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 * Anne Boleyn, Beefeaters, Guy Fawkes and the princes: a brief history of the
   Tower of London


ANNE BOLEYN, BEEFEATERS, GUY FAWKES AND THE PRINCES: A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE
TOWER OF LONDON

One of the most iconic historic sites in the world, the Tower of London was not
just the backdrop but the lead actor in some of the most momentous events in
British history. Exploring its long and fascinating history reveals a cast of
characters from the well-known (such as Anne Boleyn and the princes in the
Tower) to the more unexpected (spies, jewel thieves and polar bears). Here,
author and historian Tracy Borman investigates


 * Tracy Borman

Published: October 6, 2020 at 9:50 AM
Princes in the Tower | Don't miss our exclusive new podcast series
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The Tower of London was founded by William the Conqueror after his famous
victory at Hastings in 1066. Using part of the huge defensive Roman wall, known
as London Wall, William’s men began building a mighty fortress to subdue the
inhabitants of London. A wooden castle was erected at first, but in around
1075–79 work began on the gigantic keep, or ‘great tower’ (later called the
White Tower), which formed the heart of what from the 12th century became known
as the Tower of London.

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Although it was built as a fortress and royal residence, it wasn’t long before
the tower took on a number of other – more surprising – roles. In 1204, for
example, King John established a royal menagerie there. Upon losing Normandy
that year he had been given the bizarre consolation prize of three crate-loads
of wild beasts. Having nowhere else suitable to keep them, he settled for the
tower.



John’s son, Henry III, embraced this aspect of the tower’s role with enthusiasm,
and it was during his reign that the royal menagerie was fully established. Most
exotic of all Henry III’s animals was the ‘pale bear’ (probably a polar bear) –
a gift from the King of Norway in 1252. Three years later, the bear was joined
by a beast so strange that even the renowned chronicler Matthew Paris was at a
loss for words. He could only say that it “eats and drinks with a trunk”.
England had welcomed the first elephant in England since the invasion of
Claudius.



It was also during the 13th century that the tower embraced another function
that might not be expected of a fortress. Determined to keep the production of
coins under closer control, Edward I moved the mint here in 1279. His choice was
inspired by the need for security: after all, the mint’s workers literally held
the wealth of the kingdom in their hands. So successful was the operation that
it would remain at the tower until the late 18th century.



At around the same time that the mint was established, the tower also became
home to the records of government. For centuries the monarch had kept these
documents with them wherever they travelled, but the growing volume forced them
to be stored in a permanent – and very secure – space. During Edward I’s reign,
the tower became a major repository of these records. Purpose-built storage for
the records was never provided there, however, so they competed for space with
weapons, gunpowder, prisoners and even royalty. As with the mint, they would
remain there for many centuries to come.



MORE LIKE THIS

THE TOWER OF LONDON: ANNE BOLEYN’S PLACE OF TRIUMPH AND TERROR


The Tower of London as seen from the River Thames, 1647. From an engraving by
Wenceslaus Hollar. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)


REBEL INVADERS

It was said that he who held London held the kingdom, and the tower was the key
to the capital. It is for that reason that it was always the target for rebels
and invaders.



One of the most notorious occasions was the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, which was
prompted by the introduction of a new ‘poll’ tax by Richard II’s government.
Under the leadership of the charismatic Walter (or Wat) Tyler, in June 1381
20,000 rebels marched on the capital and headed straight for the Tower of
London. The king agreed to meet them, but as soon as the gates were opened to
let him out, 400 rebels rushed in.



Ransacking their way to the innermost parts of the fortress, they reached the
second floor of the White Tower and burst into St John’s Chapel, where they
found the despised Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury, leading prayers.
Without hesitation they dragged him and his companions to Tower Hill and
butchered them. It took eight blows of the amateur executioner’s axe to sever
the archbishop’s head, which was then set upon a pole on London Bridge.



Meanwhile, inside the tower, the mob had ransacked the king’s bedchamber and
molested his mother and her ladies. The contemporary chronicler Jean Froissart
described how the rebels “arrogantly lay and sat and joked on the king’s bed,
whilst several asked the king’s mother… to kiss them”. Steeled into more
decisive action, her son rode out to meet the rebels again and faced down their
leader, Wat Tyler, who was slain by the king’s men. Without his charismatic
presence, the rebels lost the will to fight on and returned meekly to their
homes.




THE SITE OF A GREAT MYSTERY

Despite such dramatic events as this, it is the Tower of London’s history as a
prison that has always held the most fascination. Between 1100 and 1952 some
8,000 people were incarcerated within its walls for crimes ranging from treason
and conspiracy to murder, debt and sorcery.



One of the most notorious episodes involved the ‘Princes in the Tower’. Upon the
death of Edward IV in 1483, his son and heir Edward was just 12 years old so he
appointed his brother Richard (the future Richard III) as Lord Protector.
Richard wasted no time in placing the boy and his younger brother Richard in the
tower, ostensibly for their protection. What happened next has been the subject
of intense debate ever since.

 * Read more | Did Richard III kill the Princes in the Tower?



It is now widely accepted that some time during the autumn of that year the two
princes were quietly murdered. At whose hands, it will probably never be known.
The prime suspect has long been Richard III, who had invalidated his nephews’
claim to the throne and had himself crowned king in July 1483. But there were
others with a vested interest in getting the princes out of the way.



The two princes had apparently disappeared without trace, but in 1674 a
remarkable discovery was made at the tower. The then king, Charles II, ordered
the demolition of what remained of the royal palace to the south of the White
Tower, including a turret that had once contained a privy staircase leading into
St John’s Chapel. Beneath the foundations of the staircase the workmen were
astonished to find a wooden chest containing two skeletons. They were clearly
the bones of children and their height coincided with the age of the two princes
when they disappeared.



Charles II eventually arranged for their reburial in Westminster Abbey. They lie
there still, with a brief interruption in 1933 when a re-examination provided
compelling evidence that they were the two princes. The controversy surrounding
their death was reignited by the discovery of Richard III’s skeleton in
Leicester in 2012 and shows no sign of abating.



Richard III, date unknown. (Photo by Apic/Getty Images)


EXECUTIONS AND IMPRISONMENT

The Tudor period witnessed more victims of royal wrath than any other. This was
the era in which a staggering number of high profile statesmen, churchmen and
even queens went to the block. The fortress came to epitomise the brutality of
the Tudor regime, and of its most famous king, Henry VIII.



The most famous of the tower’s prisoners during the Tudor era was Henry VIII’s
notorious second queen, Anne Boleyn. High-handed and “unqueenly”, Anne soon made
dangerous enemies at court. Among them was the king’s chief minister, Thomas
Cromwell, who was almost certainly responsible for her downfall. He drew
inspiration from the queen’s flirtatious manner with her coterie of male
favourites and convinced the king that she was conducting adulterous affairs
with five of them – her own brother included.

 * Read more | The final days of Anne Boleyn: why did she die?



Cromwell had them all rounded up and the queen herself was arrested on 2 May
1536. She was taken by barge to the tower, stoutly protesting her innocence all
the way, and incarcerated in the same apartments that had been refurbished for
her coronation in 1533.



Anne watched as her five alleged lovers were led to their deaths on Tower Hill
on 17 May. Two days later she was taken from her apartments to the scaffold.
After a dignified speech she knelt in the straw and closed her eyes to pray.
With a clean strike, the executioner severed her head from her body. The crowd
looked on aghast as the fallen queen’s eyes and lips continued to move, as if in
silent prayer, when the head was held aloft.



Anne’s nemesis, Thomas Cromwell, had been among the onlookers at this macabre
spectacle. His triumph would be short-lived. Four years later he was arrested on
charges of treason by the captain of the royal guard and conveyed by barge to
the tower. He may have been housed in the same lodgings that Anne had been kept
in before her execution.



The beheading of Anne Boleyn, image dated c1754. (Photo by Universal History
Archive/Getty Images)


THE GUNPOWDER PLOT

The death of Elizabeth I in 1603 signalled the end of the Tudor dynasty, but the
Tower of London retained its reputation as a place of imprisonment and terror.
When it became clear that the new king, James I, had no intention of following
Elizabeth’s policy of religious toleration, a group of conspirators led by
Robert Catesby hatched a plan to blow up the House of Lords during the state
opening of parliament on 5 November 1605 (later known as the Gunpowder Plot). It
was only thanks to an anonymous letter to the authorities that the king and his
Protestant regime were not wiped out. The House of Lords was searched at around
midnight on 4 November, just hours before the plot was due to be executed, and
Guy Fawkes was discovered with 36 barrels of gunpowder – more than enough to
reduce the entire building to rubble.

 * Listen | Hannah Greig and John Cooper explore the story of the 1605 attempt
   to blow up the king and parliament



Fawkes was taken straight to the tower, along with his fellow plotters. They
were interrogated in the Queen’s House, close to the execution site. Fawkes
eventually confessed, after suffering the agony of the rack – a torture device
consisting of a frame suspended above the ground with a roller at both ends. The
victim’s ankles and wrists were fastened at either end and when the axles were
turned slowly the victim’s joints would be dislocated. The shaky signature on
Fawkes’ confession suggests that he was barely able to hold a pen.



Fawkes and his fellow conspirators met a grisly traitor’s death at Westminster
in January 1606. It is said that the gunpowder with which they had planned to
obliterate James’s regime was taken to the tower for safekeeping.

 * Read more | What if the gunpowder plot had succeeded?



The Tower of London was again at the centre of the action during the disastrous
reign of James’s son, Charles I, when the country descended into civil war.
After Charles’s execution, Oliver Cromwell ordered the destruction of the crown
jewels – the most potent symbols of royal power – almost all of which were
melted down in the Tower Mint. But upon the restoration of the monarchy in 1660,
Charles II commissioned a dazzling suite of new jewels that have been used by
the royal family ever since. They are now the most popular attraction within the
tower.



The Crown Jewels are now the most popular attraction within the tower, writes
Tracy Borman. (Image by Getty Images)

Although the Tower of London subsequently fell out of use as a royal residence,
it remained key to the nation’s defence. The Duke of Wellington, who was
constable of the tower during the mid-19th century, stripped away many of its
non-military functions, notably the menagerie, and built impressive new
accommodation for its garrison, which became known as the Waterloo Block. This
is now home to the crown jewels.

 * Read more | What happened to the Crown Jewels during WW2?



By the dawn of the 20th century it seemed that the Tower of London’s role as a
fortress and prison was a thing of the past. But the advent of the two world
wars changed all of that. One of the most notorious prisoners was Adolf Hitler’s
right-hand man, Rudolf Hess, who was brought to London in May 1941 after landing
unexpectedly in Scotland, possibly on a peace mission. He was kept in the
Queen’s House at the tower and spent a comfortable four days there before being
transferred to a series of safe houses.



WAS RUDOLPH HESS THE LAST PRISONER KEPT IN THE TOWER OF LONDON?



NO, EXPLAINS JUSTIN POLLARD…

It's often surprising to find out that the Tower of London was still performing
its age-old role as late as the Second World War but, contrary to popular
belief, the last prisoners incarcerated there arrived under very unusual
circumstances – and even later.

It was Churchill who ordered Rudolph Hess to be sent to the Tower after the
Reichsminister’s rather surprising arrival in Scotland on 10 May 1941, but he
only remained a prisoner there until 20 May. It was actually 11 years later that
the Tower opened its doors to its final inmates.

Those last prisoners were the infamous Kray twins, although notoriety was not
the reason for them being put in the Tower. Indeed in 1952 Reggie and Ronnie’s
crime spree had barely begun, but they were nevertheless on the run – from being
drafted into National Service.

Having been called up to serve in the Royal Fusiliers they had frequently
deserted their regiment and had recently gone absent without leave. During this
most recent jaunt they had been recognised by a policeman who had attempted to
arrest them and been beaten up for his trouble.

The Krays were, however, finally overpowered and charged with assaulting a
police officer before being handed over to their unit. At the time the Tower
happened to be home to the barracks of the 1st Battalion Royal Fusiliers (London
Regiment), so the Kray brothers were duly carted off to their barracks and
imprisoned there, making them the last inmates of that celebrated gaol.

Not that they enjoyed the place for long, being quickly shipped off to Shepton
Mallet military prison for a month to await court-martial.


THE TOWER OF LONDON TODAY

The tower remains very much a living fortress, adapting chameleon-like to its
changed circumstances while preserving centuries of tradition. It is still home
to the world-famous Yeoman Warders, or ‘Beefeaters’, as well as to the ravens –
at least half a dozen of which must stay within the bounds of the fortress or,
legend has it, the monarchy will fall.



In 2014, to mark the centenary of the beginning of the First World War, the
tower’s moat was filled with 888,246 ceramic poppies, each one representing a
British or colonial military fatality during the conflict. ‘Blood Swept Lands
and Seas of Red’ rapidly became one of the most iconic landmarks in London,
visited by millions of people from across the globe.



Although no longer subject to bombardment from invaders, the tower is
nevertheless prey to the steady encroachment of the city’s new high-rise
buildings. Yet still it stands, a bastion of the past that is instantly
recognisable across the world.

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This article was first published by HistoryExtra in March 2016




AUTHORS

Tracy BormanAuthor, historian, joint Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces

Tracy Borman is a best-selling author and historian, specialising in the Tudor
period. She works part-time as joint Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces and
as Chief Executive of the Heritage Education Trust.

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