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

Portraits of James, Duke of Monmouth; Arthur, Earl of Essex; William, Lord Russell; Archibald, Earl of Argyll; Colonel Algernon Sidney; Sir Thomas Armstrong; Alderman Cornish; a...

In Nichols’s “Progresses,” that mine of information regarding James I., his court and times, it is related that James paid his first visit to the Tower on 3rd May 1603, “when Hi...

With the close of the reign of James I. the Tower ceased to be a royal residence—the Stuart kings, in fact, never passing more than a night or two in the old fortress prior to t...

Immediately after the return of Charles II. in the month of May 1660, the trials and executions of the late King’s judges began. The first of the regicides to be sent to the Tow...

During the four years in which James the Second misgoverned England, the most interesting events connected with the Tower were the tragedy of the Duke of Monmouth’s death, and t...

Only one prisoner of State suffered death during the twelve years of the joint reigns of William of Orange and Mary. This was Sir John Fenwick, who had been implicated in a plot...

Few prisoners of any degree were committed to the Tower during the reign of Anne, except during the first year of her rule, when the Continental wars brought some French prisone...

With George the First the Whigs came into power, and soon after the new King’s accession, Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, and the former Lord Treasurer, was sent to the Tower on...

Before coming to the year 1746, when the old fortress was the scene of the imprisonment and death of the Jacobite leaders of the rebellion of 1745, it will be necessary to enter...

The first political prisoner to enter the Tower in the reign of George the Third was John Wilkes, the notorious member for Middlesex. On the 30th of April 1763, Wilkes was impri...

During the late reigns there is little that calls for record in the history of the Tower: happy is the land that has no history. But for the fire in 1841, which destroyed the ug...

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...