Tower: An Epic History of the Tower of London

by Jones, Nigel

  I was loath to write because I know not how to comforte you. And God knows I never knewe what sorrowe meant till nowe … Comfort your hart (dear Bess) I shall sorrowe for us both; and I shall sorrowe the lesse because I have not long to sorrowe, because not long to live … My braynes are broken, and it is a torment for me to write, and espetially of Miserie … The Lord bless you, and comfort you, that you may beare patientlie the death of your valiant Sonne.

  Ralegh’s cup of ‘sorrowe’ ran over after two of his captains turned pirate and left the fleet, while the faithful Keymis, blaming himself for the disaster and mortified by Ralegh’s cold reception – ‘You have undone me by your obstinate folly’ – retired to his cabin and shot himself. The ball being deflected by a rib, he finished the job with a dagger. Ralegh briefly considered turning privateer in the service of France, but he knew that to evade his tragic fate would look like cowardice. Bereaved, broken-hearted and with a mutinous crew, he sailed for home. On 21 June 1618 the Destiny docked again at Plymouth.

  News of his disaster had preceded Ralegh. Totally under the influence of the Spanish ambassador, Gondomar, the king had denounced Ralegh’s alleged aggression against Spain, abjectly promising Gondomar that he would send Ralegh to Madrid in chains – but this was a step too far for even his craven council to swallow. In Ralegh’s absence, the Puritan secretary, Ralph Winwood, had died and the faction favouring a Spanish alliance was once again in the ascendant. Public opinion, however, in striking contrast to 1603, was wildly in favour of the last Elizabethan sea dog – a living example of the glory days of the Armada when England’s monarch had not acted as a servile Spanish lapdog.

  For several weeks Ralegh remained in Plymouth. Bess urged him to escape to France, enlisting one of Ralegh’s old captains, Samuel King, and a ship to make the attempt. Twice Ralegh actually set off in a dinghy – and twice he returned. Finally, a treacherous kinsman, Sir Lewis Stukeley, arrested him and conveyed him towards London. At Salisbury, hearing that James was about to arrive on a royal progress, Ralegh staged a humiliating fake illness to try to grab the king’s attention – rolling naked on the floor roaring, and getting a physician to rub irritants into his skin to produce sores. He also wrote an abject Apology to explain the Orinoco debacle. This theatrical demonstration failed. The king refused either to see him or to read his Apology.

  Ralegh arrived in London where he was tricked into making another escape bid on a French ship, which was betrayed by Stukeley. This allowed the authorities to activate the death sentence imposed back in 1603. For the third and final time, the gates of the Tower crashed shut behind him. Lodged in the Brick Tower – his former quarters in the Bloody Tower were now occupied by the murderous Carrs – Ralegh finally resigned himself to his fate. Queen Anne pleaded for her old friend, but her influence over her homosexual husband was nil.

  One of the despairing notes that a friendly jailer, Edward Wilson, smuggled out of the Tower for Ralegh complained that he was ‘sick and weak and in perpetual pain and unrest’. The old man, nearing seventy now, was broken, and when he left the Tower for the last time to appear before his judges at Westminster, his hair was white and matted, and he was, as Attorney General Sir Henry Yelverton noted, ‘a man to be pitied. He hath been a star at which the world hath gazed. But stars may fall, nay they must fall when they trouble the sphere wherein they abide.’

  The cowardly James was extinguishing the last and brightest star in the Elizabethan firmament on the orders of England’s enemy – Spain. It was a national humiliation and hugely unpopular with the public who, barely a decade after they had tried to lynch Ralegh, would now have liked to rescue the hero from a despised king’s hands. Fearing just such an attempt, the authorities rushed to execute him on 29 October, the day after his sentence. He spent his last night, not in the Tower, but in the Gatehouse of Westminster Abbey, close to the Palace Yard where the scaffold had been erected. Even in his last extremity, Ralegh still had enough spirit to play to the gallery – tossing his hat to a bald man, saying that he would need it no more, and asking another bystander if he knew of a plaster to re-affix a severed head. A visiting kinsman, Francis Thynne of Longleat, worried that such jests would detract from his dignity on the scaffold. ‘Do not grudge my last mirth in this world,’ Ralegh replied. ‘When I come to the sad parting you will see me grave enough.’

  The saddest parting of all, later that evening, was from Bess, his companion through so much misfortune. As she left him at midnight she confided that she had been given permission to bury his body. ‘It is well, dear Bess,’ he answered sadly, ‘that thou mayst despose of that dead which thou hadst not always the disposing of when alive.’ Bess Ralegh was faithful to her husband after death, burying his body and keeping his embalmed head with her in a velvet bag until the day she died at the great age of eighty-two. Left alone, Ralegh reworked an old poem he had written for Bess in their springtime and inscribed it in a family bible. It made an excellent epitaph for an explorer on his final journey:

  Even such is Time, which takes in trust

  Our youth, our joys, and all we have,

  And pays us but with age and dust,

  Who in the dark and silent grave

  When we have wandered all our ways

  Shuts up the story of our days.

  And from which earth and grave and dust

  The Lord shall raise me up I trust.

  These moving lines are proof enough that if Ralegh had ever toyed with atheism, such doubts were now behind him. He was dying a Christian, reconciled with God and the world – a fact which seemed to disappoint the Dean of Westminster, Dr Robert Tounson, when he came to offer him Holy Communion and spiritual consolation. Ralegh rose from his knees, reported Tounson, ‘very cheerful and merry’ and even ate a hearty breakfast and smoked a pipeful of his own tobacco. He dressed like an actor donning a costume for a famous last performance: satin doublet, black velvet waistcoat, grey silk stockings, black taffeta breeches and a large black velvet coat. His hair was now carefully combed.

  Ralegh’s last morning was a bright, dry and crisp autumn day. Refusing to tarry by a fire lest he be seen to shiver as he climbed the scaffold, Ralegh stepped out to greet the crowd – remarking how pleased he was to see them all in broad daylight. The spectators around the scaffold were astounded by his calm demeanour. Even his enemies, who had come to gloat and scoff, conceded that these were the last moments of a brave man – and a great soul. Eagerly accepting a glass of sherry, and speaking from pre-prepared notes, he said he would not keep people waiting long as he expected to be meeting Christ in his Kingdom within fifteen minutes.

  He forgave those such as Stukeley who had betrayed him ‘as I hope to be forgiven’ and he pointed out that he had returned voluntarily from South America, refuting whispers that he had been disloyal. He denied hounding Essex to his death, pointing out that his own troubles had begun with his rival’s death. Lastly, he reviewed his own long career ‘as a seafaring man, a soldier and a courtier’ – and, he might have added, as the Tower of London’s most distinguished prisoner. Finally, declaring that he died a member of the Church of England who hoped to be saved and have his sins washed away by the ‘precious blood and merits of our Saviour Christ’, he said goodbye as he departed on his final voyage: ‘I have a long journey to take and must bid the company farewell.’

  Turning to the executioner, Ralegh removed his outer clothes and asked to see the hidden axe. Checking that the blade was well whetted he joked, ‘This is a sharp medicine – but it is a sure cure for all diseases.’ In an echo of Ralegh’s most famous gesture, the executioner spread his own cloak out for the condemned man to kneel on. As he knelt, some pedant asked whether he wanted to face east, as was customary. Ralegh, as ever, was scornful of custom. ‘So the heart be right,’ he observed, ‘it is no matter which way the head lieth.’ Refusing a blindfold, he told the headsman that since he was not afraid of the axe, he would not fear the axe’s shadow. Clearly disconcerted, the man hesitated, a
nd Ralegh’s last words were an irritated order, as though he was commanding a reluctant soldier in battle: ‘What dost thou fear? Strike, man, strike!’

  The executioner struck. But it took a second blow before Ralegh’s head fell. Overcome with emotion, the headsman lifted the dripping object, but omitted the traditional cry of, ‘Behold the head of a traitor.’ The crowd watched in stunned silence. Then a single voice spoke for them all. ‘We have not another such head to be cut off!’

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  GREAT ESCAPES

  THE ATTEMPTED FLIGHT of the Earl of Surrey vividly shows that the Tower of London, seemingly so solid and impermeable, was vulnerable to determined and well-planned escapes. The Tower’s thick walls and stout turrets look far from fragile. Guarded and watched, protected by a wide moat, it seems both impregnable to foes trying to enter from the outside and impenetrable to those trying to get out. Yet, remarkably, no fewer than thirty-seven prisoners have succeeded in escaping – some only temporarily – from the Tower. They ranged in social class from humble foot soldiers to earls and lords, and their breakouts began soon after the White Tower was completed, and continued until the eighteenth century when the Tower ceased to be used regularly to hold state prisoners. Tower security did not seem to improve across nearly ten centuries.

  Ranulf Flambard would have flourished in any age, but his special talents were ideally suited to the robber-baron world of early Norman England. Flambard was the loyal servant of one of England’s most ruthless and rapacious monarchs, William II, ‘Rufus’ or ‘the Red’, a tribute to either his carroty hair or his choleric complexion. Rufus was determined to outdo even his father, William the Conqueror, in severity towards his English subjects who, forty years after Hastings, he still saw as hostile, potentially rebellious serfs to be exploited by their Norman overlords until every last drop of sweat had been wrung from them. Flambard was happy to assist.

  Flambard was born in Normandy and followed his father into the Church. A bright boy with a domineering personality, in the Conqueror’s chancery he proved adept at squeezing revenues from the English. He was one of the chief compilers of William’s Domesday Book – the vast audit of the country’s economic value – which lists young Ranulf as holding land in several counties. By the time the Conqueror died in 1087, he was chaplain to Maurice, Bishop of London, and keeper of the royal seal.

  William I’s patrimony was split between his three sons. The eldest, Robert Curthose, inherited Normandy. The second born, William Rufus, received England, while the youngest, Henry, got hard cash. Flambard chose to serve Rufus, the new king of England. Already holding a prebend (church stipend or salary) in the wealthy diocese of Salisbury, Ranulf acquired similar church sinecures, demonstrating the acquisitive habits that became his hallmark, refusing to replace church canons when they died and continuing to draw their stipends himself.

  No mean extortionist himself, Rufus admired Flambard’s ruthlessness, and the cleric rose to become chief treasurer, justiciar (lawmaker) and chaplain to Rufus’s licentious court. Flambard effectively ran the country during Rufus’s absences, and he brought his creative accounting methods to bear on his new responsibilities. Tasked with raising the fyrd – the ancient Saxon militia – for Rufus’s campaigns against his brother Robert in Normandy, Ranulf assembled archers and swordsmen, relieved each man of the ten shillings his native village had given him for his keep – and discharged them all. After creaming off a generous commission for himself, he used the remaining cash to raise mercenaries to fight the king’s war. Another ingenious money-making wheeze was to extort a tax – known as a ‘relief’ – from the unfortunate sixteen abbeys and bishoprics he administered. Of Flambard’s rule a chronicler truly said, ‘He skinned the rich, ground down the poor, and swept other men’s inheritances into his net.’

  In 1099 Flambard became Bishop of Durham. Rumour alleged that he had paid a hefty bribe of £1,000 to secure his mitre. ‘All justice slept – money was the Lord,’ a chronicler recorded. But this flinty-hearted exploiter of the poor was also one of the great builders of early medieval England. As well as constructing Durham Cathedral, Flambard threw London’s first stone bridge across the Thames and was responsible for erecting Westminster Hall. He also put up the first curtain wall around the White Tower of London – a structure with which he was about to become uncomfortably familiar.

  On 2 August 1100, Rufus died a famous death in the New Forest. Pierced through the chest by an arrow fired – in malice or by mishap – as the sun set on a burning summer day, the king lay on the forest floor all night while his killer, Sir Walter Tyrell, and other courtiers scattered to nearby ports. A passing charcoal burner named Purvis slung Rufus’s corpse on his cart and carried it to Winchester Cathedral, where it rests to this day. Flambard was one of the few to mourn his dead monarch. Rufus’s brother Henry wasted no time claiming the Crown. Henry moved to win approval from his new subjects by punishing the hated Flambard, and a fortnight after Rufus’s death, he was seized, charged with embezzlement and immured behind the gleaming new white walls of the Tower that, by a hideous irony, he himself had constructed. He was the first recorded state prisoner jailed in the fortress.

  Flambard stayed almost six months in the Tower before achieving another record: the first state prisoner there became the Tower’s first successful escaper. As a wealthy prince of the Church, he had been allowed to retain his servants, and his meals were brought in. Access to the outside world allowed him to organise his exit. On the night of 2/3 February 1101 Flambard threw a lavish banquet for his jailers. The wine, paid for from the bishop’s deep pockets, flowed freely, and the turnkeys were soon the worse for wear. Taking advantage of their befuddlement, Flambard slipped away to an antechamber where a rope, sent in previously inside a barrel of oysters, lay coiled. Fastening it securely, Flambard squeezed his bulk through the narrow window, slipped down the rope, and, climbing his own curtain wall, found a prearranged horse which carried him to a waiting ship on the river.

  Doubtless gold had greased Flambard’s path to freedom, and the constable of the Tower, Geoffrey de Mandeville, may have been in on the plot. King Henry himself might even have covertly allowed the able administrator to get away. This theory is given weight by the haste with which the king made his peace with Flambard. Taking refuge with Duke Robert in Normandy, the errant bishop helped Robert invade England only six months after his dramatic escape. A temporary truce between the warring brothers was signed at Alton in Hampshire which Flambard probably helped arrange. Under its terms he was formally forgiven by Henry and restored to the See of Durham.

  In 1105 warfare between the brothers resumed and in September 1106 Henry decisively defeated Robert at Tinchebray in Normandy. Flambard transferred his loyalty to the winner, retired from politics and settled in Durham where he completed work on the cathedral and Durham Castle. He died in September 1128 and was buried in the chapter house at Durham. His tomb was opened in 1874 by the ever-inquisitive Victorians. Flambard’s skeleton revealed that he had been five foot nine tall. His bishop’s crozier and signet ring had been buried with him.

  Like Flambard, the second state prisoner to escape the Tower was also de facto ruler of England during the reign of an incompetent, unpopular king. Unlike Flambard, however, Roger Mortimer’s time in the Tower marked the beginning, not the end, of his dictatorial power. Mortimer was a Marcher lord, with huge estates along the lawless borders of Wales. Born at his family’s Herefordshire seat, Wigmore Castle, on 25 April 1287, Roger’s evident ability won him the regard of the ageing Edward I. Young Mortimer became a boon companion of Edward, Prince of Wales, the man he was destined to supplant and – probably – murder. Superficially the two young men were similar: tall, handsome and lusty. Mortimer fathered a dozen children in as many years; Edward, despite his homosexual dalliances, sired two sons and two daughters legitimately and had one bastard son. Though bold and muscular like his father ‘Longshanks’, the first Prince of Wales
lacked the steel which Mortimer was so soon to display. Young Edward was drawn to ‘effeminate’ pursuits such as music and the decorative arts, and offended conservative courtiers by such lowly behaviour as harnessing himself to a peasant’s plough, or plying the oars of a rowing boat.

  But after succeeding his father in 1307, it was Prince Edward’s unconventional sexuality which hastened his downfall. In 1312 he lost his first gay favourite, Piers Gaveston, murdered by barons whom Gaveston had gone out of his way to mock. An outraged but powerless Edward bided his time and brooded on his revenge. Roger Mortimer remained loyal. But his once close companionship with the king withered in the face of the monarch’s ineptitude, until finally dissolving in total disillusion.

  By 1318 Edward’s doting gaze had fallen on a new favourite, with all Gaveston’s ambition but none of his charm. Hugh Despenser was a man whose greed and guile knew no bounds. Roger Mortimer was an ancestral foe of the Despensers. His grandfather had killed Hugh’s grandfather at the battle of Evesham, and young Despenser had not forgotten the ancient feud, vowing to destroy Mortimer. After a long absence fighting Edward’s wars in Ireland, on returning to England Mortimer was horrified to find how far the king had fallen under Despenser’s thumb. The ruthless new favourite flouted law, custom and human decency in amassing goods, land and property. He specialised in intimidating women as he cheated, robbed and bullied his way to become the richest magnate in the kingdom. Once again, the barons combined to curb an overreaching royal favourite. The Marcher lords – Mortimer among them – led the revolt. Again Edward backed down, agreeing to exile Despenser and his equally rapacious namesake father.

  Once the Despensers were out of the way, however, the barons squabbled over the spoils that the fallen favourites had left behind. Edward exploited these divisions, and within two years had re-established his untrammelled power. He recalled the Despensers from banishment, defeating his enemies, and wreaked vengeance with a string of hangings and beheadings. More than a dozen peers and hundreds of their humbler followers perished in a terror marking the beginning of a true royal tyranny. Mortimer surrendered to the king at Shrewsbury in January 1322. In front of the gloating Despensers, he was humiliated, stripped of his land – including his beloved birthplace, Wigmore Castle – and left with only the clothes he stood up in. He was consigned to the Tower while Edward and the Despensers travelled north to extinguish the last embers of the barons’ revolt.