Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Traitors' Gate
Most prisoners were delivered through
Traitors' Gate
, on the waterfront, which forms
part of
St Thomas's Tower
, now partially reconstructed to re-create the atmosphere of
Edward I's
medieval palace
. The King's Bedchamber has a beautiful little oratory in one
of the turrets, while in the larger oratory of the Throne Room, in 1471, the “saintly but
slightly daft” Henry VI was murdered at prayer, possibly on the orders of Edward IV or
Richard III. Not long afterwards, Edward had his brother, the Duke of Clarence,
executed in the Tower for high treason, drowned in a butt of malmsey wine (at his own
request - according to Shakespeare).
Bloody Tower
The main entrance to the Inner Ward is beneath a 3.5-ton, seven hundred-year-old
portcullis, which forms part of the
Bloody Tower
, so called because it was here that the
12-year-old Edward V and his 10-year-old brother, Richard, were accommodated “for
their own safety” in 1483 by their uncle, Richard of Gloucester (later Richard III),
following the death of their father, Edward IV. Of all the Tower's many inhabitants, few
have so captured the public imagination as the
Princes in the Tower
. According to Thomas
More, they were smothered in their beds, and buried naked at the foot of the White
Tower. In 1674, workmen discovered the skeletons of two young children close to the
Tower; they were subsequently buried in Innocents' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
The study of
Walter Raleigh
(see box below) is re-created on the first floor, while his
sleeping quarters upstairs, built to accommodate his wife, children and three servants,
now house an exhibition on the Princes in the Tower and on the poisoning of the poet
Thomas Overbury
. Confined to the Bloody Tower in 1613 by James I, Overbury was
slowly poisoned to death with arsenic concealed within the tarts and jellies sent by the
wife of one of the king's favourites, Robert Carr, the Earl of Somerset. Two years later,
Carr and his wife were themselves arrested, tried and condemned to death - in the
end, they were simply incarcerated in the Tower for five years before being pardoned.
The Lieutenant of the Tower was less fortunate, and was hanged for failing to protect
his prisoners.
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White Tower
William the Conqueror's central hall-keep, known as the
White Tower
, is the original
“Tower”, begun in 1076. Whitewashed (hence its name) in the reign of Henry III, it now
sports a Kentish ragstone exterior thanks to Wren, who added the large windows. Of the
WALTER RALEIGH
The Bloody Tower's most illustrious inmate - even more famous in his time than the princes
- was
Walter Raleigh
(1554-1618), who spent three separate periods in the Tower. His first
misdemeanor was in 1591 when he impregnated and secretly married Elizabeth Throckmorton,
one of Elizabeth I's ladies-in-waiting, without the Queen's permission. A year later his crime was
discovered and he was sent to the Tower (with his wife Bess); his second spell began in 1603,
when he was found guilty of plotting against James I. He spent nearly thirteen years here, with
his wife and kids, growing and smoking tobacco (his most famous import), composing poetry,
concocting potions in his distillery and writing
The Historie of the World
, which outsold even
Shakespeare, despite being banned by James I for being “too saucy in censuring princes”. When
Raleigh complained that the noise of the portcullis kept him awake at night, he was moved to
much worse accommodation. In 1616 he was released and sent off to Guyana to discover gold,
on condition that he didn't attack the Spanish; he broke his word and was sent straight back to
the Tower on his return in 1618. For six weeks he was imprisoned in “one of the most cold and
direful dungeons”, before being beheaded at Westminster.
