In early days a building, with towers attached, stood between the Main Guard and the White Tower, which is called in the old plans of the fortress “Cold or Cole Harbour.” When in 1899 the Main Guard was pulled down the old wall of Cold Harbour was laid bare, and at the same time a well with a stone lining to it, and a subterranean passage were discovered. The subterranean passage ran to the east of the Wakefield Tower and opened out towards the river front at the eastern side of St Thomas’s Tower, at a depth of five feet below the actual surface of the ground; it was six feet high, and so narrow that only one person could pass along it.

In Gascoyne’s plan of the Tower, Cold Harbour is shown with two tall circular towers, with a gateway between them, and stands at the south-western side of the White Tower. But as far back as the reign of James II. this building had disappeared. The origin of the name “Cold Harbour or Cole Harbour” has been a puzzle to antiquarians. The name is found in many localities throughout the south of England, and is always found in places near the Roman Road, a circumstance which has given the possible derivation of the name from Collis Arboris or Colles Arborum. And the site of Cold Harbour in the Tower might, with every probability, have been a wooded knoll or hillock by the side of the river when the Romans ruled in Britain. That Cold Harbour, or rather its two towers, were of some height is shown by the complaint made in 1572 against the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Owen Hopton, for allowing his prisoners to meet and walk on the “leads of Cole Harbour.” About the same time Lord Southampton, Shakespeare’s friend, when a prisoner in the Tower, was once seen “leaping upon the tower, his wife being on the opposite side of the ditch,” or the moat as we should call it.

To the left, and facing the Main Guard, lies the Tower Green, known also as the Parade. It has buildings upon its three sides. On the southern side the King’s House,[4] formerly called the Lieutenant’s Lodging, with its old gables, is a conspicuous feature. This building is carried on to the western side of the Green by a row of houses whose fronts have been modernised out of all semblance to their respectable antiquity; the northern end of the Green is closed by the walls of the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula. Homely as is the appearance of the King’s House, it is here that, should the reigning monarch of England ever return to lodge in the fortress, he or she would dwell, for it is the largest of the dwelling-houses within the Tower since the old Palace was pulled down. To those who have had the privilege of being taken over this house by its present occupier, General George Milman, the memory of its quaint old rooms, some panelled with wainscotting, and all made interesting by a collection of prints, and views, and portraits of places and people connected with the history of the fortress, will be a lasting and a pleasant one. No worthier guardian has held the honoured post of Lieutenant of the Tower, or taken a deeper interest in the venerable monument over which his Sovereign placed him, than the present occupant of the post.

The Lieutenant of the Tower ranks next to the Constable of the fortress. In the reign of Richard II. the Lieutenant received twenty pounds a year, and was entitled to the following perquisites. From every prisoner committed to the Tower having property of a hundred marks a year he received, “for the sute of his yrons” forty shillings, and from poorer or richer prisoners in proportion. From every galley coming up the river he received a “roundlett of wine” and of “daynties a certain quantity.” In the time of Elizabeth the Lieutenant received two hundred marks a year; in the eighteenth century this sum was increased to seven hundred pounds a year, besides valuable perquisites. The office of Constable of the Tower ranks high amongst military honours. Its roll of names include, since the death of the Iron Duke in 1852, those of Lord Combermere, Sir John Burgoyne, Sir Fenwick Williams, Lord Napier of Magdala, and Sir Daniel Lysons.

With its many gables, the old flagged court before it, bordered by sycamores, the King’s House forms a pleasing contrast to the blackened walls and towers which are round about it. The building looks a place of ancient peace, and seems rather to be a portion of some venerable college than of a mediæval fortress. The Green, formerly divided into three portions, of which one was a garden, the second a parade ground, and the third (that nearest to St Peter’s Chapel) a burying-ground, is now a single space in which seats are placed for the weary sightseer. It is a pleasant place wherein to pass a few moments day-dreaming on the scene around, and its strange contrast between the past and the present. On the ground floor of the King’s House is kept that interesting relic of the Tower and its story, the processional axe. This is the famous weapon which was carried to and from State trials by the Gentleman Warder. The axe’s head is peculiar in form, 1 foot 8 inches high by 10 inches wide, and is fastened into a wooden handle 5 feet 4 inches long. The handle is ornamented by four rows of burnished brass nails running perpendicularly down the sides, giving the weapon a strong resemblance to the decorated boat-hooks used in Venice for holding the gondolas at the landing-stages.

In the photograph which, by the kindness of General Milman, I was permitted to have taken of the axe, the background is formed by the masonry of the Bloody Tower, which has the appearance of a grisly pile of human skulls, a not inappropriate circumstance. Although the processional axe was only used as an emblem of law and justice, it is closely connected with many a Tower tragedy. It is not known when this axe was first used in those solemn processions when it preceded the prisoner to and from trial, nor is its age certain. It was last used at the State trials of the Jacobite lords in the years 1746 and 1747. It is now kept in the study of the Lieutenant of the Tower, whence it is only removed on such State occasions as the installation of a new Constable.

On the first floor of the King’s House, overlooking the Thames, is the Council Room in which Guy Fawkes was examined before Cecil and the Council of State. It was on this occasion that Cecil wrote to James I. that Guy Fawkes “was no more dismayed than if he were taken for a poor robbery in the highway.” Fawkes was not, as is sometimes stated, tortured in this room, for torture was only applied in the dungeons below the White Tower, which fact should disprove the legend that the cries of the tortured conspirator are heard on stormy nights proceeding from the Council Chamber. But there is another legend connected with this part of the Tower, to the effect that the shadow of an axe is sometimes seen spreading its form on Tower Green, and appearing on the walls of the White Tower. Indeed, a likelier or a more proper place for ghostly visitations of all kinds than the Tower can hardly be found anywhere in the world, if it be true that ghosts “do walk.” For this reason it is disappointing that there are so few legends of apparitions to chronicle, and of these few the following have the best authentication. In Notes and Queries for September 1860, some letters appeared relating to Tower ghosts, and amongst them Mr E. Le Swifte (the same individual, I believe, who so courageously saved the Regalia during the great fire in the Tower in 1841, when the Armoury was destroyed) writes an account of a ghostly visitant which appeared to his wife and himself in the Martin Tower, where the Regalia, of which he had charge, were then placed. Swifte was appointed to the post of Keeper of the Crown Jewels in 1814, which he held until 1852, living with his family in the Martin Tower. One evening in the month of October 1817, whilst at supper, his little son and his wife’s sister were startled at seeing an apparition, “like a glass tube” of the thickness of Mrs Swifte’s arm, which hovered between the ceiling and the supper table. It seemed to contain, adds Swifte, “a clear fluid.” This spectral shape appeared for a few moments, causing the family the greatest alarm. Shortly afterwards, one of the sentinels outside the Martin Tower saw a “huge bear issuing from underneath the door of the Tower.” The man fell down in a swoon and was taken to the guard-house room. The poor fellow actually died of the fright.

Above the chimney-piece of the Council Chamber is a life-size coloured alto-relievo head of James the First; between this and the window, on the same wall, is a highly ornate stone tablet in the style of an altar tomb of the period, adorned with a row of heraldic shields bearing the coat-of-arms of the members of the Council who examined Guy Fawkes, amongst whom are those of Sir Edward Coke, the Attorney-General, and of Sir William Wade or Waad, the Lieutenant of the Tower, by whom the tablet was erected in honour of King James. Wade was the Lieutenant who was so cordially disliked by Sir Walter Raleigh, who called him “that beast Waad.” Below the shields is a fulsome inscription in English, Latin, and Hebrew, describing the Gunpowder Plot and its discovery.

Adjoining the Council Chamber is the room from which Lady Nithsdale succeeded in helping her husband to escape from the Tower, where he had been in prison for the part he had taken in the rebellion of 1715. The escape, which is described in the chapter dealing with the Tower under the Georges, was effected on the day before that on which Lord Nithsdale was to be executed. The unfortunate Duke of Monmouth was a prisoner in this building in 1685, between his capture after the Battle of Sedgemoor and his death on Tower Hill. Here also, during the days when the Stuarts reigned, and even earlier, it was customary to send to the care of the Lieutenant those prisoners of State whose position and importance made it desirable that they should be under the eye of the chief officer in the fortress, who was made personally responsible for their safe keeping. To this class of prisoner belonged Lady Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, and mother of Henry Darnley. In an upper chamber of the King’s House is an inscription on a stone let into the wall above the fireplace, on which it is written that the Countess was “Commyedede prysner to this Lodgynge for the marege of her sonne, my Lord Henry Darnle and the Queene of Scotlande,” a list of servants “that doe wayte upon her noble grace in thys place” is also given upon the stone. This unlucky lady was a prisoner in 1565 for no fault, save that she was the mother of Queen Mary of Scotland’s husband. After passing many years in captivity, her cousin Elizabeth allowed her, after her release from the Tower, to die in poverty. Lady Lennox is commemorated by a stately monument in Henry the Seventh’s chapel in Westminster Abbey, for Elizabeth, with that strange inconsistency for which she was remarkable, after imprisoning the poor lady, and allowing her to die in misery after her release, erected a costly tomb to her memory. It was, indeed, a case of being asked for bread and according a stone.

At the south-western corner of the King’s House is the Bell Tower, a passage leading into it from the first floor of that building. A bell which formerly hung in a wooden turret on this tower gave it its name—the turret still remains, but the bell is kept in the upper storey. In the Tower regulations of 1607 it is ordered that: “When the Tower bell doth ring at nights for the shutting in of the gates, all the prisoners, with their servants, are to withdraw themselves into their chambers, and not to goe forth that night.” This bell was also the alarm bell of the fortress.

The Bell Tower, which dates from the time of Richard I. or Henry III., is an irregular octagon, being 60 feet in height and 30 in diameter. The lower portion is of solid masonry, the walls varying from 9 to 13 feet in thickness. There are only two floors or storeys in the Tower, the lower with a fine vaulted ceiling. The room in the upper storey is a circular chamber, 18 feet across, with walls 8 feet in thickness. This prison is reached by a narrow staircase from the King’s House, and is lighted by four windows. Bishop Fisher was imprisoned in the upper chamber in the reign of Henry VIII., Sir Thomas More being confined in the one below. Both were harshly treated, and the poor old bishop suffered terribly from the cold. In the lower chamber, where More passed many solitary hours, even debarred from the consolation of his books, there now stands a large model of the Tower. Near the door of the upper prison a much defaced inscription can be seen on the wall, cut by the Bishop of Ross, who was a prisoner here in the time of Elizabeth. Felton, the murderer of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, is also believed to have been a prisoner in the Bell Tower.

Between the King’s House and the Beauchamp Tower, and facing Tower Green, is a row of modernised houses occupied by the Yeomen of the Guard, the Yeoman Jailor, and other officials connected with the fortress. All these houses have been refaced, and one regrets the bad taste which, in former years, allowed every appearance of age to be ruthlessly swept away from these buildings; and this is a regret that is ever present when visiting the Tower. The most glaring instance is the Beauchamp Tower, which, next to the White Tower, would have been the most interesting of the many interesting buildings here, had it not undergone what architects call “a thorough restoration” half-a-century ago. But the interior walls bear the record of many notable captives who, while waiting their fate, carved their name, their escutcheon, or some pious prayer upon the stones. Nearly all the most important prisoners of State during the reigns of the Tudors were imprisoned here, as the walls of the large prison room on the first floor still show. They are literally covered with inscriptions and devices. Some of these, however, have been brought from other places in the fortress, and therefore do not properly belong to the Beauchamp Tower, which is to be regretted, since they lose their interest by being removed from their original sites. Outwardly the Beauchamp Tower has now as modern an appearance as either the Norman or Winchester Towers at Windsor—spick, span, and spruce looking, more like a modern imitation of some mediæval tower than the actuality; the glamour of the old walls has been entirely destroyed.

For many years the prison room on the first floor of the Beauchamp Tower was the mess room for the officers of the garrison, and General Milman remembers dining there frequently when on duty at the Tower, the walls and inscriptions being covered by cupboards and furniture.

This tower takes its name from Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, who was confined here in 1397. It was also known by the name of the Cobham Tower, from Lord Cobham and his sons having been imprisoned in it in Queen Mary’s reign for the part they had taken in Wyatt’s rebellion. The tower forms a semicircle and has three floors, the well staircase by which it is entered from the Green communicating with each floor and rising to the roof, which is battlemented. The large window facing the Green is modern, dating from the “restoration” of the building in 1854 by Salvin, but the cross window is of the time of Edward III., and is contemporary with the original structure. The principal prison chamber was the one on the second floor, and this contains the most noteworthy inscriptions. Close to the entrance door the name “Marmaduke Neville” is cut in the wall: this Neville is believed to have been imprisoned here in the reign of Elizabeth for having plotted for Queen Mary of Scotland. On the right of Neville’s signature appears the name of “Peverel,” with an elaborate device of a crucifix with a bleeding heart in the centre, and the Peverel shield. Nothing is known regarding this Peverel, but one sees the name with interest, associated as it is with Sir Walter Scott’s romance. Sir Walter made a careful study of this inscription, and the picturesque name doubtless attracted him and led to its forming part of the title of one of his immortal novels. Within the prison room on the ground floor, the first name of historical importance to arrest attention is that of Robert Dudley, carved on the left-hand side of the entrance. This sign manual of Elizabeth’s favourite, the unscrupulous Earl of Leicester, was probably cut by him when he was in this tower in 1554. Four of his brothers were also imprisoned with him, all of whom were released on Mary’s accession to the throne. In the prison chamber on the floor above there is another record of Robert Dudley and his brothers. This is an elaborately carved “rebus,” representing an oak tree for Robert (Robur), on which are acorns, with the initials R. D. carved beneath. Above the fireplace, which is, I fear, a restoration, appears an inscription of great interest, a pious Latin prayer with the illustrious name of Arundell cut in large letters, and dated June 22nd, 1587. This was the handiwork of the unfortunate Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, the son of that Duke of Norfolk who was beheaded in 1573 for his wish to marry the Queen of Scots. The fate of Philip Howard’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, who were all beheaded, weighed, not unnaturally, upon their descendant, and, being a zealous Roman Catholic, his position was one of great danger after the death of Tudor Mary. On Elizabeth’s accession Arundel made an ineffectual attempt to seek safety abroad, but was captured and placed in prison, where he remained until his death in 1595. Another inscription cut by him in this tower appears above some steps leading to the third storey: it is in Latin, and rendered into English, runs: “It is a reproach to be bound in the cause of sin; but to sustain the bonds of prison for the sake of Christ is the greatest of glory. Arundell, 26th May 1587.”

The late Duke of Norfolk printed, from the original MSS. kept at Arundel Castle, in 1857, a record entitled “The Lives of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, and of Anne Dacres his wife.” At the close of the book we read that “Whilst he (Arundel) was prisoner he was not only an example, but a singular comfort to all Catholicks. No one ever heard him complain either of the loss of his goods, or of the incommodities of the prison, or the being bereaved of his liberty; and such as he heard complain or understood to be aggrieved, he endeavoured by his words and courteous usage to comfort, strengthen, and confirm. His delight was in nothing but in God, and the contemplation of heavenly things; much of the money which the Queen did allow him for his maintenance (for to every prisoner in the Tower something is assigned, more or less according to each man’s degree) he gave to the poor, contenting himself with a spare and slender diet.” Lord Arundel rests in that most beautiful of England’s mausoleums, the chapel at Arundel.

In this chamber are more memorials of the family of Dudley—one an elaborate carving commemorating the magnificent Leicester and his four brothers, John, Ambrose, Guildford, and Henry. Within a frame formed by a garland of roses, geraniums, honeysuckles, and oak sprigs, are a bear and a lion supporting a ragged staff, the Dudley crest, with these lines beneath—

One line is missing, but the Rev. R. Dick, in his interesting work on the Beauchamp Tower, thus completes the verse with the words, “these may be found.”

Of these four Dudley brothers, John was the eldest of the Duke of Northumberland’s sons, and became Earl of Warwick. It was he who helped his father in his attempt to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne, and was imprisoned here until his death in 1554 in consequence. He was succeeded in the earldom of Warwick by his brother Ambrose, who is represented by the acorn in the garland on the wall; the rose stands for Robert, the geranium for Guildford, and the honeysuckle for Henry. All these suppositions are from Mr Dick’s work on the inscriptions, and whether correct or not, they are at any rate ingenious, and explain the lines.

On the left of the second recess in this room is written in the stone “I.W.S. 1571. Die Aprilis. Wise men ought circumspectly to see what they do—to examine before they speake—to prove before they take in hand—to beware whose company they use, and above all things, to whom they truste—Charles Bailly.” Bailly was a young Fleming who had been involved in one of the many plots to free Mary Stuart from her captivity; to judge from the above inscription he had reason to regret the company he had kept, and those in whom he had trusted. Near Bailly’s inscription, but outside the recess, is the name of John Store, Doctor. Store was one of the few of those who suffered death after imprisonment in the Tower, whose fate was merited. He was a bigoted Roman Catholic priest, whose intolerance and severity towards the Reformers procured him the office of Chancellor to the University of Oxford under Mary Tudor. He is said to have out-Bonnered Bonner in his persecutions of those of the Reformed faith who fell into his hands. When Elizabeth came to the throne Store fled to the Netherlands. But he was brought back, imprisoned in the Beauchamp Tower in 1571, and ended his career on the gallows at Tyburn.

There are several inscriptions in this chamber relating to the family of Pole, or, as the name is spelt on the walls, Poole. One of these is in the third recess in a loophole—E. Poole. This is Edmund Pole, a great-grandson of the murdered Duke of Clarence; he and his brother Arthur were here in 1562, being both involved in one of the real or imaginary plots against Elizabeth. Edmund Pole has engraved here that most consolatory of the Psalms, the cxxvi.—“Die semini in lachrimis in exilititiane meter.” In another recess is “A. Pole, 1564. I.H.S. To serve God. To endure penance. To obey fate is to reign.” Both brothers ended their sad lives in this prison. One name carved in this chamber has a deeper pathos than any inscription could convey; it is that of “Jane,” and it appears in two places in the Beauchamp Tower. One would like to think it inscribed by that peerless Jane Grey herself, but, as she was not imprisoned here, it was probably the handiwork of her husband, Guildford Dudley, or some adherent to her cause and sharer in her misfortune.

The name of Thomas Fitzgerald in one of the recesses records that it was here that the ninth Earl of Kildare with five of his uncles was imprisoned, having been inveigled from Ireland by Henry VIII. They were executed at Tyburn in 1538 for being concerned in a series of wild deeds in Ireland, amongst which the murder of the Archbishop of Armagh was the chief. Here, too, is the name of Thomas Cobham, with the date 1555, he being one of three brothers of that name who were placed in the Beauchamp for taking part in Sir Thomas Wyatt’s rebellion.

The earliest date in this tower is 1462, which is cut by the side of the name of Thomas Talbot. In all there are ninety-one names on the walls, of which I have noted the most important only.

To the north, and attached to the Beauchamp Tower, is the Chaplain’s house, with an uninteresting modernised front facing the Green, and but a few paces distant is a small paved plot of ground railed in by order of Queen Victoria. This little plot marks the site of the scaffold, and, above all things, it is sanctified by the memory of Lady Jane Grey. The first victim to suffer death on this spot was Anne Boleyn in 1538, and the last, Essex, the favourite of Elizabeth, in 1601. Here, too, in 1541, the venerable Countess of Salisbury was literally butchered; in the following year Catherine Howard was beheaded with her companion in misfortune, if not in guilt, Lady Rochford. Lord Hastings, Richard III.’s victim, was, I imagine, beheaded immediately beneath the walls of the White Tower, for the description of his sudden end shows that the site of Jane Grey’s scaffold was too distant for Richard Crookback to have glutted his eyes with Hastings’s death.

In former times the ground around the site of the scaffold on the Green was a place of burial, being the churchyard of the Chapel which faces it. “With the exception of the Abbey Church of St Peter’s at Westminster,” writes Mr Doyne Bell in his interesting monograph on the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower (a most appropriate title for a building of such tragic memories), “there is no ecclesiastical edifice in the United Kingdom in which (so far as it has been used as a place of sepulture) is contained so much historical interest as the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London. Within its walls have been received the mortal remains of many, whose names, though not recorded on the stones of the pavement, must yet ever live in the pages of English history.” Macaulay in a well-known passage has called this chapel “the saddest spot on earth,” and in a less well-known passage has expressed his disgust at the vandalism which had “transformed this interesting little church into the likeness of a meeting-house in a manufacturing town.” Since the historian expressed this well-merited indignation at the treatment accorded to St Peter’s Chapel, the fabric has undergone a much needed restoration, happily not in the bad sense of that term, since it has been restored as much as possible to its condition in the middle of the sixteenth century. This restoration has been mercifully undertaken and skilfully executed, externally as well as internally, in every detail.

As far back as the reign of John, or even that of Henry I., a church stood on the site of St Peter’s Chapel. In the reign of Henry III., a Royal warrant, of the year 1241, was issued by that monarch at Windsor, directing that the Royal pew in St Peter’s should be repaired for the use of the King and Queen, and instructions were given for the refurbishing of a tabernacle with carved figures of St Peter, St Michael, and St Katherine. Of this church only a few vestiges remain in the crypt of the present chapel, which was built by Edward III. In a warrant dated from Fotheringay in July 1305–6, that King orders Ralph de Sandwich, Constable of the Tower, “to be reimbursed for various expenses incurred by him in the construction of our new chapel within the Tower.”

St Peter’s consists of a nave and a single aisle on its northern side; in length it is 66 feet, in width 54, and in height 25.

As Mr Doyne Bell points out, the peculiar dedication of the church to St Peter in Chains shows that it has been used since its foundation as a church more for the use of the prisoners in the fortress than for the sovereigns and their courts, whose place of devotion was the chapel of St John in the White Tower. With the exception of the church in Rome dedicated to St Peter ad Vincula, there is no other church besides this one in the Tower, so named. To those who see this building for the first time its general aspect must cause disappointment, so small and almost mean does it appear, and like a hundred similar churches scattered all over the country. But St Peter’s has undergone endless changes and alterations, and comparatively little is left of the building of Edward III. The exterior of the building belongs to the Tudor period. Before the last restoration, in 1867, Lord de Ros wrote, “It is inconceivable what pains have been taken in comparatively modern times to disfigure this interesting chapel.” But this reproach cannot be applied to the latest restoration, which was done with extreme care and good taste.

The larger portion of the present building dates from the reign of Henry VIII., when many alterations were made, the windows, with the exception of the one over the west door, the arches in the interior, and the timbered roof, being then placed as we see them now.

The list of interments in this chapel commences with the reign of Henry VIII. This list is one of the most interesting things in connection with the chapel.

When the Reformed Faith ousted Popery the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London over this chapel ceased, and it has ever since remained a benefice donative over which the Bishop has no power of visitation or deprivation, since the Tower itself is extra-parochial. Private marriages could be solemnised at St Peter’s, and in Ben Jonson’s “Every Man in his Humour,” this privilege is alluded to. One unlucky curate of the chapel, however, was sent to prison in James the First’s reign for having performed marriages and christenings in the chapel, and only secured his liberty through the influence of Sir William Waad, the Lieutenant of the Tower. Another clergyman named Hubbock and his son were excommunicated in 1620 by Laud for committing the same offence. Later on, however, the right of solemnising marriages and christenings in this chapel was allowed, and still continues.

Samuel Pepys has described in one of his vivid word pictures a visit he paid to the chapel after the Restoration, when he occupied one of the hideous pews that then choked the floor, and which were only removed a few years ago. “February 28, 1663–4. Lord’s Day. The Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir J. Robinson, would needs have me by coach home with him; where the officers of his regiment dined with him. I did go and dine with him, his ordinary table being very good, and his lady a very high carried, but a comely big woman, I was mightily pleased with her. After dinner to chapel in the Tower with the Lieutenant, with the keys carried before us; and I sat with the Lieutenant in his pew in great state. None it seems of the prisoners in the Tower that are there now, though they may, will come to prayers there.” With a monstrous gallery built in the reign of George II. for the use of the troops of the garrison, with the ugly square wooden pews, in one of which Pepys sat “in great state”; with the pavement all broken and defaced, with walls and columns whitewashed, and with the handsome carved Tudor ceiling coated with lath and plaster, it is no wonder that to any one with a respect for antiquity or love of beauty, St Peter’s in the Tower must have presented a sad spectacle before its restoration. And it was not until 1862 that any steps were taken to remove what was nothing less than a public disgrace. The improvements were commenced by re-opening the old doorway at the west end, which had been bricked up, the window of Edward I.’s time was also restored, the broken fragments having been collected and replaced in their original position. The lath and plaster which for a century or more had disfigured the ceiling were removed, and the finely carved old chestnut beams once more uncovered.

Further improvements were carried out during the time that Sir Charles Yorke was Constable, in the year 1876. Sir John Taylor, the head of the Office of Works, drew up the plans of this restoration, and, aided by Mr Salvin, the work of renovation commenced. There was much to be done, and it was certainly done well. The pews were the first excrescence to be removed, and the pavement, which was as uneven as that of St Mark’s at Venice, was taken up and a new one laid down. During this operation it was discovered that the ground had been used as a general place of burial, for besides those whose mutilated bodies had been placed under the pavement after execution, large numbers of other individuals had been interred here, and at a very shallow depth below the pavement. It was deemed necessary to remove these remains to the crypt before the new floor could be placed. Great care was taken to identify any remains of the illustrious dead, but in most cases it was impossible to do so owing to the ground having been so much disturbed and the bones scattered. Even greater care was taken when the floor of the chancel was reached, for it was known that the bodies of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, and of the Dukes of Northumberland and Somerset had been buried there. In 1877 the restoration of the Chapel was completed. Many interesting discoveries had been made, and needless to say, but for its state of decay, none of the poor fragments of mortality of the victims of their own ambition or the tyranny of monarchs, would have been disturbed. It was necessary to identify what remained of poor Anne Boleyn in order that above her bones the tombstone should bear its record of what lay below. “The forehead,” writes Mr Doyne Bell, “and lower jaw were small and especially well formed. The vertebrae were particularly small, especially one joint (the axlas), which was that next to the skull, and they bore witness to the queen’s ‘lyttel neck.’” The remains of another of Henry’s victims were found lying in the chancel, and belonged to the old Countess of Salisbury, Margaret Clarence. Near these some bones were found which were believed to have been those of Queen Catherine Howard, but her body, having been placed in quicklime, few traces of it remained. In this “dread abode” were also laid bare the bones of the Duke of Northumberland, and a portion of the Duke of Monmouth’s skeleton.

Near the entrance door is a memorial tablet on which a list of the most notable persons buried within the chapel is engraved—a list of thirty-four persons, commencing with Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, buried here in 1534, and ending with Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, in 1747. The old antiquarian, John Stowe, thus sums up with brief simplicity the illustrious dead that lie under the pavement of the chapel. “Here lieth before the high altar in St Peter’s Church, two Dukes between two Queens, to wit, the Duke of Somerset and the Duke of Northumberland, between Queen Anne and Queen Katherine, all four beheaded.” No record that Lady Jane Grey and her husband were interred in St Peter’s exists. It would not be easy to find a place in which so many remarkable dead are grouped together as in this little spot of English ground. Beneath our feet lies all that was mortal of what was once Northumberland and Somerset, Arundel and Norfolk; gentle Anne Boleyn and saint-like Jane Grey’s calm presence seem to linger near their graves: here, too, the once brilliant Monmouth moulders before the high altar; and hard by rest the faithful little band of Jacobites—Kilmarnock and brave Balmerino, and the wily old fox, Simon Fraser of Lovat.

One of the earliest and handsomest monuments in St Peter’s is that to Sir Richard Cholmondeley and his wife Elizabeth. The knight and his lady are lying side by side, sculptured in alabaster. Sir Richard, who was Lieutenant of the Tower in the reign of Henry VII., wears plate armour, his hand rests on his helmet, his feet on a lion; round his neck he wears the collar of SS. As was then the custom, this monument has been painted and gilded, traces of its decoration still remaining. This tomb was opened in 1876, but was found to contain only some fragments of the stone font of the chapel of Edward the Third’s time. Sir Richard had been knighted for his conduct on the field of Flodden. During his Lieutenancy of the Tower a riot broke out between the Londoners and some of the Lombard merchants, and Sir Richard, who seems to have been cursed with a bad temper, by way of quietening the brawlers, discharged the guns of the fortress against the city. Hall, in his chronicle, quaintly notices this act of the Lieutenant as follows:—

“Whilst this ruffling continued, Syr Richard Cholmly Knight, Lieutenant of the Tower, no great friende of the citie, in a frantyke fury losed certayn pieces of ordinance, and shot into the citie; whiche did little harme, howbeit his good will apeered.” This choleric knight died in 1544.

On the north side of the chancel is a handsome double monument to the memory of Sir Richard Blount and to his son Sir Michael; both these Blounts were Lieutenants of the Tower. Sir Richard, clothed in armour, is represented as praying; behind him kneel his two sons, whilst facing him, upon their knees, are Lady Blount and two daughters. Sir Richard died in 1564. Sir Michael, whose effigy, also clad in armour, was placed near that of his father thirty-two years later, and his family, consisting of his wife, three sons and one daughter, are also devoutly kneeling. Below the Blount monument is a little inscription to the memory of Lyster Blount, a child of two years old: it ends with these hopeful words, “Here they all lye to expect ye coming of our sweet Saviour Jesu. Amen, Amen.”

Against the south wall is a black marble tablet inscribed to the memory of Sir Allen Apsley,[5] who was Lieutenant of the Tower in the time of James and Charles the First. His daughter was that Mrs Hutchinson whose name will be remembered by her admirable memoirs of her husband Colonel Hutchinson, who was imprisoned in the Bloody Tower, where she shared his imprisonment. Sir Allen died in 1630. The first Earl Bathurst (Lord Chancellor) was descended from him, and it was he who built Apsley House. On the same wall are mural tablets to the memory of Sir John Burgoyne, Field Marshal and Constable of the Tower, who died in 1871, and is buried in the crypt of the chapel; also to Lord De Ros, the last Deputy-Lieutenant of the Tower, who died in 1874, and to whose book on the fortress allusion has often been made in these pages. Among other good work done by Lord de Ros was to replace the tombstone of brave old Talbot Edwards, who so nearly lost his life in defending the Crown jewels when they were seized by Blood. This stone, which had been cast aside and lay among a heap of rubbish in front of the Beauchamp Tower, after being used as a paving-stone up to the year 1852 in front of the houses which up to that time had almost hidden that tower from the Green, was replaced in the chapel. It bears the following inscription: “Here lieth ye body of Talbot Edwards, Gent.: late Keeper of his Ma’ᵗˢ Regalia who dyed ye 30 of September 1674, aged 80 years and 9 moneths.” Neither in life nor in death was this brave old Keeper of the Crown well treated. Charles the Second settled a handsome pension on the scoundrel Blood—hush-money probably, for it is within the bounds of possibility that Charles was a party to Blood’s attempt—whilst the sole reward of honest old Talbot Edwards, who was half-killed in guarding the treasures of which he had charge, was the consciousness of having done his duty. The Communion plate dates from the reign of Charles the First and Charles the Second, and it is singular to find that instead of the sacred initials being engraved on these vessels only the Royal monogram of C. R. with a crown appear upon them. Severely simple in shape and devoid of any ornament, this Sacramental plate is historically interesting, for these cups and plates have been used at the solemn hour when the Blessed Sacrament was administered to more than one illustrious prisoner on the eve of his execution. There is good reason for believing that Monmouth and William, Lord Russell used these sacred vessels shortly before mounting the scaffold.

At the back of the chapel of St Peter, and at the north-western angle of the Inner Ward, stands the Devereux Tower, which contains two storeys, the lower one being of massive masonry. This tower dates from the reign of Richard the First. In the Elizabethan survey of the fortress it is named Robyn the Devylls Tower, and in later times it was known as the Develin Tower, and as such it appears in Haiward’s plan. No record has come down as to the meaning of these names, but the present appellation dates from the reign of Elizabeth, when Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, was a prisoner there. The upper part of the tower is modern, and modern windows have taken the place of the old loopholes in the 11 feet thick walls, a change which has destroyed the character of the building; formerly it was most gloomy and forbidding. A small winding staircase within the tower leads to a couple of prisons constructed in the thickness of the Ballium wall. A secret passage is supposed to have led thence, to the Flint Tower which stands to the east of the Devereux Tower, communicating also with the vaults under St Peter’s Chapel. Nothing remains, however, in the present modernised state of these passages and prisons to indicate their former appearance. Early in the nineteenth century the lower floor of the Devereux Tower was used as a kitchen and other offices connected with the ordnance; the upper portion was occupied by the Master Furbisher of the Small Arms. The old kitchen, beneath which is a dungeon, has a fine vaulted ceiling.

The Flint Tower lies due east, at a distance of 90 feet from the Devereux Tower, but as it was found to be in an entirely ruinous state in 1796, the old fabric was pulled down and the present ugly brick tower rose in its place. The old tower had been known by the unflattering name of “Little Hell,” probably from the noisomeness of its dungeons, and it had the evil reputation of having the worst prisons in the fortress. Another 90 feet from the Flint Tower stands the Bowyer Tower, of which only the base is ancient, the remainder of the building being modern; this tower dates from the reign of Edward the Third, and it was here that the Duke of Clarence is traditionally said to have been drowned in a butt of Malmsey (Malvoisie) wine. According to those learned historians of the Tower, Britton and Brayley, who wrote in the early part of the nineteenth century, there was a vault in a dungeon in this tower closed by a trap door, which opened on a flight of steps; from these steps a narrow cell led into a secret passage made in the thickness of the Ballium wall. This was one of the many secret passages which ran below ground, and of which, as has already been noticed, an important one was discovered when the Main Guard building was demolished in 1899. Mr G. J. Clark, a great authority in these matters, has stated his belief that there were several of these secret passages in the fortress. One of these, he thinks, ran between the White Tower and the King’s House, and Father Gerard’s account of the way he was led to and from the White Tower and the Governor’s or King’s House points to an underground passage between those buildings. It has been surmised that a subterranean passage led from out the Tower below the Thames to the Southwark side of London; in the Beauchamp Tower a secret passage was discovered in the thickness of the Ballium wall, where persons might have been placed to watch and overhear all that went on within the tower.[6]

The Bowyer Tower was so named because it was the dwelling of the royal maker of bows, and the place where he turned out the Long Bow, as well as the Cross Bow, and many other mediæval weapons of destruction, such as the Balistar, the Scorpion, and the Catapult. In 1223 one Grillot made here the “balistar corneas,” as that mysterious weapon is described in an old record, and for his labour he was rewarded by the gift of a new gown for his wife.

Next to the Bowyer Tower stands the Brick Tower, but it has been modernised. In shape this tower resembles a horse shoe; it is 40 feet in diameter. Between this tower and the Martin Tower the curtain wall extends some 60 feet, the sally-port stairs being passed between the two towers. As has been the general fate of most of the towers, the Martin Tower is externally entirely modern, whilst the interior has been casemated. At one time the Regalia was kept here, having been brought in 1644 from their former resting-place in a small building on the south side, and close to, the White Tower, called the Jewel House, where they had been kept, when not in pawn, from the time of Henry III. In the reign of Edward III. these jewels are referred to as being in “la Tour Blanche,” and in the same reign there is also a reference to the “Tresorie deinz la haute Toure de Londres.” It was from the Martin Tower that Blood attempted to steal the Regalia.

The Martin Tower forms the north-east angle of the Inner Ward, and its basement floor, where the Crown jewels were formerly kept, now serves as a kitchen for the warder and his family, who occupy the tower. The most ancient part of the Martin Tower dates from the reign of Henry III., but Sir Christopher Wren, who spoilt the ancient appearance of many parts of the Tower, played especial havoc here. The old windows were removed and replaced by ugly stone-faced ones, which was also done in the White Tower, where, with scarcely one exception, the original Norman windows have been destroyed and Wren’s incongruities substituted for them.

Placed on the ground at the base of the Martin Tower is a handsome architrave of stone, in alto-relievo, representing the Royal coat-of-arms in the time of William III., blended with military trophies such as helmets, kettledrums, and cannon—