Arthur Poyser

“ To lay down a comedy of the great dramatist and take up contemporary records of the Tower is as if one had stepped out of the warm sunshine and fragrant air of mid-June into a dark, damp vault whose atmosphere stings with the chill of a November night.
Tower dungeons were becoming too crowded. Many a poor obscure captive was sent over to{68} France, perhaps to a harder lot, and the vacant places were filled by political offenders. Northumberland killed himself in the Tower; Arundel, made prisoner with him, died—from self-imposed privations, it is said—some months after. ”

“ The actual spot on which the scaffold was erected on the hill is marked, in the garden by which it is now surrounded, by a square of stone paving set in the turf just within the gate on the south-western side of the enclosure. Happy children skip and play on this blood-stained bit of ground; the flowers leap up in April and the birds make melody in May; Nature has healed the sore and done lavishly to make us forget, by her gifts, that here was the scene of angry mobs crying for the slaughter of some of the nation’s noblest men. ”

“ As I look from my window day by day across Tower Hill at the noble old buildings lying beyond, and watch them when silhouetted against a morning sky or lit up by the glow of evening sunshine, I often wonder if justice can ever be done to them now that we have no Shakespeare and no Walter Scott. ”

“ The history of the Tower, as the history of other places, will give us names of famous men and the numbering of years in plenty, but of the inner everyday life of some early century there—nothing. It is only the skilful in stagecraft and romance that dare touch the Tower to turn its records to such uses; men of less skill fail, and give us novels and plays that make weary reading and weary sitting-out. ”

“ I dwell on these points in order to show how hopeless it is to catch any of the real spirit and message of the Tower when to-day, to-day, to-day, is ever intruding itself. We ask for leisure to contemplate a far-off yesterday, and to teach the boys and girls we take to the Tower something of the value of the Tower buildings as concrete embodiments of England’s noble history; but we are only permitted to walk hurriedly in one specified direction, and illusion is destroyed at every point. ”

“ Religious bigotry, alas, is still with us, but men have saner notions to-day as to the value of mere religious opinions, and poor Anne had the misfortune to live in a ruder age than ours. But her sufferings are not forgotten; religious tyranny has lost the power to send to the rack and the stake, and to her, and all who suffered, be due honour given.
Once more the curtain falls on tragedy, and on its rise we see the Tower decked out for revelry. ”

“ Twenty-four Knights of the Bath were created, and, with all the ancient pomp and splendour—for Henry had a keen eye for the picturesque—the usual procession from Tower to Westminster duly impressed, by its glitter, a populace ever ready to acclaim a coronation, in the too-human hope that the new will prove better than the old. ”

“ My wish has been to persuade those who come to visit the Tower that there is a great deal to be seen in its immediate vicinity that the majority of visitors have hitherto neglected, either for want of time or want of guidance. A noble and historic building like the Tower resembles a venerable tree whose roots have spread into the soil in all directions, during the uncounted years of its existence, far beyond the position of its stem. ”

“ The mob on Tower Hill demanded Sudbury; Sudbury was to be delivered to them; give them Sudbury. The awful glare of fire shone into the Tower casements, and the King looked out and saw the houses of many of his nobles being burnt to the ground. The Savoy was on fire, Westminster added flames to colour the waters of the Thames, and fire was seen to rise from the northern heights. Richard was but a boy, and so hard a trial found him almost unequal to the strain it imposed. ”

“ Our necessarily rapid journey through history has brought us to the illustrious Tudor Kings and Queens. The Tower was never more prominent in England’s records than during Tudor reign, from seventh Henry to the last days of great Elizabeth. The early years of the new King were to be remembered by an imprisonment in Tower walls that had little sense of justice as excuse. When the Duke of Clarence was put to death in Edward IV.’s reign, he left behind him his eldest son, then only three years old, whom Richard, after his own son’s death, had a mind to nominate as his heir. ”

“ London seemed to have lost its sense of humour—if the sense had been at all developed at that time—for in Cheapside we are told a castle had been erected “from two sides of which wine ran forth abundantly, and at the top stood a golden angel, holding a crown, so contrived that when the King came near she bowed and presented it to him. In each of the towers was a beautiful virgin ... and each blew in the King’s face leaves of gold and flowers of gold counterfeit,” while the populace yelled blessings on their new monarch, and the conduits ran wine. ”

“ These buildings might well be revered by those who are hardly yet conscious of their value; they, at least, might be spared the impertinent aggressions of to-day. A commercial age has committed one unforgivable crime in pulling down Crosby Hall to erect a bank, and we may well ask ourselves if the Tower itself is safe from such vandalism. Again, it is want of imagination. Our city magnates can appreciate a bank, with its hideous granite pillars and its vapid ornamentations, but an ancient hall which Shakespeare has touched with his magic pen is of no “practical” use, mark you! ”

“ That is why we have come to associate the Tower with murder, torture, and evil passions. We forget that the sun shone on the Royal Palace, on the Green, and even sent a beam of its rays into many a dreary cell ”

“ Fuller has said of this noble girl, “She had the birth of a Princess, the life of a saint, yet the death of a malefactor, for her parent’s offences, and she was longer a captive than a Queen in the Tower.” Her father and Wyatt, before many days had passed, were both beheaded on Tower Hill; many luckless ones who had taken part in the Kentish rising were put to death with every form of cruelty; and, shortly after these terrible days of bloodshed in London, Mary was married to Philip of Spain at Winchester. ”

“ Shakespeare might well have laid all the scenes of another Hamlet within its walls; Scott might have given its name to another Waverley Novel. The possibilities are endless. If Scott had touched it we should have been spared the gloomy sentimentalities{2} of Ainsworth; Shakespeare, in five acts, could have given us a truer picture of Tower comedy and tragedy than the tomes of Bayley and De Ros. Scott would have cast the same romance over the Tower as he did over the rugged strip of land that lies between Callander and Inversnaid. ”

“ If that child in the air and sunshine of the following morning does not take a dislike to the Tower as a rather gloomy Madame Tassaud’s, and too festive a prison, it will be surprising indeed.
The Tower buildings at the present day have been treated in a manner that destroys all illusion. It is the fault of economy and compromise. The attempt has been made to convert the old buildings into dwelling-places with modern comforts, and to accommodate there not only the families of the warders but also a military garrison. ”

“ This miserable cell lay between the dungeon containing the rack and the great dungeon under the crypt of St. John’s Chapel. Though the formidable iron-studded door of Little Ease, with its ingenious system of locks and bolts, is still to be seen, the cell itself has been broken through to give entrance to the black vault beyond. Yet even to-day, in spite of foolish “improvements,” some idea of the power of Little Ease to administer suffering can be gained. ”

“ The cell where Raleigh wrote is looked upon with lack-lustre eye by the youth whose one idea of literature is the football edition of the evening papers.
The Tower itself is the most precious jewel in the nation’s Crown. It is the epitome of English{15} history. From the Norman Conquest to the day that has just dawned we have something here to remind us of our storied past. It might be the most interesting spot in England to young and to old alike. ”

“ Models of the instruments of torture—the rack, thumb-screws, scavenger’s daughter, iron neck-collar, and so forth—are shown in this room, reminding us that though torture was never legal punishment in England, it was practised in Tower dungeons, especially in Tudor times, when, in the wisdom of those in power, occasion demanded it. ”

“ How refreshing it would be to leave the traffic of Great Tower Street behind and pass into the{17} tranquillity of Shakespeare’s day, as we entered the Tower gateway. The modern policeman should no longer repeat the irritating cry, “Get your tickets! Get your tickets!” at the foot of Tower Hill; the wretched refreshment shed, which all visitors are compelled to pass through, should no longer assail us on our entry with its close atmosphere savouring of stale buns. ”

“ In the Tower he was made a knight, and rejoicings in anticipation of his coronation made the old walls ring again to gladness. The State procession from the Tower to{58} the Abbey was conceived and carried through in a spirit of regal magnificence, and from Eastcheap to Westminster the streets were bedecked in a manner expressive of the joy of the people that Henry’s reign of terror had ended. The boy King had not long been on the throne, when, under the guidance of Protector Somerset, in whose hands was all the power of an actual ruler, bloodshed began afresh. ”

“ It is true that Shakespeare lays scenes of his historical plays in the Tower, and that Scott brings{4} Julian Peveril and Nigel within its Traitor’s Gate, for a space; but the dramatist is merely copying locality from the history books, and the novelist is so impatient with the fate that has carried two of his young men under the archway of the Bloody Tower that he cuts off his chapter with the words, “But the thoughts and occurrences of a prison are too uniform for a narrative, and we must now convey our readers into a more bustling scene.” ”

“ The south-eastern portion of the fortress had always been considered that most exposed to attack; the protecting ditch, too, is narrower at this point than elsewhere, hence the need for additional fortification. Beside the Cradle Tower a modern drawbridge has been constructed giving access for stores. Within the outer and inner walls here, lay the Privy Garden, one of the most peaceful and secluded nooks in the fortress—a place of old-world flowers and southern sunshine. ”

“ The Tower was becoming like some mighty monster whose craving for human blood was hard to satisfy. Accuser and accused, yeoman and earl, youth and age, innocence and guilt, seemed to come alike into its greedy maw. Cromwell was taken from the House of Lords to the Tower, and the angry King would listen to no word in his favour. Whatever his crimes as tyrant-councillor to Henry, two things may be reckoned to his credit, for no man is altogether bad. The Bible was printed in English, in 1538, at his wish, and he{54} initiated a system of keeping parish registers. ”

“ Our hero lands at the fatal steps, and as he walks up under the Bloody Tower a handkerchief is dropped down from the window of the cell in which Archbishop Laud was imprisoned. From within that darkened room “a female voice, in a tone wherein grief and joy were indescribably mixed, exclaimed, ‘My son!—my dear son!’” We feel our plot moves quickly when the warder picks up the mysterious bit of cambric and “looks at it with the jealous minuteness of one who is accustomed to detect secret correspondence in the most trifling acts of intercourse. ”

“ Sidney Lee’s Life of Shakespeare that Shakespeare himself, with eight players of the King’s company of actors, walked “from the Tower of London to Westminster in the procession which accompanied the King in his formal entry into London.” There is no other positive record of the great dramatist and poet having visited the Tower. We can but conjecture that a building so indissolubly bound up with the nation’s history would offer no mute appeal to such a mind as his, and that he must have come, at times, to look upon the place where, down to his own day, so many tragic deeds had been done. ”

“ Many a tale has been penned of the times of the Papist prosecution, for instance, into which the people of the Tower have been brought, but so feeble has the grasp of the subject been that we turn to actual history for the “real romance” and exclaim, with greater conviction than ever, that fact is more wonderful than fiction. ”

“ For the convenience of the garrison a paternal War Office has caused to be erected, on the ground where the old Coldharbour Tower stood, the most unsightly building it is possible to conceive within Tower walls. But the putting-up of such a monstrosity convinces one that the greatest want of the present age is imagination. The men who could plan, and then construct in brick and sandstone these “quarters,” must have been those who were hurried through the old fortress in their youth, and who, like the child we have mentioned,{14} took a not unnatural dislike to His Majesty’s Tower. ”

“ I should like, however, to say, lest I may be misunderstood, that from the Tower officials one receives nothing but courtesy. They are not to blame. They are performing the duties imposed on them from without. The pity is that the restless spirit of the age should have found its way within walls hallowed to memories of England’s kings, and the sufferings of her greatest and worthiest men. Were that spirit denied all access to this one spot, lying in the heart of modern London, a visit to the Tower would mean to young and old alike very much more than it{19} means to-day. ”