by Geoff Abbott
The instrument they used for inscribing was in all probability the dagger. Forks were not invented until the seventeenth century; before that men carried daggers with which to cut their food and convey it to their mouths. It was of little use in an escape bid. The century of the hostage is the twentieth century; when almost any sacrifice is made to save a human life. But in the Middle Ages life was cheap and a prisoner who, holding his warder hostage and demanding freedom, would have been told to go ahead – the Lieutenant had many more warders with which to replace the one stabbed! And should the prisoner employ his dagger to commit suicide, it would simply save the axeman a job.
Among those who left their marks in the stone is Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel. A devout Catholic, he was imprisoned in 1585 accused of aiding the Jesuits and, later, of praying for the success of the Spanish Armada in its attempted invasion of these islands. Queen Elizabeth spared his life, even offering him his freedom if he would forsake his religion. He refused. For ten years he was held prisoner, then died, in his fortieth year, in the Beauchamp Tower.
One of the more famous occupants of the State Prison Room was Lord Guildford Dudley, son of the Duke of Northumberland. The duke, adviser to the ailing King Edward VI, arranged for Guildford to marry the king’s cousin Lady Jane Grey, and then recommended to the King that she was the person most suited to succeed to the throne. She was eligible by birth, and the Duke was a very ambitious man. To have his son and daughter-in-law King and Queen of England would have given him immeasurable power and wealth.
The young king agreed to this, then conveniently died. Whereupon Northumberland brought Guildford and his wife to the White Tower and proclaimed Lady Jane Grey Queen of England. But he was completely unaware that the majority of the country wanted, not Jane, but the dead king’s sister, Mary Tudor. So overwhelming the support for Mary, so troublesome the uprisings by those few who supported Jane, that the days of the uncrowned queen were numbered. She was beheaded on Tower Green; her father-in-law Northumberland begged for mercy and promised to renounce his faith, to embrace Catholicism. Mary Tudor permitted him to do so, the ceremony being enacted in St John’s Chapel in the White Tower. Then she had him executed!
Young Guildford and his four brothers were all imprisoned in the Beauchamp Tower, where two carvings of the name ‘Jane’ have been found inscribed on the walls. Of the five brothers, one died therein, three were released, and Guildford perished beneath the axe on Tower Hill. His headless body, ‘dragged in a carre’ across the cobbles, was entombed in the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula on Tower Green.
As with other towers, so the Beauchamp has its share of supernatural happenings. The battlements connecting the Bell Tower with the Beauchamp had the name ‘Prisoners’ Walk’ and later ‘Elizabeth’s Walk’. Here those prisoners who were not close confined (that is, fettered and chained within their cells), were allowed to exercise, and even catch a glimpse of the outside world.
Hardly surprising then, that a Tower guide should see a man wearing cavalier-type clothing moving along those battlements. This sighting occurred during the afternoon and, as Elizabeth’s Walk cannot be seen from the Inner Ward because of the houses obscuring it, the figure could only have been seen from outside the Tower of London, from the area of the front gates.
The apparition could well have been that of James, Duke of Monmouth who in 1685 led the ill-fated Monmouth’s Rebellion against the King’s forces. Defeated, he was imprisoned in the Bell Tower and doubtless exercised on Elizabeth’s Walk. After his trial he was taken to Tower Hill and there, before a multitude of spectators, gave the axeman a few gold guineas to make a quick job of the execution.
James, Duke of Monmouth
‘Pray do your business well,’ he said. ‘Do not serve me as you did my Lord Russell; I have heard that you struck him three or four times – if you strike me twice I cannot promise not to move.’
The inducement availed him little; the axeman took five blows to sever his head, much to the fury of the crowd. It is related that the head was subsequently sewn back on to the torso so that a portrait could be painted, the join being hidden by a scarf.
Inside the Beauchamp itself, eerie gasps have been heard from time to time, and ornaments unaccountably change their position within the room. An old story recounts how the spectre of Lord Guildford Dudley was seen, shedding ghostly tears, drifting around the State Prison Room. Poor Dudley, so soon to be parted from his young queen-wife, to be reunited after death beneath the cold altar stones of St Peter’s Chapel.
The White Tower
Planted as he was in manhood’s strength,
Upon the Broadwalk where his eyes had length
Enough to compass majestie and might,
He made a study of the nation’s vile disorder.
‘Ever like this it has been,’ he pondered,
‘Ever the arrow’s line has wandered,
‘Till the bow is slack and still,
‘And the shaft without a flight.
‘But look you, London,
‘Look you God’s environ’d world,
‘To where the Union Flag at sun-up is unfurl’d,
‘There by the White Tower’s glowering impound,’
‘Is stood a Yeoman Warder strongly to his ground,
‘And ‘neath his breast in happy pride encurl’d,
‘The throbbing heart of England still is found.’
Standing proudly in the Inner Ward, dominating Tower Green, the Broadwalk and indeed all the other towers, is the Norman Keep – the White Tower. Ninety-two feet high, its battlemented roof is capped by four turrets, a roof strong enough to support the weight of the many cannon which defended the Keep in the reign of Henry VIII.
Like most Norman keeps it originally had but a single entrance, situated one floor above ground level. Should all outer defences fall, the men-at-arms would then hack away the external wooden steps and, out of reach of battering rams could continue to hold out against attack. The White Tower was self-sufficient even in that vital commodity, water, a well in the basement providing ample supplies.
Not content with the protection of the moat, drawbridges and portcullis, two surrounding walls and a small resident army of troops, the Royal Family lived as far away as possible from any attack – on the uppermost floor of the White Tower. Adjoining their apartments was the Great Council Chamber, where the issues of the day were resolved, usually by the king. The White Tower was primarily a castle built for defence rather than a palace for luxury, and so the narrow passages could be defended by just two men, and the spiral stair was designed ‘clockwise ascending’ so that a right-handed defender had superiority wielding a sword against a right-hander attacking up the stairs. Comfort there was little, windows being small for protection but, unglazed, admitted the bitter winds blowing along the river. Tapestries on the walls, straw strewn floors, log fires crackling in the fireplaces; primitive conditions indeed, but at least the occupants were safe from attack. In those days that was all important.
The Banqueting Chamber and the quarters of the nobles of the Court occupied the next floor down, while the reception floor housed the men-at-arms and personal staff.
Nor was the spiritual side of life neglected; the White Tower possesses one of the most perfect examples of a Norman chapel, the Chapel Royal of St John the Evangelist. Here royalty worshipped; here the Order of the Bath took place in which potential knights prepared themselves before their accolade; here too, Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed Queen of England, the girl so young to be queen, so soon to die; and Mary Tudor plighted her troth to King Philip of Spain.
The lowest floor, half underground, housed the armoury and kitchens, the dungeons and the torture chamber. No doors or windows there, in those days – behind the fifteen-feet thick walls, accessible only via the spiral stairs from above, the prisoners were incarcerated. There, in the darkness and squalor, men – and women – suffered the agonies of the rack, the fearsome constrictions of Skeffington’s Daughter, i
ts iron bands contorting the body beyond endurance. For while coronation processions rich in panoply and trappings did indeed start from the White Tower; while festive carousals filled the Banqueting Chamber, life in the fortress was only revelry and feasting for those in the sovereign’s favour. Others, who had forfeited the royal trust, forfeited their freedom – and later, their heads.
From the very roof to the dungeons, the White Tower has witnessed violence and death. Kings and princes, lords and ladies, even common soldiers looked their last on the world there. During the Civil War a Royalist soldier was hotly chased up the spiral stairs by a Roundhead. Having lost his sword, desperately the Royalist dropped to his knee and, tripping his pursuer, seized him and hurled him through the window, the Roundhead crashing to his death on the Broadwalk below.
Centuries earlier, in 1215, the country had groaned beneath the harsh rule of King John. But, tradition has it, he had more to concern him than the suffering of the masses. Despite being married, he was determined to possess Maud FitzWalter, ‘Fair Maud’, daughter of Baron FitzWalter of Baynards Castle. She repulsed his every advance and so, not to be denied, he had her abducted and locked up in the round turret of the White Tower. Her father protested so vehemently that the king exiled him and his family to France and then, all obstacles removed, continued his assault of Fair Maud’s virtue! Though caged and helpless, Maud defied him – whereupon he caused a poisoned egg to be sent to her in her food. She ate it – and died there in the bitter cold loneliness of the high turret.
Much later her father managed to return home, to find the country on the verge of revolution. Mustering the other barons to the cause, he led them against the King, ultimately forcing him to endorse the Magna Carta. And so it could be said that the document which gave the English their freedom originated from a poisoned egg in the round turret of the White Tower. Perhaps Maud’s life was not sacrificed entirely in vain.
High on the battlements in 1234 Gruffydd Prince of Wales sought to escape by lowering himself from the roof by means of a rope. But the rope broke and Grufydd plunged to instant death, being found the next morning ‘his head and neck crushed between his shoulder blades’. His son, Llewelyn, also a prisoner, later escaped and continued to fight the English. Captured in 1282, he was executed and his head was mounted on a spike and exhibited in London while bells rang and crowds cheered. It was adorned with an ivy wreath, thus fulfilling the ancient prophecy that a Welsh prince would one day be crowned in London! The head was then attached to a turret of the White Tower, near the spot from whence his father had previously fallen to such a hideous death. Truly a warning to all, that escape didn’t always mean freedom.
Even the top floor, domicile of the Royal Family, was not spared its share of horror. In the adjoining Council Chamber one day in June 1485 Richard, Duke of Gloucester (later King Richard III) presided at a Council Meeting. Requiring to dispose of Lord Hastings, he accused him of treason and witchcraft. ‘By St Paul!’ he exclaimed, ‘I will not dine till I have seen thy head off!’
The wretched Hastings was hustled down the spiral stair and out on the Tower Green. A log of timber served as the block; without trial or comfort of clergy his head was struck off – then shown to Richard ere he sat down to his midday meal.
Most violence, however, occurred in the dungeons. Here, underground, in the reign of Edward I, six hundred Jews, men and their families, were crowded together in appalling conditions. Public opinion strongly against them, they were accused of coin clipping, scraping metal from the rims of coins, a profitable crime. They were imprisoned for some months, and no fewer than two hundred and sixty-seven were eventually hanged.
Chivalry may have played a part on the mediaeval battlefield; it certainly had no place in the torture chamber of the White Tower. If a prisoner could be forced to divulge secrets which might incriminate a rival, it mattered not whether that prisoner was man or woman. In 1545 Anne Askew was accused of heresy by those who hoped that her confession would implicate Henry VIII’s Queen Katherine Parr. Anne, a highly intelligent woman, was a zealous Protestant, a dangerous belief to hold in those bigoted days. She had been a friend of the queen, who held the same religious opinions – and so powerful enemies struck.
Arrested, imprisoned, questioned at length by Bonner, Bishop of London, she parried his accusations with shrewd responses. But it availed her little; she was sent to the White Tower and there, in the flickering lantern-light of the torture chamber she was racked unmercifully for over an hour. She confessed nothing. At last, her limbs stretched beyond endurance, almost senseless with agony, she was carried back to her cell. A short time later she was taken on a cart to Smithfield. There, before a vast crowd of callous, jeering onlookers, she was burned to death at the stake. But someone, somehow, felt pity for the poor tortured woman, for a bag of gunpowder inserted among the fiercely burning logs brought her merciful release from the searing flames.
Gunpowder provided relief for Anne Askew; it spelt only doom to Guy Fawkes and his companions in 1605. Caught attempting to blow up the Houses of Parliament, Fawkes was yet another whose tongue – and joints - were loosened as the rack pulleys creaked and the ropes stretched remorselessly. After half an hour’s excruciating torment he was a broken man, naming names, admitting everything. The other plotters were rounded up and the ringleaders were put to that most terrible of deaths, being hanged, drawn and quartered.
If the supernatural atmosphere of the White Tower was a stage, then we would certainly not want for a cast of players. Those already mentioned are but a few who would claim star parts, and even if their apparitions failed to materialize, surely the intensity of their sufferings could well echo down the centuries, just as their screams must have reverberated along the passages and stairways of their grim prison.
Instances have been reported by sentries patrolling at night, instances of hearing screams and stifled cries of pain through the heavy doors at the base of the White Tower. And not so many years ago, soldiers reported seeing the huge shadow of an axe spreading across Tower Green, to stand menacingly erect, silhouetted against the walls of the White Tower.
A body of men with even stronger nerves than the sentries - if such were possible - are the Department of the Environment Custody Guards, one of whose many tasks is to check security within the White Tower during the night hours. In the brooding silence of the vast shadowy rooms it is not easy to dismiss a creaking noise as just an old floorboard, that cold breath of air as just a draught - especially when all windows are tightly secured! And as for a faint smell of incense, once experienced – in 1975 – by a security warden – rubbish! Though remembering that high prelates did attend the interrogation of heretics under torture, why should there not be the ghost of the aroma of incense?
Of course there couldn’t be eyes watching malevolently through the slits in that knight’s helmet – but what would you see if you turned round really quickly?
Oh, no, the White Tower at night is no place for the faint of heart – in any century.
The Martin Tower
Here in the midmost of a modern day,
When clarity of thought and deed hold sway,
What parcel of fancies with the thread undone
Can set man’s dignity off at the run,
Wailing and sobbing as a babe at the knee,
To shudder at sights none other can see.
The Martin Tower
At the north-east corner of the inner wall stands the Martin Tower, a tower of many ghostly legends. At the turn of the century it was reported that a figure in white walked the upper room, to the great alarm of the yeoman warders - and even in these times there are some workmen who are reluctant to work inside it, such is its eerie atmosphere. George Boleyn, Anne Boleyn’s brother, was imprisoned in the Martin Tower, later being hanged, drawn and quartered on the vengeful instructions of King Henry VIII.
Yet one man whose spirit is reputed to linger around this tower is one who was acquitted and released! The intrigue of
the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 involved many names. A few are well known, such as Guy Fawkes, Ambrose Rookwood, Father Gerard; many are less known, Winter, Wright, Kay. One such latter was Thomas Percy, an active conspirator in the Plot, a man related to Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland. Upon the discovery of the plot, charges were laid against the earl, alleging his complicity. And so this elderly and learned gentleman was confined in the Martin Tower for no less than sixteen years. That his confinement was not particularly arduous is evidenced by the fact that his family lived with him for some of that time, and that he formed a scientific and literary circle within the Tower of London, other erudite prisoners, among them Sir Walter Raleigh, visiting the Martin Tower to debate the finer points of the times with the ‘Wizard Earl’ as he was known.
The Earl was subsequently released in 1620 after paying a £30,000 fine, truly a fortune in those days. Whilst confined he took his exercise on ‘Northumberland’s Walk’, the battlements each side of the Martin Tower. Although he suffered neither torture nor sudden death, his ghost was seen, late in the last century, by sentries who, terrified, would only mount guard in pairs. Not only that, but the innocent passer-by has on occasion felt unseen hands push him – or her! - down the steps by the Martin Tower.
Not all happenings end so mildly. Indeed one poor unfortunate snapped beneath the strain of such an experience – and paid with his life. He was a sentry who, in January 1815, was on patrol before the arched doorway of the Martin Tower (then the Jewel House). Midnight was striking when, to his sudden horror, he saw the figure of a huge bear emerge from beneath the door. Desperately he lunged with his bayonet, only to have the weapon pass through the shape and embed itself in the oaken door. His comrades, hearing the commotion, hurried to the spot – to find him stretched unconscious on the ground.
