Romance has been more busy with this one building than with all the other edifices of England put together. A volume might be filled with the stories founded in the imaginations of Harrison Ainsworth and his predecessors and imitators. The benefactors, about whose doings he has so much to tell, were first appointed here by Edward VI., to the number of fifteen from the Yeomen of the Guard. The interesting drawings made by George Cruikshank of chambers in towers now long since restored away or otherwise destroyed have been mixed up with fictitious pictures of Lady Jane kneeling at a prie-Dieu on a straw-strewn scaffold, while a hangman brandishes an axe; or of the burning of a sorcerer in the confined space of Tower Green, with flames which would have been sufficient to consume the buildings of the whole fortress. Many as were the inhabitants from time to time, many as were the prisoners, great or small, no “executions,” that is, no putting to death by process of law, ever took place within the precincts, except those of four ladies of the court of Henry VIII. and one other under Queen Mary, while political considerations and fear of a popular movement in favour of the culprit led to the death in the same semi-private place of one of Queen Elizabeth’s some time favourites, Essex. To believe the tale-writers, the Tower and its courtyards were ordinary places of public punishment. It is often remarked as a matter of surprise that no blocks, no axes have remained like jewels and inscriptions in various stone towers. But if we ask why there should be any, we get no answer. The block long shown is probably an ordinary chopping block for faggots and of no great antiquity. The axe is of Roman make, and is known to have been brought here in 1687. Some curious correspondence is in existence as to the preparation of a block by the Sheriff of Middlesex for the decapitation of Lord Lovat. The culprit was so old, obese, and infirm that it was proposed to arrange for the provision of block at which he could kneel without lying down, and some measurements were, it is believed, furnished to the Sheriff with this object. I well remember as a child being permitted, in the old Tower Armoury, to lay my head on Queen Anne Boleyn’s block, as it was called. But Queen Anne, we know, had no block, and was kneeling up when the French executioner, sent by Lord Wentworth, then Governor of Calais, cut off her head by the sweep of a sword. Almost as unfortunate as Ainsworth’s anachronisms are those of innumerable historical writers who confound the Constable with the Lieutenant and both with the Tower Major.

Things are very different now, from the visitors’ point of view, to what they were years ago or less. In those days the so-called “Horse Armoury” was the principal object of attraction. This was built as a long wooden shed on the south side of the White Tower, and was filled with fictitious figures on which some of the ancient armour was shown as that of successive English kings from the Conqueror to James II. We emerged from this gallery by a staircase which led us up into the crypt of the Norman chapel through a window in the apse. It was impossible for any one who had not previously undergone architectural training to recognise the crypt in “Queen Elizabeth’s Armoury,” as this chamber was called. A priest’s cubicle in the side wall was pointed out as “Sir Walter Raleigh’s dungeon,” but the Queen’s robe, covered with mock jewelry, was an object of far greater interest. At every point make-believe was the rule, and when we at last visited a great hall, the roof, side-walls, and pillars of which bristled with swords, bayonets, flint locks, and other similar adornments, our powers of recognising that we were traversing the rooms of the White Tower, which, before the reign of Henry III., formed the principal residence of Rufus, Beauclerc, and other descendants of the Conqueror, were completely obscured. We could perhaps see that we had been made parties to a fiction which dwarfed the most flagrant of Ainsworth or even Victor Hugo, but better counsels prevailed when Hepworth Dixon pointed out, in his two volumes entitled Her Majesty’s Tower, the great educational value of a visit to these ancient precincts and the difficulty, under existing arrangements, of obtaining any clear ideas. By degrees everything has been changed. The visitor can pause at every step and can obtain without difficulty the fullest information. In one particular, a serious mistake was committed. The inscribed stones in the Beauchamp Tower were removed and grouped in a single chamber, and it was not perceived till too late that thus they lost more than half their historical value and all that kind of value which may be termed sentimental. There are inscriptions in all the inhabited buildings, and it is satisfactory to know that the mistake has not been repeated, while the example, coupled with the modern aspect of the Beauchamp Tower, forms a useful lesson for would-be architectural restorers.

The Tower of London formed the principal feature of a system of fortification by which William the Norman proposed at once to defend London from without and to prevent the Londoners from rebellion against his authority. The other castles are generally supposed to be those of Wallingford and of Berkhampstead. Here, as a feature of Alfred’s rebuilt Roman Wall, there was a bastion of extra size, and there are supposed references to a building which may have stood on the site afterwards covered by the Norman Keep, or possibly a little lower on the line of the Roman Wall, where the Wakefield Tower, much altered, now serves for the preservation and exhibition of the crown jewels.

The Norman Keep has been known at least since the time of Henry III. as the White Tower. It was commenced in or near 1078, the architect being Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester, who seems to have laboured here, at Rochester Cathedral and Castle, at West Malling, and probably in other places until well on in the reign of Henry I. When, in 1108, he died, his works here and elsewhere were still uncompleted. He probably left the Keep, to which there was no entrance except by a system of scaffolding and ladders connected with the Cold Harbour Tower and the Wakefield Tower by strong walls enclosing a narrow triangular court. The precinct surrounding this fortress gradually grew partly within, partly without, the City boundaries, until it extended over the Outer Ward, as far as the Bell Tower to the west, the Devereux on the north, and the Martin on the east. It included the parish church, afterwards known as St. Peter’s, and the Lanthorn Tower on the south-east, part of an extension of the royal apartments. Adjoining the palace there was a little later, say, in the reign of Henry III., an open space or “garden” south of the White Tower. What had formed the Outer Ward of the Norman Castle now became the Inner Ward of still more extensive precincts under Richard and John. Bishop Longchamp took in a further tract to eastward. King John in 1210 and later years strengthened himself against the Barons of Magna Charta by increasing the outer fortifications, and work went on constantly during the long reign of Henry III. and did not add to his popularity with London citizens. Under Edward I. we first hear of the Barbican, afterwards, down to 1834, known as the Lion Tower. There are two interesting views of this building in Ainsworth’s book: one evidently a careful woodcut of Cruikshank’s drawing on the spot before the destruction of the building; the other an etching with imaginary figures. Outside the defences at this corner was the so-called Conning or Con Tower, a building of timber, opening into a narrow passage. It led out at right angles to the north. The wooden gate, on this site, still faces this way, and it is probable that not only the Tower gates but the City gates at Newgate and Bishopsgate were similarly planned, a point too often forgotten.

As early as 1347 gunpowder was made in the Tower for the French wars of Edward III.—“pulvis pro ingeniis suis,” as we read. The Salt Tower must have received its name from the storage of saltpetre. In 1381 Richard II. was lodged here for safety from Wat Tyler’s mob; and here they seized the Archbishop Sudbury and murdered him. It was here in 1399 that Richard II. surrendered the crown to Henry IV. Jack Cade’s mob attacked the Tower unsuccessfully. It was attacked again ten years later with a similar result, and after this period the history of the fortress as a fortress may be said to terminate.

From the time the Tower combined the functions of a palace and a prison it became customary for every new sovereign to ride in state to the coronation at Westminster through the City from the gate of the Tower. Thus it was that Queen Anne (Boleyn), who had figured in such a procession, was afterwards a prisoner and was here condemned to death and beheaded on Tower Green. Here again her daughter, Elizabeth, after having been a prisoner during the reign of her sister Mary, passed out to her coronation, pausing on the way at the Lion Tower, where in a short prayer she compared herself to Daniel emerging in safety from the lion’s den. The last English king who thus went to Westminster was Charles II. He and his brother James II. were lodged in the Tower on several occasions of public danger, but the Civil War, then recently ended, had shown plainly the weakness of mediÆval fortification against artillery. At the time of the death of Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex, who in 1683 committed suicide or was murdered in his lodgings in the Lieutenant’s House, both Charles and his brother were in the royal apartments.

When the Tower ceased to be used as a palace, the old buildings to the south of the Keep fell into ruin and have now all disappeared. They included an annex of some size and importance which contained a few Roman bricks, possibly taken from such parts of the wall as here reached the river’s bank. The garden disappeared with the hall and the wardrobe, and even the names of the buildings adjoining were changed. The Garden Tower is now called the Bloody, and the odd reason used to be given that it was because here the sons of Edward IV. were smothered. This is extremely unlikely, and the name of the gateway was more likely derived from the supposed suicide of Henry Percy, eighth Earl of Northumberland, who was found dead in his bed with three bullets through his heart on June 21, 1585. The Hall Tower, since the disappearance of the adjoining Hall (in which Queen Anne Boleyn was tried), has been renamed The Wakefield, and here the regalia, described below, are now shown. This is the sole relic, with the White Tower, of the Norman buildings of Gundulf. There is a Norman crypt, but the upper structure has been “restored” away, with large but unsightly windows, and there is a bridge for the convenience of the Keeper of the Crown Jewels, whose apartments are in St. Thomas’s Tower, usually renamed The Traitors Gate. Between the archway of this gate and the Byward Tower, the chief entrance from the outer ward, is a long wall, facing which, on the north side of the narrow roadway, the buildings of the Lieutenant’s Lodgings look over the walls of the inner ward, ending with the Bell Tower. The bell now does duty at St. Peter’s Church. The roadway is continued to the north as Mint Street, which further on used to be known as Irish Mint Street. From the corner under the Bell Tower we see the Beauchamp Tower, and beyond it again the Devereux. There is a walk along the leads of the roofs connecting the Bell with the Devereux, and here, it is said by the romance writers, Lady Jane, confined in the Lieutenant’s Lodgings, used to meet her husband, who carved her name in his chamber in the Beauchamp Tower. The Lieutenant’s Lodgings have of late been renamed The King’s House, and in the late reign, the Queen’s House, a change for which no reason has ever been assigned.

The towers along the south curtain of the outer ward are the Cradle, so named probably from an arrangement for receiving supplies from a boat on the Thames, the Well, and the Develin or Galleyman’s, so named after an old warder. On the north side are three comparatively modern forts, called Legge’s Mount, North Bastion, and Brass Mount, the first from George Legge, Lord Dartmouth, Master General of the Ordnance in 1682.

On the eastern side of the inner ward are some old and, for the most part, unrestored buildings known as Martin’s Tower, at the north-eastern corner; Constable’s Tower, Broad Arrow, and the Salt Tower, already mentioned. The regalia used to be kept in the Martin, which was also known as the Burbidge or Brick Tower. Here in 1671 the crown, then in the custody of Talbot Edwards, was stolen by Colonel Blood, who carried it nearly to the gate of the Byward Tower before he was stopped. He was eventually pardoned by Charles II. The Broad Arrow shows us what some of us remember—the Beauchamp before Salvin’s ruthless “restoration.”

The Church of St. Peter ad Vincula was so called from the Romanist saint’s day, August 1, on which it was consecrated, and not from any allusion to the Tower as a prison. It has often of late been described as a Chapel Royal, but if there is any Chapel Royal in the Tower it is St. John’s. What we now see was built in 1512, after a fire. The old church was long vacant because of the murder, by the parson, of a friar named Randolph in 1419. Edward IV. proposed to place here a dean and chapter, but died before anything was arranged. Edward VI. put the church under the care of the Bishop of London, and it has since usually been served by a chaplain appointed by the Crown. The organ was formerly in the Chapel Royal at Whitehall. There are few monuments, but the burial-places in the chancel of the headless bodies of two of the wives of Henry VIII., as well as of the Dukes of Somerset and Northumberland and some others, are marked by an encaustic pavement, highly inappropriate to what Lord Macaulay described as the saddest spot on earth.

There are several oratories in the different towers, as, for example, the apartments over the Traitors’ Gate, known as St. Thomas’s Tower, where the Keeper of the Jewels is lodged. A similar place for private prayer in the Wakefield Tower has been in great part obliterated. Here, according to an ancient tradition, the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III., stabbed Henry VI. at his devotions in 1471.

The yeoman waiters or warders are not Yeomen of the Guard, but members of a separate corps. There are forty yeomen, all old soldiers and ranking as sergeant majors in the army. They seemed to have been called beefeaters from the very beginning in Tudor times. The word “yeomen” is often reckoned as “gentlemen,” being next below “esquire.” They were only fifteen at first, but Charles II. improved their position and increased their numbers. Part of their duty used to be to assist the yeoman gaoler in the custody of prisoners. Persons condemned were by them handed over to the Sheriff of Middlesex at the Con Gate, where the City and Tower precincts meet.

The crown and other parts of the regalia of the state were long treasured in the Martin Tower. They were previously in a building adjoining the palace, on the south side of the White Tower. The removal took place about 1641, which may be the date at which the palace buildings were finally pulled down. There had been a “secret jewell house” in the White Tower in which the most precious or venerable objects were kept. At the time of the Great Rebellion they were taken to Westminster and were all broken up and, as far as possible, destroyed. This sacrilege, for so it must be called, took place in 1649, in the August which followed the death of Charles I. A certain number of articles were sent back to the Tower, no doubt to be melted down at the Mint. These last included “Queen Edith’s crown” of silver-gilt and “King Alfred’s crown” of gold wirework, with a few slight jewels set in it and two bells. This must have been an object of the highest antiquity, perhaps reaching back to the eleventh century. It need hardly be remarked that “Queen Edith” is a wholly mythical person in this connection, no wife of a sovereign of the house of Wessex being called “Queen” or wearing a crown. The Confessor’s wife was “the lady Edith,” his mother “the old lady.” There is no saying what England lost by the wholesale destruction of these old crowns. There is a certain satisfaction in reflecting that the Roundhead treasury was not greatly benefited, the value of the objects sold or melted amounting only to £14,221: 15: 4. The Crown jewels as we see them now consist mainly of those required at a coronation, but the old “Regalia” comprised “one christall pott” standing on crystal balls and mounted with silver gilt, with a mannikin on the handle, valued then at £9; two gold trencher plates at £85; more than two dozen crystal cups mounted in gold, and many set with jewels; crystal and gold dishes; a crystal watch, valued at £30; salt-cellars of all kinds of precious materials; twenty-six agate bowls and cups—agate was thought to protect the drinker against poison; mazers, some mounted in gold; an “old rusty knife, forke, and spoone,” garnished with gold—it is often asserted that Charles II. brought in the use of forks, but there were several forks in the old collection; candlesticks; an old woman of gold for a salt-cellar, and numerous objects of mother-of-pearl. In addition there were many single stones, and among them “one ruby ballass pierced, and wrapt in a paper by itselfe, valued at £4.” The Puritan framers of the catalogue did not dare evidently to call any attention to the historical and monarchical associations of this stone. It remained unsold until Oliver Cromwell coming into sole power, and perhaps foreseeing that, if he lived, these things might be useful in a coronation, stopped the sale and destruction of the Crown jewels. This ruby, though it is not of first-rate quality and is pierced, was saved and is identified by antiquaries as the jewel which Peter, King of Castile, gave to the Black Prince in 1367, as part payment, it is supposed, for his help in the battle of Najera. Peter, who received the name of “the Cruel,” is said to have fought the Moorish king of Grenada for the sake of his jewels, of which this was one, and to have murdered him in cold blood. Henry V. wore it at Agincourt, in 1415, in his helmet. Another relic of the old regalia is the sapphire in the front of the circlet. It was carried away by James II. when he left England in 1688, and was restored by Cardinal York (Henry IX.) by will, with some other jewels, to George III., in 1807. Another sapphire figures in the cross on the summit of the State crown, as it did on that of Queen Victoria. Its history points to its having been worn by Edward the Confessor in a ring. The legend connecting it with the present regalia is in the Coronation Book of Edward VII., p. 56 (Cassell and Company, 1902). A silver-gilt spoon of thirteenth-century work, possibly of twelfth, is the only other object known to have been in the old regalia.

The other objects exhibited were chiefly made for the coronation of Charles II. Silver or silver-gilt plate of that period is very scarce, and the examples before us, most of which were made by Sir Robert Vyner, are of the highest quality of which the period was capable. It is not necessary to go through the different items of which the collection consists. It will be sufficient to warn the visitor that when he reads on the label “Crown of St. Edward,” he must take it as if the words were “Crown (made by Vyner in imitation of that in the old regalia called the Crown) of St. Edward.” The State crown was worn by King Edward VII. at his coronation and is the same as that of Queen Victoria, somewhat enlarged. It is of silver and has about 3000 diamonds, 227 pearls, 5 rubies, 17 sapphires, and 11 emeralds. The Sword of State was carried by the Marquis of Londonderry, the Sceptre by the Duke of Argyll, and the Sword of Mercy by the Duke of Grafton. At the coronation of George III. the sword was forgotten and was left behind in St. James’s Palace. The Lord Mayor’s sword was borrowed in the Abbey and was borne by the Earl of Huntingdon. The right sword was, however, brought and laid on the altar before the close of the service. At the coronation of George IV. it was carried by the Duke of Dorset, and at that of William IV. by the Duke of Wellington. At the coronation of Queen Victoria the sword was borne by Lord Melbourne. Three other swords were borne at the coronation of George IV., those, namely, of temporal justice, of spiritual justice, and of mercy.

A visitor who has time should not leave the Wakefield Tower without seeing an interesting series of stars, collars, and badges of the different orders of knighthood. They are exhibited in the side cases, as are also the silver trumpets of the Guards and other objects of the kind.

Although great stores of arms were accumulated in the Tower during the Tudor reigns, we do not know of any special collection of ornamental suits until much later. The armourers of Henry VIII.—men from Italy, and in particular from Milan and Mantua, whence such words as milliner, portmanteau, and others—dwelt and worked at Greenwich, where in the Green Chamber were twelve suits of tilting armour for men and horses, in the Great Chamber, nine, and in the Harness Chamber, seven, some of them still incomplete when the inventory was made in 1631. The tilting suits were removed to the Tower in 1660. Previously the arms stored there were chiefly for soldiers, and comprised, in the reign of Elizabeth, 2000 equipments for foot-soldiers, known as demi-lances, as many corslets, 1000 shirts of mail, 3000 morions or helmets, and as many steel caps, called “skulles” in the inventory. Towards the end of the reign the more ornamental horse and tilting armour began to be brought up from Greenwich, but the removal was not complete till the time of Charles II., when the old palace was pulled down to make way for the first buildings of what is now Greenwich Hospital.

Soon after, the picturesque building, now used as a military hospital, was designed by Sir Christopher Wren for the reception of the armour. About the same time, Wren’s friend, Grinling Gibbons, was employed to carve the horses on which the full knightly panoply could be exhibited. Some of these horses still remain and must be admired as real works of art. Previously, no doubt, the equestrian armour was placed upon horses such as are now called clothes-horses in a house, or saddle horses in a harness room, convenient enough for the purpose, but unsuitable for any scenic effect.

The armour was next removed to the Small Armoury. The name does not mean that the building was small, but that it was designed for the storage and exhibition of small arms, as distinguished from cannon and other great guns. It was situated where the Waterloo Barracks are now, and was entirely destroyed by fire in 1841, having become a store and being full of inflammable material. It must have resembled the central part of the great barrack at Winchester, built also by Wren. It was 245 feet long by 60 wide. Founded by James II., it was finished by William and Mary, who at the opening dined in the great room in state “having all the warrant workmen and labourers to attend them, dressed in white gloves and aprons, the usual badges of the orders of masonry,” as Dodsley tells us, writing in 1761. The “entablature and triangular pediment of the Doric order” of which he speaks, “and the king’s arms, with enrichments of trophy work,” were saved, and are now built into a wall on the south side of a storehouse near the new Lanthorn Tower. The great Small Armoury was undisturbed in 1821, but large quantities of weapons had overflowed into the White Tower, where an armourer named Harris, whose operations were much admired in their day, with his successors, arranged them in various fantastic designs, many of them very ingenious. It was Harris who made the trophies of arms at Hampton Court. “He was a common gunsmith, but after he had performed this work, which is the admiration of people of all nations, he was allowed a pension from the Crown for his ingenuity.” This Small Armoury contained, at the time of the fire in 1841, 280 stands of muskets and small arms, ready for use.

The horse armoury had fortunately been removed some ten or twelve years before the fire. A shed-like gallery, already mentioned, was built south of the White Tower, and was ready in 1826, when the collection was removed and arranged by Sir Samuel Meyrick. The visitor on entering saw a long line of equestrian figures, twenty-two in number, clothed in the armour supposed to belong to various reigns from Edward I. to James II. As a fact, very little of the armour dated before the time of Henry VIII., and the chain mail on a figure labelled Edward I. probably came from India. A rearrangement was made by Mr. Hewitt about 1859, and a catalogue. Ten years later a further arrangement was carried out by Mr. PlanchÉ. In 1883, the whole collection was removed to the upper stories of the White Tower, where it has been examined and put into something like order by Lord Dillon, whose views are considerably more scientific than those of Meyrick, Hewitt, or PlanchÉ. The change in the aspect of the collection is considerable, and the visitor may be certain of a great number of pieces of which few could be considered authentic before. Lord Dillon calls attention to the mounted figure in chain mail which used to do duty for Edward I. and before that, for William the Conqueror. There are several other suits of Oriental armour, but this one seems, in part at least, to be Persian. The only dated suit was sent to Charles II. by the Great Mogul about 1660. In the so-called Council Chamber is a suit worn by Lord Waterford at the Eglinton Tournament. It shows armour of the time of Richard III. Several suits made for Henry VIII. are beside it, and some also from Nuremberg of the same date. The finest “was sent over in 1514, having been made by Conrad Sensenhofer, whose mark is on the helmet. It was a present from the Emperor Maximilian to his ally and relative, Henry VIII. Another maker is well represented, Missaglia of Milan, by a suit for foot combats. Another bears the Burgundian “cross ragulÉ,” which must not be confused with the ragged staff of Robert Dudley, Queen Elizabeth’s Earl of Leicester. This last-named suit is very rich in extra pieces for the protection of the left side in tournaments. Another was worn by Dymoke of Scrivelsby at the coronation of George II. It would be tedious to go through all the armour, but a case in the first room contains an extensive collection of helmets, many of them modern imitations, made in Germany, of ancient forms. “The genuine tilting helmets,” says Lord Dillon, “will be distinguished from false ones by the arrangement of the ocularium or eye slit, which in the modern examples would allow of the easy insertion of the opponent’s lance point.”

It may be worth while here to observe that in the lists two knights passed each other on the left hand. In many modern pictures of mediÆval fights we see the knights each with his lance in the right hand and pointing towards another knight on his right. This would have been impossible, the weight of the lance alone being sufficient to make it so. If the combatant struck his opponent, he must infallibly have put his shoulder out and probably would also have broken some of his ribs with his heavily mailed elbow. In old pictures, and particularly in those representing tilt yards, the knights will be seen keeping the “off side,” the lance being held diagonally across the horse’s neck, the elbow being free so that no fracture ensues when the point strikes anything hard. The extra pieces in the so-called Leicester’s suit were, therefore, as Lord Dillon points out, “for the tilt yard and protected the left side, that on which the riders passed each other.” Pictures in the National Gallery and illuminated manuscripts in the British Museum may be consulted on this subject.

Of the more miscellaneous objects in the collection it is not necessary to say much here. Everything is carefully labelled. There is some Greek bronze armour from CumÆ near Naples. The series of halberds is remarkably fine and varied, as are the swords, the maces, early fire-arms, and gauntlets. We may sum up, in the words of the Guide of 1888, and make up our minds “that of the early linen armour, supplemented with iron, of the Bayeux Tapestry, we have no examples extant; that of the Crusaders and their ‘panoply’ in the twelfth century we are almost equally ignorant; that monumental brasses and illuminated manuscripts enable us both to judge how the knight was armed in the thirteenth century, and also to identify a rare helmet here and there as of the same period; but that for authentic suits of cap a pie and even much less, and for horse armour, apart from mere saddlery or harness, we must depend on a period long after the invention and common use of guns and gunpowder, a period when the skill of the armourer was exercised to ornament tilting suits, defence against fire-arms proving impossible.”

For an account of the ancient foundation known as St. Katherine’s by the Tower see MediÆval London, vol. ii. p. 335.

For history see p. 292.

The earliest date of an incumbent is 1355.

The patronage of the church has always been in the hands of the Crown; it was constituted a rectory with a rector and three chaplains by Edward III., February 10, 1353-54.

The chapel consists of a nave and chancel and an aisle on the north side, separated from the nave by columns of the Decorated period of architecture. It is 66 feet in length, 54 feet in width, and 25 feet in height.

In this church are buried: Anne Boleyn; Katherine Howard; Sir Thomas More; Cromwell, Earl of Essex; Lady Shrewsbury; Admiral Lord Seymour; the Protector Somerset; John Dudley, Earl of Northumberland; Lady Jane Grey; Lord Guilford Dudley; Sir Thomas Overbury; Sir John Elcot; Okey the Regicide; the Duke of Monmouth; Lords Lovat, Kilmarnock, and Balmerino, and others of lesser note.

The Minories lies within Portsoken Ward. Stow says:

“This Portsoken which roundeth as much as the Franchise at the gate, was sometime a guilde and had this beginning as I have reade. In the dayes of King Edgar more than 600 yeres since, there were thirteen knights wellbeloved to the king and realme (for service by them done) which requested to name a certain portion of land on the east part of the Citte, left desolate and forsaken by the inhabitants by reason of too much servitude. They besought the king to have this land, with the Libertie of a guilde for ever; the king granted to their request with conditions following that is that each of them should victoriously accomplish three combates, one above the ground, one under ground, and the thirde in the water, and after this at a certaine day in East Smithfield they should run with speares against all commers, all which was gloriously performed.”

Of the Minories, Stow says:

“From the west part of this Tower Hill towards Ealdegate being a long continual street amongst other smaller buildings in that row there was sometimes an abbey of Nunnes of the order of St. Clare called the Minories.”

This abbey was founded in 1293 by Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, King Edward I.’s brother, and was suppressed in 1539. For account see MediÆval London, vol. ii. p. 329.

The Minories was later noted for its gunsmiths. “In place of this house of Nunnes is now builded divers faire and large houses, for armour, and the habiliments of war.”