St Peter’s Chapel and Place of Execution 154 St Thomas’s and Curfew Towers 158 Traitor’s Gate from the Bloody Tower 164 Back of the Byward Tower 168 The King’s House 174 Middle Tower 198 Queen Elizabeth’s Walk, from the Curfew Tower to the Beauchamp Tower 208 Queen Elizabeth’s Walk, from the Beauchamp Tower to the Curfew Tower 210 PLAN OF THE TOWER _at End_ INTRODUCTION To the English race the Tower of London will always be the most interesting of its Monuments; for it forms a group of buildings that for eight centuries has been the very heart of the English capital, and, since the victor of Hastings raised the great Keep—or White Tower—through all the succeeding centuries, the Tower has been closely connected with the history of England. It would be vain to search any other city, Rome itself not excepted, for another such group of buildings, or to match the historic interest and splendid record of the ancient Norman structure. The Tower is indeed rife with interest; the most dramatic events of our country’s history during more than seven hundred years have been enacted within or near its walls. To see it is to conjure up a vision of scenes, some brilliant and stately, some tragic and awful, but all full of deepest interest to the hearts and minds of Britons, to whom the history of their land is dear. Although several works—some voluminous, such as the two ponderous quartos by John Bayley, published in 1825, and some more recent, such as the histories of the Tower by Britton and Brayley, and, more recently still, those by Lord de Ros and Doyne Bell—have appeared, I venture to think that in writing the present account of the Tower I have not undertaken a thankless or a useless task. My object in giving the following book to the public has been a hope that to those who already know the Tower some fresh knowledge may perhaps be added to their acquaintance with that noble old pile; and that to those who do not know it, the admirable illustrations taken from the building itself by Messrs Colls, and the reproduction of old views and scenes connected with the Tower from the days of Charles the First to those of Queen Victoria, will enable them to realise its incomparable historic interest.