Ancient London—Its Port and Trade—The Tower its Safeguard—Invasion by Julius Caesar—The Roman Province of Britain—Roman Wall and Tower—The Roman Abandonment—Saxon Invasion—London the East Saxon Capital—Danish Invasions—Desertion of London—Its Restoration by Alfred—The Norman Conquest—Bishop Gundulf, the Conqueror’s Architect of the White Tower—It becomes a Royal Palace for the East as Westminster for the West—The Royal Menagerie in the Tower—Great Additions made by Henry III—His unpopularity—The Civil War—How the Tower became a State Prison—Additions made by Edward I—Quarrels of Edward II with his Barons—His Occupation of the Tower—His Flight—Murder of Bishop Stapledon—Murder of the King—Residence of Edward III in the Tower, first as his Mother’s Prisoner, then independent—Execution of Mortimer—The Beginning of the Hundred-Years’ War—Strange use made of the Tower in the days of preparation—Imprisonment of illustrious French Captives, the Comte d’Eu, King John of France, Charles of Blois—Also of King David Bruce of Scotland—Peace of Bretigny—The Mint—St. Katharine’s Hospital.

The Tower of London is the most interesting fortress in Great Britain; it has a history equalled in interest by few fortresses in the world. The Acropolis at Athens and the Capitol of Rome are far more ancient, but they are fortresses no longer. The only rival in this respect that occurs to me is the massive tower at the Western Gate of Jerusalem. It was probably built by King David, and enlarged by Herod; and it is a military castle at this day. So is our Tower, and it was built for that use.

The Port of London held a high position from the beginning of the history of Western Europe. Before the first Roman invasion of Britain there was a City of London, carrying on trade not only with the inland towns, but with the Continent. It was, as it is, a splendid position, and on the site of the present Tower the Britons had a fortress to protect it. Fifty-four years before the Christian era Julius Caesar led the first Roman invasion of this country, but he was only here three weeks, and it is very doubtful whether he ever came to London. He makes no mention of it in his Commentaries. We may therefore treat the story that he built the Tower as a myth, though Shakespeare does take it for granted (Richard II, act v, sc. 1). The Roman Conquest of our island was not achieved until nearly a century later; from which time, until the latter half of the fifth century, Britain was a Roman Province. The conquerors made London their chief city in Southern Britain, built the Roman wall, of which many portions still exist, and renewed the British fortress which held its commanding position as the safeguard of the city. On the south side of the great keep is a fragment which was laid bare some years ago, when some buildings were pulled down, and that fragment is certainly Roman. It is part of the Arx Palatina constructed during their domination. They abandoned the island at length, and after a brief interval came the invasion of our Teutonic forefathers, and London thus became the capital of the Kingdom of the East Saxons.

But it was now anything but a flourishing city. The Danish invasions for a while destroyed its prosperity, and as Sir Walter Besant holds, caused the greater part of the population to flee. It was King Alfred who restored London, repaired the broken walls, and brought back the trade. “There were great heroes before Agamemnon,” the poet tells us, “but they found no chronicler to recount their feats.” And in like manner, one may say, the Tower had, no doubt, passages of historic interest before the Norman Conquest, which have not come down to us. It is barely mentioned in the Saxon chronicles. A few Saxon remains are noted by antiquaries. But at the Norman Conquest the continuous and most striking history begins, and continues unbroken. As we look upon it to-day, spite of all the mighty changes which Time has wrought, not only in the surroundings, but in the building itself, the great square keep is the most conspicuous object, and it was built by William the Conqueror. He brought, on the recommendation of Lanfranc, from the monastery of Bec a Benedictine monk named Gundulf, and made him Bishop of Rochester. He had travelled not only over many parts of Europe, but in the East, and was familiar with the beauties of Saracenic art, which he made subservient to the decoration of his monastery, and now brought into use in his new See. He rebuilt Rochester Cathedral, and the noble castle beside it has also been ascribed to him, but this seems to be a mistake. And then the great King set him to work on the London fortress; and he built the White Tower, as we call it, as well as St. Peter’s Church and the old Barbican, the present Jewel House. “I find,” writes Stow, “in a fair register book, containing the acts of the bishops of Rochester, set down by Edmund of Hadenham, that William I, surnamed Conqueror, built the Tower of London, to wit, the great white and square tower there, about the year of Christ 1078, appointing Gundulf, then Bishop of Rochester, to be principal surveyor and overseer of that work.” Gundulf was the greatest builder of his time; several still existent Norman towers in Kent are almost certainly his;[1] but he was also most earnest in the discharge of his episcopal duties, and both Lanfranc and Anselm entrusted much spiritual work to him. Even the rough and brutal Rufus, as well as his brother Henry I, treated him with marked respect. He died in 1108 at the age of eighty-four. The massive Ballium wall, varying from thirty to forty feet in height, was probably also his work.

Henry I was the earliest King apparently to use the Tower as a State prison. He shut up Ralph Flambard, Bishop of Durham, in the White Tower on the charge of illegally raising funds to build the very fortress. Probably the imprisonment was a sop to public opinion, for the Bishop was hated for his exactions. He escaped, however; got possession of a rope which had been hidden in a wine cask, invited his keepers to supper and made them drunk; then fastening the rope to a window bar he let himself down. A swift horse which some friends had provided for him carried him to the coast, and he went over to Normandy, where he was cordially received by Duke Robert. But after the battle of Tenchebrai had destroyed all the hopes of the latter, King Henry welcomed the overtures which Flambard made to him, and restored him to his see at Durham, where he afterwards achieved his beautiful architectural works.

The Tower was from that time onwards a Royal Palace, as was Westminster in the West. We catch incidents of residence in two or three reigns, but they are few. It is noted by one chronicler that during the contest between Stephen and Matilda, Stephen broke through the older custom and kept the Pentecost festival in the Tower instead of at Westminster. One fact comes out clear enough. Some of the Norman Kings kept wild beasts; Henry I had some lions and leopards at his palace at Woodstock. Frederick II of Germany sent three leopards as a present to Henry III, and they were placed in the Tower, where were already some lions, an elephant, and a bear, probably other beasts as well. There is an old account of the arrival of an elephant at Dover, and the amazement of the people as it was led up to London. Amid all its vicissitudes the Tower remained a royal menagerie until 1834. The Sheriff of London was ordered in 1252 to pay fourpence a day for the keep of the bear, as well as to provide a muzzle and chain for him when he was set to catch fish in the Thames. All through the Plantagenet days the beasts had food provided at the cost of 6d. a day. Their keeper was a Court official, styled “The Master of the King’s bears and apes.” The bears dwelt in a circular pit, like that in the main street of Berne to-day. It was situated where the ticket office and refreshment rooms are now. In the days of James I the bears were baited for the brutal amusement of the privileged. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth a German tourist named Hentzner saw here “a great variety of creatures, viz. three lionesses, one lion of great size called Edward VI, from his having been born in that reign, a tiger, a lynx, a wolf excessively old, a porcupine, and an eagle. All these creatures are kept in a remote place, fitted up for the purpose with wooden lattices at the Queen’s expense.” All through our literature there are references from time to time to the Tower menagerie. The “Lion Gate” was so called from its proximity to this.

When Richard I went on Crusade, he left the Tower in charge of his Chancellor, Longchamp, Bishop of Ely. John, on usurping the kingdom, besieged the Tower, which Longchamp abandoned to him, and he committed it to the care of the Archbishop of Rouen, who held it till Richard’s return. When John’s kingdom was invaded by the French Dauphin, Louis, at the invitation of the rebellious barons, the Tower was handed over to him, but he does not seem to have resided there.

The next important builder after William the Conqueror was Henry III. A good deal of English fortification work is to be attributed to him. His master mason at the Tower was Adam of Lambourne, but the King himself may be called his own clerk of the works. He built the outer wall facing the ditch which had been dug in Norman days, and of course supplied with water from the Thames. It will be remembered that this King was the builder of the greater portion of Westminster Abbey; whatever his defects as a ruler, he was a man of learning and taste, and he decorated the Norman chapel in the White Tower with beautiful frescoes and stained glass, and gave bells to St. Peter’s Church on Tower Green. The Lantern Tower, on the new wall, he chose for his bedroom, and built a tiny chapel in it for his own devotions, which was so used by his successors until the tragedy of a king murdered before the altar destroyed the sanctity. Traitors’ Gate, also, was his work, the great entrance from the river side, and a very noble piece of engineering; how it got its name we shall see abundantly hereafter. A yet more important work of his, and for a while most unpopular, was the Wharf: the strip of bank alongside the river like the Thames Embankment of our own day. Adam of Lambourne was the engineer also of this remarkable work. Piles of timber were driven into the mud, and rubble thrown in between them, and then the whole mass was faced with a barrier of stone. At the beginning of the work the high tide washed it down, and carried away completely a tower which he was constructing to guard it. The citizens sent a remonstrance, not only against the expense, but against the harm which they considered it would cause to trade navigation, but the King persisted and ordered Adam to make his foundations stronger. A cry was even got up that the ghost of St. Thomas of Canterbury had appeared to denounce the work. But the King’s wisdom was so far justified by the result, that there to-day is the Wharf, and its foundations are firm as ever.

I have told in the story of Old St. Paul’s how his Queen, Eleanor of Savoy, had much to do with King Henry’s unpopularity. She was beautiful to look upon, and highly accomplished, a patron of the arts, and the bringer of musical excellence, both of voice and instrument, from her native land of Provence. But she was greedy of money, proud, arrogant and vindictive, and always bent on enriching her kindred. Her uncle, Boniface of Savoy, whom she made Archbishop of Canterbury, was detested by the clergy, especially by the monks, for his insatiable and unblushing avarice. Her husband loved the Tower as a place of residence, but when one day she started forth in her barge for Westminster she was received with curses and cries of “Drown the witch,” and had to hasten back in terror and take refuge once more within the Tower walls. Her son, Edward I, never forgave the Londoners for so insulting his mother, and not long after found an opportunity of revenging it. At the Battle of Lewes he defeated a regiment of London citizens fighting on the side of the Barons, and pursued them far out of the field, slaughtering some 2,000 of them. But his leaving his father to look after himself had much to do with his losing the battle.

The war between King Henry and the Barons came to an end with the defeat and death of Montfort at Evesham in 1264. The Barons had held the Tower until then, but the King now resumed authority over it, and increased its fortifications. He first made the famous Hugh de Burgh, Earl of Kent, Constable, but afterwards replaced him by Peter de Roches, Bishop of Winchester. Before long the peace of the country was again disturbed by Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, who having obtained possession of the city of London denounced the Papal Legate Otho for residing in the Tower; it was “a post,” he said, “not to be trusted in the hands of a foreigner, much less of an ecclesiastic.” The Legate, in defiance, went to St. Paul’s, and under pretence of preaching in favour of the Crusade, broke forth into fierce invectives against the earl, who was present. The preacher had some difficulty in making his way back to the Tower, which was besieged by de Clare; but he held it successfully until the siege was raised by the royal army.

One notable prisoner of this reign was Griffin, son of Llewelyn, Prince of Wales, who was caught and detained in the Tower as a hostage in 1244. He attempted to escape as Flambard had done, making a rope of his bedclothes. But he was very fat, it broke, and he was killed. His nephew Llewelyn was the chieftain who afterwards gave so much trouble to Edward I.

Prince Edward went away to the Holy Land, and during his absence his father, Henry III, died. The custody of the Tower was committed to the Archbishop of York till his return to England, when he completed the works in the fortress which his father had begun, and erected some additional fortifications on the western side. Stow quotes a record of his in which he commands the Treasurer and Chamberlain of the Exchequer “to deliver unto Miles of Andwarp [Antwerp] 200 marks towards the worke of the ditch, then new made about the bulwarke, now called the Lion Tower.” Then, says Bayley, “may be regarded as the last additions of any importance that were ever made to the fortress.” During Edward’s active and powerful reign the Tower was chiefly appropriated to the use of a State prison. Of the multitudes of Jews who were apprehended in 1278, on the charge of clipping and adulterating the coin of the realm, no less than 600 were confined at once in the Tower, and the conquest of Wales and the attempt to conquer Scotland both provided a succession of illustrious prisoners, who lost their liberty in an unequal struggle for their country’s freedom. It was in 1296 that Edward began his war for the conquest of Scotland. The battle of Falkirk in 1298 scattered the whole Scottish army, but the subjugation was not complete, for the English had to retire for want of provisions, but the leaders of the Scottish army, the Earls of Athol, Menteith and Ross, with their poor King Baliol and his son Edward, and other Scottish leaders, were brought to the Tower, as in 1305 was William Wallace. The latter was executed in Smithfield, August 25, 1305. His was one of the first trials in Westminster Hall.

Edward II, like his father, showed no partiality for the Tower as a residence, but occasionally retired to it as a place of safety. In 1322 his eldest daughter was born here, and was called in consequence “Joan of the Tower,” as his youngest son was called John of Eltham from his birthplace. During that miserable reign the conspiracies raised by the barons, first against Piers de Gaveston, and afterwards against the Despensers, the successive favourites of the unhappy King, caused the issuing of frequent orders for putting the Tower in a state of defence. In 1312 engines were constructed, and other precautions taken to make it impregnable, for the barons were in open rebellion. In 1324, Lord Mortimer being confined in the Tower, and more rebel barons in other fortresses, a plot was laid to set them at liberty simultaneously. This failed, but Mortimer contrived to escape by inviting the governor of the Tower, Sir Samuel Segrave, with other officers of the fortress, to a banquet and making them drunk. Though every exertion was made to recapture him he got away to France, where in conjunction with the Queen, Isabella, he brought about the unnatural conspiracy which deprived the wretched King of his throne and his life. Segrave was removed from his post and imprisoned, and the custody of the Tower was committed to Walter Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter—a terrible trust, as was soon proved. For the rebellion was already assuming the most formidable shape. In the early part of 1326 the Queen and her accomplice Mortimer landed in Suffolk. The King retired to the newly-fortified Tower, summoned the Mayor, Sheriffs and Aldermen of the city to his presence-chamber, and gave his commands for the preservation of the tranquillity of the capital. He further issued a proclamation offering a reward for Mortimer’s head. But the rebels came on, in the full confidence of victory. The King in vain endeavoured to rouse the Londoners in his defence; and so on October 2 he left the Tower in charge of Bishop Stapledon, his young son John of Eltham being there also, and hastened away to the West of England, in hopes of finding greater loyalty there. He had hardly left London when the rebel spirit of its inhabitants broke out in fury; they seized the bishop in charge, dragged him into Cheapside, and beheaded him with some other officers, and appointed officers of their own to rule in the name of John of Eltham. Stapledon was a man not only of rectitude of character, but a munificent patron of learning. Exeter College, Oxford, owes its foundation to him, and much of the beauty of Exeter Cathedral is his work. He was first buried in the Church of St. Clement Danes, but afterwards removed to his Cathedral, where a magnificent monument covers him. The “she-wolf” queen and her paramour, after the King’s murder at Berkeley Castle, ruled for a while in the name of the young King Edward III, and kept him secluded in the Tower as a mere puppet. But they misjudged their power; he broke through their control, and threw himself on the nation; Mortimer was arrested at Nottingham and brought to the Tower, whence on November 29 he was carried to “Tyburn Elms,” hanged, drawn, and quartered—treated, in fact, as he had treated the Despensers.

1. South Aisle of St. John’s Chapel.

From a drawing by J. Wykeham Archer, 1852.
British Museum.