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
must always have been a solace to him.
There were many others imprisoned in the Bloody Tower; but we must pass
on.
In walking from one part of the Tower to another we meet some men
dressed very curiously in red dresses with velvet caps. These are the
Beef-eaters, who guard the Tower, also called the Yeomen of the Guard.
Their odd name and odd dress always attract people, and they are such
fine men that children sometimes wonder if they are called Beef-eaters
because they eat a lot of beef! That is not so. The name is said to come
from an old French word _buffetier_, which means a man who waited at a
buffet or sideboard; and in old times the beef-eaters waited on the King
and Queen, and they still wear the same costume they wore three hundred
years ago. Every night before midnight the chief Beef-eater goes to find
the chief warder; the Beef-eater carries the keys of the Tower, and with
a guard of men the two go together to lock up the outer gate. When the
sentinel who keeps watch hears them, he calls out, 'Who goes there?' and
the answer is, 'The Keys!' Then says the sentinel, 'Advance, King
George's Keys!' This is a curious old custom. Close by the Bloody Tower
is the Jewel House, where the crowns of the King and Queen and other
royalties are kept. They are made of gold and set with precious stones,
so big that it is difficult to believe that they are real--great rubies
and pearls as large as pigeon's eggs, and huge glittering diamonds. In
this room there is a man always on watch, day and night. Yet the jewels
were once stolen by a daring man called Colonel Blood, who managed to
get away from the Tower, but was caught soon after with the King's crown
under his cloak. This was in the reign of Charles II.
In the White Tower are rooms full of armour worn by English
soldiers--armour of all the different ages, from the time when a man
wore so much iron that if he fell down he could not get up again, and
sometimes was actually smothered before he could get out of it, up to
the present day.
In the White Tower there is one very awful dungeon, a little narrow
cell, without a ray of light, no window at all--nothing but dense
blackness. There must have been many prisoners kept here, for on the
walls there are sad cuttings, now half worn away, which tell how the
poor men occupied their time in chipping their names in the stone. Many
of the martyrs of Queen Mary's reign must have felt this terrible
blackness, for there are texts of which the dates show that they were
cut at that time. One of these is, 'Be faithful unto death, and I will
give thee a crown of life.' The hand that traced out these letters long
years ago is still. The martyr has long since passed from the darkness
of the narrow cell to the great brightness of eternal light.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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