James I, arrival at the Tower—Lady Arabella Stuart—George Brooke—Sir Walter Raleigh—His Liberation—Fresh Imprisonment—Execution—The Gunpowder Plot—Sir Thomas Overbury—Carr, Earl of Somerset—Ascendency of Buckingham—Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex—Charles I—His Avoidance of the Tower—Sir John Eliot—Felton, Assassin of Buckingham—Lord Loudoun—Earl of Strafford—Archbishop Laud—Tower passes into power of Parliament when the Civil War begins—Imprisonments under the Commonwealth—Lord Capel—The Restoration—Execution of the Regicides—Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham—Colonel Blood’s Attempt to Steal the Crown—The Mystery of his Pardon—Titus Oates—Lord Stafford—The Rye House Plot—Accession of James II—The Duke of Monmouth—The Seven Bishops—Bevis Skelton—Judge Jeffrey—William and Mary, only one Execution in the Tower all the Reign—But many Prisoners.

When King James arrived from Scotland he took up his residence and held his first Court in the Tower, but the plague was in London and there was no procession to Westminster at his Coronation, though the Londoners had made preparations for it. At the close of the year (1603) a conspiracy to place the crown on the head of Lady Arabella Stuart caused the imprisonment of many eminent men, among them Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham, his brother George Brooke, Thomas, Lord Grey of Wilton, and Sir Walter Raleigh. Lady Arabella was the daughter of Charles Stuart, Earl of Lennox, Darnley’s brother, and was therefore King James’s first cousin; she was also, as we have already had occasion to note, related to the Tudors, and this double relationship was the great misfortune of her life. At the trial of Lord Cobham it was clearly proved that she had no share in the scheme to make her queen. She had had many suitors, Henry IV of France and the Archduke Mathias of Austria among them, but had fallen in love with William Seymour, grandson of the Earl of Hertford, and for this Queen Elizabeth had kept her in close confinement. In 1609 King James heard that she was about to marry some foreign prince; his jealousy was aroused, and he sent her to the Tower, but finding that his fears were groundless, he gave his consent to her marrying one of his subjects. She took him at his word, and married Seymour. In wrath the king sent her to Lambeth Palace as prisoner, and her husband to the Tower. From Lambeth she was ordered to Durham, to be under the Bishop, but at Highgate pleaded illness and remained there, and planned an escape for herself and husband. She obtained a male disguise and got to Blackwall, where her husband was to meet her, he having got out of the Tower by dressing like a labourer and following a cart of firewood. When he reached the appointed meeting-place he found that Arabella had sailed away in a French boat. He could not follow her, as the wind was against him, and he had to go to Ostend. Meanwhile an alarm was raised, Arabella was pursued, caught in mid-strait, and brought back to the Tower, which she never left again until her death, September 25, 1615. She had been for some years insane. She is buried beside Mary Queen of Scots in Westminster Abbey. Her husband survived her for nearly fifty years, and married a second wife, a sister of the famous Parliamentary general, the Earl of Essex, son of Queen Elizabeth’s Essex. In 1660 he became Duke of Somerset, and lived just long enough to welcome Charles II.

But in following Arabella’s fortunes I have greatly anticipated. We must go back to the conspiracy. George Brooke and two priests were the first to be tried and executed. His brother, Lord Cobham, and Lord Grey de Wilton were also condemned and actually brought out to be executed, but a respite had been previously signed, and it was produced at the block in a coup de théâtre. They were sent back to their prison, and for fifteen years longer Cobham lay in confinement. Then, his health failing, he was allowed to visit Bath in the custody of gaolers, after which he returned to his prison. Whether he died in the Tower or was allowed, as some accounts imply, to retire to an obscure house in the Minories, is uncertain. He died in January, 1619. There was much underhand dealing about his estates and those of his brother, by which Cecil gained possession of the greater part of them; and this entered into the soul of William Brooke, George’s son, who became one of the most determined foes of Charles I, and died fighting against him at Newbury. Lord Grey of Wilton, a brilliant young man who might have served his country well, languished in the Brick Tower till his death in 1617.

Again disregarding contemporary events for awhile, we take up the history of Sir Walter Raleigh. He was detained for twelve years, mostly in the Bloody Tower, in rooms not uncomfortably furnished, was allowed two servants, and his wife and son could visit him. He had also the liberty of the garden which lay between his prison and the lieutenant’s house, and in it he constructed a little room for chemical experiments. And during this time he wrote his History of the World. In conception it was a colossal book, but he only completed his plan as far as the end of the second Macedonian war. It is a torso, one of the most wonderful books in literature, a great folio, very scarce; in fact, hardly ever to be seen except in old libraries, but full of learning, wit, shrewdness, when you get the opportunity of perusing it. In the early days of his captivity Sir George Harvey was lieutenant of the Tower. They were personal friends, and Raleigh often spent the evening with him. But when Harvey was succeeded by Sir William Wade things were changed. The new lieutenant had a personal dislike to Raleigh, and seems to have taken much trouble to curtail his privileges and make his life irksome. Henry, Prince of Wales, was partial to him, and frequently visited him, and the queen is said to have entreated the king to set him free. But James personally disliked him; partly, it is said, because he had heard that Raleigh made jests on his ugly face and uncouth gestures and accent. But, further, he was hated by Spain for his labours to make the English fleet the most powerful on the seas, to extend the English colonial possessions, and destroy the Spanish supremacy; and the Spanish ambassador, Gondomar, was the most powerful minister at the English court. Prince Henry died in 1612, a heavy loss to Raleigh, but he got his liberty in 1616 by bribing Villiers, who went to the king and roused his cupidity by explaining that if Raleigh were allowed to make a fresh expedition to the West Indies he might gather great spoils, the lion’s share of which would go to the king. And so the warrant for his liberation was signed in March, 1616, at the time when Shakespeare was dying at Stratford-on-Avon. The wretched king at the same time not only gave a pledge to Gondomar that if Raleigh touched any Spanish person or property he would hand him over to the Spanish Government to be hanged at Seville, but also showed him a private letter of Raleigh, stating the exact number of his ships and men, as well as the spot on the banks of the Orinoco where he expected to find a great silver mine. As the Spaniards claimed the whole of that territory, the vileness of the treachery becomes apparent. He started from Plymouth in March, 1617, with fourteen ships and nine hundred men. Continual disaster is the summary of the expedition. His eldest son was killed fighting gallantly in Guiana. In August, 1618, he returned a ruined man, and was again lodged in the Tower. The king was burning to get rid of him, but what should the pretext be? The Council of State was in uttermost perplexity. Bacon advised acting on the former sentence. Raleigh pleaded that the commission sending him to America was a reversal of that sentence both in law and reason, but the Lord Chief Justice Montagu gave his judicial opinion that it held good, and so on October 24 the warrant was signed, and on the 29th he was beheaded in Old Palace Yard.

Again we have to retrace our steps. In 1604 the penal laws against the Roman Catholics were re-enacted. On November 5, 1605, Guy Fawkes was seized in the vaults of the Houses of Parliament and conveyed to the Tower, as were also Thomas and Robert Winter, Robert Keyes, Thomas Oates, John Grant, Ambrose Rookwood, and Sir Everard Digby. They were placed in the dungeons beneath the White Tower. The room is still shown in the King’s House in which Guy was brought before the Council of State. And, moreover, in the subterranean dungeon are the bases of the rack on which he was tortured He is said to have been kept in “Little Ease” for fifty days. He was put to death, along with Thomas Winter, Rookwood and Keyes, in Old Palace Yard on January 31, 1606. Digby, Rookwood and Keyes suffered the same horrible death in Old Palace Yard.

But there were other persons who were implicated and brought in prisoners, of whom some account must be given, among them Henry Percy, the aged Earl of Northumberland, Lords Mordaunt and Stourton, and three Jesuit priests, Garnet, Oldcorne, and Gerard. Northumberland had to pay an enormous fine and remained a prisoner here for sixteen years; Mordaunt and Stourton were also heavily fined and kept in durance. Fathers Garnet and Oldcorne were put to death in the usual horrible manner, one in St. Paul’s Churchyard, the other at Worcester. With Gerard it was different. He was questioned in the King’s House about Garnet’s knowledge of the plot and refused to answer, whereupon he was taken into the subterranean chamber and hung up by his wrists, he being a heavy man. In this position he was pressed with questions for an hour, and several times fainted. When he still refused to open his mouth Wade, the lieutenant, cried out in a rage, “Hang there, then, till you rot.” However, when the tolling from the Bell Tower gave notice to the Commissioners to quit the fortress for the day, the poor priest was suffered to crawl to his prison room at the top of the Salt Tower. Next day the same torture was renewed, and when he fainted he was restored by having vinegar poured down his throat. It was of no use, and he was again carried back to his prison, where he lay fifty days. Another Roman Catholic named Arden was confined in the Cradle Tower, some hundred feet off; they could see one another, and could even exchange a few words across the Privy Garden. Gerard persuaded his gaoler to let Arden visit him, and they planned an escape. They wrote a letter with orange juice, which is invisible until it is subjected to a process known to the initiated, and got it sent to co-religionists outside, who came opposite with a boat, and to them the prisoners threw a thin cord across the moat by means of a leaden weight attached to it. The boatmen fastened a stout rope to this, and it was hauled up and made fast within the chamber, and down it the two men “swarmed,” though Gerard was in agony from his swollen arms. But they succeeded and got away safely, Gerard to Rome, where he wrote a full account of his trial and escape.

We pass on to one of the foulest records in the history of our great fortress. Thomas Overbury, the son of a judge, was sent by his father “on a voyage of pleasure” to Edinburgh in 1601, and there made acquaintance, which ripened into intimate friendship, with one Robert Carr, page to the Earl of Dunbar. On the accession of King James to the English throne he showed Carr great favour, and brought him to London. Carr, conscious of his own defective education and training, leaned much on Overbury’s ability, who thus to some extent shared his prosperity and was knighted in 1608. Carr was made Earl of Rochester in 1610. Their intimacy continued so close that men about court cringed to Overbury with a view to gaining Rochester’s favour, but now came a bitter feud. Rochester involved himself in a liaison with the Countess of Essex, a woman of altogether abandoned character, and she obtained a divorce with a view of marrying Rochester. But against this marriage Overbury raised an indignant protest, and entreated his friend to abandon the idea. Rochester resented his interference, and the countess in wrath excited him to retaliate. Rochester hesitated—probably Overbury was in possession of secrets which it was not desirable to bring out—and tried to persuade him to accept a diplomatic appointment abroad. He steadily refused all offers, and the Earl of Northampton, the countess’s uncle, who was keen for the match, persuaded the king, who was already prejudiced against Overbury, to send him to the Tower, on a charge of having spoken disrespectfully of the queen. Rochester regarded this imprisonment as a temporary expedient only; but far other was the idea of the countess. After making one or two proposals to officers to assassinate Overbury, she procured the dismissal of Wade from the governorship, and put in a tool of her own, Sir Gervase Helwys, by whose management the wretched captive was slowly and skilfully poisoned, September 15, 1613, three months and seventeen days after his first committal. A few weeks later Rochester was created Earl of Somerset. Nearly two years later a boy in the employment of one of the apothecaries revealed the crime. Investigations were made and proofs were abundantly forthcoming. Helwys and the attendants were hanged. The Earl of Northampton, it was clearly proved, had been an accomplice, but he had died. The Earl and Countess of Somerset were arrested, tried and convicted in May, 1616, but were pardoned and released from the Tower in 1621. Public opinion was much outraged; there were demonstrations in the streets, and it was even broadly intimated that King James must have been privy to the murder. There was a tradition that Mrs. Turner, one of the principal agents employed in this crime by Lady Essex, appeared at her trial in a stiffened ruff which was all the fashion, and which we constantly see in portraits of that time, and in the same decoration was hanged (March, 1615), the result being that these ruffs immediately went out of fashion.

There were other occupants of the Tower during the reign of James I, and the records are miserable enough; intrigues and plots among rival aspirants to power frequently ended in imprisonment of the defeated. The rise of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, is undoubtedly a notable fact of the ignoble reign, but can only be touched upon here as connected with the imprisonment of Sir John Eliot, Sir Edward Coke, and Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex. Cranfield, a creation of Buckingham, was one of the foremost accusers of Bacon for corrupt practices. He had been made Master of the Wardrobe and Lord High Treasurer. He was convicted of robbing the magazine of arms, of pocketing bribes and selling offices, and of making false entries of the royal debts. He was condemned to pay a fine of £50,000, and to be imprisoned for life. He was released, however, in a few weeks, lived in retirement for the rest of his life, and remained neutral during the Civil War. He died in 1645. Two sons in succession succeeded him, after which the family became extinct.

The schemes and intrigues concerning the proposed marriage of Charles with the Infanta of Spain and the tortuous policy of the Duke of Buckingham have not come within our scope. But it has to be noted that Sir John Eliot, who had by reason of his great ability been appointed Vice-Admiral of Devon, had got into trouble during Buckingham’s absence in Spain, by arresting a notorious pirate named Nutt, who was under the secret patronage of Calvert, the Secretary of State, and Eliot was sent to prison on false charges. He was liberated after some months and got a seat in Parliament in 1624, where he almost immediately displayed remarkable power of oratory. Buckingham had now broken with Spain, and in this Eliot heartily went with him, but his feeling was altogether based upon the rights of the House of Commons and the popular feeling against any Spanish alliance. He was one of the leaders also of the impeachment of the Earl of Middlesex. Soon there appeared serious signs of his divergence from the king’s policy. He was no Puritan, having a strong antipathy to Calvinism; but he urged enforcement of the recusancy laws against the Roman Catholics, because religion “made distractions among men.” As Mr. Gardiner puts it, his creed was “the monarchy of man.... There must be unity and purity of faith, and that faith must be one which brought man face to face with his Maker” (vol. v., p. 343). In those same early days he was in conflict with another man who was to become one of the most prominent politicians of his day—Thomas Wentworth, presently Lord Strafford. Wentworth too, according to his light, was a patriot. He was sincerely desirous for the prosperity of the country, but held that strength is the essence of good government, had a contempt for constitutional forms, and in his arrogance, knowing his own good intentions, paid no respect to those who opposed him. Eliot stood at the opposite pole. Parliament was to him the voice and the majesty of the nation. He earnestly and strenuously opposed the entrance of Wentworth into the House of Commons, on the ground that his election had been a forced one and was a sham: and he carried his point.

Further alienation followed. Buckingham’s war with Spain was a failure. Eliot, after some hesitation on account of old friendship, spoke bitterly against him in King Charles’ first Parliament of 1626; an impeachment followed, of which Eliot was one of the managers, and for this the king sent him and Sir Dudley Digges to the Tower. But the cleavage between king and parliament had grown serious; the Commons refused to proceed to business until their members were freed, and it was done, but he was dismissed from offices which he held. The third parliament met in 1628, and again Eliot spoke against Buckingham and against arbitrary taxation, and it was mainly by his energy that the Petition of Right was carried. Next year Buckingham was murdered by Felton. Eliot next directed his energies against Archbishop Laud, who had expressed his intention of raising Church ceremonial, and excluding Puritan teachers from office in the Church, and thus, according to Eliot, of making war upon the religious convictions of the nation. In the midst of an angry debate the king prorogued parliament, Eliot was again sent to the Tower, and parliament was dissolved (March 10, 1629). When examined as to his conduct he refused to answer, on the ground that it would be yielding up the privilege of parliament. The Crown lawyers had much difficulty in meeting this contention, but they managed to secure his conviction in the Court of King’s Bench, on the ground that he had calumniated the minister of the Crown, and he was fined £2,000. A word of acknowledgment from him that he had been in the wrong would have procured his liberty, but he would not speak it, for to surrender the privileges of parliament would have been in his eyes to betray the liberties of the nation. So he lay in prison writing the treatise which he called The Monarchy of Man, which had a profound effect on public opinion and the change in the balance of forces. He showed signs of consumption, and petitioned for leave to go into the country to recruit his health. But it was refused, and he died November 27, 1632. His family petitioned that he might be buried with his ancestors, but this also was refused, and he was laid in St. Peter’s chapel.

It was convenient to carry on Eliot’s history unbroken, but it is necessary to look back to the assassination of Buckingham. The assassin, Felton, bought his knife at a stall on Tower Hill, went to Portsmouth, and there committed his crime. His motives still remain uncertain. Probably religious fanaticism was one, but private vengeance for supposed injustice as to promotion was another. Buckingham was so unpopular that when Felton was brought down the river to the Tower, blessings and prayers were cried after him by the crowd. He expressed deep penitence, and requested that he might be allowed to wear sackcloth and a halter until the day of his death, and might receive the Communion. He was hanged at Tyburn in December, and his body was hung in chains at Portsmouth.

Lords Spencer and Arundel were shut up in the Tower over a private quarrel. Arundel insulted Spencer by telling him that at no distant time back his ancestors had been tending sheep, to which the retort was, “And at that time yours were plotting treason.”

James I was the last monarch who used the Tower as a royal residence. Charles I did not even rest there on the night preceding his coronation, nor is there any record of his having visited the place during his whole reign.

One line may be given to Mervyn, Lord Audley and Earl of Castlehaven, who was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1631 for a whole series of revolting crimes which probably indicate insanity. But the cells continued to be filled by offenders against the Government, Denzil Holles, Selden, Valentine, Coryton, Sir Miles Hobart, Sir P. Heyman among them. The first-named was brother-in-law of Lord Strafford, and strove to save him, but he took a strong part against the king’s policy, though after the Civil War broke out he opposed Cromwell and the Independents, and after the Restoration he was in the confidence of the king. John Selden was a steady opponent of the king, but after his fall kept entirely clear of politics, and gave himself to his great and valuable legal labours. Lord Loudoun was one of the commissioners sent to England by the Scottish Covenanters, and was committed to the Tower on the charge of treasonable correspondence. Clarendon has a story that the king ordered that he should be executed by virtue of his royal warrant, that the Marquis of Hamilton made his way to the royal presence to remonstrate, and was met with a curt refusal to listen. “Let the warrant be obeyed,” said the king, whereupon Hamilton said, “Then I shall start posthaste for Scotland to-morrow morning, for the whole city will be in an uproar, and I will show that I had no hand in it.” Thereupon Charles gave way, and soon after Loudoun was released. But the truth of this story has been questioned. He afterwards showed a genuine desire to reconcile the king with the Presbyterians, and was present at the coronation of Charles II at Scone in 1650.

But we come now to the two most prominent prisoners of King Charles’s time. On November 11, 1640, the Earl of Strafford was at Whitehall making proposals for the impeachment of the parliamentary leaders for treason. At the same moment Pym was impeaching Strafford in the House of Commons. The earl heard of this, and hastened to the House to defend himself, but was not allowed to speak, and was carried off to the Tower. So was Archbishop Laud. In January Strafford was brought to trial in Westminster Hall, and defended himself with superb eloquence. “Never any man,” says the Puritan chronicler Whitelock, “acted his part on such a theatre with greater reason, constancy, judgment and temper, and with better grace in all his words and gestures.” But he was condemned to die. The king was eager to save him, and there was at one moment a possibility of it. Charles had made overtures for a ministry composed of the popular leaders, in which Pym was to be Chancellor of the Exchequer and Holles Secretary of State. But meanwhile he was planning to bring up the army from the North, discontented as it was by want of pay, to seize the Tower and free Strafford. He also reckoned on support from the Scotch, who were divided into opposing parties. But Pym became aware of his double dealing, a peremptory message was sent to him by the House of Commons for the death warrant, and Charles signed it. We have all heard how the earl wrote to the king beseeching him not to endanger his crown by opposing the will of the people, and how when he heard of the king’s assent he exclaimed, “Put not your trust in princes.” He was led out to Tower Hill to die on May 12, 1641. On his way he passed the Bloody Tower, in which Laud was imprisoned, and knelt to receive the blessing, which the prelate uttered with uplifted hands.

That was the turning-point in the history, the victory of Parliament over the minister whose theory of government was personal authority. And the same conflict of principles was seen in the case of the Archbishop. He was not brought to trial indeed for some years, for the House of Commons had pressing work on hand and the case was much more complicated. For there were those among the Puritans who loved the Prayer Book with all their hearts, whilst they rejected Laud’s theory of Church government. The prelate had been educated by Buckeridge, president of St. John’s College, Oxford, who had always set his face against Puritanism in the latter days of Elizabeth’s reign, and had laid much stress on sacramental grace and episcopal organization; and Laud had entirely accepted this teaching, and all his life was earnestly attached to the observance of external order. And herein he was supported by an increasing number of theologians hostile to Calvinism. In his early controversial writings he followed the teaching of Hooker, desiring to bring questions not of necessity vital, under duly authorized authority. He became president of his college in 1611, Archdeacon of Huntingdon 1615, Dean of Gloucester 1616, Bishop of St. David’s 1621. But these successive advancements were not so important in his life as the ascendency which he acquired at the accession of Charles I. He had consistently held to his opinions, and now he saw his way, as he thought, to enforce authority as the rule in religion, with uniformity as its natural consequence. In 1626 he was made Bishop of Bath and Wells, in 1628 of London, Chancellor of the University of Oxford in 1629, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633. It is needless to say that his determination to enforce uniformity was identified by the Presbyterians as of a piece with Strafford’s “thorough.” Of his zeal, his honesty and purity of purpose there is no question, any more than of his holiness of life. But he was blind to the necessity of paying due respect to the convictions of others, and his meaning was misjudged. Thus, when he insisted on placing the Lord’s Table at the east end of every church instead of in the middle, he was accused, quite untruly, of desiring to restore the Roman Catholic faith. He was angry at the charge, and himself incurred the anger of the queen, Henrietta Maria, for repudiating Roman doctrine.

Meanwhile the Civil War broke out (August, 1642), and in London for the time being Puritanism had the upper hand; the Bishops were excluded from Parliament, the Archbishop lay in close confinement in the Bloody Tower. His diary remains to tell us of the hardships he went through. On March 10, 1643, he was brought to trial and charged in general terms with “high treason and other misdemeanours.” The total want of particularity in the articles of accusation, however, prove the irregular nature of the proceedings. Sergeant Wild on the part of the prosecution admitted this, but said that when all the Archbishop’s evil deeds were put together they made many grand treasons. “I crave your mercy,” retorted Laud’s counsel; “I never understood before, Mr. Sergeant, that two hundred couple of black rabbits made a black horse.” The trial lasted for twenty days, with many intervals, but at length he was condemned on the charge that he had “attempted to subvert religion and the fundamental laws of the realm.” He was beheaded on Tower Hill on January 10, 1645, in the seventy-second year of his age, and was buried in the chancel of Allhallows Barking, but the body was removed to St. John’s, Oxford, in 1663.

From the time when Charles unfurled his standard at Nottingham, the Tower, though nominally held in his name, was in the keeping of Parliament, and its prisoners were the king’s supporters. Thus Sir Ralph Hopton, who had voted for Strafford’s attainder and opposed King Charles’s taxation schemes, was sent here “for ten days” by the Parliament because he protested against violent speeches by his fellow members against the king. He afterwards joined the king’s army, and was created Baron Hopton. On the overthrow he retired to Bruges, where he died. He was a sincere patriot, and received earnest assurances from the Puritan leaders of their personal respect for him. Sir John Gayer, Lord Mayor of London, was shut up for publishing the king’s proclamation against the militia; so were three aldermen and a sheriff, Sir John Glynne, Recorder of London, a first-rate lawyer and splendid orator, a supporter of the Solemn League and Covenant, but imprisoned for opposing the ascendency of the army and the intolerance of the Independents; released and re-admitted to parliament, and one of the commissioners appointed to treat with the king at Carisbrooke; but still distrusted; made a speech in favour of monarchy in 1658, made king’s sergeant to Charles II. Two great names are those of John Paulet, fifth Marquis of Winchester (“Old Loyalty”), the celebrated defender of Basing House, and Monk, the future Duke of Albemarle, taken prisoner by Fairfax at the siege of Nantwich, and released from imprisonment on condition that he would fight for them in Ireland, but not in England. Two of his fellow-prisoners who had been fighting by his side, Lord Macquire and Colonel MacMahon, were captured in trying to escape by swimming the moat, and were hanged.