In ancient days the Wakefield Tower, then named the Hall, formed the entrance to the Royal Palace, which fell into decay during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. She having been a prisoner in the Tower as a Princess, had conceived such a horror for the place that when she became Queen she refused to live there. In previous reigns the King or Queen always lived in the Tower before their Coronation, and thence proceeded in state, preceded by the Knights of the Bath, to Westminster. In the Wakefield Tower is still a small chapel or oratory which was used as a private place of devotion by the Monarch when in residence at the Palace. In this little chapel, whilst kneeling at his prayers, Henry VI was murdered by Richard of Gloucester. A narrow, winding stair, some of the steps now so worn with age as to be hardly safe, leads down from the adjacent Bloody Tower to the basement. Down these steps the bodies of the two young Princes who were murdered there were dragged, and hastily buried in the basement of the Wakefield Tower. Here they lay for five days when Richard of Gloucester, by whose order they had been murdered, made the somewhat superfluous discovery that the bodies were not buried in consecrated ground. They were hastily dug up and buried close to the south wall of the White Tower, and being there more or less under the shadow of St. John’s Chapel, were considered suitably interred. The Constable of the Tower, Sir Robert Brackenbury, was the only person who knew the secret, and he died with it, being shortly afterwards killed at the battle of Bosworth. It was not till the reign of Charles II that the remains of the two little Princes were accidentally found, and by order of the King removed to Westminster and buried there. The walls of the Wakefield Tower are eight feet thick, and there is only one entrance, whilst the windows are heavily barred. In these more or less practical days, however, reliance is not placed solely on solid walls, or even on sentries and yeomen, to keep the Crown Jewels in safety. After the St. Patrick’s Jewels had been stolen in Dublin, King Edward VII determined that the Crown Jewels of England should be placed, as far as human prescience could devise, beyond the power of anyone to tamper with them. The most expert mechanical and scientific geniuses, with Messrs. Chubb at their head, were called into consultation, and the result was the invention of the present octagonal-shaped steel casement furnished with steel bars.