William Benham

“ In those same early days he was in conflict with another man who was to become one of the most prominent politicians of his day—Thomas Wentworth, presently Lord Strafford. Wentworth too, according to his light, was a patriot. He was sincerely desirous for the prosperity of the country, but held that strength is the essence of good government, had a contempt for constitutional forms, and in his arrogance, knowing his own good intentions, paid no respect to those who opposed him. Eliot stood at the opposite pole. Parliament was to him the voice and the majesty of the nation. ”

“ In the reign of Richard III Henry Wyatt, a gentleman of Surrey and member of the House of Commons, was thrown into the Tower for favouring the claims of Henry Tudor. According to his son’s statement, Richard had him tortured, vinegar and mustard being forced down his throat, and afterwards remonstrated with him. “Wyatt, why art thou such a fool?” said he, “Henry of Richmond is a beggarly pretender; forsake him and become mine. Thou servest him for moonshine in water. I can reward thee, and I swear to thee, I will.” ”

“ When he ascended the scaffold he observed that it was somewhat insecure. “Prythee, good fellow,” he said to one of the guards, “help me up; when I come down let me shift for myself.” And when the headsman prayed his forgiveness, “I forgive thee, good fellow, with all my heart,” he said as he laid his head on the block. Immediately after he raised it for a moment to remove his beard. “That,” he said, “has not committed treason; pity it should be cut.”
Every succeeding year of this darkening reign brought more prisoners to the Tower. ”

“ Facing us is the Middle Tower, the gateway which leads over the Moat into the fortress itself. But as I am keeping outside I pass this and ascend the hill. To-day the whole of the bank of the Moat on the western and northern side is laid out as a flower garden, and the many seats among the trees are well occupied with loungers, mostly poor, some asleep and some reading the newspaper. ”

“ 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, [Pg 2] 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. ”

“ Yet even his rascality grows dim beside that of Titus Oates, whose horrible concoction of lies concerning a pretended Popish plot sent nearly forty men to the scaffold. The execution of William Lord Stafford on Tower Hill, December 29, 1680, on the charge sworn to by Oates that he planned to kill the king and place the Duke of York on the throne, was the turning-point in the agitation. When it began Oates was half deified by the excited populace as the deliverer of the country; but as time went on men shook their heads, doubtfully at first, then strongly. ”

“ There are tragical events in plenty, but there are other notes on which it is pleasant and interesting to dwell. He began his reign by imprisoning Empson and Dudley, who had been his father’s instruments of extortion. He did so because he knew how they were hated by the nation, though he profited by their misdeeds, for Henry VII bequeathed him what was then the enormous sum of £1,850,000. Next year they were both beheaded on Tower Hill. Meanwhile the King was holding high festival to celebrate his marriage with his brother’s widow Katharine. ”

“ In the survey of Queen Elizabeth it is the Hall Tower, from its proximity to the hall just mentioned. It is a large circular building; the lower part is probably the work of William Rufus. The upper storey consists of a fine handsome chamber, with a recess which it is said Henry VI used as his private chapel, fitting it with aumbry and piscina; and tradition states that it was whilst he was praying here that he was murdered. The Wakefield Tower is now the receptacle of the King’s Crown and all the other splendid articles of the English regalia. ”

“ He, always a man, therefore, of high rank, appointed a Lieutenant, to whom he allowed £20 a year, with such savings as could be made in furniture and food. In the reign of Henry VIII, the Lieutenant, who had now become the actual prison warder, had a new house built for his accommodation, in a courtly quarter, under the Belfry. This is now “the King’s House,” the residence of the present Major of the Tower, General Milman, who is, ex officio, a Justice of the Peace for the Tower Liberties, and a Deputy Lieutenant of the Tower Hamlets. ”

“ The Duke of Northumberland, who had risen victorious over the Seymour family, and was apparently in the plenitude of power at King Edward’s death, was an able, bold, and unprincipled man. He had wedded his fourth son, Lord Guildford Dudley, to the Lady Jane, and caused the dying Edward to declare her his legitimate successor. ”

“ Charles I. He had consistently held to his opinions, and now he saw his way, as he thought, to enforce authority as the rule in religion, with uniformity as its natural consequence. In 1626 he was made Bishop of Bath and Wells, in 1628 of London, Chancellor of the University of Oxford in 1629, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633. It is needless to say that his determination to enforce uniformity was identified by the Presbyterians as of a piece with Strafford’s “thorough.” Of his zeal, his honesty and purity of purpose there is no question, any more than of his holiness of life. ”

“ Henry broke out into ungovernable fury when he heard it, and declared that the red hat might come, but that there should be no head on which to place it. The bishop was brought to trial at Westminster and beheaded on Tower Hill June 15, 1535. “There is in this realm no man,” said Sir Thomas More, “in wisdom, learning, and [Pg 45] long approved virtue together, meet to be matched and compared with him.” He died with perfect calmness and dignity. The head was fixed on London Bridge, and the body lay exposed to insult all day. ”

“ There is no need here to discuss the character of George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham. Dryden’s character of him as “Zimri” appears to be as true as it is masterly. He was an infant when his father was assassinated, and was brought up with the children of Charles I, and served them after the king’s death, fighting for the younger Charles at Worcester. But in Holland he quarrelled with the queen-mother and Clarendon, returned to England and married Fairfax’s daughter, for which he was sent to the Tower in 1658. ”

“ Though the horrors of the stake were at an end, religious persecution was not; and the Tower seldom appears in the reign of Elizabeth save as a State prison. The Reformers were only too ready to retaliate on the Roman party, and so the Bishop of Winchester (Gardiner) , who had rendered himself obnoxious under Mary, was soon in durance here, and was followed by the Archbishop of York, the Bishops of Ely, Lincoln, Worcester, Exeter, and Bath, and by Feckenham, Abbot of Westminster, and other Church dignitaries, for denying the Queen’s supremacy.
And there were fresh prisoners of State. ”

“ On December 29, 1460, York was defeated by Queen Margaret and slain at the battle of Wakefield, while King Henry was keeping Christmas in [Pg 34] London. She was fighting for her son’s rights; the King was under the care of the Earl of Warwick, who was actually supporting the claims of the Yorkists. In the following February Margaret was defeated three times, and Edward, Duke of York, was proclaimed King in London without waiting for Parliament. On Palm Sunday, 1461, the battle of Towton, the most terrible ever fought on English ground, placed the kingdom in Edward IV’s hands. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We pass on to one of the foulest records in the history of our great fortress. Thomas Overbury, the son of a judge, was sent by his father “on a voyage of pleasure” to Edinburgh in 1601, and there made acquaintance, which ripened into intimate friendship, with one Robert Carr, page to the Earl of Dunbar. On the accession of King James to the [Pg 73] English throne he showed Carr great favour, and brought him to London. Carr, conscious of his own defective education and training, leaned much on Overbury’s ability, who thus to some extent shared his prosperity and was knighted in 1608. ”

“ Stafford was beheaded on Tower Hill, and the others were hanged at Tyburn. Queen Mary died on November 17, 1558, and the accession of Elizabeth was certainly hailed with joy by the English nation.
Elizabeth was at Hatfield when her sister died. On November 28 she came to London, and entered, amidst general acclamations, the fortress where she had been so rigorously imprisoned. It is no wonder if it found no charms for her; on December 5 she retired first to Somerset House, then to Whitehall, where she remained until the eve of her coronation, when she came back to the Tower again. ”

“ Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, had been a prisoner there under King Edward; he was now restored to his dignity, and he paid a visit to Northumberland, who, in the hope of saving his life, declared himself a Catholic. Gardiner naturally took the opportunity; Mass was celebrated in the White Tower Chapel, and the Duke received after making recantation. Next day he was beheaded on Tower Hill, still clinging desperately to the hope of life, and making profession all the way to the scaffold of the fervency of his faith. ”

“ Perkin Warbeck was the son of a [Pg 40] citizen of Tournay, who came to England as a serving man to two or three English gentlemen, and in 1491, moved by vanity and ambition, whilst in Ireland, where feeling against Henry VII was strong, declared himself to be the Duke of York, who had been reported murdered in the Tower with his brother Edward V. The King of Scotland, James IV, acknowledged him, and two years later gave him his own cousin, Catherine Gordon, to wife. Charles VIII of France also for a while acknowledged him. But his strongest ally was Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy. ”

“ The office of Master is the only preferment in the gift of the Queen Consort or Queen Dowager. Queen Philippa, Edward III’s wife, gave houses in Kent and Herts for its additional support. Thomas de Bekington, Master in 1445, afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells, obtained a charter of privileges, by which the precincts of the hospital were decreed free of all jurisdiction, civil or religious, except that of the Lord Chancellor, and to help the funds an annual fair was to be held on Tower Hill, to last twenty-one days from the Feast of St. James. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Buckingham had now broken with Spain, and in this Eliot heartily went with him, but his feeling was altogether based upon the rights of the House of Commons and the popular feeling against any Spanish alliance. He was one of the leaders also of the impeachment of the Earl of Middlesex. Soon there appeared serious signs [Pg 75] of his divergence from the king’s policy. He was no Puritan, having a strong antipathy to Calvinism; but he urged enforcement of the recusancy laws against the Roman Catholics, because religion “made distractions among men.” ”

“ We think of the men, not only brought in as prisoners, but carried forth again to Westminster Hall for trial, and brought back so often under sentence of death, with the edge of the axe turned towards them. Not the Roman Capitol, nor the Römer of Frankfurt, nor the Bridge of Sighs at Venice can count such a list of names as Traitors’ Gate. St. Thomas’s Tower was built by Henry III, and named by him after St. Thomas of Canterbury. There is an old piscina showing that it once contained a chapel. ”

“ How this rebellion was quelled is no part of our subject, but the troubles of King Richard were by no means ended. In 1387 he had again to fly to the Tower for security against his uncle Gloucester and the other disaffected barons. His weakness and imbecility, and the corruptness of his ministers, had exasperated the nation against him, and Gloucester seized the regal authority and placed it in the hands of commissioners. The King summoned a Parliament at Nottingham which supported him; the nobles retorted by marching on London with forty thousand men. ”