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
Queen Elizabeth came here, too, when she was only a princess. Her sister
Mary was on the throne, and Mary feared that people would make Elizabeth
queen, so she sent her as a prisoner to the Tower. We know the very
words Elizabeth said as she landed, though nearly three hundred and
fifty years have passed since then. She exclaimed: 'Here landeth as true
a subject, being a prisoner, as ever landed on these stairs, and before
Thee, O God, I speak it, having none other friends but Thee.' Then she
sat down on a stone, and said: 'Better sit on a stone than in a cell.'
And only the entreaties of her attendant moved her to get up and go on.
She was a prisoner for several years, and at first was not allowed to go
out of her cell at all. Afterwards, when she became Queen on Mary's
death, one of the first places she visited was the Tower, perhaps
because she felt pleased at being a Queen instead of a prisoner, and
wanted to enjoy the contrast.
There were many, many others who landed here, never to come forth again
as free men. Some died in imprisonment; some were beheaded; some
suffered for their crimes; some were innocent, but suffered because they
had aroused the anger of a jealous king. Some went into those walls to
suffer tortures worse than death--tortures of the thumbscrew and rack,
to make them betray the names of their companions. Some came here as
martyrs, because they believed in God, and thought the suffering of the
present time as nothing to the glory hereafter.
Having looked long at the Traitor's Gate, we can pass on into the Tower
and see what else is there.
The prisoners went sometimes from the Traitor's Gate to the Bloody
Tower, so called from the fact that it was in a room here Edward V. and
his brother were murdered by the order of their wicked uncle. The boys'
bones were afterwards found at the foot of a staircase in the White
Tower. The Bloody Tower was not always called this awful name; it used
to be known at first as the Garden Tower. In the Bloody Tower the Duke
of Northumberland, who tried to make Lady Jane Grey a queen, was
imprisoned before he was beheaded. He must have known he well deserved
his fate; but if he had any conscience he must often have felt very
miserable to think of Lady Jane and her young husband, his own son, who
would be likely to suffer for his fault too.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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