[Illustration: The Keep, or White Tower.] The most romantic as well as the most pathetic incidents in the history of the Tower are connected with its forlorn prisoners, doomed to long incarceration or speedy death at the will of despotic monarchs. Even the sovereigns themselves were often captives within its walls. The two young Princes, Edward V. and his brother Richard, entered the Tower under the nominal protection of their uncle Richard III., never to appear again. Anne Boleyn returned as a prisoner to the place which she had formerly entered in triumph just before her Coronation. Retaining her gay spirit to the end, Anne laughingly remarked that she had a little neck, when told that death by execution was quite painless. During the reign of her sister Mary, Queen Elizabeth was brought through the Traitor's Gate to the Tower, where she was confined for some time under suspicion of being implicated in Sir Thomas Wyatt's rebellion. Though ceasing to be a royal palace, and of little use as a fortress, the Tower retained its position as a State prison until 1820, becoming since then merely a barracks and a guard-house for the Crown jewels. CHAPTER IV KENNINGTON PALACE No royal house has more completely vanished from sight, and even from memory, than the royal palace of Kennington. Few know that such a palace ever existed, and certainly those who dwell upon its site would require to be possessed of keen imaginations, to realize that once all the pageantry of a medieval Court took place, where to-day monotonous streets crowd upon one another. Yet Parliaments assembled and all the ceremonies of State were performed on a spot not far from where Kennington Park now stands. The whim of royal fancy was the cause of the complete obliteration of the palace, other royal houses pleasing the later Kings more than the one upon Lambeth Marsh. Low-lying ground, only redeemed from complete marshland by the embankment of the river, lay between it and the City of London on the north. As it was not until quite the end of the eighteenth century that houses began to be built upon this district, the land being up till then used as market-gardens, it is not surprising that when the palace was destroyed it soon passed from men's minds, no one living in the neighbourhood. The exact date of the destruction of the palace is not known, but its oblivion was almost complete when Camden, the great antiquarian, wrote in 1607, for he says: "The Royal seat call'd Kennington, whither the Kings of England us'd to retire, the discovery whereof 'tis vain to endeavour after, there appearing neither name nor rubbish to direct us."