The north-east window has a very imperfect coat of arms with fleur-de-lys and leopards, as well as two other coats with the royal motto. There is also a device which might be taken to represent the letter M, but which is probably the inverted water-bottles of the Hastings family. Daggers are quartered upon the other coats of arms. At the bottom of this window is a Tudor rose and several fragments of glass much confused. The glass has been placed in the windows with great care, the subjects being made as complete as the broken fragments permitted. Each of the eight windows is ornamented with leaded borders. CHAPTER II THE NORMAN AND PLANTAGENET KINGS Henry the First was the earliest of our kings to make use of the Tower as a State prison—Randulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham, having the distinction of being its first prisoner. Henry, it appears, in order to curry popularity at the beginning of his reign, had Flambard arrested, the Bishop—hated by the people for his rapacity—being accused of illegally raising the funds needed for the building of the fortress which was destined to become his prison. He was imprisoned with the King’s sanction, but nominally by the will of the House of Commons, and thus inaugurated the long line of prisoners of State which, from the reign of Henry the First until the early years of the nineteenth century, the Tower never lacked. Flambard had been the principal minister of Henry’s predecessor, William Rufus. The Saxon chronicler, Vitalis, recounts that the Bishop was allowed while in the Tower, to keep a sumptuous table for himself and his servants, a privilege which enabled him to escape from his prison in the following manner. He obtained a rope which had been hidden in a wine cask, and after liberally regaling his keepers, whom he succeeded in fuddling with much wine, he made fast the rope to a pillar of a chamber in the White Tower, or to the bar of a window, and let himself slide down, reaching the ground in safety. It was a wonderful feat Flambard performed, for he held his pastoral staff in his hand as he descended the side of the Tower. The rope proved too short and the Bishop had a fall of several feet, but apparently without being the worse for it. A swift horse, provided by his friends, took him to the coast, whence he succeeded in reaching Normandy. Some years after his escape he returned to his see at Durham, where he completed that splendid cathedral, also building many other churches and castles, amongst the latter being Norham Castle, whose stately ruins have been sung by Sir Walter Scott. It is uncertain whether any of the Norman kings before Stephen made the Tower a place of residence. But in 1140 that monarch, during a gloomy period of private and public affairs, retired to the Tower with a large retinue and kept his court there during Whitsuntide.