. If I mistake not, one of these was dubbed Edward I., and yet another mythical gentleman on his wooden steed played the rôle of a “Royal Crusader.” These things were as genuine as Mrs Jarley’s Waxworks. “Previous to the year 1826,” write Britton and Brayley in their history of the Tower, “nothing could present a more incongruous mass of discordant materials than the Horse Armoury of the Tower of London. Armour of the time of Edward the Sixth was ignorantly appropriated to that of William the Conqueror: foot soldiers were ranged between the horsemen, and those humble ciceroni, the warders, ascribed to the various implements of war names and uses, alike unknown, either in ancient or modern warfare.” But better times were at hand, and a great authority on ancient armour, and the owner of the finest collection of it in England, Dr S. R. Meyrick, undertook to arrange the armour in the Tower. Another expert in armour, J. R. Planché, Somerset Herald, and author of an able history of British costume, as well as of many clever burlesques and extravaganzas, drew up a catalogue. But a huge mass of rubbish and spurious armour were allowed even then to remain amongst the historic and genuine specimens. It is only since Lord Dillon undertook the great task, on which he is still engaged, of entirely re-arranging and re-cataloguing the arms and armour in the White Tower, that it can be properly studied and appreciated. The new catalogue, which will be a work of historic importance, is still unpublished, but from the accounts Lord Dillon has written of the collection, and which is published in the excellent “Authorised Guide” to the Tower and its contents, I am indebted for much of the following information.
Although not to compare in extent or importance with the great collections of Madrid, Vienna, or Turin, the armour in the White Tower must be, to an Englishman, of great interest, for, although none of the suits of armour date further back than the fifteenth century, and but very few single pieces are of an earlier epoch, there are among the former, suits of great beauty and of high historic value, and it is the only national collection of armour that England possesses. As far back as the year 1213 arms and military stores were kept in the White Tower. In that year Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, was commanded to surrender with the fortress “the arms and other stores within”; in the second year of Henry the Third’s reign, a mandate was issued to the Archdeacon of Durham to send to the Tower “twenty-six suits of armour, five iron cuirasses, one iron collar, three pair of iron fetters, and nine iron helmets.” In the reign of Edward II. we find that a certain “John de Flete, Keeper of the Wardrobe in the Tower,” was ordered to deliver up all the armour therein to John de Montgomery. This armour had belonged to Montgomery’s father.
Various documents are extant relating to armour in the Tower during the reign of Richard II., and in those of the fourth, fifth, and sixth Henrys. There is, in the library of the Society of Antiquaries, an inventory in MSS. of the arms and ammunition kept in different castles in the kingdom, written in the first year of the reign of Edward the Sixth. In this work particular mention is made of some “brigandines” in the Tower. These were military jackets. Other offensive and defensive weapons are enumerated, such as targets, pole-axes, “great holy water sprinklers” (a kind of stave with a cylindrical-shaped end, “and with a spear-point at the top,” according to Meyrick). In the reign of Elizabeth, we hear of cross-bows and arrows in the Tower, of “bow-stones” and of “slurbowes,” as well as half-a-dozen different kinds of armour.
At the beginning of this notice of the White Tower, I mentioned Paul Hentzner’s description of the armour he saw. He writes as follows:—“We were next led into the armoury, in which are these peculiarities: spears, out of which you may shoot; shields, that will give fire four times; a great many rich halberds, commonly called partuisans, with which the guard defend the royal person in battle; some lances, covered with red and green velvet, and the body-armour of Henry VIII. Many and very beautiful arms, as well for men as for horses in horse fights—(Hentzner probably means tournaments);—the lance of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, three spans thick; two pieces of cannon—the one fires three, the other seven balls at a time; two others made of wood, which the English had at the siege of Boulogne, in France. And by this stratagem, without which they could not have succeeded, they struck a terror into the inhabitants, as at the appearance of artillery, and the town was surrendered upon articles; nineteen cannons of a thicker make than ordinary, and in a room apart, thirty-six of a smaller; other cannon for chain shot, and balls proper to bring down masts of ships; cross-bows, bows and arrows, of which to this day the English make great use in their exercises; but who can relate all that is to be seen here. Eight or nine men, employed by the year, are scarce sufficient to keep all the arms bright.”
One cannot help wishing that Hentzner had told us more about the Tower itself as it looked in Elizabeth’s days, and less about the armour.
Charles the First had a survey written of the arms and armour in the Tower when he succeeded to the Throne, but during the Civil War much of it disappeared, in common with most of the Royal possessions in that troubled time. After the Restoration, William Legge, Lord Dartmouth, who had been deprived by the Commonwealth of his post of “Master of the Armouries,” was reinstated, and he had an inventory of the armour in the Tower drawn up in 1660. There is an interesting list in Britton and Brayley’s Tower book of the different officers to whom the making of the military stores in the Tower had been entrusted, up to the time of Charles II., when the employment of the following ceased:—There was first the “Balistarius,” who lodged in the Bowyer Tower, and who provided the cross-bows. In the reign of Henry III. this officer received a shilling a day and “a doublet and surcoat furred with lambskin” once a year. The “Attiliator Balistarum” provided the harness and accoutrements for the cross-bows: and received “seven pence halfpenny per diem and a suitable robe every year.” Then came the “Bowyer,” an inferior Balistarius; he also received a robe annually. After him came the “Fletcher,” or maker of the flêches or arrows. This craftsman supplied arrows to the whole army. To him succeeded the “Galeator,” the maker of helmets and head-pieces, and after him the Armourer, who made and supervised all the armour and military accoutrements in the Tower. But the greatest of these was the Master of the King’s Ordnance, who, as far back as the reign of Edward the Fourth, provided all warlike stores for the Army and also the Navy. He received eleven shillings per diem, and his clerk and valet were each paid sixpence per diem, which, according to the present value of money, would be about five pounds a day for the master, and five shillings for the two men. At the close of the reign of George the Third the following officers formed the Board of Ordnance:—First came the Master-General, chosen from among the Generals of the Army, “who by virtue of his office was Colonel-in-Chief of the Artillery and Engineers.” Next to him came the Surveyor-General, the head of all the store departments. Beneath him ranked the Clerk of the Ordnance; then the Store-keeper, the Clerk of the Deliveries; and, closing the list, a Treasurer and a Paymaster, both attached to the Ordnance Office.
Returning to the White Tower and its memories, the changes and revolutions that its massive walls have witnessed, rise before the mind. Merely glancing at the changes of fashion, as seen in the suits of armour in its armoury, one is carried back to the Middle Ages. And although the armour is all of a later time, the Norman barons in their steel-ringed surcoats and pointed helmets, as they are portrayed on the Bayeux tapestry, have been seen here. All the chivalry of England, from the time of the Normans down to our present Guardsmen with their bearskin head-dresses, are closely bound up with the old Norman fortress, and it should be remembered that from the end of the eleventh century up to the present day the Tower has always retained the rank and position of chief fortress and depository of arms in the realm, and so may still be regarded as the “Arx Palatina” of the British Empire.
The oldest armour in the Tower are some “bassinets” of the second half of the fourteenth century. Until the death of Henry VIII., the royal collection of armour was kept in the Palace at Greenwich, and the possessions of that monarch now form by far the finest portion of the Tower Armoury, consisting of several splendid suits of armour given him by the Emperor Maximilian. The best armour was made in Italy and Germany, and Henry, who loved a fine suit of armour almost as much as a handsome woman, had a number of skilled armourers sent to England to work for him. As we see by Hentzner’s narrative, foreigners of distinction were shown the collection of armour in the Tower as one of the principal sights of London. During the Civil War a great deal of the armour was carried away from the Tower, and but little of it was returned, even when the Restoration had become an accomplished fact.