In Hollar’s panoramic view of London before and after the Great Fire, here reproduced, it will be seen how very close was the approach of the conflagration to the walls of the ancient fortress. Another danger threatened the Tower in this same year, a Captain Rathbone, with some other officers, having formed a plan for scaling the outer walls, and killing Sir John Robinson,[5] after securing the gates. It was one of the Anti-Royalist plots with which the period was so rife, and, like the majority of them, ended in failure; Rathbone and his gang were taken prisoners and promptly hanged at Tyburn. [Illustration: APPEARETH NOW AFTER THE SAD CALAMITIE AND DESTRVCTION BY FIRE In the Yeare M. DC. LXVI. _Wenceslaus Hollar delin: et sculp: 1666, Cum Privilegio._ _London after the Great Fire._ _(From an Engraving by Hollar.)_] Among other prisoners there at this time was Thomas, Lord Buller of Moor Park, incarcerated for having challenged the Duke of Buckingham to a duel, and also the Marquis of Dorchester, for “quarrelling with and using ill language to that duke”; the latter was likewise in the Tower, and not for the first time. On this occasion Buckingham was charged with treasonable correspondence and with stirring up a mutiny in the Army. Few persons of the time were so frequently made acquainted with the prison chambers of the Tower as this roystering ne’er-do-well, “that life of pleasure, and that soul of whim,” George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who was, in all, five times confined in the Tower, his first visit having been paid during the Protectorate because he had married Fairfax’s daughter, an event that greatly enraged Cromwell. In 1666 he was imprisoned for insulting Lord Ossory, the son of the Duke of Ormond, in the House of Lords. But he was never a prisoner for long, the last occasion being when, together with Shaftesbury, Wharton, and Salisbury, he opposed the “Courtiers’ Parliament.” All four were sent to the Tower, but Buckingham, after making a humble apology, was released. On leaving the Tower he passed under Shaftesbury’s windows; the latter had refused to submit. “What,” said Shaftesbury to Buckingham, “are you leaving us?” “Why, yes,” answered Buckingham, “such giddy fellows as I am can never stay long in one place.” Constantly in trouble, Buckingham was so boon a companion of the King’s that Charles could not long let him remain out of his sight, whatever the follies of which the Duke might have been guilty. Another of these brilliant but dissipated friends and courtiers of Charles II. who was sent to the Tower, was the infamously famous John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. He was there in 1669 for having abducted Elizabeth Mallet, “la triste héritière,” as Grammont calls her. Ultimately Rochester married the lady, and she made a most devoted wife to a most worthless and unfaithful husband.