Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

enter, whilst Lady Jane Grey very probably had a room on the first floor.

On the south side of Tower Green is the entrance to the Bloody Tower.

THE BLOODY TOWER1

This Tower of ill omen is chiefly connected in the minds of all with the murder of the young Princes, so long ago as 1483. These were the boy king, Edward V, twelve years old, and his little brother Richard Duke of York, their murder being ascribed to Richard of Gloucester, their uncle. The circumstances connected with this pathetic tragedy are suspicious enough, and one arraigned on existing evidence whose name was already connected with the murder of Henry VI, and the death of George Duke of Clarence, whose uncontested path to the throne lay over the dead bodies of these two boys, would have a meagre chance of acquittal before a modern jury. The Princes had, with due pomp and circumstance, but to the prophetic dread of their mother, been conducted to the Tower, the elder brother for his coronation, and the younger to bear him company. Sir Robert Brackenbury was Constable of the Tower, and to him as he was at his prayers in St. John's Chapel came one John Green, a messenger from Richard, with a letter. This letter contained instructions for the murder of the Princes, but the Constable turned in anger on the messenger, and swore he would have no hand in "so mean and bestial a deed." But Richard was not to be turned from his purpose, and selecting a more willing agent sent Sir James Tyrrel, with orders. that the Constable was to hand over to him the keys of the Tower for one night. The Constable suspecting foul play reluctantly obeyed. In the dead of that August night Tyrrel's three bloodhounds, William Slaughter, a warder, Miles Forest, a professional assassin,

1 It is not certain whether the name originated with the murder of the young Princes, or was acquired through the succession of tragedies enacted within its walls.

and John Dighton, ruffian and horse-keeper, crept in through the western entrance along the narrow passage to the Princes' chamber. There together in one bed they lay peacefully asleep. One man carried a shaded light whilst the other two crept silently on to their quarry. One boy woke and raised a cry and was smothered with a pillow, whilst the other was stabbed to death with a dagger. Sir James Tyrrel, satisfying himself that the work had been well done, ordered the bodies to be buried, and himself hastened off to Warwick to give the good tidings to Richard.

The assassins took the bodies down and through a subway to the Wakefield Tower, and there buried them lightly in the basement.

When Sir Robert Brackenbury next day took over his duties again he made enquiries, and being told of this hasty burial ordered the bodies to be removed and buried by the priest secretly. This he did under the stairs leading up to the White Tower on the south side and close to the Wakefield Tower. The place of burial was known to Sir Robert Brackenbury, but he told no one, and being himself killed at the battle of Bosworth, the secret was long kept. It was not till two centuries later, in the reign of Charles II, that in the course of some alterations the bones of the young Princes were found in the spot indicated, and were by him ordered to be buried in Westminster Abbey.

The reader will be consoled to learn that tardy fate eventually overtook Sir James Tyrrel, and that nineteen years later he was executed on Tower Hill, though not for this crime.

The murder of the Princes was the first great tragedy in this building, but it was followed by many others. Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, the martyrs of Queen Mary's reign, were imprisoned in one room in the Bloody Tower, and thence daily found their way along the terrace, known later as Raleigh's Walk, to dine at the Lieutenant's table in the Lieutenant's Lodgings. This official in those days had, it may be remembered,

the contract for the feed and maintenance of prisoners of distinction; and as touching the Bishops the records show that the allowance per week for feeding Ridley, Bishop of London, was I 13s., whilst 6s. 8d. was allowed him for fire and lighting, and 10s. for his attendants. Those were indeed evil days for a prelate of either church, for it might blow hot or cold for each in turn, with the change of sovereigns. It was, for instance, the same Archbishop Cranmer who was head of the Church in the days of Henry VIII, and apparently much in his matrimonial confidence, who two reigns later walked to the stake at Oxford. Not indeed because he himself was different, but because change of sovereigns. had turned a pillar of the Church into a heretic. Latimer and Ridley, leaving their prison in the Bloody Tower, shared the Archbishop's fate; for at Oxford may be seen the statues of these three Bishops erected on the spot where they suffered at the stake.

Another prelate, John Leslie, Bishop of Ross, was a prisoner for two years in the Bloody Tower, 1570-72, in connection with the Ridolfi Plot, but escaping the scaffold and the fiery ordeal, was banished to France.

The death of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, in the Bloody Tower had the same elements of tragedy as that of the young Princes, and the circumstances were suspiciously alike. This was in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The Earl of Northumberland and Sir Walter Raleigh were friends and fellow-prisoners on the same account, high treason, with Mary Queen of Scots somewhere in the background. The Earl had not been brought to trial, but after a year of not too irksome imprisonment came to him the midnight assassin. During the day of Sunday, June 21st, 1585, his three personal servants were removed and placed under arrest on some trumped-up charge by Sir Christopher Hatton, the Lord Keeper, and in their place was sent one Thomas Bailiff to wait upon his lordship. In the middle of that same night the said Bailiff raised the hue and cry, and when the watch hurried to him declared that the Earl had committed

с

suicide. Sir Owen Hopton, the Lieutenant, was hastily summoned, and found the Earl lying in bed with the bed-clothes drawn up over him in orderly fashion. Pulling them down he found the bed soaked with blood, which had flown from dagger thrusts in the left breast. The Lieutenant immediately went off to report the occurrence, and on his return noticed a pistol lying on the ground which had not been there before. Bailiff at once volunteered the suggestion that the Earl had first shot himself and then thrown the pistol away. This seemed to Sir Owen Hopton an extraordinary statement considering that he had seen the dagger marks himself, nor would he believe that a dying man would so carefully arrange his bed-clothes over him. These views he apparently gave in his evidence, but this was suppressed and the official announcement made with the aid of a servile coroner's inquest was, that the Earl had died by his own hand. The reason given being that not only had his heart failed him at the thought of the axe, but that suicide saved his estates from the confiscation which was part of the punishment that accompanied execution for high treason. The exact words ascribed to him were "The B-[meaning Her Gracious Majesty Queen Elizabeth] shall not have my estates." The tale was little believed at the time, and popular opinion, though muttered with baited breath, was that another political murder had added to the sinister reputation of the Bloody Tower.

Of Sir Walter Raleigh and his long imprisonment in the Bloody Tower a fuller account has been reserved for the chapter which describes the career of that historic knight.1

As time went on and civilization progressed so did the art of murder. The old brute days of the dagger gave place to the subtler poison of the Renaissance. To cover up and do away with the traces of murders such as those of the young Princes, and the Earl of Northumberland, became increasingly difficult; but Italy had found 1 See p 169.

a new and safer way, and thence it came to the Bloody Tower. Sir Thomas Overbury, who was the first victim to this stride in civilization, was passed out of the Bloody Tower and through the portals of out and beyond by a woman, whose patron saint might well have been Lucretia Borgia.

Sir Thomas was an Englishman of strong sentiments in certain directions, and as such was much opposed to the marriage of his friend Robert Carr1 with Lady Frances Howard, who was married to the Earl of Essex, but was then living apart from her husband. Lady Essex was, historically speaking, a distinctly unchaste lady, with manifestly criminal instincts. She took strong and vigorous objection to this interference with her passions and ambitions, and resolved like an even more celebrated lady to demand "the head of John the Baptist on a charger." Sir Thomas Overbury was the John of this tragedy.

Thereupon commenced the familiar procedure. Sir Thomas, at the instigation of the Countess, was committed to the Tower, on the sufficiently vague charge that he was acting contrary to the orders of his Sovereign Lord the King. Parenthetically anyone who disobeys a police notice may be held to commit the same crime. Safely in the Tower it was necessary to remove therefrom all unwilling tools; consequently Sir William Waad, the Lieutenant, was induced, on a consideration of £2,000,3 to retire, and his place was taken by Sir Gervase Helwyss, who was bound by many ties of gratitude to the interested parties, and might so far be relied upon as to refrain from putting inconvenient restrictions on the execution of further plans. Continuing on established lines the Warder in charge of the Bloody Tower was transferred elsewhere, and in his place was appointed Richard Weston, on the recommendation of Robert Carr. Weston was an exceedingly bad character; by trade a tailor, but open to any 2 See P. 68.

1 Later Earl of Somerset.

> Two payments of £1,400 and £600 made ostensibly by his successor.

« ZurückWeiter »