belligerent Bishop of Durham, was here confined. He kept a sumptuous table, and his jovial character was agreeable enough to his keepers, amongst whom he circulated the wine-cup with a very unclerical intemperance. A rope was conveyed to him in a fresh tun of the generous liquor wherewith he made the hearts of his companions glad. Their wassail was prolonged to the point of the most helpless drunkenness; and the bishop escaped from the window by the aid of his good rope, whilst his warders were soundly sleeping. A century or so later, Griffin, the eldest son of Llewellyn Prince of Wales, tried a similar experiment with a rope, with no such happy result. The bishop got safe to Normandy; the Welsh prince broke his neck.

During the absence of Richard I. in the Holy Land, in 1190, Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, held the Tower against John and his partisans. He " enclosed," say the chroniclers, "the tower and castle with an outward wall of stone, and also caused a deep ditch to be cast about the same, thinking to have environed it with the River of Thames." Stow has looked upon this occurrence with the eye of one skilled in local boundmarks. He was the feed chronicler of the City, and, by a diligent hunting of records, could tell us of petty oppressions and spoliations with a minute exactness which amusingly contrasts with his brief dismissal of the mighty events by which the boundaries of empires were changed, or the ancient limits of authority subverted. The building of the outward wall of the Tower, and the making of the deep ditch, by William Longchamp, was a pretty sure indication that struggles for power were to take place in the heart of the great city, upon which the happiness and liberties of its inhabitants for centuries after might mainly depend. But the honest local historian tells us, with delightful simplicity, "by the making of this ditch in East Smithfield the church of the Holy Trinity in London lost half a mark rent by the year, and the mill was removed that belonged to the poor brethren of the Hospital of St. Catherine, and to the church of the Trinity aforesaid, which was no small loss and discommodity to either part. And the garden which the King had hired of the brethren for six marks the year for the most part was wasted and marred by the ditch." He complains, too, that the enclosure and ditch took away the ground of the City on Tower Hill, besides breaking down the city wall. The citizens, however, did not complain, because they thought all was done for "good of the city's defence." But in the reign of Henry III. their opinions underwent a material change. That King saw the weakness of the Tower as a fortress; and, whilst he made it his chief residence, adding to its internal comfort and beauty, he was careful to strengthen its bulwarks, especially towards the west. The work was probably hurried on, for the walls twice fell down, "shaken as it had been with an earthquake." Matthew Paris, who tells us this, adds, " For the which chance the citizens of London were nothing sorry, for they were threatened that the said wall and bulwarks were builded to the end that if any of them would contend for the liberties of the city they might be imprisoned; and, that many might be laid in divers prisons, many lodgings were made, that no one should speak with another." Henry III. had, however, other and fiercer prisoners within those new walls than the valiant citizens of London. They had many contests with him; they insulted his queen and pent her up within the bulwarks of the Tower; but the royal clemency was to be bought with money, and good round sums did the

citizens pay for it. The prisoners that Henry III. chiefly kept here were three leopards; and their abode, and that of their successors, was for centuries in the gate called the Lion Tower. This tower also was built by Henry III. The leopards, which were presented to Henry III. by the Emperor Frederick, formed, no doubt, part of the royal state with which that King here surrounded himself. Although we have no very full traces of what he effected during his long reign in rendering the Tower a fitting palace for the English kings-the records of what he did leave no doubt that he accomplished many things of which there are no record. Mr. Bayley says, "To him the Tower owed much of the splendour and importance which it possessed in early ages; and to his time may be ascribed the erection of some of the most interesting of the buildings that are now extant. The records of that era, which abound with curious entries, evincing Henry's great and constant zeal for the promotion of the fine arts, contain many interesting orders which he gave for works of that kind to be executed in different parts of the Tower. The royal chapels there, as well as the great hall and the King's chamber of state, are subjects of frequent and curious mention." These fragmentary notices are more interesting to the antiquary than to the general reader; but, like every other such authentic record, they throw light not only upon the state of national industry, but of the manners of the period. The King, for example, orders the garner to be repaired: this was probably a storehouse of corn. The leaden gutters of the Great Tower, through which the rain-water must fall down from the top, are to be lengthened and brought even with the ground. This was a progress in domestic architecture which we should have scarcely expected, when we know that five centuries afterwards the roofs of the London houses were furnished with spouts which bestowed their torrents during every shower upon the unhappy passengers below. The Great Tower, and the old wall about it, are ordered to be whitened; and Stow holds that the Great Tower was thenceforward called the White Tower: this we doubt. The church of St. Peter within the Tower was also the object of the King's especial care. It was not only to be brushed and plastered with lime, but its images were to be coloured anew, and a new image of St. Christopher was to be made, and two fair tables to be made, painted of the best colours, concerning the stories of the blessed Nicolas and Catherine. The last direction of this letter mandatory (the original of which is in Latin) is very curious:-" And that ye cause to be made two fair cherubims, with a cheerful and joyful countenance, standing on the right and left of the great cross." Edward I. completed the ditch and bulwarks erected by his father, and he raised some additional fortifications to the west. Mr. Bayley, the historian of the Tower, considers the works of Edward I. to be the last additions to the fortress of any importance. Some of the works of this period were perishable enough, from the nature of their construction. It is recorded, for example, that in 1316 the citizens of London pulled down a mud wall between the Tower Ditch and the city, supposed to have been erected by Henry III.: they were compelled to restore the same, and were fined a thousand marks for their exploit.

In the reign of Edward III. a commission was issued for inquiring into the state of the Tower. The original return to that commission is at the Record Office; and has been printed by Mr. Bayley in his History of the Tower.' We

have here a detailed estimate of the expense of repairing particular buildings, the several items amounting to 9201. 3s. 4d. It is not very easy to assign the various items to the buildings which now exist: for example, we have the "High Tower," and the "White Tower;" as well as the "Round Tower," the "Money Tower," and "Corande's Tower." Other items indicate the palatial character of the fortress, such as the King's hall and chapel; the Queen's kitchen, bakehouse, chamber, and chapel; the waiter's chamber; the wardrobe. In the year subsequent to this estimate, 1337, the attention of the King seems to have been more directed towards the strengthening of the fortress than the increase of its domestic comforts. The sheriffs of London were required to pay forty pounds out of the farm of the city, "to be spent about the Great Tower of the Tower of London;" and the sheriff of Kent was commanded to bring all the oak timber from Havering to be employed upon the fortress. In the reign of Edward's unhappy grandson we find the outer walls of mud already noticed still remaining. In a document of the fourth year of Richard II. it is stated that "the franchise of the Tower stretcheth from the water-side unto the end of Petty Wales, to the end of Tower Street, and so straight unto a mud wall, and from thence straight east unto the wall of the city; and from thence to the postern, south; and from thence straight to a great elm before the Abbot of Tower Hill's rents, and from thence to another elm standing upon Tower Ditch, and from that elm by a mud wall straight forth into Thames."

Charles Duke of Orleans, and his younger brother, John Count of Angoulême, who were taken prisoners at the battle of Agincourt, suffered a long captivity in the Tower of London. We mention this circumstance here, because in

a copy of the poems of the Duke, now preserved in the Harleian collection in the British Museum, there is a most curious illumination representing the Tower and the adjacent parts of London at the period of the Duke's captivity. The copy on the opposite page will furnish a better idea of the condition of this fortress four centuries and a half ago than any description, even if the most full and correct existed. In a design of this nature the artist was more desirous of conveying the most complete notion of a building by something like the union of a picture and a plan, than of adhering to any rules of perspective, even if he had been familiar with them. His ingenious device for showing the interior as well as the exterior of the Great Tower will not pass unnoticed. He has opened the south side by an arch of immense span; and there he exhibits to us the Duke in a large chamber, assiduously wooing the Muse with the unusual accompaniment of a body of guards and attendants. We are to suppose that the Duke also possesses the property of ubiquity; and that, whilst he is writing his poems in the large room, he is looking out of his chamber window in the upper story, and walking within the bulwarks to welcome some faithful adherent who has recently arrived from his beloved France. Here, then, we have correctly enough represented the Great Tower, with the buildings and bulwarks between that and the Thames; the towers and walls on the west; and those behind the Great Tower on the north. The space within the walls, it will be seen, bears wholly the character of a palatial fortress; with no mean erections growing up beneath the massive walls, utterly unsuited to the character of the place, either as one of magnificence or strength. They were the parasitical growth of a later period.

In the reigns of Edward IV. and Richard III. some considerable repairs of the Tower appear to have taken place. In connexion with the fortress-prison, Edward IV. made a movement highly characteristic of the period. His officers set up a scaffold and gallows upon Tower Hill; but the City of London insisted upon their ancient right of dealing with offenders within their own precincts: so the King's scaffold and gallows were taken down with many apologies, and the sheriffs maintained their ancient privileges of superintending all heading and hanging beyond the Tower walls. In the time of Henry VIII. extensive repairs again took place; and the specifications furnish a pretty accurate notion of the character of the several buildings and of the extent of the royal apartments. Amongst other towers whose ancient names have now fallen into oblivion, such as "Broad Arrow Tower" and "Robin the Devil's Tower," we have "Julius Cæsar's Tower;" but this, be it remarked, is not the great White Tower, which in later times has been called Cæsar's-it is the Salt Tower," at the south-eastern angle.

We are now arrived at a period—that of the reign of Elizabeth-in which we can ascertain with great exactness the condition of this fortress. In 1597 a survey was made of the Tower and its liberties under the direction of Sir John Peyton, then governor. A "true and exact draught " has been preserved; but before we proceed to exhibit this very curious plan we may transcribe the brief description of the Tower by an intelligent foreigner, Paul Hentzner, who visited England in 1598:

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Upon entering the Tower of London we were obliged to leave our swords at the gate, and deliver them to the guard. When we were introduced we were shown above a hundred pieces of arras belonging to the Crown, made of gold, silver, and silk; several saddles covered with velvet of different colours; an immense quantity of bed-furniture, such as canopies and the like, some of them richly ornamented with pearl; some royal dresses, so extremely magnificent as to raise any one's admiration at the sums they must have cost. We were next led to the Armoury, in which are these particularities :-spears out of which you may shoot; shields that will give fire four times; a great many rich halberds, commonly called partisans, with which the guard defend the royal person in battle; some lances covered with red and green velvet, and the suit of armour of King Henry VIII.; many and very beautiful arms, as well for men as for horse-fights; the lance of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, three spans thick; two pieces of cannon-the one fires three, the other seven balls at a time; two others made of wood, which the English had at the siege of Boulogne in France-and by this stratagem, without which they could not have succeeded, they struck a terror as at the appearance of artillery, and the town was surrendered upon articles; nineteen cannons of a thicker make than ordinary, and in a room apart thirty-six of a smaller; other cannons for chain-shot, and balls proper to bring down masts of ships; cross-bows, bows and arrows, of which to this day the English make use in their exercises. But who can relate all that is to be seen here? Eight or nine men employed by the year are scarce sufficient to keep all the arms bright. "The mint for coining money is in the Tower. N.B. It is to be noted that, when any of the nobility are sent hither, on the charge of high crimes, punishable with death, such as murder, &c., they seldom or never recover their liberty. Here