In Wellclose Square beyond the Tower, is a building that is more than three hundred years old, and in it are still to be seen the oldest police cells in London. Under them is the entrance to a subway which tradition says once led direct to the Tower. The house is now used as a club. The cells are in the rear of the building, and reached by a winding stone stairway. They are dark and stifling. Many names and inscriptions are carved on the wooden walls. There is still to be deciphered the name of Edward Burk hanged for murder; that of Edward Ray, December 27, 1758, and another inscription reading "Francis Brittain, June 27, 1758. Remember the poor debtors." [Illustration: The Tower of London] The Tower of London, quite the most ancient and historic of English fortresses, begun by William the Conqueror, has been successively a royal palace, a State Prison, and is to-day a barracks and an arsenal. The most ancient portion of the fortress, The White Tower, is still standing. In this Tower of London, Richard II. while imprisoned, was deposed; Henry VI. was murdered by the Duke of Gloucester; the Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV., was drowned in a butt of wine; the princes, Edward V. and his brother, were murdered by order of their uncle, Duke of Gloucester, who thereafter took possession of the throne as Richard III. Here Henry VIII. received in state all his wives before he married them; here were imprisoned countless subjects, among them Archbishop Cranmer; Shakespeare's patron the Earl of Southampton, and Prince James of Scotland. Here Sir Walter Raleigh wrote, while a prisoner, his "History of the World." Here were executed Queen Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. On the Thames side may still be seen the double water gate, called the Traitors' Gate, through which prisoners charged with high treason were brought into the Tower. Through this gate passed the princess who was afterwards Queen Elizabeth, exclaiming as she entered: "Here landeth as true a subject, being a prisoner, as ever landed at these stairs; and before Thee, O God, I speak it." Rich in memories, indeed, is this grimmest of grim monuments consecrated by time and the tears and blood of many captives.