Ghosts of the Tower of London (11 page)

The Beauchamp Tower

On the west side of Tower Green, overlooking the scaffold site, stands the Beauchamp Tower. Because of its proximity to the Lieutenant’s Lodgings it became one of the more ‘popular’ prison towers, favouring those of noble birth and high estate. Not that much comfort was provided: a fire, some candles, rushes spread on the floor, these did little to compensate for the open arrow slits and cold, thick walls.

Originally the prison room and the living quarters of its guardian, the yeoman warder, on the top floor, could only be reached via the battlements from the Bell Tower, the latter being integral with the Lieutenant’s Lodgings (now the Queen’s House). The present doorway was a later addition; in earlier times such an aperture would have weakened the defences, and in any case it would not have been seemly for prisoners to have been conducted through the Inner Ward, the precincts of the nobles and the Royal Family. The lower chambers, then, were dungeons, cramped and gloomy cells secured by heavy doors, approached by spiral stairs from above.

Over the centuries the State Prison Room, on the first floor, housed many prisoners. In them the flame of hope burned bright, the hope that a change of monarch, a change of policy, could bring about their release. For a great number of them, however, it was not to be; after years of captivity they were led out, to face the baying mob, the black-clad axeman. Some did survive, to have titles and estates bestowed on them anew. A grim gamble, with Fate tossing the dice!

Elizabeth’s Walk

During their imprisonment time hung heavy. Many of these were men of breeding and of letters, skilled in Latin, versed in the Scriptures. And there, locked away in the great fortress, having ceased to exist so far as the outside world was concerned, they carved inscriptions on the walls. Proud family crests, pitiful pleas of innocence, religious quotations, even wry witticisms adorn the stonework, mute messages from those who lived from day to day under the shadow of violent execution.

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

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, its 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.