The Children's Book of LondonMitton, G. E. (Geraldine Edith)
History
The Children's Book of London
Mitton, G. E. (Geraldine Edith)
London (England) -- Description and travel -- Juvenile literature
Underneath our feet is a deep channel, now dry, where the river once ran
in to fill up the moat. It flowed under a great gloomy archway with a
gate, and when the river was running here everyone who came to the
Tower by water had to land at that gate. It has an awful name, and some
of the very saddest memories belong to it. It is called Traitor's Gate.
In those old days, when people used their river much more than we do
now, they owned barges, great boats covered with an awning, and when
they wanted to go from Westminster to the Tower they did not think of
driving, for the streets were narrow and badly paved, the roads between
London and Westminster quite dangerous; and they could not go by train,
for no one had ever imagined anything so wonderful as a train, so they
went by water.
When the prisoners who were in the Tower had to be tried before judges
they were taken up the river in barges to Westminster, where all the
evidence was heard, and then they were brought back again. How many of
them made that last sad journey and entered the Traitor's Gate never to
come out again! They had been to Westminster to be tried, feeling quite
sure something would happen in their favour, and they would be set free;
and then they had heard the sentence that they were to be beheaded! They
came back down the river, and the sunshine might be just as gay, the
water as sparkling, as when they went, but to them it would all seem
different. The journey was short, too short for a man who knew it was
his last! Then when they reached the Tower the barge would sail on up to
the Traitor's Gate, and the dark shadow of the heavy walls would fall on
the prisoner, and he would feel a chill at his heart as he stepped out
on to those cold gray stones.
Of some of those who suffered in the Tower you have heard. Sir Thomas
More landed here when he came in his barge from Chelsea, but we know
that he was too brave and good to feel much fear. Lady Jane Grey landed
here when her father and father-in-law brought her here, calling her
Queen; she came as a queen, but stayed here afterwards as a prisoner.
Did any warning tell her this when she stepped out of the boat?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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