Felton, the murderer of Buckingham, was thrown into this tower in 1628 and Archbishop Laud was prisoner here from December 16, 1640, to January 10, 1644. Here, also, in July, 1683, Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex “cutt his own throat,” as the Register of St. Peter ad Vincula shows. The infamous Judge Jeffreys came here as prisoner in 1688, having been “taken” in a low ale-house in Wapping, and is reported to have spent his days in Bloody Tower “imbibing strong drink,” from the effects of which employment he died in 1689. This old tower has tragedy and misery enough in its records to deserve its name, and it is a mistake on the part of Tower authorities to allow so interesting a building to be closed altogether to the public. The narrow chamber above the archway on the south side still contains all the machinery for raising and lowering the portcullis which, when down, would at one time have prevented all access to the Inner Ward. This is believed to be the only ancient portcullis in England that is still in working order. _The Wakefield Tower._--The lower portion of this tower is, with the White Tower, one of the oldest portions of all the buildings, and was laid down in Norman times. Henry III. rebuilt the upper part, and it served as the entrance to his palace, which lay to the east. During the Commonwealth the great hall in which Anne Boleyn was tried, and which was attached to this tower, was demolished. The name “Wakefield” was given to the tower after the battle of Wakefield in 1460, when the captive Yorkists were lodged here. In former times the tower had been called the Record Tower and the Hall Tower. In the octagonal chamber where the Crown Jewels are now kept, the recess to the south-east was at one time an oratory. In Tower records of the thirteenth century it is so spoken of. Here tradition asserts that Henry VI. was murdered by Duke Richard of Gloucester, who, entering the chamber from the palace, found Henry at prayer and treacherously stabbed him to death. To the dungeon beneath this tower the men who were “out in the Forty-Five,” and who were taken captive after that rebellion which was crushed at Culloden, were brought and huddled together with so little regard for the necessity of fresh air that many of them died on the damp earthen floor of the cell. The walls of this dungeon are thirteen feet thick; from floor to vaulted roof, within, there is only ten feet space. Those men who survived even the terrors of this place, and whose hearts remained true to the royal house of Stuart, were shipped off to the West Indies, and so ended “an auld sang.” The wonder, the bravery, the sacrifice and sadness of it all is set down for after ages to marvel at in _Waverley_. Happy those who fell at Culloden, for they, at least, rest under the heather; they escaped the miserable English dungeons and the wickednesses of the plantations.