The Tower of London

Michael, his son, both Lieutenants of the Tower in their time. These Blounts died in the middle of the sixteenth century. In the body of the church Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher, Protector Somerset and Thomas Cromwell, Strafford and Sir John Eliot, lie buried. One of the earliest monuments in the building is that lying between the organ and chancel, commemorating Sir Richard Cholmondeley and his wife Elizabeth. The recumbent figures are carved in alabaster. Neither the knight nor his lady was buried in the church. Sir Richard held the position of Lieutenant of the Tower in Henry VII.’s reign. Lord de Ros, the last Deputy-Lieutenant of the Tower, and author of a valuable record of its history, who died in 1874, has a memorial here. It was owing to his care that the tombstone covering the grave of Talbot Edwards, so nearly killed when defending the Crown Jewels at the time of the Colonel Blood onslaught, was replaced. This slab had been doing duty as a paving-stone on Tower Green. The Communion Plate of St. Peter’s dates from the time of the first Charles, and the vessels bear the royal monogram, C.R., with crown above. They have been used by many a condemned captive just before the hour appointed for death.

CHAPTER IV

A WALK ROUND THE TOWER

On leaving the Tower gateway we turn into the gardens on the right and walk along the pathway that lies beneath Tower Hill and above the moat. An excellent view is to be obtained from these gardens of the outer defences of the Tower. The western front exhibits a striking mass of buildings of various age and colour. At first glance we might imagine we were looking upon a bit of sixteenth-century Nuremberg. We would not be at all surprised to see Hans Sachs, Veit Pogner, or Sixtus Beckmesser look out from the windows above the Ballium Wall. Below lie the Casemates or outer defences, running, on this western side, from the Byward Tower to Legge’s Mount, named, it is conjectured, after George Legge, Earl of Dartmouth, who had charge of the battery in the seventeenth century. The Outward Wall was put up by Henry III.

The Devereux Tower.—This tower stands at the north-west angle of the Ballium Wall, above Legge’s Mount battery. Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and friend of Shakespeare, was a prisoner here in Elizabeth’s reign, hence the name; but in earlier days it was known as Robyn the Devyll’s, or Develin Tower. It is so termed in the 1597 plan reproduced at the end of this book. The lower and older portion of the tower dates back to the time of Richard I.; the upper portions are modern restorations of what had existed previously, but the arrow-slits, which formerly pierced the walls and admitted so little light to the interior of one of the gloomiest towers in the fortress, are now widened to windows. The walls are eleven feet thick, and a small staircase leads from the tower to cells lying within the thickness of the Ballium Wall. The lower floor contains an old kitchen with finely vaulted ceiling; beneath this there is a forbidding dungeon, and underground passages at one time led thence to the vaults of St. Peter’s Church. But the secret subways are now sealed up and their existence probably forgotten.

Flint, Bowyer, and Brick Towers.—These towers lie along the northern section of the Inner Wall and are protected by the Outer Wall, and also by the comparatively modern North Bastion which projects into the ditch and is pierced for successive tiers, containing five guns each. The Flint Tower is next in order after the Devereux, and lies some ninety feet away. An older tower on this site, known as Little Hell because of its evil reputation as a prison, had fallen partly to ruin in 1796 and was demolished; the present tower was set up in its place, and, though used as a prison for a few years after the rebuilding, has practically no history as it now stands. The Bowyer Tower, next in order eastwards, was the place of confinement of the luckless Duke of Clarence, who suffered a mysterious death in 1478. The lower portions of the structure date back to Edward III.; all above is of more recent date. This tower had always an evil reputation. “One of the most terrible cells of the fortress,” one authority states, “is to be found in the Bowyer Tower, where there is a

ghastly hole with a trap-door, opening upon a flight of steps.” From these steps a secret passage led through a small cell to a farther cell in the body of the Ballium Wall. It is possible that Scott had this tower in mind when describing the dungeon and secret passages and doors in the thirteenth chapter of the Legend of Montrose. The account of the one resembles very closely what we know of the other. The bowmaker lived and followed his trade within this tower, and it is named after that master craftsman, whose workshop was a busy place in the days before the bullet had ousted the arrow. The Brick Tower is chiefly of interest as having been the place to which Raleigh was moved during his first and third imprisonments. When it was found necessary to keep him in closer captivity than had been imposed on him in the Garden House and Bloody Tower, he was brought to the Brick Tower, and not to the cell in St. John’s crypt, as tradition has led many to believe. Lord Grey de Wilton died here, during his captivity, in 1617; here, also, Sir William Coventry was confined for a time in Charles II.’s time. Pepys, on his visit to Sir William, found “abundance of company with him,” and sixty coaches stood outside Tower gates “that had brought them thither.”

The Martin Tower.—This is the most famous of the lesser towers, and is also known as the old Jewel House. It, too, in part is ancient, but the building set up by Henry III. was tampered with by Wren, and has, in consequence, a somewhat patchy appearance to-day. The tower stands at the north-east corner of the Inner Wall, and beneath it lies Brass Mount battery. It is best seen from the point where we leave the public gardens and go on to the level of the Tower Bridge Approach. From this recently constructed roadway a good general view of the Tower buildings on the eastern side is obtained. But we will pause here on our walk to consider two memorable events in the history of the Martin Tower.

In May, 1671, that audacious rascal, Colonel Blood, “whose spirit toiled in framing the most daring enterprises,” after having failed to “seize his ancient enemy, the Duke of Ormond, in the streets of London,” bethought him of a plan to seize and carry away the Crown Jewels of England, then kept in the Martin Tower. It was soon after the appointment of Sir Gilbert Talbot as Master, or Keeper, of the Jewels that the regalia had been opened to public inspection, and an old servant of Sir Gilbert’s, Talbot Edwards, was in immediate charge of the room in which the gems lay. Blood had been making one or two visits, in various disguises, to the Jewel-room during the last weeks of April of the year mentioned (the date is sometimes given as 1673, but Evelyn mentions the affair, in his Diary, under May 10, 1671), in order to make sure of his ground and to devise plans of safe retreat. Blood, in guise of a clergyman, and addressed as Parson Blood, had been invited to dine with Edwards and his wife and daughter. “You have,” said the cassocked Colonel, “a pretty young gentlewoman for your daughter, and I have a young nephew, who has two or three hundred a year in land, and is at my disposal. If your daughter be free, and you approve it, I’ll bring him here to see her, and we will endeavour to make it a match.” The day that he had chosen to introduce his nephew was the day on which he was to make his own attempt to steal more than a maiden’s heart. At the time appointed, Parson Blood returned “with three more, all armed with rapier-canes and every one a dagger and a brace of pocket-pistols.” Blood and two of his associates “went in to see the crown,” and the pretended “nephew” remained at the door as sentinel. Miss Edwards, with maidenly modesty, forbore to come down and meet her wooer, yet curiosity impelled her to send a waiting-maid to inspect the company and report as to the appearance of her lover. The maid, having seen whom she took to be the intended bridegroom standing at the door of the Jewel-room, returned to her mistress and analysed the impression of the young man which she had formed, with womanly intuition, by a single glance. Meanwhile, it was not love but war below. Old Talbot Edwards had been gagged and nearly strangled by Blood and his men, but not before he had made as much noise as possible in order to raise an alarm. The young women upstairs were much too interested in Cupid’s affairs to hear the cries from the Jewel chamber. Edwards received several blows on the head with a mallet in order that his shouts might be silenced. He fell to the ground and was left there as dead, while the ruffians were busily despoiling the jewel case of its more precious contents. Blood, as chief conspirator, secured the crown and hid it under his cloak; his trusty Parrot secreted the orb; and the third villain proceeded to file the sceptre in order to get it into a small bag. At that moment a dramatic event upset their calculations. One can almost hear the chord in the orchestra and imagine that a transpontine melodrama was being witnessed, when told that there stepped upon the scene, at this juncture, a son of Talbot Edwards who had just returned from Flanders. Young Edwards, on entering his own house, was surprised by the sentinel at the door asking him what his business might be. He ran upstairs, in some amazement, to see his father, mother, and sister, and ask the meaning of this demand. Blood and his precious suite of booty-snatchers received the alarm from the doorkeeper, and the interesting party made off as quickly as they could with cloaks, bags, pockets, and hands full of Crown jewellery, the property of His Majesty King Charles and the English nation. Old Edwards had now recovered his powers of speech, and, working the gag out of his mouth, rose up to shout “Treason! Murder!” and so forth. This was heard by those above who had been welcoming young Edwards’ unexpected return. All were now active, and young Edwards, assisted by some warders, gave chase to the rapidly retreating regalia. The Blood contingent had already reached the Byward Tower and were making for the outer gateway when some of the King’s jewels were dropped in order to lighten the burdens of those who ran. But the Colonel still hugged the crown. They were soon out on Tower Wharf and making for St. Catherine’s Gate (where the northern end of Tower Bridge now stands). Here horses awaited them, and here they were aware that shouts of “Stop the rogues!” were proceeding from an excited body of men rushing towards them from the western end of the Wharf. The gallant Colonel did not resign the crown without a struggle, during which several of the jewels, including the Great Pearl and a large diamond, with which it was set, rolled out upon the ground and were for a time lost, but subsequently recovered. Parrot was found with portions of royal sceptre in various linings and pockets, and a valuable ruby had been successfully conjured away. When Blood and his three tragic comedians had been made prisoners, young Edwards hastened back into the Tower and acquainted Sir Gilbert Talbot with the alarming news. Sir Gilbert stamped and swore a round oath or two and hurried to the King to give him an account of the escapade. Charles commanded the prisoners to be brought before him at Whitehall, and the Merry Monarch endowed Blood with a pension of £500 a year. The second Charles evidently admired a man of daring.

The Seven Bishops were confined—huddled together would be the more literal term—in the Martin Tower, during the troublous days of James II., for refusing to subscribe to the Declaration of Indulgence. “A warrant was issued for their committal to the Tower,” we are told by Dr. Luckock in his Bishops in the Tower, and “the spectacle of the 8th of June [1688] has had no parallel in the annals of history. It has often been painted, and in vivid colours, but no adequate description can ever be given of a scene that was unique.” As the barge containing the Bishops was pushed off from Whitehall Steps, “men and women rushed into the water and the people ran along the banks cheering with the wildest enthusiasm, and crying, ‘God bless the Bishops!’ When they reached the Traitor’s Gate and passed into the Tower, the soldiers on guard, officers as well as men, fell on their knees and begged for a blessing. It was evening when they arrived, and they asked for permission to attend the service in the chapel [of St. Peter]; and the Lesson for the day, by a happy coincidence, was one well calculated to inspire them with courage: ‘In all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in strifes, in imprisonments.’ ... The enthusiasm was continued long after the ponderous gates of the Tower had closed upon them. The soldiers of the garrison drank to the health of the Bishops at their mess, and nothing could stop them from such a manifestation of their sympathy.” The Bishops were in the Martin Tower until June 15, when they returned by water from the Wharf and were taken to the Court of King’s Bench. They were tried on June 29. When Sir Robert Langley, foreman of the jury, declared that the prisoners were found “not guilty” the scene again became one of the wildest joy and excitement. “The released Bishops, hearing the bells of a neighbouring church, escaped from the crowd to join in the service, and, by a second coincidence, more striking even than the first, the Lesson that they heard was the story of St. Peter’s miraculous deliverance from prison.”

The Constable, Broad Arrow, and Salt Towers.—These small towers stand on the line of the eastern wall of the Inner Ward and face the Tower Bridge roadway. In the first named the Constable of the Tower lived in Henry VIII.’s reign; in the time of Charles I. it was used as a prison. Its rooms and dungeons resemble those of the Beauchamp Tower, but are on a smaller scale. The Broad Arrow Tower never lacked prisoners during the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth, and the room on the first floor has some inscriptions left by captives; these writings on the stone have been so repeatedly covered with whitewash that they are now somewhat difficult to decipher. In 1830 a list of the inscriptions was made, and we find in it the following names and dates: “John Daniell, 1556,” a prisoner concerned in a plot to rob the Exchequer in Mary’s reign, and hanged on Tower Hill; “Thomas Forde, 1582,” a priest executed “for refusing to assent to the supremacy of Queen Elizabeth in the Church”; “John Stoughton, 1586,” and “J. Gage, 1591,” both priests. At the top of this tower, near the doorway giving access to the Inner Wall, is a narrow cell, with only a small aperture to admit light, which rivals Little Ease in sparsity of accommodation. Behind the Constable and Broad Arrow Towers are the Officers’ Quarters of the garrison, occupying ground on which stood, until the reign of James II., an old building known as the King’s Private Wardrobe, connected with the now vanished Royal Palace. South-west of the Broad Arrow Tower lay the Queen’s Garden.

The Salt, Cradle, and Lanthorn Towers.—The Salt Tower, standing at the south-east corner of the Ballium wall, is one of the oldest portions of all the buildings, and dates back to the time of William Rufus. It possesses a spacious dungeon, with vaulted ceiling, a finely carved chimney-piece in one of the upper rooms, and in a prison chamber the inscription of “Hew: Draper, 1561”—the memento of a sixteenth-century magician—is cut on the wall. The Salt and Cradle Towers were the scene of an escape of two prisoners in Elizabeth’s reign—Father Gerard and John Arden.

Gerard had been put in the Salt Tower for the part he is said to have taken in an attempt on the Queen’s life. When examined before a Council which sat in the room in the King’s House where Guy Fawkes was afterwards convicted, he refused to give any information that might involve brother priests. For this he was ordered to be tortured in the dungeon under the White Tower. In the account which he himself wrote of the proceedings

we are told that he and his guards “went in solemn procession, the attendants preceding us with lighted candles because the place was underground 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 I should have to taste them.” Gerard was led to “a great upright beam, or pillar of wood” in the centre of the torture chamber, and there hung up by his hands, which were placed in iron shackles attached to an iron rod fixed in the pillar. The stool on which he had stood while this was being done was taken away from under his feet and the whole weight of his body was supported by his wrists, clasped in the gauntlets. As he was a tall, stout man his sufferings must have been terrible indeed. While he hung thus he was again questioned as to his associates in the “plot,” but he refused to betray any one. He has left on record his sensations as he hung against the pillar of torture. “I felt,” he says, “that all the blood in my body had run into my arms and begun to burst out at my finger-ends. This was a mistake, but the arms swelled until the gauntlets were buried in the flesh. After being thus suspended for an hour I fainted; when I came to myself I found the executioners supporting me in their arms.” They had replaced the stool under his feet, and poured vinegar down his throat; but as soon as he recovered consciousness the stool was withdrawn and Gerard allowed to remain hanging in agony for five hours longer, during which he fainted eight or nine times. For three days he was put to this torture on the pillar, and Sir William Waad, then Lieutenant of the Tower, exasperated at the victim’s fortitude, exclaimed at last, “Hang there till you rot!” and he was left hanging till his arms were paralysed. Each evening the victim, “half dead with pain, and scarce able to crawl,” was taken back to his cell in the Salt Tower. A few days later Gerard was again brought before the Council, and again refused to compromise others. Waad thereupon delivered him to the charge of the chief of the torturers—a dread official indeed—with the injunction, “You are to rack him twice a day until such time as he chooses to confess.” Once more he was led down into the dungeon beneath the White Tower and strapped up to the pillar as before, his swollen arms and wrists being forced into the iron bands which could now scarce go round them. Still he refused to give the name of a single friend, and Waad saw the futility of torturing him to death. Gerard was locked up in the Salt Tower again and lay on the floor of his chamber with maimed arms, wrists, and hands, terrible to look upon. Yet he remained firm, and the pains of the body could not, it seemed, affect his spirit. It happened that in the Cradle Tower, standing to the south-west of the Salt Tower, on the outer wall and close by the Wharf, another Roman Catholic prisoner, John Arden, was kept in confinement. Gerard, when sufficiently recovered to be able to walk about again, obtained leave of his jailor to visit Arden. Together they planned escape. They wrote to friends in the City with orange juice, which writing was invisible unless subjected to a certain treatment whereby it became legible. Gerard, by the help of these friends, secured a long piece of thick string with a leaden weight attached, and with this came a written promise that upon a certain night a boat would lie beside the Wharf just under the Cradle Tower. On the evening of the day appointed Gerard stayed longer than usual with Arden, but dreading lest at any moment he should be sent for and taken back to the Salt Tower. But night came and he was still in the Cradle Tower, looking out anxiously across the moat towards the riverside. At last the boat approached, and was moored opposite the tower, from which Arden threw his line, and both prisoners saw, with joy, that the leaden weight had cleared the moat and fallen on the Wharf. It was picked up by the boatmen, and a strong rope was fastened to the cord. This rope Arden hauled up into his cell and made it fast. Gerard then swarmed down the tightened rope to the Wharf, suffering acute pain owing to the condition of his arms and wrists. It was five months after his torture before the sense of touch was restored to his hands. Arden followed, and both got away safely to the steps beside London Bridge, where they were met by the friends who had cheered them in their captivity, and were taken to a place of safety.

The Cradle Tower is seen best from the Wharf. This broad riverside embankment constructed by Henry III. makes a delightful promenade. It is reached from the level of the Tower Bridge approach by descending a flight of steps on the eastern side of the roadway and passing under the bridge by the archway at the guard-room. When this arch is passed under, on the immediate right, beyond the trees, is seen the Galleyman or Develin

Tower, and the Well Tower to the left of it The Galleyman, or Galligman Tower—to give it the name under which it appears in a plan of 1597—was in former times a powder store and gave access to the “Iron Gate,” now demolished. It will be noticed that five towers stand closely together at this corner of the defences. The south-eastern portion of the fortress had always been considered that most exposed to attack; the protecting ditch, too, is narrower at this point than elsewhere, hence the need for additional fortification. Beside the Cradle Tower a modern drawbridge has been constructed giving access for stores. Within the outer and inner walls here, lay the Privy Garden, one of the most peaceful and secluded nooks in the fortress—a place of old-world flowers and southern sunshine. The Cradle Tower is so named from the existence there in former times of a “cradle,” or movable bed by means of which boats could be hoisted from the moat, and, within the grated doorway in the tower wall, raised on to a dry platform there. The principal entrance to the Outer Ward lay, in early days, through this gateway in the Cradle Tower, and prisoners were landed here as well as through Traitor’s Gate. In 1641 it was described as “Cradle Tower—a prison lodging.” The round Lanthorn Tower rising above and dwarfing the Cradle Tower was in Tudor days known as the New Tower, and commanded the King’s Bedchamber, and the Queen’s Gallery. Towards the end of the eighteenth century this tower was burnt down, and the walls, from the lower portions and vaults, were rebuilt. In Henry III.’s reign this tower was a place of great importance; its chambers were hung with ornate tapestry, and the inner walls decorated with frescoes. This tower, being attached to the royal apartments, was never used as a prison, and so may be said to be happy in having no history of suffering attached to it. It has been so admirably restored, by Salvin, and again by Taylor in 1882, that it has lost little of its original appearance.

From the Wharf the massive St. Thomas’s Tower can be examined more closely and the outer side of the Traitor’s Gate is open to view. The guns on the Wharf, near the Byward Tower, are those that are used for the firing of salutes on days of royal anniversary.

CHAPTER V

TOWER HILL

The actual spot on which the scaffold was erected on the hill is marked, in the garden by which it is now surrounded, by a square of stone paving set in the turf just within the gate on the south-western side of the enclosure. Happy children skip and play on this blood-stained bit of ground; the flowers leap up in April and the birds make melody in May; Nature has healed the sore and done lavishly to make us forget, by her gifts, that here was the scene of angry mobs crying for the slaughter of some of the nation’s noblest men. The block was set up on a high wooden platform so that the ceremony of decapitation was performed well above the heads of the dense crowd that gathered on the hill when the more notable Tower prisoners were brought here to die. It is stated that during the making of the tunnel that goes through Tower Hill to-day the wooden foundations of the scaffold were discovered, and also, near by, the remains of two victims whose bodies had been interred there. Neither the imbedded timber nor the human bones were disturbed, and both still lie beneath the turf to fix accurately the spot of execution. Tower Hill seems to have possessed a gallows also, for we find frequent record of criminals being “hanged in chains” there, either for State or other offences. Under an oak tree that grew on the slope towards the Tower gateway, the public stocks stood, and in the vestry minutes of Allhallows Barking, under the date December 16, 1657, we find it recorded that an order was given “for the erection of stocks and whipping-post required by the statute at the churchyard corner in Tower Street against Mr. Lowe’s, the draper’s, with a convenient shed over them.” How Mr. Lowe, the draper, took the proposition we are not informed, but if he expressed his feelings in forcible language he might, perchance, have met the fate of his neighbour, Mr. Holland, who, three years previously, on April 26, 1654, “was fined 3s. 4d. by Alderman Tichbourne for vain oaths sworn” within the parish of Allhallows. Tower Hill would seem, in those days, to have had a peculiar attraction for “beggars and common vagrants.” It was a popular resort for those who lived to beg and those who begged to live—two very different classes of people, but both equally inconvenient. In the middle seventeenth century the condition of affairs became serious and gave alarm both to officials and to the annoyed inhabitants of the district. In May, 1647, the Vestry of Allhallows “takes into consideration the destitute condition of the poor, and it is ordered that a collection for the poor shall be made every second Sabbath in the month; the churchwardens shall stand at the door ... to receive the freewill offerings of the parishioners,” and in 1654 the residents appeal to the Lord Mayor, for “grate, grate, very grate are your petitioners’ wants, and may it please your Honour to afford them some relief ... without which they are unable to maintain so great a charge.” Hither came “a poore starving Frenchman,” who was solaced with 2s.; a like sum was granted to a “poore Spaniard turned Protestant” and a “poore Dutch minister.” The dwellers on the side of Tower Hill were themselves at times reprimanded by the authorities, for we find that in May, 1653, “Goodman Dawson and his wife” are summoned to appear, “because they would not let their daughter, aged seventeen, go out to service: their pension to be stopped as long as they encourage such indolence,” which seems a just enough proceeding.

This district suffered severely during the three years after the Great Fire. Tower Hill lay on the eastern edge of the city of desolation. The poor proprietor of the Blue Bell tavern, which stood in picturesque angularities overlooking the hill before the catastrophe which reduced it, to quote its owner’s words, “to nothing but a ruinous heap of rubbish,” sought exemption, in 1669, from arrears of lawful dues. These old inns bordering Tower Hill were the scene of frequent “Parish dinners,” at which the consumption of food was so considerable as to lead one to believe that Tower Hill was noted in those days, as it is to-day, for its fresh air, which sharpens the edge of appetite. These feeds were partaken of by just as many “men of import in the parish” as could get into a small

room, “mine host’s best parlour.” On April 26, 1629, they consumed “5 stone of beefe, 2 legges of mutton, 2 quarters of lamb, 3 capons,” and so on. A few weeks afterwards they are at it again and “dine upon 5 ribbs of beef, a side of lamb, 2 legges of mutton, 2 capons; and did drink wine and beer to the value of £l:7s.” This reminds one of Falstaff’s feeds in Eastcheap and his capacity for imbibing Canary sack. At one meal, in Henry IV., Shakespeare makes the fat knight, if we go by the bill presented afterwards, drink sixteen pints of wine! In 1632 sack was sold in the City at 9d. per quart, claret at 5d., and Malmsey and muscadine at 8d.

In Queen Anne’s reign Tower Hill is described as “an open and spacious place, set with trees, extending round the west and north parts of the Tower, where there are many good new buildings, mostly inhabited by gentry and merchants.” In the contemporary drawings it is shown as an open space, but singularly devoid of trees. The artists may have been so intent upon crowding their pictures with tightly packed citizens gazing upon the decapitation of some unfortunate nobleman that they forgot to put in the trees. Certainly several of the fine trees that now adorn Trinity Square are of some age, and represent the survivors of that fragment of the ancient forest which crept up to the eastern side of the hill, and which we see so plainly marked in many of the old maps.

In a house on the western side of Tower Hill Lady Raleigh dwelt with her son when her husband was denied her society. From her window she could look out day by day upon the Brick Tower to which Raleigh had been removed, and tradition asserts that she was able to communicate with him and send him gifts in spite of Waad’s stringent orders. The house in which William Penn was born, on October 14, 1644, stood on the east side of the hill; its site is covered by the new roadway leading to the Minories. Penn was sent to school at Chigwell, in Essex, and it was during those days of boyhood that he had been impressed by the preaching of a Quaker preacher which led him to forsake the Church of his baptism (he was baptized, as we shall see in the following chapter, in Allhallows Barking), and join the Society of Friends. Thomas Otway, the poet, abused by Rochester in his Session of the Poets, and praised by Dryden, died, it is believed of starvation, in the Bull Inn on Tower Hill, when only thirty-four years old. That great Elizabethan, Edmund Spenser, was born near Tower Hill in 1552, and passed his boyhood there, before going, when sixteen, to Pembroke College, Cambridge. In Little Tower Street, in a timber-fronted, many-gabled house, now, alas, swept away, James Thomson wrote his poem Summer, published in 1727. So much for literary associations.

Peter the Great, who raised Russia “out of the slough of ignorance and obscurity,” in order to superintend the building of a navy took upon himself the task of learning shipbuilding, first as a common labourer, afterwards as a master craftsman. He came to London for four months and worked in the dockyards by day and drank heavily in a public-house in Allhallows Barking parish at night. He was accustomed “to resort to an inn in Great Tower Street and smoke and drink ale and brandy, almost enough to float the vessel he had been helping to construct.” Barrow, his biographer, states that “the landlord had the Czar of Muscovy’s head painted and put up for his sign, which continued until the year 1808, when a person of the name of Waxel took a fancy to the old sign and offered the then occupier of the house to paint him a new one for it. A copy was accordingly made from the original, which maintains its station to the present day as the sign of the Czar’s Head.” The house has since been rebuilt and the sign removed, but the name remains. While the Earl of Rochester was in disgrace at Court in Charles II.’s time he is said to have “robed and bearded himself as an Italian quack or mountebank physician, and, under the name of Bendo, set up at a goldsmith’s house, next door to the Black Swan in Tower Street,” where he advertised that he “was to be seen from three of the clock in the afternoon till eight at night.” The second Duke of Buckingham came, once or twice in disguise, in his days of political intrigue, to a house facing Tower Hill, to consult an old astrologer who professed to draw horoscopes. In Seething Lane, then known as Sidon Lane, which runs from Allhallows Barking to the Church of St. Olave’s, Hart Street, Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s principal secretary, dwelt “in a fair and large house.” This foe of the Jesuits died here on April 5, 1590, “and was buried next night, at ten of the clock, in Paul’s Church.”

St. Olave’s Church is a building with many interesting associations, and a well-written little pamphlet has recently been issued which visitors will do well to read. There is only space here to mention the Pepys monument, in the South Aisle, where the diarist was buried in June, 1703, the service being taken by his friend Dr. Hickes, Vicar of Allhallows Barking. The registers of the parish show that from July 4 to December 5, 1665, there were buried 326 people who had died of the plague. A quaint skull and crossbones carving can still be seen over the gateway within which the burial pit lay. Pepys, going to church reluctantly early in the following year, is relieved to find snow covering the plague spot. St. Olave’s has renewed its old-time activity under the care of its present rector, the Rev. A. B. Boyd Carpenter.

There is much of interest, also, in the neighbouring church of St. Dunstan-in-the-East, lying between Tower Street and Lower Thames Street. Its graceful spire is a familiar landmark, and, with its flying buttresses set in bold relief when seen from Tower Hill against a sunset sky, makes a noble crown to the church hidden from sight. St. Dunstan’s list of rectors dates back to the early fourteenth century. In 1810 the church became ruinous, and the walls of the nave, owing to insecurity of foundation, showed signs of collapsing altogether. The present building was opened in 1821 after restoration and reconstruction. The registers of St. Dunstan’s escaped the Fire, and date back to 1558. A valuable model of the church as rebuilt by Wren, and almost contemporaneous with the rebuilding, may be seen in the vestry.

The chief Mint of England was, from the Conquest down to 1811, situated within Tower walls. It was removed in the year just mentioned to the present buildings on the eastern side of Little Tower Hill, over which visitors are shown if application be made beforehand to the Deputy-Master. The art of “making money” is here shown from the solid bar of gold to the new sovereign, washed and tested, sent out on its adventurous career in a world which will welcome its face in whatever company it appears. The Mint also possesses an excellently arranged museum of coins and medals, in which are many invaluable treasures.

Trinity House, headquarters of the Trinity Brethren, stands on Tower Hill, facing the Tower. A graceful and well-proportioned building, it supplants the older quarters in Water Lane, Great Tower Street. The corporation of Trinity House was established in 1529 as “The Masters, Wardens, and Assistants of the Guild, or Fraternity, or Brotherhood of the Most Glorious and Undividable Trinity,” and the first headquarters was situated near the river, at Deptford. The guild was founded by Sir Thomas Spert, Comptroller of the Navy to Henry VIII., and commander of the great ship, “a huge gilt four-master, the Harry Grace de Dieu,” in which the King sailed to Calais on his way to the Field of the Cloth of Gold. In 1854 “the exclusive right of lighting and buoying the coast” was given to the Board of Trinity House. Within Trinity House to-day may be seen models of practically all the important lighthouses and lightships on the English coast. The regulations of Trinity House in former times are described by Strype, and among them we find rules to the effect that “Bumboats with fruit, wine, and strong waters were not permitted by them to board vessels. Every mariner who swore, cursed, or blasphemed on board ship was to pay one shilling to the ship’s poor-box. Every mariner found drunk was fined one shilling, and no mariner could absent himself from prayers unless sick, without forfeiting sixpence.” The present House on Tower Hill was built in 1793-95 by Samuel Wyatt. On the front, Ionic in character, are sculptured the arms of the corporation, medallions of George III. and Queen Charlotte, genii with nautical instruments, and representations of four of the principal lighthouses on the coast. The interior is beautified by several valuable pictures, one of them a large Gainsborough, and a suite of most handsome furniture. Here, too, is preserved a flag taken from the Spanish Armada by Drake, and many curious old maps and charts. The present Master of Trinity House is H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, who visits Tower Hill every Trinity Monday, and, with the Elder Brethren, walks through Trinity Square and Catherine Court to service at the parish church.

An old print hanging in one of the rooms of Trinity House depicts, with some realism, the last execution on Tower Hill, in 1747, when Lord Lovat suffered. In August of the previous year the Earl of Kilmarnock and Lord Balmerino had been brought to the block after the Culloden tragedy. A journal of the time gives us a most detailed account of the proceedings, from which some extracts may be taken in order to form some idea of procedures that were soon to end for ever. “About 8 o’clock the Sheriffs of London ... and the executioner met at the Mitre Tavern in Fenchurch Street, where they breakfasted, and went from thence to the house, on Tower Hill near Catherine’s Court [now Catherine House], hired by them for the reception of the lords before they should be conducted to the scaffold, which was erected about thirty yards from the said house. At ten o’clock the block was fixed on the stage and covered with black cloth, with several sacks of sawdust up to strew on it; soon after the coffins were brought, also covered with black cloth.” The leaden plates from the lids of these coffins are those now preserved on the west wall of St. Peter’s on Tower Green. “At a quarter after ten,” the account proceeds, “the Sheriffs went in procession to the outward gate of the Tower, and after knocking at it some time, a warder within asked, ‘Who’s there?’ The officer without replied, ‘The Sheriffs of London and Middlesex.’ The warder then asked, ‘What do they want?’ The officer answered, ‘The bodies of William, Earl of Kilmarnock, and Arthur, Lord Balmerino,’ upon which the warder within said, ‘I will go and inform the Lieutenant of the Tower,’ and in about ten minutes the Lieutenant with the Earl of Kilmarnock, and Major White with Lord Balmerino, guarded by several of the warders, came to the gate; the prisoners were then delivered to the Sheriffs, who gave proper receipt for their bodies to the Lieutenant, who as usual said, ‘God bless King George!’ to which the Earl of Kilmarnock assented by a bow, and the Lord Balmerino said, ‘God bless King James!’ Lord Kilmarnock had met Lord Balmerino at the foot of the stairs in the Tower and said to him, ‘My lord, I am heartily sorry to have your company in this expedition.’” The prisoners were led to the house near the block in Trinity Square, and they spent what time was left to them in devotions. Kilmarnock was brought out to the scaffold first. “The executioner, who before had something administered to keep him from fainting, was so affected by his lordship’s distress, and the awfulness of the scene that, on asking his [Lord Kilmarnock’s] forgiveness, he burst into tears. My Lord bade him take courage, giving him at the same time a purse with five guineas, and telling him he would drop his handkerchief as a signal for the stroke.... In the meantime, when all things were ready for the execution, and the black bays which hung over the rails of the scaffold having, by the direction of the Colonel of the Guard, or the Sheriffs, been turned up that

the people might see all the circumstances of the execution, in about two minutes after he kneeled down his lordship dropped his handkerchief. The executioner at once severed the head from the body, except only a small portion of the skin which was immediately divided by a gentle stroke. The head was received in a piece of red baize and, with the body, immediately put into the coffin.” Lord Balmerino followed shortly afterwards, wearing the uniform in which he had fought at Culloden. His end was not so swift as Lord Kilmarnock’s had been; twice the executioner bungled his stroke, and not until the third blow was the head severed.

Lord Lovat, whom Hogarth had seen, and painted, in the White Hart Inn at St. Albans as the prisoner was being brought to London, was led to the block on Tower Hill on Thursday, April 9, 1747, and his was the last blood that was shed there. Just before his execution, a scaffolding, which had been erected at the eastern end of Barking Alley, fell and brought to the ground a thousand spectators who had secured places upon it to view the execution. Twelve were killed outright and scores of others injured. “Lovat,” as the account puts it, “in spite of his awful situation, seemed to enjoy the downfall of so many Whigs.” Lord Lovat’s head was, at one blow, severed from his body, and Tower Hill’s record of bloodshed was at an end.

CHAPTER VI

ALLHALLOWS BARKING BY THE TOWER

On the south-west side of Tower Hill there stands the oldest parish church in London. But beyond the earliest date that we find any portion of the present building mentioned, it is more than probable that a still more ancient church occupied this piece of ground. Consider the importance of the site. The approach to London from the sea was then, as now, a somewhat dreary progress between the mud-flats that fringed the river. On the northern bank the rising ground, now known as Tower Hill, would be the first relief to the eye after the wearying Essex marshes. Beyond and behind that hill lay the little city, and beside that hill was set a church. But, with the building of the White Tower, the church was eclipsed as a landmark for boats on the river, and now it is quite obscured from the water-side by hideous brick warehouses that only men of the nineteenth century could conceive and erect. In early days this church stood on the edge of London; now it is in its very centre. Yet few buildings equally well preserved have altered as little as this old building has—this “fair church on Tower Hill”—and we have here handed down to us much that is unique as a record not only of English history but of the progress of architecture. The furnishings of the church, the carvings and wrought-iron work, also carry us through generations of activity in such arts, and the pavement brasses and sculptured tombs serve as memorials of many a famous Englishman. The church has an additional interest in being the nearest ancient building outside the Tower walls and in having received, for burial, victims from the block on Tower Hill. Yet the close connection of this ancient church with the Tower and its history has not, hitherto, been sufficiently emphasised. It is well, therefore, that we should give Allhallows some of our time when we have explored and examined the Tower itself.

Four hundred years before the Conqueror laid the foundation stones of the White Tower, a cluster of cottages on the edge of Tower Hill, and lying not far from the Ald-gate of the old walls of London, constituted the germ of the present parish, and stood within sight of the earlier church. What the history of the church was then we have no means of knowing, but as it would be the first building of importance that Danish invaders came upon during their onslaughts on London, it must have passed through exciting times in those old days of raid and turmoil.

Erkenwald, a seventh-century Bishop of London, founded the convent at Barking, in Essex. Of this convent his sister, St. Ethelburga, became first abbess, and the abbesses of Barking were not only mitred, but were in after days peeresses of the realm. Erkenwald made over certain rights of the land, upon which the parish is now spread, to this convent of Barking, and, in return, a priest was supplied from the community to serve the religious needs of the parishioners. It was thus the surname Barking was acquired. It is, however, a surname that is somewhat misleading, as printers, even to this present day, have an awkward habit of placing a comma between “Allhallows” and “Barking” and so send many who would visit the church on an empty quest into Essex. But the poor printer is not altogether to blame. The people here have a way of calling themselves “Barking people” and of referring to the parish as “Barking parish.” This leads to unnecessary confusion. The only alternative would be to retain the term on Tower Hill and ask the good folk of the Essex town to adopt some other name! As it is improbable that either of these suggestions will be taken seriously, a return to the ancient title, “Berkyngechurch by the Tower,” might solve the difficulty.

The parish system in England took its rise under Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, A.D. 668, and the number and boundaries of the parishes as we know them to-day agree very nearly with the parochial divisions in Doomsday Book. The ground now included in Allhallows parish was undoubtedly included in Roman London, which extended from Tower Hill to Dowgate Hill, the present Fenchurch and Lombard Streets forming the line of its northern boundary. Eastward of the parish lay marsh and forest—the great forest of Essex, of which so wide and unspoilt a portion remains to us in Epping Forest.