It is generally admitted that Gundulp, Bishop of Rochester, was the architect of the White Tower; and that it was built in the time of William the Conqueror. Nor must we forget that soon after his first entry into London, William the Norman resided in the Tower, in proof (if true) that this fortress, whatever it might have been, was one of the strongest in London--one of the safest to retire into in a land filled with enemies, for he had then but few friends except his own soldiers. What William the Norman built, and Rufus and Henry I. added to the old Saxon Tower of London, cannot distinctly be defined, for we read of the Great Tower, and a castle fronting the river beneath this Tower; and then we pass over a few years, and find Flambard, the fighting Bishop of Durham, a prisoner within the Tower walls, and from which, with the aid of a rope, he made his escape. Another Bishop, Longchamp, held the Tower against John and his retainers while the lion-hearted King Richard I. was waging war in Palestine. Here we see it used as a prison, and find it a fortress too strong for Prince John and his followers to storm. Henry III., who built the Lion Tower and kept leopards in it, made many additions and improvements. Mr. Bayley says, "The records of that era, which abound with curious entries, evincing Henry's great and constant zeal for the promotion of the fine arts, contain many interesting orders which he gave for works of that kind to be executed in different parts of the Tower." Edward I. strengthened the fortifications, and seems to have left the Tower much in the state that we now see it; for, after this period, but few alterations or additions appear to have been made. Edward III. repaired it, and Mr. Bayley, in his _History of the Tower_, tells us how the sum (nearly 1000_l._) was expended. The first interesting description we have of the Tower was written by a foreigner named Paul Hentzner, in the reign of Elizabeth, and is as follows: