Tales from the Tower of London E-Book

Daniel Diehl

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 405

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

'Highly enjoyable' – Ancestors 'A fascinating recreation of the Tower as the life-and-death blood of the nation' – Oxford Times Serving as both a palace and a prison, the Tower of London has been at the centre of more intrigue, terror and crucial turning points in history than any other site in England. Diehl and Donnelly take us behind the grim, grey walls which circumscribe England's greatest fortress to discover true stories of the rebels, rogues, despots, lovers, spies and conmen who lived or were held captive there, and whose various, strange fates have added to the Tower's sinister reputation. It is a place where court intrigues, clandestine liaisons, gruesome tortures and grisly executions took place with frightening regularity. Tales from the Tower of London is more than the factual history of a great building; it is storytelling at its best. The fifteen stories in this book are made all the more poignant by the fact that they are all true and focus on individuals royal and common, good and bad, heroic and villainous, who lived, loved, plotted and died there. The characters you will meet include: - William the Conqueror - Richard II and the forlorn 'Princes in the Tower' - Wat Tyler - Lady Jane Grey - Guy Fawkes - Colonel Thomas Blood - Henry Laurens - Sir Roger Casement Whether you are a lover of history, adventure, intrigue and romance, or just appreciate a ripping good yarn, you will find Tales from the Tower of London a classic page turner.

Leseprobe

First published in the United Kingdom in 2004 by Sutton Publishing Ltd

This paperback edition first published 2025

The History Press

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© Daniel Diehl and Mark P. Donnelly, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2025

The right of Daniel Diehl and Mark P. Donnelly to be identified as the Authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Plans of the Tower of London: Twelfth to Twentieth Century

Part I: Building a Castle and a Kingdom (1066–1485)

1 The Axe, the Arrow and the Wailing Monk: William the Conqueror and Brother Gundulf

2 Dangerous Liaisons: Wat Tyler and the Peasants’ Revolt

3 A Family Affair: The Princes in the Tower

Part II: State Prison of the Tudors (1485–1603)

4 The Warden, the Wolf and the Woman: John Wolfe and Alice Tankerville

5 Treason in the Bedroom: Queen Katherine Howard

6 Nine Days a Queen: Lady Jane Grey

7 The Devil’s Dancing Bear: Bishop Edmund Bonner and Cuthbert Symson

8 The Spymaster: Francis Walsingham and Anthony Babington

Part III: Turmoil and Treason (1603–1800)

9 Gunpowder, Treason and Plot: Guy ‘Guido’ Fawkes

10 A Right Royal Heist: Colonel Thomas Blood

11 The Bloody Assizes: The Duke of Monmouth and Judge Jeffreys

12 The King Over the Water: William and Winifred Maxwell, Lord and Lady Nithsdale

13 The American (P)Resident: Henry Laurens

Part IV: A Home for Spies and Tourists (1900–1950)

14 The Black Book: Sir Roger Casement

15 The Weatherman: Josef Jakobs

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

There are only a handful of buildings in the world that are universally recognisable by both their name and location. The Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum, Britain’s Houses of Parliament (and their accompanying clock, Big Ben), China’s Great Wall, the White House (thanks primarily to television news), the pyramids and their neighbouring Sphinx, the Empire State Building, Notre Dame, the Taj Mahal and the Tower of London. Even the great temple complex at Ankor Wat and Moscow’s Kremlin are only partially recognisable; the first by its distinctive architecture, but not by location (Cambodia) and the second only by the presence of the magnificent cathedral of St Basil. Of all these wonderful monuments to architectural creativity the Tower of London is unquestionably the most drawn, painted and photographed. No occupied building in the world is, or has been, more often represented on paper.

Amazingly, as universally popular as medieval castles are with the public, of all the buildings listed above only the Tower of London is a castle and, with the exception of the White House, the only one ever used as a private residence. Having been in constant use since the 1080s, the Tower can also lay claim to being the oldest living community in Europe, if not the world. These factors alone qualify it as a site worth studying.

Building of the Tower of London was begun in 1078 by command of William the Conqueror, but its initial form was a far cry from that which we see today. The only original buildings still remaining are the White Tower, which dominates the complex, and a few sections of the old Roman city wall that remain embedded in the curtain wall and scattered around the inner yard. The rest of the original buildings, and their surrounding fortification, were constructed of wood and have long since disappeared.

Through most of its nine and a half centuries, the Tower was a place where the monarchs of England could house their private army, seek refuge in times of trouble and use as a base of operations. More than one of these periods of strife are dealt with in depth in this book. Curiously, the Tower was not originally intended to protect the city of London, but rather to protect the occupying Normans from what William the Conqueror called ‘the vast and furious population’ of England. The idea was to build a castle so massive and so terrifying that the indigenous Anglo-Saxons would think twice before challenging their Norman overlords. To that end, it worked magnificently.

In the centuries since the Normans first began construction of the Tower, it has undergone massive (and until the mid-nineteenth century) almost constant change. Old buildings and towers were routinely torn down and new ones erected in their place. Sometimes these changes were brought about by purely practical needs and other times to repair the destruction brought about by the occasional fire, siege, or bombing (both during the Second World War and during 1970s terrorist attacks). Existing buildings were also frequently converted from one use to another to suit changing social demands and political reality. As one monarch after another remodelled the complex to suit their individual needs, the names of some existing towers and buildings also changed. What is now known as the Bloody Tower was originally called the Garden Tower because of its proximity to the complex’s kitchen garden. We have tried to reflect these changes in the text of our stories.

The Tower has alternately, and often simultaneously, been used as a royal palace, a fortress, a zoo, a military garrison, the Royal Treasury, an arsenal, the Royal Mint, a state office building, a museum and the repository of the Crown Jewels. As late as the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, John Stow commented on the Tower’s multiple uses, stating that it was ‘a citadel to defend or command the city, a royal palace for assemblies or treaties, a prison of state for the most dangerous offenders; the only place of coinage for all England … The armoury for warlike provision; the treasury of the ornaments and jewels of the crown; and general conserver of the records of the Queen’s courts of justice.’

The Tower complex’s architectural make-up as we see it today is, to a great extent, the result of Victorian ‘remodelling’, to make it more accessible to the public and appear more ‘appropriately medieval’. Since Queen Victoria first opened the Tower to tourists in 1837, the general public has come to think of it primarily as an awe-inspiring museum. While ‘wowing’ the tourists may only recently have become one of the Tower’s official functions, it has had that effect on visiting dignitaries since the Middle Ages. After all, as London’s most visible symbol of the monarchy it was the Tower’s job to impress, and impress it does.

The Tower of London is, quite literally, a town in a stone envelope tucked in the heart of London. Deep inside massive walls, the streets and alleys of the Tower complex twist, turn and double back on themselves like some bizarre stone maze. Nearly everything here, from the looming White Tower to the enclosure walls, road surfaces, walkways and smallest public toilet, are made of stone – the only relief is the occasional blank stare of a window or the narrow ribbon of sky appearing over the outer curtain walls.

Popular though they are, neither photograph nor drawing can impart the sheer mass of the place. Unless visitors constantly remind themselves that this is not some perfectly preserved medieval town, but a very real military base, the most thrilling aspect of the Tower experience will be lost amid the tourist-friendly splash.

As spectacular as the Tower is architecturally, chronicling its physical development is not the primary concern of this book. For nearly two centuries there have been dozens, if not hundreds, of books written about the tower’s physical history. Nearly all of them, from the simplest guidebook to the most lavish ‘coffee table’ volume, have attempted to give an overview of the old fortress’ development, changing uses, important prisoners and gory tortures that have all contributed to the rich tapestry of its history. Instead of reploughing this well-trodden field, we have limited ourselves to telling the stories of the lives, and too often the deaths, of a few of the individuals who have passed through the gates of the Tower over the centuries. Most of the people whose stories are told here are at least briefly mentioned in many of these earlier books, giving us tantalising glimpses into their lives, but seldom, if ever, telling their whole story as it relates to their time at the Tower. It is the stories of these individuals, stories of bravery, greed, lust, heroism and ambition that we endeavour to bring to light in this volume.

Some of the people you will meet in the following pages will be at least slightly familiar. Wat Tyler and the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower, Henry VIII’s ill-fated fifth wife, Katherine Howard, and others, will be familiar, but hopefully we will add to your understanding of them. Others such as the foolhardy Colonel Blood, the tragic Alice Tankerville and the Nazi spy Josef Jakobs may well take you into unfamiliar territory.

The vast catalogue of adventures and adversities that people have faced in connection with the Tower of London is almost endless and it would be impossible to recount all, or even most, of them in a single volume. Practical limitations have forced us to omit many worthwhile, and often familiar, incidents of Tower history. Anne Boleyn, Sir Walter Raleigh and Scots patriot William Wallace are only a few of the people whose stories might have been told here, but space forced us to leave them out. But take heart dear reader; hopefully we will cover them in a future book.

We have approached each chapter in Tales from the Tower as a complete work in itself, capable of being read on its own and in no particular order. If you prefer not to read them in the chronological order in which they are presented, by all means do so. There are instances, however, where this might cause you to miss some revealing insights. In the chapter on Katherine Howard, you will find a seemingly benign mention of Bishop Edmond Bonner who performed the marriage ceremony between Katherine and Henry VIII. In the following chapter you will meet Bonner again, but in a far less pleasant capacity. However you choose to approach this book, rest assured that each chapter has been provided with sufficient background material to give you a sound historical ‘feel’ for the story, its characters and its setting in time and place.

Our book is not designed to be a weighty academic tome. We have tried to make every chapter an exciting, enjoyable read, free of excessive and superfluous detail. There are no footnotes or obscure references to bog you down. At the same time, we have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure the historical accuracy of every name, date, place and incident you will come across in these pages. Often, in our research, we uncovered conflicting and contradicting accounts of individual incidents, or dates, or other information, and have checked and cross-checked to make certain our accounts are the most accurate version of the story possible. For instance, in the story of Lord and Lady Nithsdale, we found several different descriptions of the cloaks worn by Lady Nithsdale and her friends on their visit to the Tower. One account said they wore bright cloaks in a variety of different colours, while another insisted they all wore similar, brown cloaks. It was only when we discovered that one of the cloaks survived in the collection of the current Duchess of Norfolk that we could verify its colour; it is brown. This may seem a small detail, but we hope that knowing the information you uncover in these pages is not only enjoyable, but also historically accurate, will add to your reading pleasure.

We hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as we enjoyed writing them, and should you ever be lucky enough to visit the Tower of London, we sincerely hope your experience there is happier than that of most of the people you will meet in the following pages.

PLANS OF THE TOWER OF LONDON: TWELFTH TO TWENTIETH CENTURY

The Tower of London, c. 1100.

Aerial view of the Tower of London, c. 1100.

Interior of the White Tower, c. 1100.

Aerial view of the Tower of London, c. 1200.

The Tower of London, c. 1300.

The Tower of London, c. 1490.

The Tower of London in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

PART I

BUILDING A CASTLE AND A KINGDOM

1

THE AXE, THE ARROW AND THE WAILING MONK

William the Conqueror and Brother Gundulf 1066–80

King Edward, the great-great-great-grandson of King Alfred the Great, had reigned over Anglo-Saxon England for nearly a quarter of a century. With the exception of paying a massive annual tribute to the Viking Danes who controlled the northern half of England his reign had been a relatively peaceful one. The English channel had always been so effective at preventing any large-scale invasion of England that Edward had confidently devoted much of his later years to building churches and cathedrals rather than the massive stone fortresses which were appearing all over continental Europe.

The king was perceived as being so gentle and pious that his people respectfully dubbed him Edward the Confessor. The grandest monument to Edward’s earnest faith in God was the massive new church, the Abbey of Westminster, which stood just yards beyond Edward’s palace near London’s west gate. By the end of December 1065 the Abbey Minster was nearly finished, but so was Edward the Confessor. On 27 December the 63-year-old monarch suffered a stroke and drifted in and out of consciousness for days. Confused and near death, the king clutched at his bedclothes, mumbling incoherently about ‘devils that shall come through all the land with fire and sword and the havoc of war’.

For all his piety the dying king had good reason to worry about the future. He was leaving behind a kingdom with no direct heir to the throne, which amounted to a disaster of monumental proportions in the turbulent eleventh century. Over the years he had probably dangled the promise of the throne in front of many friends and enemies as a means of keeping them on his side. Now there was no time left to play politics. On 5 January, just hours before he died, Edward named his young brother-in-law, Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex, as his heir and successor. Even if there had been other legitimate contenders for the throne, in Anglo-Saxon England a deathbed request from the monarch had the strength of law. The following day, 6 January 1066, King Edward was laid to rest in his new cathedral at Westminster and Harold was crowned King of England.

If the coronation seemed rushed, there was more than ample reason for haste. The noblemen of England may have supported Edward’s choice of Harold, but there were others across the Channel who were less than pleased. Harold was not the late king’s only brother-in-law. Like his brother Harold, Tostig was also a brother of Edward’s widow Queen Edith – giving him equal claim to the crown. The fact that he had been stripped of his title as Earl of Northumbria and sent into exile only the year before didn’t seem to matter to Tostig.

Then there was Harald III Hardrada, King of Norway. As ruler of the Viking Confederation Harald had clawed his way to the throne through pure brute force. He now ruled Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and commanded vast portions of northern England known as the Danelaw. With no legitimate heir to the English throne, there was no reason why the rest of England should not come under Viking rule. And Harald had an ally. Tostig knew he was not strong enough to seize the country alone, and so had thrown in his lot with that of Harald. Their combined armies posed a serious threat to the security of the British Isles.

Finally, there was William, ‘the bastard’ Duke of Normandy, who, at forty years of age, was as hard and strong as a younger man and a brutally determined master of military strategy. Not only did England and Normandy have strong political and blood ties, William insisted that he had personally been promised the throne of England. Depending on which story you believe, Edward the Confessor may indeed have promised it to William and then changed his mind shortly before he died. If he had promised the crown to William, it is also possible he had sent his brother-in-law Harold Godwinson (now King Harold) to Normandy with verbal confirmation of this promise. Or Harold may have been taken prisoner on the continent, been rescued by Duke William and, in a fit of gratitude, offered to lay aside all claim to the throne and support William when the time came. William insisted that one or more of these stories were the truth. Conversely, Harold argued that it was all rubbish and that even if it were not, the king’s deathbed request legally superseded all previous agreements.

Whatever the claims, whatever the truth, Tostig was unhappy, Harald Hardrada of Norway was unhappy, William of Normandy was unhappy and King Harold was in deep and immediate trouble.

Comprehending the full scope of the threat facing him and his kingdom, Harold immediately began assembling an army. The nobles were instructed to call into service every able-bodied man, and the navy was made ready for war. Then, just before Easter 1066, a strange and frightening omen appeared in the skies over northern Europe. Day and night a blazing ball of light ripped through the sky for more than a week. The cyclical nature of Haley’s Comet was not yet understood and its appearance seemed an ominous portent. The more superstitious spread tales about hails of fire and strange and unnatural births as rumours of impending disaster rumbled through England. Disregarding the fears of his credulous people, King Harold continued to prepare for war.

By midsummer the English army was, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles: ‘larger than any king had assembled before in the country’. Because the English Channel had been storm-tossed since early spring, Harold knew the first wave of invasions would come from the north, sweeping southward through the Danelaw, towards free England. Accordingly, late in August he began moving his army north towards York.

About 15 September the 200 Viking longboats carrying Harald Hardrada’s invasion force landed on the north-east coast of England. Thousands of warriors slipped ashore to meet up with the forces of Tostig, who had fought their way across the length of England. The confederates then marched on York where they slaughtered the local militia and laid down terms of surrender to the city, retreating about 10 miles eastward to the village of Stamford Bridge to make camp and await an answer from the city fathers of York.

On 25 September, even before the Vikings had established a defensible camp, the English army appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and fell on the invaders with a vengeance. Hour after hour the two sides hacked at each other with swords, spears and vicious long-handled axes that could split a man from collarbone to pelvis with a single blow. By the end of the day, thousands lay dead or dying on the blood-soaked field. Among the dead were both Hardrada and Tostig. The first threat to Anglo-Saxon England was over, and centuries of terror at the hands of Viking raiders were effectively ended. Having lost more than a quarter of his army in that single day, King Harold moved the survivors to York to rest and regroup. But as the clouds of battle still hung over Stamford Bridge, the weather cleared over the English Channel.

Just three days after the disastrous defeat of the Vikings at Stamford Bridge, William of Normandy landed on the Pevensey coast of southern England near Hastings. With him were seven thousand men, more than two thousand horses and five portable wooden forts. It did not take long for word of this second invasion to reach the English army.

To King Harold’s credit, after weeks of marching and intense fighting, the remains of his army was still largely intact. Hurriedly, he reassembled his men and sent out messengers to plead for more volunteers to join him in London. In a feat of incredible stamina the already beleaguered army marched the 250 miles between York and London in just eighteen days. Pausing only five days in London to collect his volunteers and supply his forces, Harold then pressed on southward towards Hastings, 40 miles away. As impressive as the feat was, before they encountered the Normans the English were exhausted from their long ordeal.

Even before the English had arrived in London, a messenger in the employ of one of William’s relatives in England reached the Norman camp with news that the English king had: ‘given battle to his brother and the king of Norway, killing both of them and destroyed their mighty armies. He now hastens towards you …’ Duke William’s commanders urged him to set up defensive positions and wait for the English. Confident in his cause and his men, William refused: ‘I have no desire to protect myself behind any rampart, but intend to give battle to Harold as soon as possible.’

In a clever ploy to deprive his adversary of food, shelter and any hiding place, William began laying waste to the farms, forests and villages north of Hastings. He also sent out messengers to make contact with the English king. When a Norman envoy caught up with the English army south of London, he offered Harold an opportunity to surrender his crown and kingdom. King Harold’s sentiments were much the same as William’s had been when advised to dig in. According to one chronicler, he replied, ‘We march at once, we march to battle. May the Lord decide this day between William and me, and may He pronounce which of us is right.’ The stage had been set for the most pivotal battle of the early Middle Ages.

Just after nine o’clock in the morning on 14 October, the two sides came within sight of each other about 7 miles north-west of the town of Hastings. Hurriedly positioning themselves near the top of a low rise, the English took up battle formation. What the Normans were doing seemed to make no sense.

Like most armies of the day, many of the English rode to battle on horseback, but before taking up attack formation they dismounted. A man could not swing a war axe from horseback and horses were too awkward, and too valuable, to be ridden into battle. The Normans did not seem to understand this. Fascinated with all the latest technology and tactics of warfare, William of Normandy had long since incorporated the use of stirrups to enable mounted cavalry to hold their position in the saddle while fighting. He had also picked up the concept of using massed contingents of archers as a force separate from either cavalry or infantry. In his drive to make his army the most modern and efficient in western Europe, William had also incorporated a new weapon called a crossbow into his archery units.

The Norman archers stood in units at the front of their battle lines; the infantry positioned behind them, while the cavalry waited at the rear. The English arrayed themselves in the accepted manner of the period, with warrior nobility at the centre of the line flanked by units of levied commoners on either side, with a few archers scattered randomly among the ranks.

Norman archers opened the battle by unleashing volley after volley of arrows and crossbow bolts into the English line – the deadly missiles slamming through the shield wall protecting the front ranks of soldiers. To their credit, despite this horrific punishment the English line held. Next, William ordered a massive infantry charge. If the English could be kept too confused to regroup, the Norman cavalry could move in and destroy them before a counter-attack could be organised. But the English stood their ground and mowed down the Norman infantry with a hail of spears. The few survivors were then cut to pieces with swords and long axes. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the battle was so terrible that ‘the noise of the shouting could barely be heard over the clash of weapons and the groans of the dying’. William of Normandy now saw that the English would not collapse as easily as he had hoped. To urge his men forward in the face of this punishing defence, William and some of his cavalry rode into the thick of battle, shouting and exhorting his men to greater effort.

Somehow, in all the confusion, William’s horse was killed. Word spread among the Normans that Duke William himself had been slain. Confused and apparently leaderless, the Norman line began to falter and fall back. Seizing their advantage, the English pushed forward, heedless of the safety of maintaining a solid defensive line, driving the frightened Normans before them.

Realising what had happened, William tore off his helmet, grabbed another mount, raised himself up in his saddle and shouted that he was unharmed. In a desperate attempt to regroup the cavalry for a concerted charge, William and his mounted knights withdrew slightly. Thinking a rout was in progress, the English drove deeper into the sea of Normans. There was no longer any order on the field. When the Norman cavalry had reassembled, they rode headlong into the midst of the enemy. Only minutes before the cavalry engaged the English, Norman archers unleashed a final, massed volley of arrows. In less than two hours the hopes for a free Anglo-Saxon England were shattered.

Nearly all the English nobility lay dead, including two of the king’s brothers and the king himself; his body was so horribly mangled that his men could not identify him. Leaderless and defeated, the Anglo-Saxons surrendered to William of Normandy, now the Conqueror of England.

After the battle, King Harold’s mother and his mistress, the beautiful Edith Swansneck, managed to identify the king by sorting through the mountain of corpses one at a time. Among his many other wounds, it is likely that King Harold had been shot through the eye with an arrow during the final volley from the Norman archers. Despite the women’s pleas, and the queen mother’s offer of gold equal in weight to her son’s body, William would not give them the dead king for a decent Christian burial. There would be no martyrs to stand between William and the throne of England.

William, Duke of Normandy, may have become William I, Conqueror and King of England, but he had made no friends in his new realm and he knew it. His next job was to ‘pacify’ the land and control what William referred to as ‘the fickleness of the vast and furious population’. But William understood the art of domination as thoroughly as battlefield tactics. Like most early medieval princes, he ruled essentially by terror. To consolidate his power, he devastated the land of anyone who might even conceivably put up resistance, systematically destroying the ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and duchies and wiping out remaining Viking strongholds in the Danelaw, so recently freed by King Harold’s victory at Stamford Bridge. Anglo-Saxon noblemen were stripped of their titles and nearly all land was confiscated to be divided among the Norman lords.

Rather than waste time and resources trying to take London in a straight assault, he simply devastated the surrounding land for miles in every direction and sat down to wait for the city to capitulate. His tactics were so brutal, even by the standards of the day, that one of his closest supporters, Ordericus, was appalled by the devastation: ‘William in the fullness of his wrath ordered that the corn and cattle, with all the farming implements and provisions, to be collected on heaps and set on fire.’ For months, the Normans laid waste to such vast tracts of land that the resultant famine would not subside in some areas for seventeen years. The compiler of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle prayed ‘may God will an end to this oppression’.

If all this were not enough, to make certain his new subjects did not forget who controlled their country, William began a programme of castle building that would last for the rest of his life. Most of these early castles were little more than one or two wooden buildings inside a series of wooden palisade walls, which could serve as supply depots and redoubts for army patrols. Thanks to all the free Saxon labour he now commanded and an average construction time of only three to four months apiece, within a few years there were somewhere in the neighbourhood of eighty castles dotting the English countryside.

But above all, William knew, as had the Romans and Anglo-Saxons before him, that the key to controlling England was controlling London. It not only guarded the mouth of the Thames estuary, but major roads from every point on the island converged on the capital. London alone boasted three of the new wooden fortresses. William chose the best situated of these London strongholds as his base of operations.

When the Romans moved into Britain in the first century AD they made London, which they called Londinium, the administrative centre of the province. Surrounding the city with more than 3 miles of stone wall 8 feet thick and 20 feet high, they constructed a massive fortress in the south-east corner to protect the town and the Thames harbour. Although the Romans abandoned Britain in the fourth century, many of their fortifications remained and William set about repairing the surviving sections of wall around London, building his timber castle on the foundations of the ancient fortress.

In 1077, more than a decade after the Norman invasion, London was devastated by a fire, which destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses. Whether the king’s castle itself was burned remains unknown, but the fire was enough to prompt William to rebuild the fortress in a style befitting the conqueror of England. A new, stone castle would dominate the town and be large enough to serve as a royal palace, military garrison for the king’s household troops and administrative centre for the kingdom. It was a monumental undertaking that required the services of the best architect available, and William knew just the man for the job.

When Prior Lanfranc was sent from Normandy to England by the Pope in 1067 to become the new Archbishop of Canterbury, he brought with him his loyal clerk, Gundulf. Gundulf had already developed a reputation as an architectural genius on the continent, having designed numerous churches and military fortifications in a career that spanned more than three decades. He also had a reputation of being more than a little eccentric. Pious and emotional, Gundulf was subject to outbursts of weeping, sulking, fervent prayer and depression at the slightest provocation. His odd behaviour had earned him the none-too-flattering nickname of ‘the wailing monk’.

More concerned with Gundulf’s abilities than his personal problems, the king summoned the monk to the royal presence and offered him the job of designing the new castle. Gundulf refused. He was a man of God and had no desire, at his advanced age, to build any more fortresses. He wanted to dedicate his few remaining years to designing churches and would be pleased to offer his services to William in that capacity.

Not to be denied, the king happily offered Gundulf the commission to build a new cathedral at Rochester, 40 miles east of London. To sweeten the deal, he would guarantee that Gundulf became Bishop of Rochester. Gundulf jumped at the offer, breaking into a fit of tears, praising the king’s wisdom and generosity. Obviously, Gundulf had never dealt with William the Conqueror. He would have the bishopric, and his cathedral, but first he would build the king’s fortress in London. Whining and haggling, the two finally struck a deal. Gundulf would first be appointed bishop, then build the new castle and finally he could retire to build his cathedral. Reluctantly, the old monk agreed. Within months he was made Bishop of Rochester and in the following year, 1078, began work on William’s castle.

After the wooden castle was torn down, the Roman foundations were repaired and strengthened while Gundulf designed the new building. Incorporating the many uses the building would have to serve into a single, massive tower, the designs revealed a gigantic, cube-like structure more than 100 feet square and nearly as high. The only entrance would be situated on the west front of the building, facing the town, but the entry gate would be concealed and protected by an outer wall. The entrance itself would be located one floor above ground, and the ground floor would have neither windows nor doors to prevent attackers from breaking into the building. The entry stairs were probably made of wood so they could be destroyed or burned if the tower came under siege. No one would get into the great tower unless the king wanted them in. Protected on one side by the old Roman wall, on another by the River Thames and fortified with 15 foot-thick walls, the new castle would be unassailable.

The ground floor, without windows or doors, would contain barracks for the king’s personal troops, beneath which were cells, dungeons and a specially constructed room with a vaulted ceiling and a massive oak door. This was the royal treasury. On the floor above the barracks would be the banqueting hall, armoury and chapel. Above these were the royal council chambers and on the top floor were the royal apartments. With the exception of the chapel, which projected from the south-east corner, the building was no more than a massive square box. The few windows were mostly limited to tall, narrow arrow slits, allowing the entire building to become a bunker should the occasion require it. The building had no adornment of the type found in the great churches and cathedrals; there were no unnecessary frills. This was not a building to be loved; it was designed only to protect the king and inspire fear and awe in both his subjects and enemies. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles lamented: ‘He built him a castle as a place to annoy his enemies from … And they oppressed the people greatly with castle building.’ So it would seem that the king’s subjects were every bit as ‘annoyed’ by the project as his enemies.

Carrying out this monumental project required hundreds of workmen. Not merely masons and carpenters, but quarrymen to mine the stone as well as carters and boatmen to move it from the quarry to the building site. When Gundulf agonised over the amount of manpower needed, the king simply sent out his soldiers to commandeer London’s labour force. When this proved insufficient, farmers and craftsmen from the surrounding villages were rounded up as well. This was, in part, legitimate. Every subject under the feudal system owed forty days’ service a year to his or her lord, but partly it was pure punishment for having lost a war to the Duke of Normandy.

To his credit, this distressed Gundulf greatly. He insisted that forced labour did not make good workers, and convinced the king that everyone above the rank of common labourer should be imported from Normandy. William undoubtedly hated to spend the extra money on skilled (and more importantly voluntary) labourers, but Gundulf would not be moved. Along with the imported labour force came thousands of tons of limestone slabs from Norman quarries. The local ragstone, which the king provided as the building material, did not please Gundulf. He finally agreed it would work for the large areas of wall, but the corners and levelling courses between floors had to be good Norman limestone. Each block of limestone had to be quarried, carted to a long-ship, transported across the English Channel and then up the Thames to the castle site. As with so many government and military projects throughout history, budget was obviously not a serious issue.

No matter how impossible Gundulf must have been to work for, the results of his labours were rather impressive. After barely three years the tower was finished. With foundation dimensions of 118 by 107 feet, the battlements of the massive fortress soared more than 90 feet into the air. Higher still were four sleek towers, three of which were square and one round.

Shortly after the tower’s completion the entire outside of the building was whitewashed. Not only did this make it seem even larger and more ominous, looming over the thatched houses and huts of London, but should an enemy attack, the massive white walls would act like a mirror, reflecting the sun into their eyes. In reality, however, it simply made the entire fortress appear stark and alien on the landscape. Which, in truth, is what it was.

Although many European castles had names, there seemed no sense in giving a name to the only stone castle in England. It was just ‘The Tower’ and once painted, its gleaming walls added another dimension to the name. William the Conqueror’s castle was simply ‘The White Tower’.

William was true to his word. When Bishop Gundulf finished his work late in 1080, he was released to Rochester where he immediately began work on his beloved cathedral. Although it would not be finished until 1130, nearly three decades after his death, the wailing monk lived long enough to see substantial portions of the work completed. It would seem that he lived to be nearly eighty-four years old. William the Conqueror was not, however, so lucky. In 1087, only nine years after commissioning the construction of the White Tower, William I of England died, leaving his kingdom, his throne and his fortress to his son, William II, known as William Rufus (the red) because of his bright red hair. While the English may have understandably hated his father, Rufus was equally despised by his own Norman lords, but he did carry out substantial work on the White Tower and persuaded Gundulf, the wailing monk, to build one last castle in his bishopric of Rochester.

2

DANGEROUS LIAISONS

Wat Tyler and the Peasants’ Revolt 1381

Fourteenth-century England was a place of unprecedented social and economic turmoil. By mid-century the Black Death combined with the endless military campaigns of the Hundred Years’ War had reduced the workforce by nearly half and bled the Royal Treasury dry. Add to these disasters a series of bad laws, bad administration and pure bad luck and the result was the most devastating urban riot in the nation’s history. Fortunately the entire incident was recorded not only by numerous court chroniclers, but also by the greatest chronicler of the age, Jean de Froissart, and a young clerk named Geoffrey Chaucer.

When the beloved heir to the throne, Edward the Black Prince, died in 1376, his ageing father, Edward III, was left with a dilemma. Should the crown pass to his younger son, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, or the Black Prince’s son Richard? Adhering to a strict interpretation of the succession laws, Edward left the crown to his nine-year-old grandson and appointed the massively unpopular Gaunt as head of the government and regent until Richard reached the age of majority. Gaunt, who had been appointed head of the English army in France on his brother’s death, was not pleased with his father’s choice of heir. Within a year of making these arrangements Edward III was dead, the new king was a ten-year-old child and John of Gaunt, though not king himself, was responsible for the management and welfare of England as well as the ongoing Hundred Years’ War with France.

The day after his grandfather’s death, Prince Richard was escorted to the Tower where he would be sequestered for his own safety until final plans for his coronation could be made. Three weeks later, the streets of London were festooned with banners and tapestries and lined with cheering crowds to welcome their new king as he rode to Westminster Cathedral and his coronation. It was a grand and awesome spectacle and, by all accounts, Richard II lived up to everyone’s expectations. He was an extraordinarily beautiful child; pale and aesthetic looking, with wavy golden locks that glistened like a halo in the sun ringing his delicate face. Dressed entirely in white for his investiture, the new king was, according to the chronicler Holinshed, ‘as beautiful as an arch-angel’. But beneath the fine medieval pageantry lurked a social cancer that had been eating away at English society for two generations.

Between 1348 and 1353 the Black Death had swept through England, taking the lives of nearly one-third of the population. To add to the devastation, more than a decade before the plague struck, England had begun a series of wars with France that had, by the time of Richard’s coronation in 1377, reduced the male population by another 25 per cent. This massive drop in the labour force left huge tracts of once-productive farmland untended and entire towns and villages deserted. The scarcity of farm labour brought about an acute shortage of food and an accompanying rise in prices as workers demanded higher wages, or simply left their farms in search of better paying jobs elsewhere. Understandably, landowners were desperate to keep their peasants (many of whom were serfs and legally tied to their manor) on the land and working. To make matters worse for everyone, as the economy imploded, taxes crept higher and higher to maintain government services and to fund the ongoing French wars.

As early as 1351 the government attempted to address the problem by imposing a wage and price freeze known as the Statute of Labourers. Among the provisions of the statute were the following:

All labourers under the age of thirty-six must work for the same wage as they received prior to 1348.

Any worker or servant who leaves his lord’s service without cause or licence would be imprisoned.

Any man who pays his servant more than their pre-1348 wage will be fined twice the amount of that labourer’s wage.

Anyone giving alms to the poor or gifts to beggars will be imprisoned.

This last clause was to make certain that everyone physically able to work did so. Despite the Statute of Labourers, serfs continued to steal away from their land, prices continued to rise and each new round of taxes became a heavier burden on everyone. By the time the young Richard II came to the throne, England was physically exhausted, nearing bankruptcy, and the people were growing increasingly restive. Only the natural human tendency to grumble rather than fight kept the nation from unravelling.

But John of Gaunt, Richard’s uncle and regent, was more concerned with making war on the French than bureaucratic details or public welfare. Much that could have been done to redress the problems was ignored or grossly mishandled. What taxes could be collected were promptly funnelled into the military rather than the projects for which they had been earmarked. At Gaunt’s urging, in November 1380 the new Chancellor (Archbishop of Canterbury Simon Sudbury) and the king’s sergeant-at-arms (John Legge, a member of the privy council) came up with a new, single-levy poll tax set at 3 groats (the equivalent of 1 shilling) to be paid by every person over the age of fifteen. For skilled tradesmen this was the equivalent of a week’s wages; for serfs who seldom even saw hard currency, it was nothing short of disastrous. Worse still, the 1380 levy was the third such tax to be passed in four years.

The tax collectors were resisted everywhere they went. Taxmen were run out of towns and villages while thousands of people temporarily disappeared. When the tax boxes returned to London, they contained less than two-thirds of what had been expected. To make up for the loss in revenue, in the spring of 1381 the tax men were sent out to collect the tax again – from everyone, whether they had paid the previous tax or not. Riots broke out wherever the taxman showed his face.

Anywhere people congregated, in churches, in public squares and at town markets, agitators were there inciting them to resist the extortionate tax. Among the most virulent opponents of government policy was a defrocked priest from Maidstone, Kent, named John Ball. He not only advocated refusing to pay the tax, but called for massive social changes including stripping the nobility of its power to impose such taxes. Ball was repeatedly arrested and thrown into jail. As soon as he was released, he returned to his personal crusade.

With the economy collapsing at an ever-increasing rate and people simply running away from their homes to escape the taxmen and the ‘enforcers’ who now accompanied them, by late spring thousands of starving, homeless peasants wandered England. In early June 1381, nearly twenty thousand dispossessed men and women from the county of Kent chose an ex-soldier and highwayman named Wat (or Walter) Tyler to be their leader, though it is equally possible that Tyler elected himself. In either case, he seems to have been a mesmerising speaker whose military experience provided him with a basic understanding of organisation and crowd control.

In a matter of days, Tyler began formulating an agenda. He and his motley band of followers marched along the River Medway. Their first stop was Maidstone, where they ransacked the local jail, freed all the prisoners and invited them to join the crusade. Among those who accepted the invitation was John Ball. Between Ball’s fiery rhetoric and Tyler’s organisational skills, the group quickly became a formidable force. Moving east from Maidstone, their next stop was Canterbury, where they gathered so many additional recruits that Froissart said ‘they departed [there] and all the people of Canterbury with them…. And in their going they beat down and robbed houses … and had mercy of none.’

Now turning back to the west, the mob moved slowly towards London, solidifying their plans. The only person to whom they would pay allegiance was King Richard. Everyone else in the ruling class, from the greatest nobleman to the humblest lawyer, was to be forced out of office and put on trial. Halfway along the 40-mile stretch between Canterbury and the capital lies the town of Rochester, and here the rebels seized the castle, ransacked it and took the family of Sir John Newton, the constable, prisoner. Newton himself was sent to London with a message for the king: Richard would meet with the rebels at Blackheath in three days to hear their demands. If Newton failed to deliver the message, or if the army was called out, his family would be killed. Over the next two days, Tyler’s army plodded steadily westward. Unknown to them, another rebel army even larger than their own was also converging on London from Essex, north-east of the capital.

For some reason, word of the rebels’ approach took the King’s Council and the government completely by surprise; certainly they should have been aware of the level of discontent in the country, and the tax riots could hardly have escaped their attention. Possibly, it was the sheer size of the uprising that overwhelmed them. The combined force of Tyler’s army and the Essex men has been estimated at more than one hundred thousand – nearly twice the population of London itself and three times the size of the largest medieval army ever assembled. Certainly it did not help matters that the government’s driving force and chief military mind, John of Gaunt, was in Scotland at the time.