'It is the poynte of a wyse man to try and then to truste,
For hapy is he who fyndeth on that is juste.'--R. C.
The following is the conceit of a poor lover:
'Thomas Willynagh, Goldsmithe. My hart is yours tel dethe.'
And by the side is a figure of a 'bleeding hart,' and another of
'dethe.' The initials, T. W. and P. A. on each side of the bleeding
heart, are doubtless those of the lover and his mistress."
This was the Tower in which Anne Boleyn was imprisoned. It is on record,
that, when she passed under the Traitor's Gate, she fell on her knees
and prayed, declaring herself innocent. When about to be beheaded on the
Green, she refused to have her eyes bandaged (those eyes into which her
brutal, tiger-like husband had so often fondly looked), but kept them
riveted on the headsman, who, while she gleamed on him, had not power to
strike the blow, until some one attracted her attention, and then, when
her eyes were turned away, he took off his shoes, strode forward
noiselessly, and struck off her head.
Another inscription in this tower, in Italian, runs as follows:
"Since fortune hath chosen that my hope should go to the wind, to
complain, I wish the time were destroyed, my planet being ever sad
and unpropitious."--WILIM TYRREE, 1541.
One underground cell was called the Rats' Dungeon; it was below
high-water mark, and dark as the grave. At high-water, hundreds of rats
are believed to have sought shelter in this hideous cavern, until the
tide subsided. In this den, it is said, prisoners were sometimes thrust,
when the rack was found of no avail in extorting a confession. But all
the shrieks and struggles would be drowned deep down in this inhuman
hell, and only the Angel of Death left to look on the maddening horrors
of the wretched prisoners. The imagination shrinks back, as, through the
darkness of bygone years, it pictures for a moment the terrible
tragedies which must have been enacted in such a blood-stained dungeon.