The collection now occupies the two upper floors of the White Tower. On the lower floor are kept the more modern weapons and the Oriental armour, of which there is a great quantity. On the upper floor the far more interesting of the earlier weapons, and all the suits of foot and horse armour, are ranged along the walls and in rows down the middle of the hall, making an imposing show of mounted and unmounted mail-clad figures of men and horses.
In the lower floor we will only take a glance at the Indian and Oriental arms and at the modern European weapons, as these are of little historical interest. There are, however, amongst them some relics of the so-called “good old days” worthy of inspection. These consist of a grim collection of instruments of death and torture. Here, for instance, are the thumbscrews, the bilboes, and the Scavenger’s Daughter—in the last the victim was almost bent double in its iron embrace. Here, too, is an iron collar, very massive, with a row of iron spikes within its ring, which, when fastened round the sufferer’s neck, must speedily have caused death. This horrible instrument is incorrectly stated to have been taken in one of the ships of the Armada, but Lord Dillon vouches for its having been used in the Tower long before the Spanish ships were seen in the Channel. Here, too, is a small model of the rack, the most general form of torture employed in the Tower during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when even women were cruelly torn almost limb from limb by its cords and pulleys. This toy rack does not give so vivid an impression of the torture as does a small wood-cut from Fox’s “Book of Martyrs.” Here is also the block, with the axe. The latter was kept here as far back as the year 1687, so it is uncertain whether it is the axe that was used for the execution of the Duke of Monmouth and William, Lord Russell, but it is probable that it was the one used for beheading the rebel lords after the two Jacobite risings in Scotland, and it was undoubtedly used for decapitating Lord Lovat in 1747.
As regards the block, it appears to have been the custom for a new one to be made for each State execution, and although there is more than one mark made by the axe on the top of this block, it does not follow that it was used for more than one execution.
The upper floor is reached by a staircase in the south-eastern corner of the Tower. On reaching this upper floor a collection of spears of all sorts and sizes is seen. Among these is a formidable-looking weapon called a “holy water sprinkler,” which consists of a staff with a wooden ball at the top, covered with long iron spikes. Another sinister-looking weapon is the “Morning Star,” so named by the Germans, and certainly calculated to raise up many a star before the eyes of anyone who had the misfortune to be struck by it. Besides these there is a goodly array of partisans, halberds, and pole-axes. In the centre of this gallery is an equestrian figure clad in sixteenth-century armour which was made at Nuremberg, where the best armour in Germany was manufactured. The whole of the knight’s armour, as well as the panoply of the horse, is ornamented with that quaint device, the Burgundian cross “ragule,” and also the flint and steel pattern, the same that appears on the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece: from these ornaments and devices it follows that this armour was made for one of the Burgundian princes, perhaps for the Emperor Maximilian, it having been given to Henry VIII. by that monarch.
There are many suits of armour which, until Lord Dillon re-arranged and classified the collection, passed as genuine, and among them is a sham suit of armour worn by Lord Waterford at the famous Eglinton tournament—a tourney which ended by the competing knights taking shelter from the rain under their umbrellas. Another splendid specimen of the German armourers’ work is the fluted suit for man and horse belonging to the early part of the sixteenth century. Two other suits of armour which are placed in the centre of the gallery belonged to Henry VIII.; they are of prodigious weight, and as they were intended for fighting on foot, it must have required considerable physical strength to walk when clad in this ponderous habiliment: it certainly would have been impossible for its wearer to run away with it upon his back. Lord Dillon believes that both these suits are of Italian or Spanish workmanship; one of them is made up of 235 separate pieces. Besides these, two other suits of Henry VIII.’s armour are in the collection; one of them still retains traces of gilding, and must have shone resplendently when worn by the bluff king.
Regarding the equestrian suit of armour in the centre of the gallery, Lord Dillon thinks “that it is one of the finest in existence.” It was made at Augsburg by the famous German armourer Conrad Sensenhofer, and was given to Henry by the Emperor Maximilian in 1515. It is covered with devices, such as roses, pomegranates, and portcullises—the badges of Henry and Catharine of Arragon—the letters H and K stand out in bold relief on the horse armour. Engraved within panels are representations of scenes from the lives of St George and St Barbara. No finer example of the great German’s art workmanship than this truly Imperial suit can be seen, not even in the great German, Spanish, and Italian collections.
Close to this stands a curious shield, one of eighty similar ones made for Henry VIII., with a pistol in the middle. Worthy of note is a helmet with a mask attached, also a gift to Henry from Maximilian. It was formerly known as Will Somers’s mask (the King’s Jester), but recent research does not show that Somers ever used this ugly vizor. Here, also, is a very gorgeous suit of gilt armour which belonged to the Earl of Cumberland, one of Elizabeth’s smartest courtiers, who fitted out at his own expense no less than eleven expeditions against the Spaniards. Noticeable, too, are the quaint double weapons—staves with pole-axes and gun-barrels attached; one of these has three barrels, a kind of gigantic early revolver which was called King Harry’s Walking-Stick. Here are also ancient saddles used for tournaments. One of these belonged, and was probably used by Charles Brandon, Henry VIII.’s brother-in-law: much horse armour besides these tilting saddles is to be seen here,—“chaufons” and “bards” made of leather, known by the name of “cuir bouall,” and “vamplates,” worn when tilting to protect the hand, and into which the tilting spear was fastened. More suits of armour for men and horses are those which belonged to the Earl of Worcester in Elizabeth’s time, and a still richer one, once worn by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, bearing all over it the badge of the rugged staff, and the double collars of the English order of the Garter and the French one of St Michael. The armour of another of Elizabeth’s favourites is here, a suit which is believed to have belonged to Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. To come to later times, and the House of Stuart, the most conspicuous of the armour of that period is a gilt suit which belonged to Charles I., but very inferior in workmanship and artistic excellence to the earlier work of the German armourers. There is also a small suit of armour made for Charles I., when a child. Here, too, are models of cannon made for Charles II., when he was Prince of Wales, and a richly decorated suit of armour given to Henry, Prince of Wales, by the Prince de Joinville.
Of all this display of arms and armour in the Tower, of which I have but touched upon the chief objects of historical and artistic interest, the “processional” axe is, to my mind, by far the most interesting in regard to the Tower and its history, for it is the outward and visible sign of the part the “great axe,” as Shakespeare called it, has played in our country’s history, the symbol of its highest justice, whether it appeared with its edge turned towards or turned away from the prisoner: and what scenes in English history has not that steel reflected in its impassive surface. This axe is in itself an epitome of the history of the Tower, and consequently of England.
Beneath the western wall of the White Tower is a varied park of artillery. Here, placed side by side, are cannon taken from out the wreck the Mary Rose, a warship lost off Spithead in 1545, with others from the Royal George, which sank in the same place in 1782. Here is a Portuguese cannon made in 1594 and taken at the siege of Hyderabad in 1843; and guns made for Napoleon at Avignon, with the crowned N engraved upon them. What is curious amongst the old English cannon of the sixteenth century, is their being made of iron bars welded together and bound round with iron hoops. One of these belonged to the Mary Rose, and still holds within its barrel a stone shot. Here is also a breech-loading cannon made early in the sixteenth century, and two triple brass guns made for Louis XIV. bearing his device of the sun and the motto, “Ultima ratio regum.” The old French and English mortars are also of interest, the earliest of the latter being dated 1686; one was used by William III. at the siege of Namur in 1695. There is a French mortar made by Keller, Louis’s gun-founder at Douai, in 1683. In 1708 there were sixty-two guns on Tower Green and the river wharf: the latter were fired on festivals; they are now used for saluting from “Salutation Battery,” which faces Tower Hill. Amongst these weapons of destruction one is almost certain to find a pair of venerable ravens hopping about; they are a pair of weird and eerie fowls, and one might imagine the spirit of some guilty wretch had been re-incarnated under their black feathers.
In Mr W.H. Hudson’s book, entitled “Birds of London,” these and other birds are described as follows:—“At the Tower of London robins occasionally appear in autumn, but soon go away. The last one that came, settled down and was a great favourite with the people there for about two months, being very friendly, coming to window-sills for crumbs, and singing every day very beautifully. Then one day he was seen in the General’s garden wildly dashing about, hotly pursued by seven or eight sparrows, and, as he was never seen again, it was conjectured that the sparrows had succeeded in killing him. The robin is a high-spirited creature, braver than most birds, and a fair fighter, but against such a gang of feathered murderous ruffians, bent on his destruction, he would stand no chance.
“The Tower sparrows, it may be added, appear to be about the worst specimens of their class in London. They are always at war with the pigeons and starlings, and would gladly drive them out if they could. It is a common thing for some foreign bird to escape from its cage on board ship and to take refuge in the trees and gardens of the Tower, but woe to the escaped captive and stranger in a strange land who seeks safety in such a place! Immediately on his arrival the sparrows are all up against him, not to ‘heave half a brick at him,’ since they are not made that way, but to hunt him from place to place until they have driven him, weak with fatigue and terror, into a corner where they can finish him with their bludgeon beaks.”
It is worthy of notice that no mention is made of the Tower in Domesday Book, London being altogether omitted from that work. Of all the Norman strongholds and castles which rose in London along the river-side, of Montfichet, Baynard’s Castle, the old Palace at Blackfriars, or of Tower Royal, Stephen’s palace in Vintry Ward, no trace remains, and of them all the great Norman keep of the Conqueror remains little altered in outward form from what it was eight centuries ago.
Tower Hill
Tower Hill, which lies to the north-west of the Tower, is more closely allied with the history of the fortress than any other spot within the City boundaries, and the short space intervening between it and the entrance gate of the Tower was, in most cases, the final journey of the State prisoners condemned to death. Writing of Tower Hill, Stow, the antiquary, says it was “sometime a large plot of ground, now greatly straightened by encroachments (unlawfully made and suffered) for gardens and houses. Upon the hill is always readily prepared at the charge of the City, a large scaffold and gallows of timber, for the execution of such traitors or transgressors are as delivered out of the Tower, or otherwise, to the Sheriffs of London, by writ, there to be executed.”
Hatton, however, describes Tower Hill in the reign of Queen Anne as “a spacious place extending round the west and north parts of the Tower, where there are many good new buildings, mostly inhabited by gentry and merchants.”
The Sheriffs of London and Middlesex were responsible for State prisoners so long as they were within the City and county boundaries, and when such prisoners were taken through the streets of London from the Tower, the Sheriffs received them from the Lieutenant of the Tower at the entrance to the City, and gave a receipt for their persons.
The City officials, too, were responsible for the scaffold on Tower Hill, but in the reign of Edward IV. this scaffold was erected at the charge of the King’s officers. Constant quarrels and disputes, however, arose on the subject of the boundaries between the City and the Lieutenant of the Tower, until the charge of Tower Hill was finally vested in the City. In the view of the Tower and its surroundings, to which I have so often referred, made by Haiward and Gascoyne in 1597, the scaffold is shown standing some distance to the north of Tower Street: its site is now a pleasant garden, the place of execution being recorded by an inscription on a tablet placed on the grass plot within the railings.
Tower Hill is almost entirely associated with the shedding of blood, with the masked executioner, his block and axe, and has little historical interest besides, save that Lady Raleigh lodged in a house on the Hill with the child born to her in the Tower, after James I. refused to allow her to share her husband’s imprisonment. William Penn, the Quaker, and founder of Pennsylvania—which he mortgaged for £6600 in his old age—was born on Tower Hill in 1644; Otway the poet died at the Bull public-house, it is supposed of starvation; and it was at a cutler’s shop on Tower Hill that Felton bought the knife with which he mortally stabbed George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, at Portsmouth.
Stained Glass in the Tower
Of all the richly coloured windows placed in the chapel of St John in the White Tower by Henry III. and the brilliant glass in the church of St Peter ad Vincula, very little now remains, and the only coloured glass to be found in the Tower at the present day, as it was originally placed, is in the window of a little room used as the library for the Tower warders close to the Byward Tower—this room in one respect resembles the most famous library in the world, that of the Vatican, from the fact that no books are visible, they being all put away in cupboards—and this consists only of two royal badges in coloured glass. These royal arms appear to be of the time of James I., and although they have been much restored, that containing the three feathers of the Prince of Wales retains much of its old glaze and is a good example of emblazoned glass of the period. It may possibly have been intended for the cognisance of Prince Henry, or Charles I., when Prince of Wales.
A quantity of stained glass panels were found in the crypt of St John’s Chapel, in which some interesting and valuable fragments, mostly incomplete in themselves, of heraldic glass of the sixteenth century and of small pictorial subjects, were mixed with modern and valueless glass of subordinate design. The whole was carefully examined by Messrs John Hardman, who separated the ancient from the modern glass, and using delicate leads to repair the numerous fractures of the former, and setting the various fragments in lozenges of plain glass, filled the right windows of the chapel with the following subjects:—
The first window in the south front, entering from the west, a coat of arms, with the words “Honi soit qui mal y pense” around it on the upper portion; a sepia painting in the centre, representing the Deity and two angels appearing to a priest, with flames rising from an altar. In the lower portion is another sepia painting with the Deity depicted with outstretched arms, one hand on the sun, the other on the moon, and the earth rolling in clouds at the feet. This is generally supposed to be emblematical of the Creation, but has been suggested as representative of the Saviour as the Light of the World.
The second window has a head and bust near the top, with a peculiar cap and crown. The centre is a sepia representing the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and the guardian angel. At the bottom there is another sepia, depicting a village upon a hill, probably a distant view of Harrow.
The third window has at the top a figure of Charles I. in sepia; in the centre a knight in armour, skirmishing, and at the bottom what appears to be a holly-bush with the letters H. R.
The fourth window has a negro’s head with a turban in the upper portion; in the centre a sepia of Esau returning from the hunt to seek Isaac’s blessing, Rebecca and Jacob being in the background. Near the bottom is another sepia of the exterior of a church, probably Dutch.
The fifth window, and the last of the series facing south, has a coat of arms and motto like those in the first window; in the centre, a sepia of the anointing of David by Samuel, and near the bottom Jehovah in clouds, with the earth and shrubs bursting forth. This is probably emblematical of the Creation.
The south-east apsidal window has the coat of arms and royal motto as before, with two smaller coats of arms and the same motto below, a royal crown and large Tudor rose being near the bottom.
The eastern window (in the centre of the apse) has a crown with fleur-de-lys and leopards at the top, and in the centre the small portcullis of John of Gaunt and the wheat-sheaf of Chester. These are by far the best heraldic devices in the whole series of windows.
The north-east window has a very imperfect coat of arms with fleur-de-lys and leopards, as well as two other coats with the royal motto. There is also a device which might be taken to represent the letter M, but which is probably the inverted water-bottles of the Hastings family. Daggers are quartered upon the other coats of arms. At the bottom of this window is a Tudor rose and several fragments of glass much confused.
The glass has been placed in the windows with great care, the subjects being made as complete as the broken fragments permitted. Each of the eight windows is ornamented with leaded borders.