Ghosts of the Tower of London (7 page)

Even more baffling was the fact that the trajectory of the stones was such that no-one standing on the other side of the wall could possibly have thrown the stones to clear the top of the wall and score hits so accurately on a moving target. Nor could anyone have stood there without being seen by the night security guard whose office was situated on the ground floor of the Lanthorn Tower on that side of the wall.

The author, going on duty nearby at 6.15 am the following morning was not only given a full account of the night’s events, but was also given three of the flinty missiles – and holding them in my hand, I sometimes wonder who – or what – held them before they struck the sentry’s legs – perhaps a Tudor poltergeist?!

If so it could well have been the same one who, two years later, caused annoyance, if not minor havoc, in the Lanthorn security office, members of the staff repeatedly finding the electric kettle switched on when it had been switched off, and the refrigerator switched off when left on! Consequently, in order to thwart the spectral prankster, the kettle was always unplugged from the socket when not in use but, it being necessary to keep the refrigerator running all the time, the wall switch was taped over. But there was no frustrating the phantom fingers, for the switch was still occasionally being found in the ‘off’ position, the food thawing and the cold drinks tepid!

The Queen’s House, a magnificent Tudor building in the south-west corner of Tower Green, rich in timbered panels and ceilings, steeped in tradition, was built in 1530 on the orders of Henry VIII. He intended to live there as an alternative to the White Tower but having disposed of Cardinal Wolsey (who was heading for the block and a beheading, but fortuitously died
en route
) the King commandeered Hampton Court and so the new house became the official residence of the Lieutenant of the Tower, it being known as the Lieutenant’s Lodgings. In 1880 it was renamed the Queen’s House, in which the Resident Governor and his family live.

It was there in bygone days that prisoners brought to the Tower were initially questioned, ‘booked in’ and assigned their various quarters in the fortress. Some, Guy Fawkes, Anne Askew and others were brought from their prison quarters to be interrogated there, but the really important prisoners were actually confined either there or in the Bell Tower which backs on to it, a tower which can only be entered via the Queen’s House, all thereby being under the day-today supervision of the Lieutenant. Those who endured imprisonment in those two buildings read like a veritable list from history; Princess Elizabeth (later Elizabeth I), Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard, Sir Thomas More, Archbishop Fisher and many others. Lady Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox was imprisoned there for five years on three different occasions, Lady Arabella Stuart endured over four years confinement only to die, her sanity gone. The doomed Lady Jane Grey was accomodated there for a short while and in more recent centuries the Quaker William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, and Rudolph Hess, Deputy Fuhrer of Nazi Germany also found themselves deprived of their freedom behind those timbered walls.

So it is hardly surprising that their suffering and deprivation has given rise to the many instances of supernatural occurrences reported over the last two centuries, accounts of ghostly footsteps (see my
Beefeaters of the Tower of London
pub. 1985), the unnatural coldness in some of the rooms, the inexplicable sounds heard, even ghostly sightings. And it could have been one of the latter which was experienced by a secretary one dark evening in April 1994. She was alone in the building and, needing some papers from an upper room, started to ascend the main stairway. As she did so, she looked up – to see a woman facing her, a motionless figure who, in her own words, existed only ‘from the waist up, as if in a portrait’. Caught completely unawares, she later recalled the appearance of the figure, noting the white collar and the fact that ‘she’ had red hair. In such a situation it is noteworthy that all sense of time usually deserts the witness, and this level-headed young lady was no exception, describing afterwards how time seemed to stand still, until the apparition suddenly vanished. Unbelieving, she automatically continued to mount the stairs, and quite some time elapsed before she was able to recover from the shock.

Who could the ghostly figure have been? The most likely name to spring to mind is of course Princess Elizabeth who, like most of the Tudors, had red hair, and the ‘white collar’ could have been the ruff, which she made fashionable and therefore mandatory in Court circles. Admittedly she was not executed, but at the time of her imprisonment, under suspicion of being involved in some of treasonable plots prevailing at that time, her mind must have been in an agonised state of constant turmoil lest her half-sister Queen Mary should suddenly decide that such threats to her throne could be eliminated only by condemning her to follow in the footsteps of her mother Anne Boleyn, up the scaffold steps on Tower Green.

The Threshold of the
    Tower of London

Immediately outside the Tower of London stands Tower Hill. From that eminence many men – women too – looked their last on the Tower, on London, on life itself. For it was on Tower Hill that scores of victims met death, death that came by the flashing axe, the burning logs, the taut rope. Down through the centuries the names reproach history for the manner in which death was meted out: John Goose, a Lollard, burnt in 1475; four church robbers hanged in 1480, as was Lady Pargitor’s manservant for coin clipping in 1538; John Smith, Groom of King Edward’s Stirrup, beheaded for treason in 1483, together with William Collingbourne, Sheriff of Wiltshire, hanged, drawn and quartered for composing a verse derogatory to Richard III. Death distinguished not between the highest and the lowest; from Don Pantaleon Sa, brother to the Portuguese Ambassador, beheaded for murder 1654, down to Mary Roberts, Charlotte Gardner and a one-armed soldier, William MacDonald, hanged for rioting in 1780. Many eminent names grace the lists, lords, dukes, archbishops, most of them having been led from their prison cells in the Tower of London by the yeoman warders who handed them over (against a receipt!) to the Sheriff of London and his men at the Tower Gates. Following beheading, the head was spiked on London Bridge as an awful example to all, the body being returned to the Tower for burial within or near the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula.

It is hardly surprising then that such suffering should manifest itself to those whose duties require them to be near the main gates. There the victims first faced the waiting crowds, the surging multitude of avid spectators; there the grim procession started, to end on the scaffold on the Hill.

And so it was that one night in World War II a sentry patrolling the Tower entrance was suddenly shocked into bloodchilling awareness of figures trooping down the Hill towards him. Clad in quaint uniforms, they slowly advanced. In their midst they bore a rough stretcher. And on the stretcher sprawled a headless body – whilst between arm and torso lay the severed head! Nearer and nearer the grim cortege approached–to fade into nothingness when barely yards away.

The sentry’s detailed report was investigated by the authorities with great thoroughness. It was discovered that the uniforms worn by the ghostly figures tallied with those issued to the Sheriff’s Men in the Middle Ages, men whose job it was to bring the corpse back for burial; the head being conveyed to London Bridge by river from Tower Steps, the quickest and most customary route. All the reported facts agreed with historical detail – so who are we to doubt it?

The Middle Tower

The Middle Tower

This, the first tower encountered on entering the castle, dates from 1280, though it was restored in 1717. It was too near the outer walls to be much used as a prison, but the name of one eminent prisoner appears in the ancient records, that of Laurence Shirley, Earl Ferrers. In 1760 he murdered his bailiff Johnson, shooting him with a pistol, for which foul deed he was taken to Tyburn to be hanged. Always elegant, the earl wore silver-embroidered clothes and made his final journey in his own carriage drawn by six horses. His entitlement, as an earl, to be hanged by a silken cord, was denied. He swung from a common hempen rope.

So was it his eccentric spirit which, a few years ago (1977), terrified two painters working within the Middle Tower? In broad daylight they heard the echoing sound of footsteps pacing the battlemented roof above. At first each thought the other was responsible and so was not alarmed. And then, when both were later working together in the same room … the measured pacing suddenly commenced. With dawning horror their eyes followed the path of the sounds beyond the ceiling – to pause – then to retrace its route.

Assistance was called for, and a thorough search revealed no
physical
presence nor any hiding-place. No battlements connect this tower with any other. Yet again and again during the next few days the footsteps were heard.

Was it the murderous earl – or some other, unrecorded felon, whose restless soul finds no peace?

Water Lane – Bloody Tower and Wakefield Tower on the left

The Outer Ward