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like adequate treatment, and upon which we can only lightly and briefly touch. William the Conqueror and William the Red fixed the style and plan of the structure, impressed indelibly upon it the character of a fortress, and began its history as a dungeon. Necessarily they developed towards it the unfavourable opinion of the Londoners, by causing them at once to realize how firm a grasp it laid upon their liberties, while at the same time vigorous levies were exacted for its construction. The money of the citizens contributed to their own subjection. Naturally in its earlier days the Tower was not popular.

Stephen was a monarch to whom the Londoners took kindly. He was their candidate for the throne, and by their election only was his possession of the crown rendered probable. In 1143 he managed to make Geoffrey, Earl of Essex, who was then holding the Tower for Matilda, prisoner, and as his ransom exacted the surrender of the Tower. Stephen managed to hold it for ten years. In Henry the Second's reign large sums were spent on the buildings; but already its associations had become grim and forbidding, and Fitz-Stephen described it as 'great and strong, with encircling walls rising from a deep foundation, and built with mortar tempered with the blood of beasts.' This last statement is of course mythical; but there is ample evidence that more than the first scenes of the Tower tragedy of human cruelty and suffering had been enacted prior to Henry the Second's time.

In 1215 the barons seized London, and the Tower was held by the Archbishop of Canterbury, in connection with the struggle which resulted in John's very unwilling assent to the Magna Charta. Henry III., during his long reign of fifty-six years, almost rebuilt the Tower. He did not, indeed, as in the case of Westminster Abbey, resolutely sweep away almost every trace of his predecessors' work, but he spent very large sums, greatly increased the strength of the place as a fortress, and built the entire river front and quay. In 1258 the barons again seized the Tower, restoring it to Henry after promises which, in a few years, by the special permission of the people, he faithlessly broke. Edward I. continued his father's work upon the Tower; Edward II. used it mainly as a place of refuge from his enemies; while Edward III. passed the first years of his reign here, until he had rescued public affairs from the confusion into which they had fallen during his predecessor's troubled rule. The Beauchamp, Salt, and probably the Bowyer towers date from this reign. Edward III. used the Tower as an arsenal, greatly developed the Mint within it, and tried many plans for improving the military weapons of his time, carrying on, among others, those curious experiments for manufacturing pulvis pro ingeniis, in which, according to the records in 1346 and 1347, nine hundredweight and twelve pounds of saltpetre, and eight hundred and eighty-six pounds of quick sulphur, were used. This is taken by competent authorities to indicate that

gunpowder was at that time manufactured in the Tower. In Edward's reign also came the first of a long series of royal prisoners of war-John, King of Scotland, captured at Neville's Cross in 1347; Charles of Blois, nephew to the King of France; John de Vienne, governor of Calais; and in 1350 John, King of France, and many of his nobles.

In Richard the Second's reign the Tower was captured by Wat Tyler and his adherents, who summarily executed Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury; and here, in 1399, Richard signed his abdication. For the next century the Tower was alternately a fortress or a refuge, the former under kings like Henry V. and Edward IV., the latter under a weak man like Henry VI. Henry VIII. seems to have thoroughly repaired the buildings; but from his time the popularity of the place as a royal residence began to decline. Elizabeth was not likely to associate any pleasant memories with the walls which had witnessed the execution of her mother, and to which she herself had been brought an unwilling prisoner. The rival claims of Richmond, St. James's, and Whitehall, the troubles of the Commonwealth, the development of social life and luxury, all tended to render the Tower unsuitable for royal residence; and hence it came to pass that the last English monarch who set out upon the time-honoured procession on coronation day from the Tower to Westminster Abbey was Charles II. Since that day a great deal has been done by unwise restoration, by Philistine destruction, by the erection of unsightly buildings, which have either hidden or swept away ancient work, to deface and injure the Tower. But, notwithstanding all the chances of time, and the follies of men in authority, it still remains the one fortress and place of past royal residence, surpassing all others in historical association and perennial interest.

And now a few details relating to special buildings. The first architect employed, the builder of the White Tower, was Gundulf, a monk from the Abbey of Bec, in Normandy. From this famous religious house came the first two Norman Archbishops of Canterbury, Lanfranc, the wise administrator, and Anselm, the man who could withstand even the wrath of William the Red, the man who penned the most profound and most helpful religious works of the Middle Ages. Gundulf was consecrated Bishop of Rochester in 1077, and belonged to that school of architects who reared the Conqueror's cathedral at Caen, Durham Cathedral, and other structures of similar massive grandeur. It is one of the strange contrasts and ironies of life that Gundulf was a man of such sympathetic nature, and so easily moved by the sorrows of others, that he was known as 'the weeper.' And yet his brain planned, and his skill directed, the construction of a building whose life-history was to be one long tale of cruelty, suffering, tears, and blood. He lived well into Henry the First's reign, dying in 1108. Hence he was able to complete not only the Keep, but also, in all probability, a considerable part of the inner ward. The foundations of this, from nine to twelve

feet thick, and the lower half of the Wakefield Tower, date from this period.

The White Tower is of enormous strength, and slightly irregular in plan. It is rectangular, forming a nearly but not quite perfect square. But the regularity of outline is broken at the north-east angle by a circular tower, and the south-eastern angle is occupied by the apex of the chapel, which curves boldly outwards as shown in our frontispiece-and forms a marked feature in the exterior view. The length from north to south along the western wall is 118 feet, from east to west the breadth is 107 feet. The keep, as may be well seen from the accompanying plan,

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consists of basements, and of three upper stages. It is divided into two unequal portions by a strong wall running north and south, and the eastern portion is again subdivided into two sections. This interior wall allows communication between the eastern and western sections by means of arches, of which in the crypt there is one, and on each of the other floors five. There are also five windows looking towards the Beauchamp Tower on each floor. On each of the three floors the western and north-eastern parts are occupied by large, unvaulted apartments; but the south-eastern section of the structure is occupied by vaulted apartments; on the ground level a sub-crypt, Little Ease; above this a crypt known as Queen Elizabeth's Armoury, and then, extending through the second and third stages, St. John's Chapel.

LITTLE EASE.

LOWER STORE

ROOM.

40 FEET

VERTICAL SECTION OF THE WHITE TOWER, EAST AND WEST.

The White Tower can never have been a comfortable residence. It was built for purely defensive purposes, and as a strong place of refuge. The massive thickness of the walls, and the paucity of staircases, show that

the main object of the architect was to make it impregnable as regards any attack from without. If the way in which Gundulf's building has survived the wear and tear of eight centuries may be taken as a symbol of the firmness of grasp with which the 'Stark' William seized upon Harold's crown, the skilful way in which security was secured for the residents, and the absence of all home comfort in the gloomy pile, may be taken as evidence that the Conqueror well knew he could retain that crown only by the exercise of that force and courage which placed it in the first instance within his grasp. This unsuitability for comfortable residence explains why, from very early times, there were buildings between the southern wall and the Wakefield Tower more suitable for royal residence-buildings which, in one form or another, survived until the seventeenth century. In these, so far as home comfort was understood in Plantagenet times, the royal residents and their chief attendants doubtless secured a measure of luxury unattainable in the larger and less attractive apartments of the great Keep.

Several parts of the White Tower, including the crypts and dungeons, are not shown to visitors as a matter of course, but special application to the authorities on the part of those who have good reasons for wishing to see them will almost always prove successful. No visitor, however, is allowed to go without a warder, and it is well to be somewhat sceptical as to the statements made. Unfortunately the authorities do not make a careful study of the true history of the Tower a compulsory condition of entry into the ranks of the 'beefeaters.' The entrance to the basement is in the northern wall. On this side the ground level is higher by twenty-five feet than on the south. So, after passing through the wall, over fifteen feet thick, the floor is reached by descending a long flight of steps. Like the upper stages, the basement consists of three apartments, a large one on the western side and two smaller on the eastern. The flight of steps terminates at the end of the north-eastern room, known as the 'torturechamber.' Here stood the rack, and yet visible in the floor are the holes for the posts of that instrument of cruelty. Here also in former days were the thumbscrews, scavenger's daughter, and all the horrid apparatus for inflicting exquisite suffering upon the human frame. The instruments perished for the most part in the fire of 1841. But although they are no longer in evidence to deepen the impression, yet the dim light, the chill atmosphere, and the power of imagination, make a visit to this room a gruesome experience. How often, one feels, must these dark rooms have re-echoed the groans of great criminals like Guy Fawkes, of noble martyrs like Anne Askew!

A BEEFEATER.

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The south-eastern vault, the sub-crypt of the chapel, is known as Little Ease, an accurate description of the condition of those who were unfortunate enough to be immured in it. It is entered by a very ancient door covered with bolts and bars, battered and defaced, but still strong, and said to be the only ancient door left in the Tower. The chamber is forty

seven feet by fifteen, and the only light comes from a deep recess and loophole in the eastern wall. The warder imparts a quantity of information, some of which is interesting and probable, some absurd. He tells you that Guy Fawkes was imprisoned in the cell formed by what is now the entrance into Little Ease, that the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot were shut up in Little Ease, and that Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, was confined in the western dungeon. There is an inscription on the wall signed I. Fisher, but the man who carved it was tainly not the bishop. In all probability he was a Jesuit, arrested nearly a century after the bishop's execution, in connection with the Gunpowder Plot. But one needs no specific information to receive very uncanny impressions while walking through these gloomy chambers. They must ever have been admirably suited for deeds of cruelty, and wretched indeed were those who heard the door clang upon them and the bolts shot home, keeping them exposed to the vengeance or dependent for justice upon the flinty hearts of Norman, Plantagenet, or Tudor sovereigns.

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THE SO-CALLED RALEIGH'S CELL IN THE WHITE TOWER.

The stage directly above the dungeons is used as an armoury for the storage of rifles, and contains nothing of any special interest to the ordinary visitor. But on passing through the armoury one of the most interesting

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