To the foregoing hasty sketch, in which we have endeavoured to make the reader acquainted with the general outline of the fortress, we would willingly, did space permit, append a history of the principal occurrences that have happened within its walls. We would tell how in 1234, Griffith, Prince of Wales, in attempting to escape from the White Tower, by a line made of hangings, sheets, and table-cloths, tied together, being a stout heavy man, broke the rope, and falling from a great height, perished miserably—his head and neck being driven into his breast between the shoulders. How Edward the Third first established a Mint within the Tower, coining florences of gold. How in the reign of the same monarch, three sovereigns were prisoners there;—namely, John, King of France, his son Philip, and David, King of Scotland. How in the fourth year of the reign of Richard the Second, during the rebellion of Wat Tyler, the insurgents having possessed themselves of the fortress, though it was guarded by six hundred valiant persons, expert in arms, and the like number of archers, conducted themselves with extraordinary licence, bursting into the king’s chamber, and that of his mother, to both of whom they offered divers outrages and indignities; and finally dragged forth Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, and hurrying him to Tower Hill, hewed off his head at eight strokes, and fixed it on a pole on London Bridge, where it was shortly afterwards replaced by that of Wat Tyler. How, in 1458, jousts were held on the Tower-Green by the Duke of Somerset and five others, before Queen Margaret of Anjou. How in 1471, Henry the Sixth, at that time a prisoner, was said to be murdered within the Tower; how seven years later, George Duke of Clarence, was drowned in a butt of Malmsey in the Bowyer Tower; and how five years after that, the youthful Edward the Fifth, and the infant Duke of York, were also said, for the tradition is more than doubtful, to be smothered in the Blood Tower. How in 1483, by command of the Duke of Gloucester, who had sworn he would not dine till he had seen his head off, Lord Hastings was brought forth to the green before the chapel, and after a short shrift, “for a longer could not be suffered, the protector made so much haste to dinner, which he might not go to until this were done, for saving of his oath,” his head was laid down upon a large log of timber, and stricken off.