The Tower Of London by W. Harrison Ainsworth

Having now surveyed the south of the fortress, we shall return to the north. Immediately behind Saint Peter’s Chapel stood the habitations of the officers of the then ordnance department, and next to them an extensive range of storehouses, armouries, granaries, and other magazines, reaching to the Martin Tower. On the site of these buildings was erected, in the reign of William the Third, that frightful structure, which we trust the better taste of this, or some future age will remove—the Grand Storehouse. Nothing can be imagined more monstrous or incongruous than this ugly Dutch toy (for it is little better), placed side by side with a stern old Norman donjon, fraught with a thousand historical associations and recollections. It is the great blot upon the Tower. And much as the destruction of the old palace is to be lamented, the erection of such a building as this, in such a place, is infinitely more to be deplored. We trust to see it rased to the ground.

In front of the Constable Tower stood another range of buildings appropriated to the different officers and workmen connected with the Mint, which, until the removal of the place of coinage to its present situation on Little Tower Hill, it is almost needless to say, was held within the walls of the fortress.

The White Tower once more claims our attention. Already described as having walls of enormous thickness, this venerable stronghold is divided into four stories including the vaults. The latter consist of two large chambers and a smaller one, with a coved termination at the east, and a deeply-recessed arch at the opposite extremity. Light is admitted to this gloomy chamber by four semicircular-headed loopholes. At the north is a cell ten feet long by eight wide formed in the thickness of the wall, and receiving no light except from the doorway. Here tradition affirms that Sir Walter Raleigh was confined, and composed his History of the World.

Amongst other half-obliterated inscriptions carved on the arched doorway of this dungeon, are these: HE THAT INDVRETH TO THE ENDE SHALL BE SAVID. M. 10 R. RVDSTON. DAR. KENT. AN∨dm;. 1553.—BE FEITHFUL VNTO THE DETH AND I WILL GIVE THE A CROWN OF LIFE. T. FANE. 1554. Above stands Saint John’s Chapel, and the upper story is occupied by the council-chamber and the rooms adjoining. A narrow vaulted gallery, formed in the thickness of the wall, communicating with the turret stairs, and pierced with semicircular-headed openings for the admission of light to the interior, surrounds this story. The roof is covered with lead, and crowned with four lofty turrets, three angular and one square, surmounted with leaden cupolas, each terminated with a vane and crown.

We have spoken elsewhere, and shall have to speak again of the secret and subterranean passages, as well as of the dungeons of the Tower; those horrible and noisome receptacles, deprived of light and air, infested by legions of rats, and flooded with water, into which the wretched captives were thrust to perish by famine, or by more expeditious means; and those dreadful contrivances, the Little Ease, and the Pit; the latter a dark and gloomy excavation sunk to the depth of twenty feet.

To the foregoing hasty sketch, in which we have endeavoured to make the reader acquainted with the general outline of the fortress, we would willingly, did space permit, append a history of the principal occurrences that have happened within its walls. We would tell how in 1234, Griffith, Prince of Wales, in attempting to escape from the White Tower, by a line made of hangings, sheets, and table-cloths, tied together, being a stout heavy man, broke the rope, and falling from a great height, perished miserably—his head and neck being driven into his breast between the shoulders. How Edward the Third first established a Mint within the Tower, coining florences of gold. How in the reign of the same monarch, three sovereigns were prisoners there, namely, John, King of France, his son Philip, and David, King of Scotland. How in the fourth years of the reign of Richard the Second, during the rebellion of Wat Tyler, the insurgents having possessed themselves of the fortress, though it was guarded by six hundred valiant persons, expert in arms, and the like number of archers, conducted themselves with extraordinary licence, bursting into the king’s chamber, and that of his mother, to both of whom they offered divers outrages and indignities; and finally dragged forth Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, and hurrying him to Tower Hill, hewed off his head at eight strokes, and fixed it on a pole on London Bridge, where it was shortly afterwards replaced by that of Wat Tyler.