Другое : The Castles of England
The Castles of England
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На тему «The Tower Of London»
Студента 103 группы I курса
факультета Социологии
Варнавского Евгения
1.
The
Development of the Tower
2.
The Normans
3.
The Medieval Tower
4.
The Tower in Tudor Times
5.
The Restoration and After
6.
The Tower in the 19th Century
7.
The 20th Century
The Tower of London
The History of the Tower of
London
Fortress, Palace and Prison
This short history of the Tower of London charts the different
stages of its development. Throughout its history, the Tower has attracted a
number of important functions and its role as armoury, royal palace, prison and
fortress is explained, as well as its modern role as tourist attraction and
home to a thriving community.
The development of the Tower
The Tower of London was
begun in the reign of William the Conqueror (1066-1087) and remained unchanged
for over a century. Then, between 1190 and 1285, the White Tower was encircled
by two towered curtain walls and a great moat. The only important enlargement
of the Tower after that time was the building of the Wharf in the 14th century.
Today the medieval defences remain relatively unchanged.
The
Tower in 1100 The Tower in 1270 The Tower
in 1547
The
Normans
WestmCastle building was an essential part of
the Norman Conquest: when Duke William of Normandy invaded England in 1066 his
first action after landing at Pevensey on 28 September had been to improvise a
castle, and when he moved to Hastings two days later he built another. Over the
next few years William and his supporters were engaged in building hundreds
more, first to conquer, then subdue and finally to colonise the whole of
England.
By the end of the
Anglo-Saxon period London had become the most powerful city in England, with a
rich port, a nearby royal palace and an important cathedral. It was via London
that King Harold II (1066) and his army sped south to meet William, and to
London which the defeated rabble of the English army returned from the Battle of
Hastings in 1066. Securing the City was therefore of the utmost importance to
William. His contemporary biographer William of Poitiers tells us that after
receiving the submission of the English magnates at Little Berkhampstead,
William sent an advance guard into London to construct a castle and prepare for
his triumphal entry. He also tells us that, after his coronation in inster
Abbey on Christmas Day 1066, the new King withdrew to Barking (in Essex)
‘while certain
fortifications were completed in the city against the restlessness of the vast
and fierce populace for he realised that it was of the first importance to
overawe the Londoners.
These fortifications may have included Baynard’s
Castle built in the south-west angle of the City (near Blackfriars) and the
castle of Monfichet (near Ludgate Circus) and almost certainly the future Tower
of London. Initially the Tower had consisted of a modest enclosure built into
the south-east corner of the Roman City walls, but by the late 1070s, with the
initial completion of the White Tower, it had become the most fearsome of all.
Nothing had been seen like it in England before. It was built by Norman masons
and English (Anglo-Saxon) labour drafted in from the countryside, perhaps to
the design of Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester. It was intended to protect the
river route from Danish attack, but also and more importantly to dominate the
City physically and visually. It is difficult to appreciate today what an
enormous impression the tower and other Norman buildings, such as St Paul’s
Cathedral (as rebuilt after 1086) or the nearby Westminster Hall (rebuilt after
1087) must have made on the native Londoners.
The White Tower
was protected to the east and south by the old Roman city walls (a full height
fragment can be seen just by Tower Hill Underground station), while the north
and west sides were protected by ditches as much as 7.50m (25ft) wide and 3.40m
(11ft) deep and an earthwork with a wooden wall on top. In the 12th century a
‘fore-building’ (now demolished) was added to the south front of the White
Tower to protect the entrance. The Wardrobe Tower, a fragment of which can be
seen at the south-east corner of the building, was another early addition or
rebuilding. From very early on the enclosure contained a number of timber
buildings for residential and service use. It is not clear whether these
included a royal residence but William the Conqueror’s immediate successors
probably made use of the White Tower itself.
It is important for us
today to remember that the functions of the Tower from the 1070s until the late
19th century were established by its Norman founders. The Tower was never
primarily intended to protect London from external invasion, although, of
course, it could have done so if necessary. Nor was it ever intended to be the
principal residence of the kings and queens of England, though many did in fact
spend periods of time there. Its primary function was always to provide a base
for royal power in the City of London and a stronghold to which the Royal Family
could retreat in times of civil disorder.
The
Medieval Tower:
A refuge and a
base for royal power
When
Richard the Lionheart (1189-99) came to the throne he departed on a crusade to
the Holy Land leaving his Chancellor, William Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, in
charge of the kingdom. Longchamp soon embarked on an enlargement and
strengthening of the Tower of London, the first of a series of building
campaigns which by about 1350 had created the basic form of the great fortress
that we know today. The justification for the vast expenditure and effort this
involved was the political instability of the kingdom and the Crown’s
continuing need for an impregnable fortress in the City of London.
Longchamp’s
works doubled the area covered by the fortress by digging a new and deeper
ditch to the north and east and building sections of curtain wall, reinforced
by a new tower (now known as the Bell Tower) at the south-west corner. The
ditch was intended to flood naturally from the river, although this was not a
success. These new defences were soon put to the test when the King’s brother,
John, taking advantage of Richard’s captivity in Germany, challenged
Longchamp’s authority and besieged him at the Tower. Lack of provisions forced
Longchamp to surrender but the Tower’s defences had proved that they could
resist attack.
The
reign of the next king John (1199-1216) saw little new building work at the
Tower, but the King made good use of the accommodation there. Like Longchamp,
John had to cope with frequent opposition throughout his reign. Only a year
after signing an agreement with his barons in 1215 (the Magna Carta) they were
once more at loggerheads and Prince Louis of France had launched an invasion of
England with the support of some of John’s leading barons. In the midst of his defence of the
kingdom, John died of dysentery and his son, Henry III, was crowned.
With England at war with France, the start of King Henry’s long
reign (1216-72) could have hardly been less auspicious, but within seven months
of his accession the French had been defeated at the battle of Lincoln and the
business of securing the kingdom could begin. Reinforcement of the royal
castles played a major role in this, and his work at the Tower of London was
more extensive than anywhere other than at Windsor Castle. Henry III was only
ten years old in 1216, but his regents began a major extension of the royal
accommodation in the enclosure which formed the Inmost Ward as we know it
today. The great hall and kitchen, dating from the previous century, were
improved and two towers built on the waterfront, the Wakefield Tower as the
King’s lodgings and the Lanthorn Tower (rebuilt in the 19th century), probably
intended as the queen’s lodgings. A new wall was also built enclosing the west
side of the Inmost Ward.
By the mid 1230s, Henry III had run into trouble with his barons
and opposition flared up in both 1236 and in 1238. On both occasions the King
fled to the Tower of London. But as he sheltered in the castle in March 1238
the weakness of the Tower must have been brought home to him; the defences to
the eastern, western and northern sides consisted only of an empty moat,
stretches of patched-up and strengthened Roman wall and a few lengths of wall
built by Longchamp in the previous century. That year, therefore, saw the
launch of Henry’s most ambitious building programme at the Tower, the
construction of a great new curtain wall round the east, north and west sides
of the castle at a cost of over £5,000. The new wall doubled the area
covered by the fortress, enclosing the neighbouring church of St Peter ad
Vincula. It was surrounded by a moat, this time successfully flooded by a
Flemish engineer, John Le Fosser. The wall was reinforced by nine new towers,
the strongest at the corners (the Salt, Martin and Devereux). Of these all but
two (the Flint and Brick) are much as originally built. This massive extension
to the Tower was viewed with extreme suspicion and hostility by the people of
London, who rightly recognised it as a further assertion of royal authority. A
contemporary writer reports their delight when a section of newly-built wall
and a gateway on the site of the Beauchamp Tower collapsed, events they
attributed to their own guardian saint, Thomas à Becket. Archaeological excavation
between 1995 and 1997 revealed the remains of one of these collasped buildings.
In 1272 King Edward I (1272-1307) came to the throne determined to
complete the defensive works begun by his father and extend them as a means of
further emphasising royal authority over London. Between 1275 and 1285 the King
spent over £21,000 on the fortress creating England’s largest and
strongest concentric castle (a castle with one line of defences within
another). The work included building the existing Beauchamp Tower, but the main
effort was concentrated on filling in Henry III’s moat and creating an
additional curtain wall on the western, northern and eastern side, and
surrounding it by a new moat. This wall enclosed the existing curtain wall
built by Henry III and was pierced by two new entrances, one from the land on
the west, passing through the Middle and Byward towers, and another under St
Thomas’s Tower, from the river. New royal lodgings were included in the upper
part of St Thomas’s Tower. Almost all these buildings survive in some form
today.
Despite all this
work Edward was a very rare visitor to his fortress; he was, in fact, only able
to enjoy his new lodgings there for a few days. There is no doubt though that
if he had been a weaker king, and had to put up with disorders in London of the
kind experienced by his father and grandfather, the Tower would have come into
its own as an even more effective and efficient base for royal authority.
King Edward’s new works were, however, put to the test by his son
Edward II (1307-27), whose reign saw a resurgence of discontent among the
barons on a scale not seen since the reign of his grandfather. Once again the
Tower played a crucial role in the attempt to maintain royal authority and as a
royal refuge. Edward II did little more than improve the walls put up by his
father, but he was a regular resident during his turbulent reign and he moved
his own lodgings from the Wakefield Tower and St Thomas’s Tower to the area
round the present Lanthorn Tower. The old royal lodgings were now used for his
courtiers and for the storage of official papers by the King’s Wardrobe (a
department of government which dealt with royal supplies). The use of the Tower
for functions other than military and residential had been started by Edward I
who put up a large new building to house the Royal Mint and began to use the
castle as a place for storing records. As early as the reign of Henry III the
castle had already been in regular use as a prison: Hubert de Burgh, Chief Justiciar
of England was incarcerated in 1232 and the Welsh Prince Gruffydd was
imprisoned there between 1241 and 1244, when he fell to his death in a bid to
escape. The Tower also served as a treasury (the Crown Jewels were moved from
Westminster Abbey to the Tower in 1303) and as a showplace for the King’s
animals.
After the unstable reign of Edward II came that of
Edward III (1327-77). Edward III’s works at the Tower were fairly minor, but he
did put up a new gatehouse between the Lanthorn Tower and the Salt Tower,
together with the Cradle Tower and its postern (a small subsidiary entrance), a
further postern behind the Byward Tower and another at the Develin Tower. He
was also responsible for rebuilding the upper parts of the Bloody Tower and
creating the vault over the gate passage, but his most substantial achievement
was to extend the Tower Wharf eastwards as far as St Thomas’s Tower. This was completed in its
present form by his successor Richard II (1377-99).
The
Tower in Tudor Times:
A royal prison
The first Tudor monarch, Henry VII (1485-1509) was responsible for
building the last permanent royal residential buildings at the Tower. He
extended his own lodgings around the Lanthorn Tower adding a new private
chamber, a library, a long gallery, and also laid out a garden. These buildings
were to form the nucleus of a much larger scheme begun by his son Henry VIII
(1509-47) who put up a large range of timber-framed lodgings at the time of the
coronation of his second wife, Anne Boleyn. The building of these lodgings,
used only once, marked the end of the history of royal residence at the Tower.
The reigns of the
Tudor kings and queens were comparatively stable in terms of civil disorder.
However, from the 1530s onwards the unrest caused by the Reformation (when
Henry VIII broke with the Church in Rome) gave the Tower an expanded role as
the home for a large number of religious and political prisoners.
The first
important Tudor prisoners were Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher of Rochester,
both of whom were executed in 1535 for refusing to acknowledge Henry VIII as
head of the English Church. They were soon followed by a still more famous
prisoner and victim, the King’s second wife Anne Boleyn, executed along with
her brother and four others a little under a year later. July 1540 saw the
execution of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex and former Chief Minister of the
King - in which capacity he had modernised the Tower’s defences and, ironically
enough, sent many others to their deaths on the same spot. Two years later,
Catherine Howard, the second of Henry VIII’s six wives to be beheaded, met her
death outside the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula which Henry had rebuilt a
few years before.
The
reign of Edward VI (1547-53) saw no end to the political executions which had
begun in his father’s reign; the young King’s protector the Duke of Somerset
and his confederates met their death at the Tower in 1552, falsely accused of
treason. During Edward’s reign the English Church became more Protestant, but
the King’s early death in 1553 left the country with a Catholic heir, Mary I
(1553-8). During her brief reign many important Protestants and political
rivals were either imprisoned or executed at the Tower. The most famous victim
was Lady Jane Grey, and the most famous prisoner the Queen’s sister Princess
Elizabeth (the future Elizabeth I). Religious controversy did not end with
Mary’s death in 1558; Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) spent much of her reign
warding off the threat from Catholic Europe, and important recusants (people
who refused to attend Church of England services) and others who might have
opposed her rule were locked up in the Tower. Never had it been so full of
prisoners, or such illustrious ones: bishops, archbishops, knights, barons, earls
and dukes all spent months and some of them years languishing in the towers of
the Tower of London.
Little was done
to the Tower’s defences in these years. The Royal Mint was modified and
extended, new storehouses were built for royal military supplies. In the reign
of James I (1603-25) the Lieutenant’s house - built in the 1540s and today
called the Queen’s House - was extended and modified; the king’s lions were
rehoused in better dens made for them in the west gate barbican.
The
Restoration and After:
The Tower and
the Office of Ordnance
After
a long period of peace at home, the reign of Charles I saw civil war break out
again in 1642, between King and Parliament. As during the Wars of the Roses and
previous conflicts, the Tower was recognised as one of the most important of
the King’s assets. Londoners, in particular, were frightened that the Tower
would be used by him to dominate the City. In 1643, after a political rather
than a military struggle, control of the Tower was seized from the King by the
parliamentarians and remained in their hands throughout the Civil War (1642-9).
The loss of the Tower, and of London as a whole, was a crucial factor in the
defeat of Charles I by Parliament. It was during this period that a permanent garrison
was installed in the Tower for the first time, by Oliver Cromwell, soon to be
Lord Protector but then a prominent parliamentary commander.
Today’s
small military guard, seen outside the Queen’s House and the Waterloo Barracks,
is an echo of Cromwell’s innovation.
The
monarchy was restored in 1660 and the reign of the new king, Charles II
(1660-85), saw further changes in the functions of the Tower. Its role as a
state prison declined, and the Office of Ordnance (which provided military
supplies and equipment) took over responsibility for most of the castle, making
it their headquarters. During this period another long-standing tradition of
the Tower began - the public display of the Crown Jewels. They were moved from
their old home to a new site in what is now called the Martin Tower, and put on
show by their keeper Talbot Edwards.
Schemes for strengthening the Tower’s defences, some elaborate and
up to date, were also proposed so that in the event of violent opposition,
which was always a possibility during the 1660s and 1670s, Charles would not be
caught out as his father had been earlier in the century. In the end, none of
these came to much, and the Restoration period saw only a minor strengthening
of the Tower. Yet the well equipped garrison which Charles II and his
successors maintained was often used to quell disturbances in the City; James
II (1685-8) certainly took steps to use the Tower’s forces against the
opposition which eventually caused him to flee into exile.
Under the control
of the Office of Ordnance the Tower was filled with a series of munitions
stores and workshops for the army and navy. The most impressive and elegant of
these was the Grand Storehouse begun in 1688 on the site where the Waterloo
Barracks now stand. It was initially a weapons store but as the 17th century
drew to a close it became more of a museum of arms and armour. More utilitarian
buildings gradually took over the entire area previously covered by the
medieval royal lodgings to the south of the White Tower; by 1800, after a
series of fires and rebuildings, the whole of this area had become a mass of
large brick Ordnance buildings. All these, however, have been swept away, and
the only surviving storehouse put up by the Ordnance is the New Armouries, standing
against the eastern inner curtain wall between the Salt and Broad Arrow towers.
While the Ordnance was
busy building storehouses, offices and workshops, the army was expanding
accommodation for the Tower garrison. Their largest building was the Irish
Barracks (now demolished), sited behind the New Armouries building in the Outer
Ward.
The
Tower in the 19th Century:
From fortress to
ancient monument
Between
1800 and 1900 the Tower of London took on the appearance which to a large
extent it retains today. Early in the century many of the historic institutions
which had been based within its walls began to move out. The first to go was
the Mint which moved to new buildings to the north east of the castle in 1812,
where it remained until 1968, when it moved to its present location near
Cardiff. The Royal Menagerie left the Lion Tower in 1834 to become the nucleus
of what is now London Zoo, and the Record Office (responsible for storing
documents of state), moved to Chancery Lane during the 1850s, vacating parts of
the medieval royal lodgings and the White Tower. Finally, after the War Office
assumed responsibility for the manufacture and storage of weapons in 1855,
large areas of the fortress were vacated by the old Office of Ordnance.
However,
before these changes took place the Tower had once again - but for the last
time - performed its traditional role in asserting the authority of the state
over the people of London. The Chartist movement of the 1840s (which sought
major political reform) prompted a final refortification of the Tower between
1848 and 1852, and further work was carried out in 1862. To protect the
approaches to the Tower new loop-holes and gun emplacements were built and an
enormous brick and stone bastion (destroyed by a bomb during the Second World
War) constructed on the north side of the fortress. Following the burning down
of the Grand Storehouse in 1841, the present Waterloo Barracks was put up to
accommodate 1,000 soldiers, and the Brick, Flint and Bowyer towers to its north
were altered or rebuilt to service it; the Royal Fusiliers’ building was
erected at the same time to be the officers’ mess. The mob never stormed the
castle but the fear of it left the outer defences of the Tower much as they are
today.
The vacation of large parts of the Tower by the offices which had
formerly occupied it and an increasing interest in the history and archaeology
of the Tower led, after 1850, to a programme of ‘re-medievalisation’. By then
the late 17th and 18th-century Ordnance buildings and barracks, together with a
series of private inns and taverns, such as the Stone Kitchen and the Golden
Chain, had obscured most of the medieval fortress. The first clearances of
these buildings began in the late 1840s, but the real work began in 1852, when
the architect Anthony Salvin, already known for his work on medieval buildings,
re-exposed the Beauchamp Tower and restored it to a medieval appearance.
Salvin’s work was much admired and attracted the attention of Prince Albert
(husband of Queen Victoria), who recommended that he be made responsible for a
complete restoration of the castle. This led to a programme of work which
involved the Salt Tower, the White Tower, St Thomas’s Tower, the Bloody Tower
and the construction of two new houses on Tower Green.
In the 1870s Salvin was replaced by John Taylor, a less talented
and sensitive architect. His efforts concentrated on the southern parts of the
Tower, notably the Cradle and Develin towers and on the demolition of the
18th-century Ordnance Office and storehouse on the site of the Lanthorn Tower,
which he rebuilt. He also built the stretches of wall linking the Lanthorn
Tower to the Salt and Wakefield towers. But by the 1890s, restoration of this
type was going out of fashion and this was the last piece of re-medievalisation
to be undertaken. The work of this period had succeeded in opening up the site
and re-exposing its defences, but fell far short of restoring its true medieval
appearance.
The second half
of the 19th century saw a great increase in the number of visitors to the
Tower, although sightseers had been admitted as early as 1660. In 1841 the
first official guidebook was issued and ten years later a purpose-built ticket
office was erected at the western entrance. By the end of Queen Victoria’s
reign in 1901, half a million people were visiting the Tower each year.
The 20th Century
The
First World War (1914-18) left the Tower largely untouched; the only bomb to
fall on the fortress landed in the Moat. However, the war brought the Tower of
London back into use as a prison for the first time since the early 19th
century and between 1914-16 eleven spies were held and subsequently executed in
the Tower. The last execution in the Tower took place in 1941 during the Second
World War (1939-45). Bomb damage to the Tower during the Second World War was
much greater: a number of buildings were severely damaged or destroyed
including the mid-19th century North Bastion, which received a direct hit on 5
October 1940, and the Hospital Block which was partly destroyed during an air
raid in the same year. Incendiaries also destroyed the Main Guard, a late
19th-century building to the south-west of the White Tower. During the
Second World War the Tower was closed to the public. The Moat, which had been
drained and filled in 1843, was used as allotments for vegetable growing and
the Crown Jewels were removed from the Tower and taken to a place of safety,
the location of which has never been disclosed. Today the Tower of London is
one of the world’s major tourist attractions and 2.5 million visitors a year
come to discover its long and eventful history, its buildings, ceremonies and
traditions.
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