The Tower of London, (Vol. 1 of 2)

Nothing has come down to us of any authentic value regarding ancient London until Tacitus writes of Londinium as a place celebrated for the numbers of its merchants and the conf...

After succeeding to the throne, Henry VIII. passed a few tranquil days in the Tower, but his sanguinary nature soon showed itself, and his first victims were his father’s most t...

The important position occupied by the Tower at the commencement of the reign of Elizabeth, and its connection with all branches of State affairs is shown by the great antiquary...

Northumberland had persuaded the dying King to pass over his sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, in favour of Lady Jane Grey, the grand-daughter of Henry VII. by the marriage of Mary,...

There is much that is tedious in the accounts of the Wars of the Roses. One battle is gained by the Lancastrians, and the next by the Yorkists, this continuing for years in a se...

The boy King Edward VI. was only ten years of age when he succeeded to the throne. On the 30th of May 1547, he was brought in state to the Tower amidst an outburst of the people...

As I have pointed out in the Introduction to this book, reliable historical details regarding the Tower are very meagre up to the date of the reign of Edward III., but with the...

Neither of the succeeding reigns—those of Henry IV. and of Henry V.—have left many traces upon the history of the Tower, although both these sovereigns occasionally lived within...

Henry the First was the earliest of our kings to make use of the Tower as a State prison—Randulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham, having the distinction of being its first prisoner....

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 expe...

When Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, had become Henry VII., after the battle of Bosworth, a relative calm settled over the Tower, as it did over the country generally. Not that S...

To the English race the Tower of London will always be the most interesting of its Monuments; for it forms a group of buildings that for eight centuries has been the very heart...

The glass has been placed in the windows with great care, the subjects being made as complete as the broken fragments permitted. Each of the eight windows is ornamented with lea...