Ghosts of the Tower of London

by Geoff Abbott

  Mint Street, Outer Ward

  The Bloody Tower

  Stay ye near the tower, the Bloody Tower, at ten,

  And ye shall hear a cry,

  A great Amen,

  That lifts the very Raven’s savage head,

  And wakes the sleeping servant in his bed.

  ‘God preserve King Henry!’ is the shout,

  And by warder ‘gainst strong guard the keys are carried,

  As if iron into palm the twain are married….

  And the while the candlelamp it goes not out.

  So praise ye all that God preserves King Hal,

  Foolhardy is the one whose voice is weak,

  But if ye have aught else on which to speak….

  Wait till the candlelamp it goeth out!

  Bloody Tower Arch

  The Inner Ward is the area surrounding the White Tower, and is bordered by the inner wall. For many centuries, when Royalty resided in the White Tower and the Royal Apartments, the inner ward was for the exclusive use of Royalty and the nobles of the court. Also within the protection of the inner wall were stored the nation’s armoury, the State Papers, and the Regalia and Jewels. During these centuries there was only one entrance to the inner ward, a heavily guarded archway beneath a gatehouse known originally as the Garden Tower (it overlooked the gardens of the Lieutenant’s Lodgings) but later as the Bloody Tower. Situated only yards from Traitors’ Gate, it served admirably as a prison for princes and knights, bishops and judges.

  Here, in Queen Mary’s reign, languished Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishop Latimer of Winchester and Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London. Opposing the Pope’s supremacy, they were condemned as heretics and later burnt to death at Oxford.

  Here, in the same reign, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, was confined for attempting to make his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, Queen of England. He perished beneath the axe on Tower Hill, the vast crowd cheering as he died.

  The Bloody Tower

  Judge Jeffries, the Hanging Judge of the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685, eventually caught by the mob, was placed in the Bloody Tower for his own protection – where he drank himself to death with copious draughts of brandy.

  The Bloody Tower also heard the whispering of evil conspirators, when Sir Thomas Overbury survived fearful poisoning for over four months. He had sought to persuade his friend Robert Carr not to marry the vicious Countess of Essex, but he under-estimated her influence and malice. Finally her poisonous concoctions took effect, and in the Bloody Tower he died a horrifying death.

  But if the stones could speak, surely they would lament the deaths of the two little princes in 1483. Confined, it is said, in the upper chamber of the Bloody Tower, the two small boys, twelve-year-old King Edward V and his nine-year-old brother Richard Duke of York, were taken from their mother’s care into the custody of their uncle, Richard Duke of Gloucester. Placed in the Bloody Tower, they were never seen again. The country could not continue without a ruler, and so the Duke of Gloucester became King Richard III.

  Tradition states that one boy was smothered, the other stabbed to death. Skeletons discovered in 1674 beneath an external stairway of the White Tower were assumed to be theirs.

  And so their two small ghosts, hand in hand, clad in white nightgowns, have been seen around the Bloody Tower, a sight for pity and compassion rather than terror.

  Sir Walter Raleigh

  Be they innocent children or worldly adults, the Bloody Tower spared none, and surely no one proved more brave than Sir Walter Raleigh. An adventurer, a scientist, the favourite of Queen Elizabeth, he could do little wrong. But the next monarch, James I, had no time for men of Raleigh’s sophisticated calibre. Accused of treasonable plotting, Raleigh was soon the occupant of the Bloody Tower, a confinement which lasted thirteen years. He would stroll on Raleigh’s Walk, the battlemented wall adjoining his prison; dressed always in the height of fashion, he was popular with the people, with rich merchants, ambassadors and learned men. But as the years dragged by, the cold of the stones and the dampness of the river mists sapped his vitality, and rheumatism racked his ageing joints. King James, anxious to conclude a peace pact with Philip of Spain, acceded to Philip’s vengeful demand for Raleigh’s death, Raleigh who had plundered so much gold from Spanish galleons and colonies.

  Eventually, on 24th October 1618, after years of deprivation, Raleigh was awakened by a yeoman warder and told his fate. Peter, his valet, attempted to help him to prepare, to comb his hair. Raleigh, undaunted to the end, retorted: ‘Let them comb it that shall have it!’ Taken to Old Palace Yard at Westminster, he met death bravely as the axe descended.

  His phantom, then, surely has greater claim than any other to return to the scene of his long imprisonment. Over the years it has been reportedly seen flitting noiselessly through the forbidding rooms of the Bloody Tower; seen too on moonlit nights by those whose duties take them past Raleigh’s Walk, his ghostly figure floating along the battlements.

  In Raleigh’s time the Walk extended to the Lieutenant’s Lodgings. Now part of those battlements are incorporated in houses built a century or so later, houses occupied by yeoman warders and their families. And since 1976 one wife in particular will always have cause to remember that her bathroom is positioned where Raleigh promenaded. Deciding to have a bath, she leant over to turn on the taps. Next minute a hand brushed gently over the small of her back! Instinctively she straightened up, turning to chide her husband – then caught her breath as she remembered that he was Watchman for the night and had left the house hours ago! However, yeoman warders’ wives are not given to swoons or the vapours; ‘Oh, stop it, Raleigh!’ she exclaimed and, undaunted, continued with her ablutions!

  Incidents such as this are not restricted to nighttime, nor do they occur only to officials or residents of the fortress. In August 1970 a young visitor to the Bloody Tower saw a long-haired woman wearing an ankle-length black velvet dress, standing by an open window. She wore a white cap, and around her neck hung a large, gold medallion. As the visitor stared, the figure faded away.

  Intrigued, the visitor returned some weeks later – only to see the apparition again, in the same place! No longer shocked by the unexpected, she was able to describe in detail the apparel of the ghost.

  ‘Princes in the Bloody Tower’ (an artist’s impression from an Edwardian postcard)

  The mediaeval records are understandably incomplete, but for all we know, one of the many women who suffered imprisonment may well have been locked up behind the Bloody Tower’s ancient, creaking doors.

  Two R. A.F. Regiment sentries on guard in October 1978 will not easily forget their tour of duty. On a still, moonless night, just after midnight, with never an autumn leaf stirring, they patrolled beneath the Bloody Tower arch. For no apparent reason they paused, feeling eerie apprehension, the hairs at the back of their necks bristling – and then their short capes billowed upward, almost covering their faces, as an icy breeze suddenly blew through the archway – a rush of cold air which died away as rapidly and as inexplicably as it had arrived.

  Later that night their sergeant traversed the grim forbidding archway en route to the Waterloo Block. To his right the floodlights illuminated the ancient thirteenth-century wall built to stand high and impenetrable, guarding the approaches to the White Tower. Now it was crumbling, pierced by gaping holes once arrow slits and loops.

  The sergeant paused, his attention attracted by a shadow he could see through a hole in the nearest end of the wall adjoining the Wakefield Tower. He stared–then his eyes widened with disbelief as the shadow moved … vanished … only to reappear at the next hole! Hardly pausing, the shape slipped past each gaping aperture, gliding silently along behind the crumbling wall. Yet when the sergeant reached the far end, nothing was to be seen on the wide expanse of grass stretching behind the White Tower!

  Tower Green

  If ’tis seen, men say ’tis not.

  If ’tis heard, men say the lot

 
; Of all fools is a simple-mindedness

  Beyond belief.

  So why hold faith in aught

  But candle-flame that burneth,

  Roasting-spit that turneth,

  Lover’s heart that yearneth?

  These are plausible, men saith….

  So keep unto thyself thy tale

  Of yester e’en’s ethereal wraith!

  Tower Green

  A central garden, sheltered by plane trees, is known as Tower Green. It is bounded on the east by the White Tower and the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula forms its northernmost side. To the west squats the Beauchamp Tower, while its southern border is the Queen’s House, originally the Lieutenant’s Lodgings – since 1530 the residence of the officer in charge of the Tower of London.

  In such a pleasant oasis it is easy to imagine the royal levees, the parties and merrymaking which must have taken place here during the centuries when the Tower of London was a Royal Residence. Yet one small enclosure on Tower Green constantly reminds us that this is where the private scaffold stood, the five-foot high wooden platform, draped in black, strewn with straw. There, witnessed by the Royal Court and dignitaries of the City of London, perished those whose only crime was to incur a king’s wounded pride or be thought a dangerous rival.

  Before 1536 executions, even of women, were not infrequent; infidelity too, was hardly a rarity. Yet the punishment of death for alleged unfaithfulness – and that in the person of a Queen of England – was unimaginable. That such an event did happen has never ceased to horrify and appal subsequent generations.

  Queen Anne Boleyn

  Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII, had been queen two brief years when she was accused of infidelity and treason and sentenced to be ‘either burnt or beheaded on the green within the Tower as his Majesty in his pleasure should think fit’. Confined in the Lieutenant’s Lodgings for four days, she was led out to the private execution site. Strangely enough she was to be beheaded by the sword – a rare weapon of execution in English history, but infinitely preferable to the axe. The latter was a cumbersome and ill-balanced weapon, its primitive design often necessitating more than one stroke.

  Anne mounted the steps and knelt upright, there being no block when the sword was employed. The French headsman, black clad, stepped forward. Her attention being distracted by his assistant, Anne mercifully failed to see the flashing blade as, with one stroke, her head was severed. In accordance with custom, the executioner held her head high – and the gathered assembly gasped in horror as the eyes and lips continued to move! Her pitiful remains were ensconced in an old arrow chest and buried beneath the altar in the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula on Tower Green.

  It is hardly surprising, therefore, that through the centuries apparitions purporting to be those of the doomed queen have been seen, even by those most prosaic and level-headed human beings, soldiers of the British Army.

  In 1864 a sentry of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps on duty at the Queen’s House saw, through the swirling river mist, a white figure. He challenged and, receiving no reply, attacked – only to drive his bayonet through the spectre! Being found in a state of collapse, he was court-martialled but two witnesses at the window of the Bloody Tower corroborated his story and he was acquitted. The phantom figure was seen by other sentries in later years, gaining the sentry post an evil reputation.

  Council Chamber in the Queen’s House

  Still in the last century, a yeoman warder swore under oath to seeing a bluish form hovering, a shape which then seemed to move towards the Queen’s House, whilst in 1933 a guardsman reported seeing a headless woman floating towards him near the Bloody Tower.

  Within the Queen’s House, long a prison for royal and important personalities as well as being the Lieutenant’s residence, many an eerie experience has been reported. Across the ancient timbered floors walks the ‘Grey Lady’. Only a woman will ever discover her secret – for she has never been seen by a man. In the 1970s the figure of a man in mediaeval dress was seen drifting along an upper corridor, whilst in the same decade firm footsteps were frequently heard ascending a rear stairway. So convincing were these sounds that eventually two residents investigated. On hearing the measured tread, one resident went instantly to the foot of the stairs, his companion going to the top. Slowly they moved along the stairs – to meet no one but the other!

  Late in 1978 an American guest in the house heard religious chanting. It was midnight, and the faint music and voices continued for some minutes. Assuming it to be from a radio or similar equipment, she mentioned it casually the next day – only to be told that no music had been played as late as that. The same slow religious chant had been heard on a previous occasion by a resident passing by the house.

  The Gunpowder Plot conspirators

  A room adjoining that in which Anne Boleyn passed her last few days has a particularly unearthly atmosphere, being noticeably colder than other rooms in the house. A peculiar perfumed smell lingers in the air, and such is the brooding menace of the room that no unaccompanied girl or young child is ever permitted to sleep in it, for in the past those who were have woken to feel that they were being slowly suffocated!

  Across Tower Green is the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula, and an instance some years ago of lights burning therein led the Officer of the Guard to investigate. Peering in through the window, he stared unbelieving at the spectacle confronting him. Along the aisle, between the tombs, moved a procession of spectral figures, knights and their ladies. They were led by a female who, he averred, resembled Anne Boleyn, and they moved towards the altar beneath which her pitiful remains had been buried centuries before. Even as he stared the vision faded and the chapel darkened, leaving the officer alone in the deepening shadows of Tower Green.

  Of the women who perished so violently on the private scaffold, surely none suffered more terribly – nor more undeservedly – than Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury. Over seventy years of age, innocent of all crime, the countess was slain as an act of vengeance by King Henry VIII. The countess’ son, Cardinal Pole, from the safe haven of France, reviled Henry’s religious beliefs. Retribution – and the axe – descended on his mother. On the scaffold the countess proclaimed her innocence. She refused to kneel over the block and she challenged the axeman to ‘remove her head as best he could’. Pursuing her around the block, the axeman is said to have literally hacked her to death in a welter of blood.

  Chapel Royal, St Peter ad Vincula

  Over the centuries it seems as if her proud Plantagenet spirit still shrieks defiance to the sombre skies. On the anniversaries of her brutal execution, her ghost is reported to run round the scaffold site pursued by the spectral axeman, the bloodstained axe brandished aloft.

  One night in 1975 personnel in the Waterloo Block overlooking the Green were roused in the early hours by the sound of piercing screams. This was confirmed by men on duty in the Byward Tower, and a few nights later the guardsman patrolling the rear of the Waterloo Block also reported that just before dawn he too heard high-pitched screaming from the direction of the Green. Nothing was found.

  Could it really have been the death cries of the hideously mutilated countess?

  The Beauchamp Tower

  Heaven send us open weather,

  For if I stay thus so shut up,

  With no walk upon the battlements,

  Then shall I lose my looks, my wits,

  And aught else of value

  That the good Lord gave me.

  ‘Tis not much when I take air and exercise.

  The guards and women there all crowd the way.

  But I can stretch both foot and eye,

  And see to where the river’s sheen

  Doth mock the sky.

  So I do say….

  Heaven send us open weather,

  That God and I and London Town

  May stand together.

  The Beauchamp Tower

  On the west side of Tower Green, overlooking the
scaffold site, stands the Beauchamp Tower. Because of its proximity to the Lieutenant’s Lodgings it became one of the more ‘popular’ prison towers, favouring those of noble birth and high estate. Not that much comfort was provided: a fire, some candles, rushes spread on the floor, these did little to compensate for the open arrow slits and cold, thick walls.

  Originally the prison room and the living quarters of its guardian, the yeoman warder, on the top floor, could only be reached via the battlements from the Bell Tower, the latter being integral with the Lieutenant’s Lodgings (now the Queen’s House). The present doorway was a later addition; in earlier times such an aperture would have weakened the defences, and in any case it would not have been seemly for prisoners to have been conducted through the Inner Ward, the precincts of the nobles and the Royal Family. The lower chambers, then, were dungeons, cramped and gloomy cells secured by heavy doors, approached by spiral stairs from above.

  Over the centuries the State Prison Room, on the first floor, housed many prisoners. In them the flame of hope burned bright, the hope that a change of monarch, a change of policy, could bring about their release. For a great number of them, however, it was not to be; after years of captivity they were led out, to face the baying mob, the black-clad axeman. Some did survive, to have titles and estates bestowed on them anew. A grim gamble, with Fate tossing the dice!

  Elizabeth’s Walk

  During their imprisonment time hung heavy. Many of these were men of breeding and of letters, skilled in Latin, versed in the Scriptures. And there, locked away in the great fortress, having ceased to exist so far as the outside world was concerned, they carved inscriptions on the walls. Proud family crests, pitiful pleas of innocence, religious quotations, even wry witticisms adorn the stonework, mute messages from those who lived from day to day under the shadow of violent execution.