With the close of the reign of James I. the Tower ceased to be a royal residence—the Stuart kings, in fact, never passing more than a night or two in the old fortress prior to their coronation, after which they only visited it on very rare occasions. James himself only occupied the Tower-Palace on the eve of opening his first Parliament; and as the plague had broken out in the city at the time of Charles the First’s coronation, that king did not even stay the previous night in the building, nor does he appear ever to have visited the fortress during the whole of his stormy reign of four and twenty years.

A very remarkable man occupied a prison in the Tower early in Charles’s reign. This was Sir John Eliot, “fiery Eliot” Carlyle calls him. He was first of that noble band of patriots who defied Charles’s tyranny, and had been sent to the Tower in the winter of 1624–25 for censuring Buckingham during Charles’s second Parliament, but he remained there only a short time. In the March of 1628, however, Eliot, with a batch of independent members of the House of Commons—amongst whom were Denzil Holles, Selden, Valentine, Coryton, and Heyman—was again imprisoned in the Tower. Eliot had boldly declared that the “King’s judges, Privy Council, Judges and learned Council had conspired to trample under their feet the liberties of the subjects of the realm, and the liberties of the House.” Denzil Holles and Valentine were the two members who had kept the Speaker in his chair by main force; the others were committed to prison for using language reflecting on the King and his Ministers. For the following three months these members of Parliament were kept in close confinement in the fortress, books and all writing materials being strictly kept from them. In May, Sir John Eliot was taken to Westminster, where an inquiry was held but no judgment given. After his return to the Tower, however, Eliot was allowed to write letters, and was also given “the liberty of the Tower,” and permitted to see a few friends. In the month of October Eliot and the others were taken to the chambers of the Lord Chief-Justice, and thence to the Marshalsea Prison, a change which he jokingly described as having “left their Palace in London for country quarters at Southwark.” Then they were tried, and Eliot, being judged the most culpable, was fined two thousand pounds, and ordered to be imprisoned in the Tower during the King’s pleasure. As for the fine, Eliot remarked that he “possessed two cloaks, two suits of clothes, two pairs of boots, and a few books, and if they could pick two thousand pounds out of that, much good might it do them.” The fearless member never quitted the Tower again, for a galloping consumption carried him off two years after he had written the above lines. There can be no doubt that this consumption was not a little owing to the harsh treatment he endured. In 1630 he wrote to his friend Knightley, alluding to rumours of his being released. “Have no confidence in such reports; sand was the best material on which they rested, and the many fancies of the multitude; unless they pointed at that kind of libertie, ‘libertie of mynde.’ But other libertie I know not, having so little interest in her masters that I expect no service from her.” His prison was frequently changed, and many restraints were put upon him, for, on the 26th of December, he writes to his old friend, the famous John Hampden, that his lodgings have been moved. “I am now,” he says, “where candle-light may be suffered, but scarce fire. None but my servants, hardly my sonne, may have admittance to me; my friends I must desire for their own sake to forbear coming to the Tower.” Poor Eliot was dying fast in the year 1632, but his last letter to Hampden, dated the 22nd of March, is full of his old brave spirit, and the gentle humour that distinguished this great and good man. The letter concludes thus: “Great is the authority of princes, but greater much is theirs who both command our persons and our will. What the success of their Government will be must be referred to Him that is master of their power.” The doctor had informed the authorities that any fresh air and exercise would help Eliot to live, but all the air they gave him was a “smoky room,” and all the exercise, a few steps on the platform of a wall. On the 27th of November Eliot died, “not without a suspicion of foul play,” wrote Ludlow some years afterwards.

Eliot’s staunch friends, Pym and Hampden, moved in the House for a committee “to examine after what manner Sir John Eliot came to his death, his usage in the Tower, and to view the rooms and place where he was imprisoned and where he died, and to report the same to the House,” a motion which shows how matters had changed for the better since the days of Elizabeth, none of whose Parliaments would have dared thus to question the treatment of State prisoners.

The blame of his untimely death—for he was but forty-two—rests upon those who let him die by inches in his prison as much as if they had beheaded him on Tower Hill. John Eliot died a martyr in the cause of constitutional liberty as opposed to monarchical autocracy. Eliot’s son petitioned the King to be allowed to remove his father’s body to their old Cornish home at St Germains, but the vindictive and narrow-minded monarch, who would not even forgive Eliot after death had intervened, refused the prayer, writing at the foot of the petition, “Lett Sir John Eliot’s body be buried in the church of the parish where he died.” No stone marks the spot where he is buried, and his dust mingles with that of the illustrious dead in St Peter’s Chapel in the Tower, but his name will be remembered as long as liberty is loved in his native land.

We now come to a period of quite another sort.

In Carlyle’s “Historical Sketches,” John Felton, the assassin of Buckingham, is thus described:—“Short, swart figure, of military taciturnity, of Rhadamanthian energy and gravity.... Passing along Tower Hill one of these August days (in 1628) Lieutenant Felton sees a sheath-knife on a stall there, value thirteen pence, of short, broad blade, sharp trowel point.” We know the use Felton made of that Tower Hill knife on his visit to Portsmouth, where Buckingham was then about to set sail for his second expedition to La Rochelle; how he stabbed the gay Duke to the heart, exclaiming, as he struck him: “God have mercy on thy soul!” how he was promptly arrested, brought to London and imprisoned in the Tower.

The reason, or reasons, for Felton killing Buckingham have never been made clear. He appears to have been a soured religious fanatic, but the crime was doubtless owing to some fancied injustice regarding his promotion in the army; and it has been thought that it was merely an act of private vengeance, rather than one of political significance. But after his arrest a paper was found fastened in Felton’s hat, with the following writing upon it:—“That man is cowardly, base, and deserveth not the name of a gentleman or soldier, that is not willing to sacrifice his life for the sake of his God, King, and his countrie. Lett no man commend me for doing of it, but rather discommend themselves as the cause of it, for if God hath not taken away our hearts for our sins, he would not have gone so long unpunished.—Jno. Felton.” A sentiment which goes to show that Felton assassinated Buckingham with the fanatical idea of benefiting his country.

So hated was Buckingham by the people, that Felton passed into the Tower amid blessings and prayers. He was placed in the prison lately occupied by Sir John Eliot in the Bloody Tower, and before his death made two requests—one, that he might be permitted to take the Holy Communion, and the other that he might be executed with a halter round his neck, ashes on his head, and sackcloth round his loins. On being threatened with the rack in order to induce him to give the names of his accomplices, Felton said to Lord Dorset that, in the first place, he would not believe that it was the King’s wish that he should be tortured, it being illegal; and, secondly, that if he were racked, he would name Dorset, and none but him—a capital answer. When he was asked why sentence of death should not be passed upon him, he answered: “I am sorry both that I have shed the blood of a man who is the image of God, and taken away the life of so near a subject of the King.” As a last favour, he begged that his right hand might be struck off before he was hanged. He suffered at Tyburn, and his body was gibbeted in chains at Portsmouth. “His dead body,” writes Evelyn, “is carried down to Portsmouth, hangs high there. I hear it creak in the wind.” An eye-witness describes Felton as showing much courage and calm during his trial and at his death, and Philip, Earl of Exeter, who attended the execution, declared that he had never seen such valour and piety, “more temperately mixed,” as in Felton’s demeanour. This is surely one of the strangest mysteries in our history.

Prisoners still continued to come to the Tower, and in 1631, Mervin, Lord Audley, was executed on Tower Hill for a crime not of a political nature. Six years later a very distinguished ecclesiastic, John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, was imprisoned for four years within the Tower walls. Williams, who was a Privy Councillor, had repeated some remarks made by the King, in which His Majesty had advocated greater leniency in the treatment of the Puritans, and was accused of revealing Charles’s private conversation, and being an enemy of Laud’s was very hardly dealt with in consequence. He was deposed from his bishopric, fined £10,000, and imprisoned in the Tower, where he caused some surprise, if not scandal, by not attending the church services in the fortress. However, after his release, Williams was reconciled to the King, and in 1641 became Archbishop of York. He had been successively Dean of Salisbury and Dean of Westminster, and had succeeded Bacon as Lord Chancellor in 1621, just before he had been appointed to the See of Lincoln. Williams certainly belonged to the Church Militant, and during the Civil War defended Conway Castle most gallantly for the royal cause. At the end of December 1641, he was back again in the Tower, with ten other Bishops who had protested that, owing to their being kept out of the House of Lords by the violence of the mob, all Acts passed during their absence were illegal. The Peers arrested the protesting Bishops on a charge of high treason; and on a very cold and snowy December night they were all sent to the Tower, where they remained until the May of 1642.

Lord Loudon, who had been sent by the Scottish Covenanters to Charles, had a narrow escape of leaving his head on Tower Hill in 1639. According to Clarendon, a letter was discovered of a treasonable nature, signed by Loudon, addressed to Louis XIII. of France, and Charles ordered Sir William Balfour, by virtue of a warrant signed by the royal hand, to have the Scottish lord executed the following morning. In this terrible dilemma Loudon bethought him of his friend, the Marquis of Hamilton, and gave the Lieutenant a message for that nobleman. Now it was one of the privileges of the Lieutenant of the Tower that he could at any time, or in any place, claim an audience with the sovereign. Hamilton persuaded Balfour to go with him to Charles, but on arriving at Whitehall, they found that the King had already retired for the night. Balfour, however, taking advantage of his privilege, entered the room with Hamilton, and together they besought Charles to re-consider his decision, pointing out to him that Loudon was protected by his quality as Ambassador from the Scotch. The King, as was his wont, was obdurate. “No,” he said; “the warrant must be obeyed.” At length the Marquis, having begged in vain, left the chamber, saying, “Well, then, if your Majesty be so determined, I’ll go and get ready to ride post for Scotland to-morrow morning, for I am sure before night the whole city will be in an uproar, and they’ll come and pull your Majesty out of your palace. I’ll get as far as I can, and declare to my countrymen that I had no hand in it.” On hearing this, Charles called for the warrant and destroyed it. Loudon was soon afterwards released (Oldnixon’s “History of the Stuarts”).

Now comes the story of the last days of one of Charles’s most noted counsellors—last days that, as in the case of many before him, were passed within the grim precincts of the Tower, and were the prelude to execution. On the 11th of November 1640, the Earl of Strafford was at Whitehall laying before Charles a scheme for accusing the heads of the parliamentary party of holding a treasonable correspondence with the Scotch army, then encamped in the North of England. Whilst he was with the King the news reached him that Pym at that very moment was impeaching him in the House of Commons on the charge of high treason. Strafford at once made his way to the House, but was not allowed to speak, and shortly afterwards heard his committal made out for the Tower. At the same time Archbishop Laud was arrested at Lambeth Palace, and carried off to the great State prison. “As I went to my barge,” Laud writes in his diary, “hundreds of my poor neighbours stood there and prayed for my safety and return to my home.” But neither he nor Strafford were ever to return to their homes. Perhaps Strafford’s life might have been saved had it not been for the King’s action, for when it became known that Charles had plotted with the hope of inducing the Scottish army to march on London, seize the Tower and liberate Strafford, the great Earl was practically doomed. The city rose as one man, a huge mob surging round the Houses of Parliament and the Palace of Whitehall, shouting “Justice.”

For fifteen days Strafford faced his accusers and judges at Westminster Hall, his defence being a splendid piece of oratory. He proved that on the ground of high treason his judgment would not count, and his judges were compelled to introduce an Act of Attainder in order to convict him; but for the next six months he was kept in the Tower, uncertain as to his ultimate fate until the 12th of May 1641, when the Bill of Attainder was passed by the Lords.[3]

Charles had sworn to Strafford that not a single hair of his head should be injured; but on the Earl writing to him and offering his life as the only means of healing the troubles of the country, the King yielded, and deserting his minister, gave his assent to the execution, and signed the warrant.

On the following morning Strafford was led out to die. There is no more dramatic episode in the great struggle between Charles and his people than that when Strafford, amidst his guards, passed beneath the gateway of the Bloody Tower, where, from an upper window, his old friend, Archbishop Laud, gave him his blessing. The Archbishop, overcome, sank back fainting into the arms of his attendants. “I hope,” he is reported to have said, “by God’s assistance and through mine own innocency that when I come to my own execution, I shall shew the world how much more sensible I am to my Lord Strafford’s loss than I am to my own.”

Knowing how bitterly Strafford was hated by the people, the Lieutenant of the Tower invited him to drive to Tower Hill in his coach, fearing he might be torn to pieces if he went on foot. Strafford, however, declined the offer, saying, “No, Mr Lieutenant, I dare look death in the face, and I trust the people too.” With the Earl were the Archbishop of Armagh (Ussher), Lord Cleveland, and his brother, Sir George Wentworth. On reaching the scaffold Strafford made a short speech, followed by a long prayer, and giving his final messages for his wife and children to his brother, said: “One stroke more will make my wife husbandless, my dear children fatherless, my poor servants masterless, and will separate me from my dear brother and all my friends; but let God be to you and to them all in all.” He then removed his doublet, and said, “I thank God that I am no more afraid of death, but as cheerfully put off my doublet at this time as ever I did when I went to bed.” Then placing a white cap upon his head, and thrusting his long hair beneath it, he knelt down at the block, the Archbishop also kneeling on one side and a clergyman upon the other, the Archbishop clasping Strafford’s hands in both his own. After they had left him Strafford gave the sign for the executioner to strike by thrusting out both his hands, and at one blow, “the wisest head in England,” as John Evelyn, who was present, says, “was severed from his body.” On that night London blazed with bonfires, and the people rejoiced as if in celebration of some great victory.

The great Earl’s mistake was in serving and trusting such a king as Charles. Later on it transpired that Charles had a plan of removing Strafford from the Tower by throwing a hundred men into the fortress, thus relieving the Earl, and keeping possession of the Tower as a check upon the city. In pursuance of this plan, on the 2nd May 1641, Captain Billingsby with a force of one hundred men presented himself at the gates of the Tower, but Sir William Balfour refused to admit them, and the King’s scheme for taking the fortress fell to the ground.

The first beginnings of a Tower regiment, according to Mr J. H. Round, was the appointment of two hundred men as Tower Guards in 1640. In November of the same year Charles promised to remove this garrison, but he did not do so until the city offered to lend him £25,000, on the condition that these troops should be taken away, as well as the ordnance from the White Tower, which was a perpetual menace to the safety of the city. Aersen, the Dutch Ambassador, writing to his Government about this time, says, “le dessein semble aller sur le tour.” Still the King would not withdraw the soldiers or the cannon, and then the House of Lords expostulated with him, but Charles excused his breach of faith by saying that his object was merely to insure the safety of the stores and ammunition in the fortress.

After his plot to seize the Tower had been made public, the train bands belonging to the Tower Hamlets occupied and garrisoned the fortress. These train bands, as well as those of Southwark and Westminster, were distinct from the city train bands. On the 3rd of January 1642, the King made another attempt to garrison the Tower with his own troops, which also proved a failure. On this occasion Sir John Byron entered the fortress with a detachment of gunners and disarmed the men of the Tower Hamlets, but the city train bands came to the rescue, and Byron, with his gunners, had to beat a retreat. When, in 1642, the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Conyers, resigned his charge, the Parliament conferred the Lieutenancy upon the Lord Mayor of London. Later, in 1647, when the city had taken the side of the Parliament against the King, Fairfax was appointed Constable; the Constables had succeeded each other according to the chances which brought the King or the Parliament to the top, thus Lord Cottrington had been replaced by Sir William Balfour, and he in his turn had given room to Sir Thomas Lumsford, a “soldier of fortune,” writes Ludlow of him in his “Memoirs,” “fit for any wicked design.” Lumsford, so uncomplimentarily referred to by Ludlow, was supposed to be willing to act according to the King’s good pleasure, and succeeded in making himself so unpopular with the Londoners, that they petitioned the House of Lords to beg the King to place the custody of the Tower in other hands, the Lord Mayor saying he could not undertake to prevent the apprentices from rising were Lumsford allowed to remain in office; so Charles unwillingly gave the keys of the fortress to the care of Sir John Byron. Byron, in his turn, was succeeded by Sir John Conyers, who had distinguished himself in the Scottish wars and had been Governor of Berwick; and after Conyers followed Lord Mayor Pennington,[4] “in order,” as Clarendon writes, “that the citizens might see that they were trusted to hold their own reins and had a jurisdiction committed to them which had always checked their own.” From 1643 to 1647 the Tower remained in the hands of the Parliament. In the latter year the army obtained the mastery, and Sir Thomas Fairfax, the Commander-in-Chief, became its Constable, under him being Colonel Tichbourne as Lieutenant of the fortress. Shortly after the King’s execution, however, Fairfax resigned his post of Constable, none other than Cromwell, himself, stepping into the vacant place.

But we must return to Archbishop Laud, who for four years was a prisoner in the Bloody Tower in the prison chamber over the gateway of that gloomy building.

In his diary, the Archbishop has left a minute account of a domiciliary visit paid him by William Prynne in 1643. The Archbishop’s trial being determined on by the House of Lords, Prynne was commissioned by the Peers to obtain Laud’s private papers. “Mr Prynne,” writes the Archbishop, “came into the Tower with other searchers as soon as the gates were open. Other men went to other prisoners; he made haste to my lodging, commanded the warder to open my doors, left two musketeer centinels below, that no man might go in or out, and one at the stairhead. With three others, which had their muskets already cocked, he came into my chamber, and found me in bed, as my servants were in theirs. I presently thought on my blessed Saviour when Judas led in the swords and staves about him.”—This surely is rather a bold comparison for an Archbishop to make?—“Mr Prynne, seeing me safe in bed, falls first to my pockets to rifle them; and by that time my two servants came running in half ready. I demanded the sight of his warrant; he shewed it to me, and therein was expressed that he should search my pockets. The warrant came from the close committee, and the hands that were to it were these: E. Manchester, W. Saye and Seale, Wharton, H. Vane, Gilbert Gerard, and John Pym. Did they remember when they gave their warrant how odious it was to Parliament, and some of themselves, to have the pockets of men searched? When my pockets had been sufficiently ransacked, I rose and got my clothes about me, and so, half ready, with my gown about my shoulders, he held me in the search till half-past nine of the clock in the morning. He took from me twenty and one bundles of papers which I had prepared for my defence; two Letters which came to me from his gracious Majesty, about Chartham and my other benefices; the Scottish service books or diary, containing all the occurrences of my life, and my book of private devotions, both which last were written through with my own hand. Nor could I get him to leave this last, but he must needs see what passed between God and me, a thing, I think, scarce offered to any Christian. The last place that he rifled was my trunk, which stood by my bedside. In that he found nothing, but about forty pounds in money, for my necessary expenses, which he meddled not with, and a bundle of some gloves. This bundle he was so careful to open, so that he caused each glove to be looked into. Upon this I tendered him one pair of gloves, which he refusing, I told him he might take them, and fear no bribe, for he had already done me all the mischief he could, and I asked no favour of him, so he thanked me, took the gloves, bound up my papers, left two centinels at my door, and went his way.”—(From “Troubles and Trials of Archbishop Laud.”)

Prynne, whose ears Laud had been the means of cutting off some half-dozen years before, must have enjoyed this visit to his old foe. On the 10th of March 1643, the Archbishop was brought to his trial in Westminster Hall, but amongst all the charges brought against him none could be considered as proving him guilty of high treason. Serjeant Wild was obliged to admit this, but said that when all the Archbishop’s transgressions of the law were put together they made “many grand treasons.” To this Laud’s counsel made answer, “I crave you mercy, good Mr Serjeant, I never understood before this that two hundred couple of black rabbits made a black horse.”—(In Archbishop Tennison’s MSS. in Lambeth Library. Quoted by Bayley.)

Laud’s trial lasted for twenty days, the chief accusation brought against him being that he had “attempted to subvert religion and the fundamental laws of the realm.” The outcome of the trial was that Laud was beheaded on Tower Hill on 10th of January 1644. Laud was a strange compound of bigotry and intolerance, of courage and of devotion to what he considered to be the true Church, and of which he seemed to regard himself as a kind of Anglican Pope. His life and character are enigmas to those who study them, and his death became him far better than his life had done.

Carlyle, in a delightful passage in his posthumously published “Historical Studies,” writes: “Future ages, if they do not, as is likelier, totally forget ‘W. Cant,’ will range him under the category of Incredibilities. Not again in the dead strata which lie under men’s feet, will such a fossil be dug up. This wonderful wonder of wonders, were it not even this, a zealous Chief Priest, at once persecutor and martyr, who has no discernible religion of his own?” “No one,” said Laud, when told of the day on which he was to die, “no one can be more ready to send me out of life than I am to go.” Indeed, no one could have left life in a calmer or more tranquil manner than did the Archbishop. It must be a great support to have a sublime opinion of oneself, and if ever man had a sublime opinion of himself it was Laud. The comparison he made in his diary, and which I have already quoted, between his Saviour and himself—between Prynne-Judas and Laud-Christ—proves the ineffable self-conceit of the prelate.

The fact that he himself was notoriously indifferent, if not callous, to the sufferings of others, has destroyed all the sympathy that might have been felt for this strange character in his fall and tribulations. For a mere difference of opinion Laud would order ears to be lopped off, noses slit, and brows and cheeks to be branded with red-hot iron. His best and most enduring monument is the addition he made to St John’s College at Oxford, of which he was at one time the president, and in whose chapel his remains were re-interred, after resting for a time in the Church of All Hallows, Barking, and in the library of which his spectre is said to be seen occasionally gliding on moonlight nights, between the old bookshelves.

After the month of August 1642, when Charles had unfurled his standard at Nottingham, the Tower, although nominally still in the King’s possession, was in reality held by the Parliament; and its prisoners were those who were opposed to the representatives of the people. Among these was Sir Ralph Hopton, who had protested against a violent address made by the Parliament against Charles, Sir Ralph having declared that his fellow-members “seemed to ground an opinion of the King’s apostacy upon less evidence than would serve to hang a fellow for stealing a horse.” This remark brought him to the Tower, where he was soon joined by another member of Parliament, Trelawney (or Trelauney), who had informed the House of Commons that they could not legally appoint a guard of troops for themselves without the King’s assent, under pain of high treason (Clarendon).

Sir Ralph, afterwards Lord Hopton of Stratton, distinguished himself later in the war in the West of England, where he had much success, and with the help of Sir Beville Grenville, gained a signal victory over the Parliamentarians at Stamford Hill, near Stratton, in Cornwall. Fairfax, however, ultimately proved too strong for him, and finally Hopton left England, dying at Bruges in 1652.

Besides these, Sir Thomas Bedingfield and Sir James Gardner were committed to the Tower by the House of Lords, “for refusing to be of the counsel of the Attorney-General,” whilst the Earl of Bristol and Judge Mallet followed them to the fortress, “merely for having seen the Kentish petition.” This petition was drawn up by the principal inhabitants of that county, praying, “that the militia might not otherwise be exercised in that county than the known law permitted, and that the Book of Common Prayer, established by law, might be observed.” Lord Bristol soon obtained his liberty, but Mallet was kept a prisoner for two years on the charge of being “a fomentor and protector of malignant factions against the Parliament” (Clarendon).

In the same year, Sir Richard Gurney, Lord Mayor of London, was sent to the Tower on the charge of having caused the King’s proclamation against the militia, and for suppressing petitions to Parliament, to be published in the city. Sir Richard was dismissed from his mayoralty, and imprisoned during the pleasure of the House. Another Lord Mayor, loyal to the cause of the King, Sir Abraham Reynoldson, was, six years later, also a prisoner in the Tower; but his incarceration lasted only two months, whilst Gurney, it seems, remained for several years in the fortress. The Parliament meted out heavy punishment for “opinions,” Lord Montagu of Boughton, the Earl of Berkshire, and some Norfolk squires, being likewise sent to the Tower on a charge of favouring the King’s side, and of being hostile to the Parliament. In 1643 Justice Berkeley was imprisoned by order of the Lords on a charge of high treason, and also a Mr Montagu, a “messenger” from the French Court to the King.

At this time whole batches of Cavaliers began to be frequently brought to the Tower. Of these, Sir William Moreton, who was captured at the fall of Sudeley Castle, of which he was the governor, remained a prisoner until the Restoration, when he was made a judge. Another was Daniel O’Neale, who had greatly distinguished himself on the royal side in the Scottish war, and later in England. He was committed to the Tower on the invariable charge of high treason, but, like Lord Nithsdale, about half-a-century later, he managed to break his prison in female attire, and succeeded in reaching Holland, whence he returned to serve under Rupert as a lieutenant-colonel in the Prince’s cavalry. According to Clarendon, O’Neale became a celebrated adept in court intrigue in the time of Charles II.

In this year (1643), Sir John Conyers was in command of the fortress, having received the charge from the Parliament in the hope that he would be gained over to that side. On being asked to take the command of the Parliamentary army, Conyers, however, declined, his refusal causing so much annoyance to the leaders of that party that he thought it more prudent to resign his charge of the Tower, being, as Clarendon puts it, too conscientious, “to keep His Majesty’s only fort which he could not apply to his services.” His place, as has already been said, was given to Sir Isaac Pennington, Lord Mayor of London.

In 1644, Sir John Hotham, and his son, Captain Hotham, who had been imprisoned in the Tower in the preceding summer on the charge of intending to surrender the town of Hull to the King, were both beheaded on Tower Hill. Hotham may be described as the Bazaine of the Parliament. The town of Hull was the greatest magazine of arms and ammunition in England. Charles had in vain summoned Hotham, who was the Governor for the Parliament, to surrender the town, and on his refusal had declared him a traitor. There is little doubt that both Hotham and his son were Royalists at heart, and both were convicted of having entered into a correspondence with the King’s party in order to come to terms for the surrender of the town and arsenal to the Royalist forces.

Another governor—Sir Alexander Carew, who held Plymouth for the Parliament—was beheaded in the same month as the Hothams for a like “intention.” Carew is said to have been decapitated with the same axe with which Strafford was killed, and it was reported that at the time of Strafford’s trial, Carew had said that sooner than not vote for the Earl’s death, he would be ready to be the next man to suffer on the same scaffold, and with the same axe: a wish which was literally fulfilled. (Dugdale’s “Short View of the Late Troubles.”)

By one of those strange vagaries of fortune which are the characteristic of the history of this period, and in which the Tower played its accustomed part of imprisonment, George Monk, the future Duke of Albemarle, and one of the makers of our history, was imprisoned in the Tower for three years after his capture by Fairfax at the siege of Nantwich. He was a colonel at the time, and only regained his freedom by consenting to take the command of the Parliamentary forces sent to Ireland (Ludlow’s Memoirs).

Two of Monk’s fellow-prisoners, Lord Macquire and Colonel MacMahon, who had both been fighting on the Royalist side in Ireland, made a desperate attempt to escape from the Tower in this same year (1644). They succeeded in sawing through their prison door and lowered themselves by a rope, which they had been enabled to find through directions written on a slip of paper that had been placed in a loaf of bread, sent to them by some of their friends. They got down into the moat, across which they swam, but were taken on the other side and hanged at Tyburn in February 1645, although Macquire pleaded that, as an Irish peer, he had the right of dying by the axe and not by the halter. For allowing the escape of these officers from their prison chamber the Lieutenant of the Tower was fined heavily.

That splendid cavalier, “Old Loyalty,” as he was proudly called, John Paulett, Marquis of Worcester, who had defended Baring House so long and so well, came a prisoner into the Tower in this same year, accompanied by Sir Robert Peake, who had aided him in the defence of his home, and who had also been taken prisoner after the storming of the place. They were followed by Sir John Strangways, who had been taken at the siege of Cardiff. In 1647 Sir John Maynard, Serjeant Glynn, the Recorder of London, and the Lord Mayor, Sir John Gayre, with some of his aldermen and sheriffs, were in the Tower, and amongst the Royalists who were brought to the fortress as Charles’s fate was closing over him, were the Earl of Cleveland, Judge Jenkins, Sir Lewis Davies, and Sir John Stowell.

At the time of the King’s death on the scaffold in front of the Banqueting House at Whitehall, many of his most devoted adherents were close prisoners in the Tower, among them being James, Duke of Hamilton, one of Charles’s closest friends, who had made a rash attempt to invade England in 1648, and, meeting Cromwell, was defeated and made prisoner at Uttoxeter. For fellows in misfortune the Duke had George Goring, Earl of Norwich, Lord Capel, and the Earl of Holland—taken after the surrender of Colchester Castle—and Sir John Owen. The imprisonment of captured Royalists by the Parliament was but too often the prelude to their execution, but before the Duke and Lord Holland were beheaded, much interest was made to save them—more particularly Lord Holland; but Cromwell was obdurate, and they were both put to death in New Palace Yard. Lord Capel had succeeded in getting out of his prison. There is an interesting account of his escape and recapture given by Lord Clarendon in his “History,” and, although lengthy, may be quoted here as throwing an interesting light upon those times of revolution. “The Lord Capel, shortly after he was brought prisoner to the Tower from Windsor Castle, had, by a wonderful adventure, having a cord and all things necessary conveyed to him, let himself down out of the window of his chamber in the night, over the wall of the Tower, and had been directed through what part of the ditch he might be best able to wade. Whether he found the right place, or whether there was no safer place, he found the water and the mud so deep, that if he had not been by the head taller than other men, he must have perished, since the water came up to his chin. The way was so long to the other side, and the fatigue of drawing himself out of so much mud so intolerable, that his spirits were near spent, and he was once ready to call out for help, as thinking it better to be carried back to the prison, than to be found in such a place, from whence he could not extricate himself, and where he was ready to expire. But it pleased God that he got at last to the other side, where his friends expected him, and carried him to a chamber in the Temple, where he remained two or three nights secure from any discovery, notwithstanding the diligence that could not be used to recover a man they designed to use no better. After two or three days a friend whom he trusted much, and who had deserved to be trusted, conceiving he might be more secure in a place to which there was less resort, and where there were so many harboured who were every day sought after, had provided a lodging for him in a private house in Lambeth Marsh; and calling upon him in an evening when it was dark, to go thither, they chose rather to take a boat they found ready at the Temple Stairs, than to trust one of that people with their secret, and it was so late that there was only one boat left there. In that the Lord Capel (as well disguised as he thought necessary) and his friend put themselves, and bid the waterman to row them to Lambeth. Whether, in their passage thither, the other gentleman called him ‘my lord,’ as was confidently repeated, or whether the waterman had any jealousy by observing what he thought was a disguise, when they were landed, the wicked waterman undiscerned followed them, till he saw into what house they went; and then went to an officer and demanded: ‘What he would give him to bring him to the place where Lord Capel lay?’ And the officer promising to give him ten pounds, he led him presently to the house, where that excellent person was seized upon, and the next day carried to the Tower.”

Lord Capel was after this sentenced to be hanged, but this was commuted to his being beheaded, the sentence being carried out in front of Westminster Hall on the 9th March 1649. Clarendon writes of him as being, “the noblest champion his party possessed; a man in whom the malice of his enemies could discover very few faults, and whom his friends could not wish better accomplished.” Arthur Capel had been created Baron Capel of Hadham in Hertfordshire by Charles I., and his son, Arthur, was created Earl of Essex by Charles II., coming, as we shall see, to a tragic end in the Tower in that monarch’s reign.

Sir John Owen, that gallant Welsh knight, who had fought long and valiantly for the Royal cause, was taken prisoner at the engagement near Llandegas, and was imprisoned with the Duke of Hamilton and his fellow-Cavaliers at Windsor Castle before going to the Tower. At his trial Owen told his judges “that he was a plain gentleman of Wales, who had been taught to obey the King; that he had served him honestly during the war, and finding that many honest men endeavoured to raise forces whereby he might get out of prison, he did the like.” When he was condemned to be beheaded, he made his judges a low bow and said: “It was a great honour to a poor gentleman of Wales to lose his head with such noble lords; for, by God,” he added, “he was afraid they would have hanged him.” But the gallant old Cavalier did not lose his head, for Ireton stood up in the House and said that although the noble lords who had been condemned to death had many advocates, plain Sir John Owen had not one to speak for him. Ireton interceded so well, that Sir John was pardoned, and after a few months’ imprisonment in the Tower, was released. He went back to his beloved country, where he died in 1666, and rests in the church of Penmorven, in his native county of Carnarvonshire.

The execution of the other Cavaliers caused much indignation, and, as was the fashion of the times, some pamphlets were written on the subject against those in power, Colonel John Lilburne being the most prominent of the pamphleteers. He, with three other writers, Walwayn, Prince, and Overton, were sent to the Tower by order of the Parliament for writing against its authority. Lilburne was banished the country, the others were liberated. The Colonel, who was known as “Freeborn John,” was a born pamphleteer, and no amount of prisons or pillories stopped his output of what was certainly seditious matter. There is a strong resemblance between “Freeborn John” and the French pamphleteer, Rochefort, of our own time, for whatever Government was in power he opposed it by his writings. In later life he became a Quaker, because he was determined to enjoy what he considered “Christian Liberty.”

The Parliament met with considerable opposition from the Lord Mayor of the city. In 1648 Lord Mayor Sir Abraham Reynardson was kept prisoner in the Tower for two months, because he refused to publish in the city the Ordinance of the House of Commons, abolishing the title of King. Sir Abraham was one of the city worthies. He had been Master of the Merchant Taylors Company in 1640–41, and had filled the highest civic post in the city for six months prior to his imprisonment, and had valiantly resisted the “turbulent disorders,” and the tyranny of the Rump Parliament, which had tried in vain to force the Corporation of London to follow its commands. Sir Abraham was not only imprisoned, but was also fined £2000, and degraded from the office of Lord Mayor. Reynardson’s generosity was great, and he is reported to have spent £20,000 whilst he was Lord Mayor, not inclusive of the heavy fine. But his loyalty to the Crown was unshaken, and he most willingly suffered both loss of office and fortune in the Royalist cause. His portrait, recently acquired by the Company of Merchant Taylors, is one of the most interesting features of their splendid hall. Sir Abraham was re-elected to the Lord Mayoralty on the return of Charles II. (see C. M. Clode’s “Memoirs of Sir A. Reynardson”). The list of Royalist prisoners gained additions almost every month. At this time an agent of the young King’s, named Penruddock, was in the Tower with Sir John Gell, Colonel Eusebius Andrews, and Captains Benson and Ashley. Colonel Andrews, an old Royalist, was beheaded on Tower Hill; Gell, who was a Parliamentary General, and who left some interesting memoirs of the Civil War, was released after an imprisonment of two years. Benson was hanged at Tyburn, and Ashley was liberated. All these were suspected of plotting against the Parliament, and to them may be added Lords Beauchamp, Bellasis, and Chandos, committed to the Tower by the Council of State, “upon the suspicion of designing new troubles.” Lord Howard of Escrick and a minister named Love were in the Tower at the same period—the former, who was a member of Parliament, being imprisoned on a charge of bribery whilst contesting the city of Carlisle; he was dismissed the House and fined £10,000. The minister, Christopher Love, had been a preacher at St Anne’s, Aldersgate, and St Lawrence’s, Jewry, and was the author of many theological works. After the death of Charles the First he became as violent a Royalist as he had been a republican, and was found to be in correspondence with Charles the Second. His pardon was eagerly begged by many London parishes, and by no less than fifty-four of the clergy, but all they could get was a respite for a month, and Love was beheaded in July 1651. His execution caused much stir, as is proved by the fact that a Dutch allegorical engraving was made of the scene, an engraving which, after those of the executions of Strafford and Laud, is the earliest representation of an execution on Tower Hill in existence. Lord Clarendon writes that “when Love was on the scaffold he appeared with a marvellous undauntedness.” In the same year, after the Battle of Worcester, the Tower was filled with the captured Royalists from that disastrous fight. With these came the Earls of Lauderdale, Kelly, and Rothes, General Massey and General Middleton, the earls being soon removed to Windsor Castle, where they remained prisoners until the Restoration. The two generals were enabled to escape from the Tower, and joined Charles in Paris, “to the grief and vexation of the very soul of Cromwell,” writes Clarendon. These constant escapes from the Tower during the power of the Parliament and the Commonwealth would seem to point to great laxity in its protection, or to sympathy on the part of its guardians with the prisoners.

In the September of the following year the famous Edward Somerset, Marquis of Worcester, and Earl of Glamorgan, was a prisoner of the Commonwealth in the Tower. It was he who, with much show of probability, is supposed to have come within reasonable distance of inventing the steam-engine. He published in 1665 a book with a long title, which may be abbreviated into “A Century of Invention,” which Horace Walpole unkindly called “an amazing piece of folly.” Worcester died in 1667, and the model of his steam-engine is supposed to have been buried with him.

During the closing years of the Protectorate most of the State prisoners in the Tower were those implicated in schemes for assassinating Cromwell. One of these schemes, in 1654, brought Lord Oxford, Sir Richard Willis, Sir Gilbert Gerrard, and his brother, John Gerrard, with other Cavaliers, to the fortress, charged with belonging to a set of conspirators who aimed at taking the Protector’s life. It was proved that they had met at a tavern where it was proposed to kill Cromwell, seize the Tower, and proclaim Prince Charles king. One of the conspirators, named Fox, turned what would now be called king’s evidence, with the result that two of his fellow-conspirators were executed—Vowel, who was hanged at Charing Cross, and John Gerrard, who was beheaded on Tower Hill.

In the following year Cromwell made a raid among the officers of the Cavalier party, many of whom were seized and cashiered, Major-General Overton being sent to the Tower. Two other generals came there to bear him company in the same year, Generals Penn and Venables. They had made a disastrously unsuccessful expedition to the West Indies, which so exasperated Cromwell that on their return he ordered both of them to be imprisoned. A year later the Lieutenant of the Tower was ordered to release “one that goes by the name of Lucy Barlow, who for some time hath been a prisoner in the Tower of London. She passeth under the character of Charles Stuart’s wife; and hath a young son whom she openly declareth to be his; and it is generally believed; the boy being very like him; and both the mother and child provided for by him” (“Mercuris Politicus,” 1656). This Lucy Barlow was better known later on as Lucy Walters, and her son, who was then, and for some time to come, known by the name of James Crofts, became Duke of Monmouth.

Clarendon describes at some length the strange story of the death in the Tower, in 1657, of Miles Syndercombe, once an intimate friend of Cromwell’s, but who for some unknown reason became involved in one of the many plots for assassinating the Protector. Syndercombe was sentenced to death, and it being expected that an attempt at his rescue might take place, he was most carefully guarded in his prison. On the morning of the day fixed for the execution, however, Syndercombe was found dead in his bed, but nevertheless the corpse was dragged at a horse’s tail to the place of execution, a stake being driven through it after it was buried: Cromwell’s enemies accused him of having caused his former friend to be poisoned.

Cromwell, who, with all his natural courage lived in constant terror of assassination, in 1658 ordered all Royalists to live twenty miles away from London, and sent Colonel Russell, Sir William Compton, and Sir William Clayton, together with Henry Mordaunt, Lord Peterborough’s brother, to the Tower. Mordaunt had been in the young King’s employment, and, with a Dr Hewet, was put upon his trial for conspiracy. Mordaunt was acquitted, but Hewet was found guilty, and beheaded on Tower Hill. Another eminent Royalist, Sir Henry Slingsby, a great Yorkshire magnate who had fought for Charles, was also beheaded in the same year.

During the short interval that elapsed between the death of Cromwell in September 1658 and the return of Charles II. in May 1660, the Tower contained many important prisoners. Among them were Lady Mary Howard, the daughter of the Earl of Berkshire, and another lady, a Mrs Sumner, both of whom appear to have been mixed up in Mordaunt’s conspiracy against Cromwell, as well as a Mr Ernestus Byron and a Mr Harlow for the same cause. Other Royalists then in the fortress were Lord Falkland, Lord Delaware, the Earl of Chesterfield, Lords Falconbridge, Bellasis, Charles Howard, and Castleton, who had all taken part in a Royalist rising in Cheshire under the leadership of Sir George Booth. None of these, however, suffered more than a short imprisonment.

While the faction of the Parliament was making a desperate stand against the military party in the government of the country, an attempt was made by the former to seize the Tower. “The Lieutenant, Colonel Fitz, had consented that Colonel Okey, with 300 men, should be dispersed in the vicinity prepared for the enterprise, promising that on a certain day he would cause the gates to be opened at an early hour for the passage of the Colonel’s carriage, at which time Colonel Okey with his men, embracing the opportunity, might seize the guards and make themselves masters of the place. This plot, however, was discovered, and on the night before its intended execution Colonel Desborough being despatched from the Army, with a body of horse, changed the guards, seized the Lieutenant, and placed a fresh garrison in the Tower under the command of Colonel Miller” (Ludlow’s “Memoirs”).

Shortly after this episode, and during a disturbance amongst the soldiers there, Lenthal, the Speaker of the House of Commons, proceeded to the Tower, and removing the Lieutenant, who had been appointed by the Committee of Safety, conferred the government of the fortress upon Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper. But when General Monk declared for the King, that officer seized the fortress in the name of his royal master, released many of the prisoners, and placed in it a garrison commanded by Major Nicholson.

It was now the turn of the Royalists, and in the month of March 1660, Sir Arthur Hazelrigge and Colonel John Lambert were placed in the Tower because they had opposed Monk’s design for the restoration of the King, an event which showed the other members of the Committee in which direction the wind was blowing, and they made an attempt to secure the Tower by victualling the fortress, with the intention of standing a siege if it were necessary. Ludlow proposed that a force of two thousand men should join Colonel Morley’s regiment in the Tower, that the building itself should be stored with provisions for six months, and that two thousand sailors should also be placed within its walls as an additional security for its defence. This scheme, however, came to nothing.

Samuel Pepys has given a description of how Lambert escaped from his prison in the Tower, “The manner of the escape of John Lambert out of the Tower, as related by Rugge:—That about eight of the clock at night he escaped by a rope tied fast to his window, by which he slid down, and in each hand he had a handkerchief; and six men were ready to receive him, who had a barge to hasten him away. She who made the bed, being privy to his escape, that night, to blind the warder when he came to lock the chamber door, went to bed, and possessed Colonel Lambert’s place and put on his night-cap. So, when the said warder came to lock the door according to his usual manner, he found the curtains drawn, and conceiving it to be Colonel Lambert, he said, ‘Good-night, my lord.’ To which a seeming voice replied, and prevented all further jealousies. The next morning, on coming to unlock the door, and espying her face, he cried out, ‘In the name of God, Joan, what makes you here? Where is my Lord Lambert?’ She said, ‘He is gone; but I cannot tell whither.’ Whereupon he caused her to rise and carried her before the officer in the Tower, and (she) was committed to custody. Some said that a lady knit for him a garter of silk, by which he was conveyed down, and that she received £100 for her pains.”

Lambert was, however, retaken by Colonel Ingoldsby in Warwickshire, together with some other Roundhead officers who had joined him, and he was again placed in the Tower. At the Restoration he was banished to Guernsey, where he remained a prisoner until his death in 1683. Lambert had a high military reputation amongst the Roundheads, and had contributed greatly to the victory at Naseby, as well as defeating the Royalists both in Scotland and in the Midlands: his fame was such that Cromwell was supposed to have been somewhat jealous of his successes.