THE TOWER FROM WITHIN.*
MAJOR-GENERAL SIR GEORGE YOUNGHIISBAND writes of The Tower from Within. He is Keeper of the Jewels, and has his official residence in St. Thomas's Tower. The reader, entranced as he cannot fail to be by the story here unfolded to him, will put a snore intimate interpretation upon the last words of the title. The writer seems not only to dwell within the precincts of the Tower, but to have entered, as it were, into its memory. It is not too much to say that some of his chapters create an illusion that he has actually seen the events he records. The reader shivers with him upon Tower Green, enjoys the company of the distinguished prisoners who met and dined in the "Lieutenant's Lodgings" three hundred years ago, and enters with bated breath the tragic and sacred precincts of St. Peter's ad Vincula.
The Tower of London was, our author maintains, "the heart of England," wherein joy, romance, and tragedy held sway. There were dungeons and torture-chambers within its walls, but "here too Kings feasted and held high revelry, and hence set forth for their Coronation at Westminster ; here too in days of stress they stood behind the rampart and the moat." The "Mint for the coin of the realm, the treasure, and the regalia " were all within the precincts of the Tower, "and here stood the chief armoury and place
d'armes."
The tragedy of the plate is, however, more enthralling than its revelry or its glory. The student of its history must come in along with many innocent men and heroes at the Traitors' Gate. How splendidly they all died, these men and women of the past, who had strength to walk to their trial at Westminster or Whitehall behind the Yeoman Gaoler carrying the axe pointed away from them, and strength to come back on foot with the axe pointed towards them. The world was more histrionic then than now, and men threw themselves into their parts with amazing fervour. They "played the man" in the presence of the block, and there is but one recorded instance among these historic execu tions of a man or a woman who showed either fear or resistance. They each behave in character, but all well. Anne Boleyn was debonair almost to the last, but how wonderfully touching is the little verse she wrote just before her execution, even if the words "very guiltless" do not describe her spiritual condition
accurately :— • Oh Death ! rock me to sleep, Bring on my quiet rest, Let pass my very guiltless ghost Out of my careful breast."
Ralegh made a fine and touching speech full of literary effects, bearing himself with as little perturbation as before any other of his "long journeys." The old Bishop of Rochester simply repeated the Te Deum and "without more ado, lay down and so entered into Heaven." The Duke of Monmouth, true son of his father, went light-heartedly to his death, the name of his mistress upon his lips. We see Lady Jane Grey going calmly to her fate in all the dignity of grave youth and true religion. There is a coldness, however, about her which keeps the tears out of the reader's eyes. But many State prisoners of course were never executed, and some never expected to be. They made themselves as comfortable as they could ; in fact, judging by the accounts which have been preserved, they and their servants ate and drank of the best. First and last, Ralegh was thirteen years in the Tower. During part at least of the time he must have re- garded it as a sort of home. Sometimes the resident Governor was very kind to him, though he hated "that beast Wised." He had his laboratory, wherein he discovered how to make salt water fresh and invented a "patent wine" whose secret has been lost, but which had—according to tradition—an incredibly large sale. One would like very much to know what it tasted like, or whether it was supposed to possess medicinal value.
Cruel as was the treatment of certain prisoners, and frequent as was the (always illegal) application of torture, the relation of prisoner and gaoler was sometimes a very human one. The follow- ing story is curiously illustrative of the spirit of an early time with its strange admixture of fierceness of action and tenderness of heart :— "The Earl of Arundel complained bitterly of the severity of his treatment by Sir Michael [Sir M. Blount, Lieutenant of the Tower, 1588 to 1592] ; but on his death-bed, when the Lieutenant expressed his sorrow and asked for forgiveness, he frankly gave it. The Earl, however, took occasion to add : 'When a prisoner comes
• The Tow from Malin. By Major-General Sir George Yonnghneband, B.0 M.G., C.B. Illustrated. London : Herbert Jenkins. 110a. 001.1+43.1 hither to this Tower, he bringeth sorrow with him ; then do not add affliction to affliction. Your commission is only to keep with safety, not to kill with severity.' We read that the Lieutenant went out of the chamber weeping."
It is a remarkable fact that the practice of torture in England was put an end to by a trenchant sentence. Felton, who murdered " Steenie," Duke of Buckingham, was threatened with the rack by Archbishop Laud. He replied : "If I am racked, my Lord, I may happen in my agony to accuse your Lordship." The Arch- bishop saw that the sentence undermined the whole principle of torture. He referred the matter to the Judicial Bench, who decided that the practice must cease.
The chapter in which Sir George Younghusband deals with the armour collected in the Tower contains some facts and some infer. sneer which will, we think, strike the public with surprise. "The popular impression," we read, "is that fighting men in the days of armour carried prodigious weights." This notion is, however, erroneous, as has frequently been pointed out in the Speckaor. There exists in the Tower Armoury a particularly large and perfect suit of armour which belonged to a man considerably over six feet in height. "This giant, fully equipped, only carried about 88 lbs., whereas every British soldier in battle in this year of grace carries from 75 to 90 lbs. of dead weight." The horses, also, are called upon at present to carry more than the thickly made horses of the past. "Our cavalry horses, though they do not carry armour, carry in dead weight considerably more than the equivalent."
A menagerie has always been one of the sights of London. We are all apt to forget, however, how new among the sights of Londoner° our present Zoological Gardens. Till the beginning of the nine- teenth century "uncommon beasts" were kept for show at the Tower, and had been from time immemorial. In the time of Edward VI., who built the Lion Tower, we hear of allowances of money for the beasts' feed. Fourpenee a day is to be expended upon "a white bear and his keeper." An iron chain is provided "to hold the said bear out of the water," and " a long cord to hold the said bear the time it was fishing in the Thames." More attractive to the imagination even than "uncommon beaets " are uncommon jewels. The eyes of all men have always turned towards these bright points of light—and jewels have, and always must have, an entirely unreasonable value. The history of the chief gems of the regalia is here set forth, and is full of romans°, a romance which takes us up to the present day. Only a .short time ago the Timur ruby, which appears in history about the wee time as the oele- brated ruby of the Black Prince, was found among the treasures of Buckingham Palace by Sir James Dunlop-Smith after having been lost for years and searched for by the Jewellers of the world. But somehow when jewels lie in glass cases for the public to gaze upon they forfeit their romantic lustre. In the old days they were con- stantly worn in the Council Chamber, on the battlefield, at banquets, wherever they could add to the splendour of the Royal costume. It was a romantic world which they emblazoned, a dead world of which the Tower of London is one of the great memorials.
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