There was yet another victim to Warbeck’s imposture. Sir William Stanley, who had turned the scale in King Henry’s favour at Bosworth Field, was, in 1495, impeached as having been heard to say that “if he were sure that the young man called Perkin was really the son of Edward IV, he would never draw sword against him.” For this he was sent to the Tower, tried in its Council Hall, and beheaded on Tower Hill, February 16, 1495.

Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, was the son of Elizabeth, sister of Edward IV. His plottings against Henry VII, encouraged by Maximilian, failed, and he fled the kingdom, and remained abroad several years. But Philip, King of Castile, who had given him shelter, visiting Henry in 1506, persuaded him to spare the fugitive’s life on his surrender, and Suffolk was committed to the Tower. Here he remained until 1513, when he was beheaded by order of Henry VIII on a charge of plotting. But he had involved two men in his ruin; Sir James Tyrrell, the same who had assisted at the murder of the two princes, and Sir John Wyndham, who had been knighted for his good service against Perkin Warbeck, were both executed on Tower Hill for their share in Suffolk’s treason. Tragedies enough, these, for one reign; yet we have hardly come to the end of them. The marriage of Prince Arthur with Katharine of Aragon took place in St. Paul’s Cathedral on November 14, 1501, and the rejoicings took the form of a succession of tournaments and feasts within the Tower walls. There were great pageants to emphasize the descent of the bridegroom from his namesake the British hero whose fabulous exploits fill the pages of Geoffrey of Monmouth. But they could not alter the fact that he was a poor sickly child of fifteen, and five months later he died. The calamity was a terrible blow to his mother, Elizabeth, of York, whose health appears to have failed from that time. On February 2, 1503, she gave birth to a daughter, Katharine, in the Tower, and died nine days later, on her birthday, aged thirty-eight. An amiable and beautiful woman, according to all accounts; “brilliant, witty, and pious,” so says Erasmus. Six years later her husband was buried by her side in the Abbey.

The reign of Henry VIII forms an epoch in the history of the Tower. There are tragical events in plenty, but there are other notes on which it is pleasant and interesting to dwell. He began his reign by imprisoning Empson and Dudley, who had been his father’s instruments of extortion. He did so because he knew how they were hated by the nation, though he profited by their misdeeds, for Henry VII bequeathed him what was then the enormous sum of £1,850,000. Next year they were both beheaded on Tower Hill. Meanwhile the King was holding high festival to celebrate his marriage with his brother’s widow Katharine. He was now nineteen years old, and she twenty-five. Surrounded by a splendid retinue he created four and twenty Knights of the Bath, after which there was a gorgeous procession from the Tower to Westminster; the details are given at length, and dismal enough they are when one sees the hollowness of them all in what followed. Henry was bent on improving the Tower buildings, and appointed Commissioners to take the work in hand. In the S.W. corner a Lieutenant’s house was built with many chambers, having a free passage both into the Beauchamp and Garden Towers. This house was flanked by two smaller buildings, warders’ houses, one on the West, the other on the South. The Bell Tower part of this building had a stone vault pierced for archers, who from it could sweep the outer works. This is called in old records the Strong Room. Though not intended for the reception of prisoners, it presently received an illustrious one, as we shall see. In the State Papers of the reign are the following memoranda of repairs done in the Tower during the summer of 1532: “Work done by carpenters and taking down old timber, etc., at St. Thomas’ Tower, and for alterations in the palace.” “There has also been taken down the old timber in the four turrets of the White Tower; and the old timber of Robert the Devil’s Tower—that is Julius Caesar’s tower; and of the tower near the King’s wardrobe. Half of the White Tower is now embattled, coped, indented, and cressed with Caen stone to the extent of 500 feet.” The cost is given as £3,593 14s. 10d.