The edge of the axe was turned towards the captive after his trial, during the sad return to the prison-house, if he had--as was nearly always the case--been condemned to die. This Yeoman still carries the historic axe in State processions, but it is now merely an emblem of a vanished power to destroy. Allied to the Warders are a body of men known as the Yeomen of the Guard, or Beefeaters, who attend on the King’s person at all his State functions, whether it be in procession or at levée. The Yeomen were first seen beyond Tower walls in the coronation procession of Henry VII. The eastern front of the Byward Tower has a quaint, old-world appearance, and has altered little since Elizabethan days. _Bell Tower._--This old Tower, at the angle of the Ballium Wall, contained at one time, within the turret still to be seen above its roof, the Tower bell, which in former days was used as an alarm signal. In the regulations of 1607 we find that “when the Tower bell doth ring at nights for the shutting in of the gates, all the prisoners, with their servants, are to withdraw themselves into their chambers, and not to goe forth that night.” The walls, built by Henry III., are of immense strength, the masonry being solid for fully ten feet above the ground. The Tower contains an upper and a lower dungeon, the former lit by comparatively modern windows, the latter still possessing narrow openings or arrow-slits. In the upper cell, the walls of which are eight feet thick, four notable prisoners were confined--Bishop Fisher and Anne Boleyn in Henry VIII.’s time, Princess Elizabeth in Mary’s reign, and Lady Arabella Stuart in the days of James I. Fisher was eighty years old when brought to linger here “in cold, in rags, and in misery.” The aged Bishop had refused to comply with the Act of Succession and acknowledge Henry supreme head of the Church of England. From this prison he wrote to Cromwell, “My dyett, also, God knoweth how slender it is at any tymes, and now in myn age my stomak may nott awaye but with a few kynd of meats, which if I want, I decay forthwith, and fall into crafs and diseases of my bodye, and kan not keep myself in health.” But no alleviation of his sufferings did he obtain, and early in the morning, when winter and spring had passed away, and slender rays of June sunshine had found entrance to his dismal dwelling-place, the Lieutenant of the Tower came to him to announce that a message from the King had arrived, and that Fisher was to suffer death that day. The Bishop took this as happy tidings, granting release from intolerable conditions of life. At nine o’clock he was carried to Little Tower Hill (towards the present Royal Mint buildings), praying as he went. On the scaffold he exclaimed, “_Accedite ad eum et illuminamini, et facies vestræ non confundentur_,” with hands uplifted, and, having spoken some few words to the crowd around, was repeating the words of the Thirty-first Psalm,