The Tower of London, (Vol. 1 of 2)Gower, Ronald Sutherland, Lord
History
The Tower of London, (Vol. 1 of 2)
Gower, Ronald Sutherland, Lord
Tower of London (London, England)
With Henry of Lancaster the list of State prisoners recommences;
Llewellyn, a relation of Owen Glendower’s, coming there in 1402,
being followed three years later by Owen’s son Griffin, and other
leaders of the Welsh, taken at the battle of Usk. Nor did Henry fail
to visit his wrath upon offending priests, for in 1403 the Abbot of
the Friar Preachers at Winchelsea, was interned in the Tower, with
other ecclesiastics, charged with intending to incite the people to
rebellion, and with having written “railing rimes, malicious meters,
and tauntyng verses against the King”; their literary ability brought
these unlucky priests to the gallows at Tyburn. But the most important
prisoner of State whom we find in the Tower in Henry’s reign, was
Prince James of Scotland, the son and heir of Robert III. The young
Prince, who was only nine years of age, was being sent to France
to be educated, and, encountering heavy weather, was driven ashore
at Flamborough Head in Yorkshire. Notwithstanding the fact that
England and Scotland were then at peace, Henry seized the prince and
his attendants, contrary to all the laws of justice and hospitality,
imprisoning him within the Tower, together with the Earl of Orkney,
who was accompanying him as his guardian. When the news reached King
Robert of Scotland in 1406, he is said to have died of a broken heart,
the young prince becoming _de facto_ king of that country, but Henry
still kept him a prisoner. After remaining for two years at the Tower,
he was taken to Nottingham Castle, and it was not until the accession
of Henry the Sixth that he regained his liberty, having been a prisoner
for eighteen years.
Henry V. became King in 1412, and in the “Chronicles of London” is an
account of the goodly array which accompanied the new monarch to the
Tower, “and ayens hym was a gret rydynge of men of London, and brought
hym to the Tower upon the Fryday, and on the morowe he rood through
Chepe with a gret rought of lordes and knyghtes, the whiche he hadde
newe made in the Towre on the night before, unto Westᵐʳ.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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