CHAPTER V TOWER HILL

The garlands wither on your brow;
Then boast no more your mighty deeds;
Upon Death’s purple altar now
See where the victor-victim bleeds:
Your heads must come
To the cold tomb;
Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust.
J. Shirley.

The actual spot on which the scaffold was erected on the hill is marked, in the garden by which it is now surrounded, by a square of stone paving set in the turf just within the gate on the south-western side of the enclosure. Happy children skip and play on this blood-stained bit of ground; the flowers leap up in April and the birds make melody in May; Nature has healed the sore and done lavishly to make us forget, by her gifts, that here was the scene of angry mobs crying for the slaughter of some of the nation’s noblest men. The{154} block was set up on a high wooden platform so that the ceremony of decapitation was performed well above the heads of the dense crowd that gathered on the hill when the more notable Tower prisoners were brought here to die. It is stated that during the making of the tunnel that goes through Tower Hill to-day the wooden foundations of the scaffold were discovered, and also, near by, the remains of two victims whose bodies had been interred there. Neither the imbedded timber nor the human bones were disturbed, and both still lie beneath the turf to fix accurately the spot of execution. Tower Hill seems to have possessed a gallows also, for we find frequent record of criminals being “hanged in chains” there, either for State or other offences. Under an oak tree that grew on the slope towards the Tower gateway, the public stocks stood, and in the vestry minutes of Allhallows Barking, under the date December 16, 1657, we find it recorded that an order was given “for the erection of stocks and whipping-post required by the statute at the churchyard corner in Tower Street against Mr. Lowe’s, the draper’s, with a convenient shed over them.” How Mr. Lowe, the draper, took the proposition we are not informed, but if he expressed his feelings in forcible language he{155} might, perchance, have met the fate of his neighbour, Mr. Holland, who, three years previously, on April 26, 1654, “was fined 3s. 4d. by Alderman Tichbourne for vain oaths sworn” within the parish of Allhallows. Tower Hill would seem, in those days, to have had a peculiar attraction for “beggars and common vagrants.” It was a popular resort for those who lived to beg and those who begged to live—two very different classes of people, but both equally inconvenient. In the middle seventeenth century the condition of affairs became serious and gave alarm both to officials and to the annoyed inhabitants of the district. In May, 1647, the Vestry of Allhallows “takes into consideration the destitute condition of the poor, and it is ordered that a collection for the poor shall be made every second Sabbath in the month; the churchwardens shall stand at the door ... to receive the freewill offerings of the parishioners,” and in 1654 the residents appeal to the Lord Mayor, for “grate, grate, very grate are your petitioners’ wants, and may it please your Honour to afford them some relief ... without which they are unable to maintain so great a charge.” Hither came “a poore starving Frenchman,” who was solaced with 2s.; a like sum was granted to{156} a “poore Spaniard turned Protestant” and a “poore Dutch minister.” The dwellers on the side of Tower Hill were themselves at times reprimanded by the authorities, for we find that in May, 1653, “Goodman Dawson and his wife” are summoned to appear, “because they would not let their daughter, aged seventeen, go out to service: their pension to be stopped as long as they encourage such indolence,” which seems a just enough proceeding.

This district suffered severely during the three years after the Great Fire. Tower Hill lay on the eastern edge of the city of desolation. The poor proprietor of the Blue Bell tavern, which stood in picturesque angularities overlooking the hill before the catastrophe which reduced it, to quote its owner’s words, “to nothing but a ruinous heap of rubbish,” sought exemption, in 1669, from arrears of lawful dues. These old inns bordering Tower Hill were the scene of frequent “Parish dinners,” at which the consumption of food was so considerable as to lead one to believe that Tower Hill was noted in those days, as it is to-day, for its fresh air, which sharpens the edge of appetite. These feeds were partaken of by just as many “men of import in the parish” as could get into a small{157}

Image unavailable: THE TOWER AND TOWER HILL, SHOWING SITE OF THE SCAFFOLD, IN THE GARDEN
THE TOWER AND TOWER HILL, SHOWING SITE OF THE SCAFFOLD, IN THE GARDEN

room, “mine host’s best parlour.” On April 26, 1629, they consumed “5 stone of beefe, 2 legges of mutton, 2 quarters of lamb, 3 capons,” and so on. A few weeks afterwards they are at it again and “dine upon 5 ribbs of beef, a side of lamb, 2 legges of mutton, 2 capons; and did drink wine and beer to the value of ￡l:7s.” This reminds one of Falstaff’s feeds in Eastcheap and his capacity for imbibing Canary sack. At one meal, in Henry IV., Shakespeare makes the fat knight, if we go by the bill presented afterwards, drink sixteen pints of wine! In 1632 sack was sold in the City at 9d. per quart, claret at 5d., and Malmsey and muscadine at 8d.

In Queen Anne’s reign Tower Hill is described as “an open and spacious place, set with trees, extending round the west and north parts of the Tower, where there are many good new buildings, mostly inhabited by gentry and merchants.” In the contemporary drawings it is shown as an open space, but singularly devoid of trees. The artists may have been so intent upon crowding their pictures with tightly packed citizens gazing upon the decapitation of some unfortunate nobleman that they forgot to put in the trees. Certainly several of the fine trees that now adorn Trinity{158} Square are of some age, and represent the survivors of that fragment of the ancient forest which crept up to the eastern side of the hill, and which we see so plainly marked in many of the old maps.

In a house on the western side of Tower Hill Lady Raleigh dwelt with her son when her husband was denied her society. From her window she could look out day by day upon the Brick Tower to which Raleigh had been removed, and tradition asserts that she was able to communicate with him and send him gifts in spite of Waad’s stringent orders. The house in which William Penn was born, on October 14, 1644, stood on the east side of the hill; its site is covered by the new roadway leading to the Minories. Penn was sent to school at Chigwell, in Essex, and it was during those days of boyhood that he had been impressed by the preaching of a Quaker preacher which led him to forsake the Church of his baptism (he was baptized, as we shall see in the following chapter, in Allhallows Barking), and join the Society of Friends. Thomas Otway, the poet, abused by Rochester in his Session of the Poets, and praised by Dryden, died, it is believed of starvation, in the Bull Inn on Tower Hill, when only thirty-four{159} years old. That great Elizabethan, Edmund Spenser, was born near Tower Hill in 1552, and passed his boyhood there, before going, when sixteen, to Pembroke College, Cambridge. In Little Tower Street, in a timber-fronted, many-gabled house, now, alas, swept away, James Thomson wrote his poem Summer, published in 1727. So much for literary associations.

Peter the Great, who raised Russia “out of the slough of ignorance and obscurity,” in order to superintend the building of a navy took upon himself the task of learning shipbuilding, first as a common labourer, afterwards as a master craftsman. He came to London for four months and worked in the dockyards by day and drank heavily in a public-house in Allhallows Barking parish at night. He was accustomed “to resort to an inn in Great Tower Street and smoke and drink ale and brandy, almost enough to float the vessel he had been helping to construct.” Barrow, his biographer, states that “the landlord had the Czar of Muscovy’s head painted and put up for his sign, which continued until the year 1808, when a person of the name of Waxel took a fancy to the old sign and offered the then occupier of the house to paint him a new one for it. A copy was accordingly made from the{160} original, which maintains its station to the present day as the sign of the Czar’s Head.” The house has since been rebuilt and the sign removed, but the name remains. While the Earl of Rochester was in disgrace at Court in Charles II.’s time he is said to have “robed and bearded himself as an Italian quack or mountebank physician, and, under the name of Bendo, set up at a goldsmith’s house, next door to the Black Swan in Tower Street,” where he advertised that he “was to be seen from three of the clock in the afternoon till eight at night.” The second Duke of Buckingham came, once or twice in disguise, in his days of political intrigue, to a house facing Tower Hill, to consult an old astrologer who professed to draw horoscopes. In Seething Lane, then known as Sidon Lane, which runs from Allhallows Barking to the Church of St. Olave’s, Hart Street, Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s principal secretary, dwelt “in a fair and large house.” This foe of the Jesuits died here on April 5, 1590, “and was buried next night, at ten of the clock, in Paul’s Church.”

St. Olave’s Church is a building with many interesting associations, and a well-written little pamphlet has recently been issued which visitors will do well to read. There is only space here to mention the{161} Pepys monument, in the South Aisle, where the diarist was buried in June, 1703, the service being taken by his friend Dr. Hickes, Vicar of Allhallows Barking. The registers of the parish show that from July 4 to December 5, 1665, there were buried 326 people who had died of the plague. A quaint skull and crossbones carving can still be seen over the gateway within which the burial pit lay. Pepys, going to church reluctantly early in the following year, is relieved to find snow covering the plague spot. St. Olave’s has renewed its old-time activity under the care of its present rector, the Rev. A. B. Boyd Carpenter.

There is much of interest, also, in the neighbouring church of St. Dunstan-in-the-East, lying between Tower Street and Lower Thames Street. Its graceful spire is a familiar landmark, and, with its flying buttresses set in bold relief when seen from Tower Hill against a sunset sky, makes a noble crown to the church hidden from sight. St. Dunstan’s list of rectors dates back to the early fourteenth century. In 1810 the church became ruinous, and the walls of the nave, owing to insecurity of foundation, showed signs of collapsing altogether. The present building was opened in 1821 after restoration and reconstruction. The{162} registers of St. Dunstan’s escaped the Fire, and date back to 1558. A valuable model of the church as rebuilt by Wren, and almost contemporaneous with the rebuilding, may be seen in the vestry.

The chief Mint of England was, from the Conquest down to 1811, situated within Tower walls. It was removed in the year just mentioned to the present buildings on the eastern side of Little Tower Hill, over which visitors are shown if application be made beforehand to the Deputy-Master. The art of “making money” is here shown from the solid bar of gold to the new sovereign, washed and tested, sent out on its adventurous career in a world which will welcome its face in whatever company it appears. The Mint also possesses an excellently arranged museum of coins and medals, in which are many invaluable treasures.

Trinity House, headquarters of the Trinity Brethren, stands on Tower Hill, facing the Tower. A graceful and well-proportioned building, it supplants the older quarters in Water Lane, Great Tower Street. The corporation of Trinity House was established in 1529 as “The Masters, Wardens, and Assistants of the Guild, or Fraternity,{163} or Brotherhood of the Most Glorious and Undividable Trinity,” and the first headquarters was situated near the river, at Deptford. The guild was founded by Sir Thomas Spert, Comptroller of the Navy to Henry VIII., and commander of the great ship, “a huge gilt four-master, the Harry Grace de Dieu,” in which the King sailed to Calais on his way to the Field of the Cloth of Gold. In 1854 “the exclusive right of lighting and buoying the coast” was given to the Board of Trinity House. Within Trinity House to-day may be seen models of practically all the important lighthouses and lightships on the English coast. The regulations of Trinity House in former times are described by Strype, and among them we find rules to the effect that “Bumboats with fruit, wine, and strong waters were not permitted by them to board vessels. Every mariner who swore, cursed, or blasphemed on board ship was to pay one shilling to the ship’s poor-box. Every mariner found drunk was fined one shilling, and no mariner could absent himself from prayers unless sick, without forfeiting sixpence.” The present House on Tower Hill was built in 1793-95 by Samuel Wyatt. On the front, Ionic in character, are sculptured the arms of the corporation, medallions{164} of George III. and Queen Charlotte, genii with nautical instruments, and representations of four of the principal lighthouses on the coast. The interior is beautified by several valuable pictures, one of them a large Gainsborough, and a suite of most handsome furniture. Here, too, is preserved a flag taken from the Spanish Armada by Drake, and many curious old maps and charts. The present Master of Trinity House is H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, who visits Tower Hill every Trinity Monday, and, with the Elder Brethren, walks through Trinity Square and Catherine Court to service at the parish church.

An old print hanging in one of the rooms of Trinity House depicts, with some realism, the last execution on Tower Hill, in 1747, when Lord Lovat suffered. In August of the previous year the Earl of Kilmarnock and Lord Balmerino had been brought to the block after the Culloden tragedy. A journal of the time gives us a most detailed account of the proceedings, from which some extracts may be taken in order to form some idea of procedures that were soon to end for ever. “About 8 o’clock the Sheriffs of London ... and the executioner met at the Mitre Tavern in Fenchurch Street, where they{165} breakfasted, and went from thence to the house, on Tower Hill near Catherine’s Court [now Catherine House], hired by them for the reception of the lords before they should be conducted to the scaffold, which was erected about thirty yards from the said house. At ten o’clock the block was fixed on the stage and covered with black cloth, with several sacks of sawdust up to strew on it; soon after the coffins were brought, also covered with black cloth.” The leaden plates from the lids of these coffins are those now preserved on the west wall of St. Peter’s on Tower Green. “At a quarter after ten,” the account proceeds, “the Sheriffs went in procession to the outward gate of the Tower, and after knocking at it some time, a warder within asked, ‘Who’s there?’ The officer without replied, ‘The Sheriffs of London and Middlesex.’ The warder then asked, ‘What do they want?’ The officer answered, ‘The bodies of William, Earl of Kilmarnock, and Arthur, Lord Balmerino,’ upon which the warder within said, ‘I will go and inform the Lieutenant of the Tower,’ and in about ten minutes the Lieutenant with the Earl of Kilmarnock, and Major White with Lord Balmerino, guarded by several of the warders, came to the gate; the{166} prisoners were then delivered to the Sheriffs, who gave proper receipt for their bodies to the Lieutenant, who as usual said, ‘God bless King George!’ to which the Earl of Kilmarnock assented by a bow, and the Lord Balmerino said, ‘God bless King James!’ Lord Kilmarnock had met Lord Balmerino at the foot of the stairs in the Tower and said to him, ‘My lord, I am heartily sorry to have your company in this expedition.’” The prisoners were led to the house near the block in Trinity Square, and they spent what time was left to them in devotions. Kilmarnock was brought out to the scaffold first. “The executioner, who before had something administered to keep him from fainting, was so affected by his lordship’s distress, and the awfulness of the scene that, on asking his [Lord Kilmarnock’s] forgiveness, he burst into tears. My Lord bade him take courage, giving him at the same time a purse with five guineas, and telling him he would drop his handkerchief as a signal for the stroke.... In the meantime, when all things were ready for the execution, and the black bays which hung over the rails of the scaffold having, by the direction of the Colonel of the Guard, or the Sheriffs, been turned up that{167}

Image unavailable: THE BLOCK, AXE, AND EXECUTIONER’S MASK
THE BLOCK, AXE, AND EXECUTIONER’S MASK

the people might see all the circumstances of the execution, in about two minutes after he kneeled down his lordship dropped his handkerchief. The executioner at once severed the head from the body, except only a small portion of the skin which was immediately divided by a gentle stroke. The head was received in a piece of red baize and, with the body, immediately put into the coffin.” Lord Balmerino followed shortly afterwards, wearing the uniform in which he had fought at Culloden. His end was not so swift as Lord Kilmarnock’s had been; twice the executioner bungled his stroke, and not until the third blow was the head severed.

Lord Lovat, whom Hogarth had seen, and painted, in the White Hart Inn at St. Albans as the prisoner was being brought to London, was led to the block on Tower Hill on Thursday, April 9, 1747, and his was the last blood that was shed there. Just before his execution, a scaffolding, which had been erected at the eastern end of Barking Alley, fell and brought to the ground a thousand spectators who had secured places upon it to view the execution. Twelve were killed outright and scores of others injured. “Lovat,” as the account puts it, “in spite of his{168} awful situation, seemed to enjoy the downfall of so many Whigs.” Lord Lovat’s head was, at one blow, severed from his body, and Tower Hill’s record of bloodshed was at an end.