THE EDWARDS
AT the close of Henry’s troubled reign we find the Tower in the keeping of the Archbishop of York, a post he held while the young King, Edward the First, was absent upon an expedition in Palestine. Although this monarch was not often at the Tower, he added to its buildings, and strengthened its fortifications, which, after the two sieges they had lately undergone, no doubt stood much in need of repair, and it was during his reign that the fortress became the recognised place of incarceration for State prisoners, and the principal prison in the realm. The dungeons beneath the White Tower were crowded with hundreds of unfortunate Jews in 1278,—a strange way, it seems, of repaying these people for the courage and loyalty some of their brethren had so recently displayed in the reign of the King’s father, in defending the same fortress against the King’s enemies. These Jews—there were some six hundred of them—were imprisoned in the Tower on the charge of clipping and defacing the coin of the realm.
The prisons were often filled after Edward’s campaigns, many captives being brought from Wales and from Scotland. Amongst the latter, after the defeat of the Scottish army at Dunbar in 1296, was King Baliol, with the Earls of Athol, Sutherland, Menteith, Ross, and others, Baliol’s son, Prince Edward, with other Scottish chiefs and knights, being added to the former batch of State prisoners in the following year.
It was in 1305 that one of the greatest heroes of that or any other period was brought a prisoner to London, and one would give much to know with any certainty whether William Wallace was imprisoned or not in the Tower, and where he spent the last days of his glorious life. But it is a matter of uncertainty whether he ever entered the walls of that fortress. He appears, when brought to London, to have been lodged in a citizen’s house in Fenchurch Street, whence he was taken to his trial at Westminster Hall; there he was impeached, and, as Holinshed has it, “condemned and thereupon hanged at Smithfield.” Had Wallace been imprisoned in the Tower, Holinshed would probably have recorded the fact. The manner of the hero’s death will ever remain a stain upon England and upon the memory of his judges. He was treated worse than a common felon; dragged in chains to the gallows, and killed with every detail of barbarous cruelty. Three other distinguished Scottish prisoners were imprisoned in the Tower in 1306, after the battle of St John’s Town, before their execution. These were the Earl of Athol, Sir Simon Fraser, and Sir Christopher Seton. Their heads were placed on the turrets of the White Tower.
Not only did the dungeons of the Tower hold the King’s enemies in this reign, but also many of his clergy and judges. Of the former was the Abbot of Westminster, with a following of eight of his monks, who were imprisoned upon the charge of having robbed the King’s Treasury to the amount of one hundred thousand pounds—a prodigious sum in those days. Among the judges imprisoned in the Tower at this time (1289) were Ralph de Hengham, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, and the Master of the Rolls, Robert Lithbuy, with others, charged “with criminal partiality in the discharge of their offices”; they were only released after paying heavy fines.
The succeeding monarch Edward II., frequently occupied the Tower, leaving his queen and children within the fortress for safety in 1322, whilst he invaded Wales; and it was in the Tower that his eldest daughter was born—Jane of the Tower, as she was styled on account of the place of her birth. She lived to marry David Bruce and to become Queen of Scotland in 1327. During this reign the once powerful order of the Knights Templar fell into unspeakable ruin, the Tower becoming the prison of all the knights of the order who had been arrested south of the Tweed, their Grand Master dying there. Besides these there were many prisoners of note taken in Scotland and Wales, and mention is made of a woman having been imprisoned there for the first time. The lady who gained this unpleasant celebrity appears to have richly deserved her incarceration. On the occasion of a visit made to the shrine of St Thomas at Canterbury by Queen Isabella and her retinue, the royal pilgrim, on her return journey to London, was obliged to crave the hospitality of the châtelaine of Leeds Castle in Kent. Lady Badlesmere, for such was the name of the lady of the Castle, not only refused to admit the royal party, but gave orders for it to be attacked, and several of the Queen’s servants were killed. As a result of this conduct upon the part of the strong-minded Lady Badlesmere, Leeds Castle was taken, its governor hanged, and the inhospitable lady herself was conveyed to London, and occupied a prison in the Tower.
Amongst the Welsh prisoners in the Tower towards the close of Edward’s reign were the two Lords Mortimer of Wigmore and of Chirk, the former of whom, making his escape and gaining France in safety, returned at the head of an army. Edward had thrown himself into the Tower, but fled to Wales when he heard that Mortimer and the Queen—his most implacable enemy—were in arms against him. The King was captured, and soon afterwards murdered at Berkeley Castle. Meanwhile Mortimer had seized the Tower and beheaded the Bishop of Exeter, whom Edward had left in charge, had taken the keys from the Constable, Sir John Weston, and, releasing the prisoners, gave the Tower into the keeping of the citizens of London. After Edward the Second’s murder, his son, the young King Edward the Third, was kept in a state of semi-captivity in the Tower by his mother, Queen Isabella, and her paramour Mortimer. Edward, however, soon showed the strength of his character, and, after capturing Roger Mortimer and his sons at Nottingham in 1330, carried them to the Tower, where they were promptly hanged.
The French and Scottish wars waged by the third Edward brought many State prisoners to the Tower. From France came the Counts of Eu and Tankerville, taken at the close of the siege of Caen in 1346, together with three hundred burghers of that town. From Scotland came David Bruce, with a large following of his nobles, Sutherland, Carrick, Fife, Menteith, Wigton, and Douglas, captured by Percy at the Battle of Neville’s Cross in 1346. Froissart and Rymer describe the huge escort of twenty thousand armed men which guarded the captive Scottish King, mounted on a black charger, on his arrival at the Tower on 2nd January 1347, how the streets were crowded with eager sightseers, the City companies drawn up clad in their richest liveries, and Sir John Darcy, the Constable, receiving the King at the Tower gate. Bruce remained a prisoner in the fortress until he was liberated on the payment of an immense ransom, the companions of his imprisonment being the brave defender of Calais, Jean de Vienne, with twelve of its principal citizens, after the siege and capture of that city. Eleven years later, in 1358, another sovereign was a prisoner in the Tower, John, King of France, with his son Philip, remaining there for two years after the Battle of Poitiers, until the Treaty of Bretigny set them free in 1360.
A minute survey of the Tower had been made in 1336, and in the following year orders were given by Edward for repairs therein, “on account,” the King said, “of certain news which had lately come to his ears, and which sat heavy at his heart; the gates, walls, and bulwarks shall be kept with all diligence, lest they be surprised by his enemies.” He ordained that the gates of the fortress should be closed “from the setting till the rising of the sun.” But in spite of these royal commands, it appears that the Tower was allowed at this period to fall into disrepair; for, three years after these orders had been issued by Edward, we find him, on his second return from warring in France, landing secretly one November night at the Tower, and finding the place so ill-guarded that he had the Governor and some of the other officers imprisoned, amongst them being the Lord Chancellor, who combined that office with the Bishopric of Chichester. About this time Edward’s Queen, Philippa, was brought to bed of a daughter in the Tower, but the little Princess, who was named Blanche, died in her infancy, and was buried in the Abbey Church of Westminster.