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На тему «The Tower Of London»
Студента 103 группы I курса факультета Социологии
Варнавского Евгения
Contents:
The Development of the Tower
The Normans
The Medieval Tower
The Tower in Tudor Times
The Restoration and After
The Tower in the 19th Century
The 20th Century
The Tower of London
The History of the Tower of London
Fortress, Palace and Prison
This short history of the Tower of London charts the different stages of
its development. Throughout its history, the Tower has attracted a
number of important functions and its role as armoury, royal palace,
prison and fortress is explained, as well as its modern role as tourist
attraction and home to a thriving community.
The development of the Tower
The Tower of London was begun in the reign of William the Conqueror
(1066-1087) and remained unchanged for over a century. Then, between
1190 and 1285, the White Tower was encircled by two towered curtain
walls and a great moat. The only important enlargement of the Tower
after that time was the building of the Wharf in the 14th century. Today
the medieval defences remain relatively unchanged.
The Normans
Westm PRIVATE Castle building was an essential part of the Norman
Conquest: when Duke William of Normandy invaded England in 1066 his
first action after landing at Pevensey on 28 September had been to
improvise a castle, and when he moved to Hastings two days later he
built another. Over the next few years William and his supporters were
engaged in building hundreds more, first to conquer, then subdue and
finally to colonise the whole of England.
By the end of the Anglo-Saxon period London had become the most powerful
city in England, with a rich port, a nearby royal palace and an
important cathedral. It was via London that King Harold II (1066) and
his army sped south to meet William, and to London which the defeated
rabble of the English army returned from the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
Securing the City was therefore of the utmost importance to William. His
contemporary biographer William of Poitiers tells us that after
receiving the submission of the English magnates at Little
Berkhampstead, William sent an advance guard into London to construct a
castle and prepare for his triumphal entry. He also tells us that, after
his coronation in inster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066, the new King
withdrew to Barking (in Essex)
‘while certain fortifications were completed in the city against the
restlessness of the vast and fierce populace for he realised that it was
of the first importance to overawe the Londoners.
These fortifications may have included Baynard’s Castle built in the
south-west angle of the City (near Blackfriars) and the castle of
Monfichet (near Ludgate Circus) and almost certainly the future Tower of
London. Initially the Tower had consisted of a modest enclosure built
into the south-east corner of the Roman City walls, but by the late
1070s, with the initial completion of the White Tower, it had become the
most fearsome of all. Nothing had been seen like it in England before.
It was built by Norman masons and English (Anglo-Saxon) labour drafted
in from the countryside, perhaps to the design of Gundulf, Bishop of
Rochester. It was intended to protect the river route from Danish
attack, but also and more importantly to dominate the City physically
and visually. It is difficult to appreciate today what an enormous
impression the tower and other Norman buildings, such as St Paul’s
Cathedral (as rebuilt after 1086) or the nearby Westminster Hall
(rebuilt after 1087) must have made on the native Londoners.
The White Tower was protected to the east and south by the old Roman
city walls (a full height fragment can be seen just by Tower Hill
Underground station), while the north and west sides were protected by
ditches as much as 7.50m (25ft) wide and 3.40m (11ft) deep and an
earthwork with a wooden wall on top. In the 12th century a
‘fore-building’ (now demolished) was added to the south front of the
White Tower to protect the entrance. The Wardrobe Tower, a fragment of
which can be seen at the south-east corner of the building, was another
early addition or rebuilding. From very early on the enclosure contained
a number of timber buildings for residential and service use. It is not
clear whether these included a royal residence but William the
Conqueror’s immediate successors probably made use of the White Tower
itself.
It is important for us today to remember that the functions of the Tower
from the 1070s until the late 19th century were established by its
Norman founders. The Tower was never primarily intended to protect
London from external invasion, although, of course, it could have done
so if necessary. Nor was it ever intended to be the principal residence
of the kings and queens of England, though many did in fact spend
periods of time there. Its primary function was always to provide a base
for royal power in the City of London and a stronghold to which the
Royal Family could retreat in times of civil disorder.
The Medieval Tower:
A refuge and a base for royal power
PRIVATE When Richard the Lionheart (1189-99) came to the throne he
departed on a crusade to the Holy Land leaving his Chancellor, William
Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, in charge of the kingdom. Longchamp soon
embarked on an enlargement and strengthening of the Tower of London, the
first of a series of building campaigns which by about 1350 had created
the basic form of the great fortress that we know today. The
justification for the vast expenditure and effort this involved was the
political instability of the kingdom and the Crown’s continuing need for
an impregnable fortress in the City of London.
Longchamp’s works doubled the area covered by the fortress by digging a
new and deeper ditch to the north and east and building sections of
curtain wall, reinforced by a new tower (now known as the Bell Tower) at
the south-west corner. The ditch was intended to flood naturally from
the river, although this was not a success. These new defences were soon
put to the test when the King’s brother, John, taking advantage of
Richard’s captivity in Germany, challenged Longchamp’s authority and
besieged him at the Tower. Lack of provisions forced Longchamp to
surrender but the Tower’s defences had proved that they could resist
attack.
The reign of the next king John (1199-1216) saw little new building work
at the Tower, but the King made good use of the accommodation there.
Like Longchamp, John had to cope with frequent opposition throughout his
reign. Only a year after signing an agreement with his barons in 1215
(the Magna Carta) they were once more at loggerheads and Prince Louis of
France had launched an invasion of England with the support of some of
John’s leading barons. In the midst of his defence of the kingdom, John
died of dysentery and his son, Henry III, was crowned.
PRIVATE With England at war with France, the start of King Henry’s long
reign (1216-72) could have hardly been less auspicious, but within seven
months of his accession the French had been defeated at the battle of
Lincoln and the business of securing the kingdom could begin.
Reinforcement of the royal castles played a major role in this, and his
work at the Tower of London was more extensive than anywhere other than
at Windsor Castle. Henry III was only ten years old in 1216, but his
regents began a major extension of the royal accommodation in the
enclosure which formed the Inmost Ward as we know it today. The great
hall and kitchen, dating from the previous century, were improved and
two towers built on the waterfront, the Wakefield Tower as the King’s
lodgings and the Lanthorn Tower (rebuilt in the 19th century), probably
intended as the queen’s lodgings. A new wall was also built enclosing
the west side of the Inmost Ward.
By the mid 1230s, Henry III had run into trouble with his barons and
opposition flared up in both 1236 and in 1238. On both occasions the
King fled to the Tower of London. But as he sheltered in the castle in
March 1238 the weakness of the Tower must have been brought home to him;
the defences to the eastern, western and northern sides consisted only
of an empty moat, stretches of patched-up and strengthened Roman wall
and a few lengths of wall built by Longchamp in the previous century.
That year, therefore, saw the launch of Henry’s most ambitious building
programme at the Tower, the construction of a great new curtain wall
round the east, north and west sides of the castle at a cost of over
F5,000. The new wall doubled the area covered by the fortress, enclosing
the neighbouring church of St Peter ad Vincula. It was surrounded by a
moat, this time successfully flooded by a Flemish engineer, John Le
Fosser. The wall was reinforced by nine new towers, the strongest at the
corners (the Salt, Martin and Devereux). Of these all but two (the Flint
and Brick) are much as originally built. This massive extension to the
Tower was viewed with extreme suspicion and hostility by the people of
London, who rightly recognised it as a further assertion of royal
authority. A contemporary writer reports their delight when a section of
newly-built wall and a gateway on the site of the Beauchamp Tower
collapsed, events they attributed to their own guardian saint, Thomas a
Becket. Archaeological excavation between 1995 and 1997 revealed the
remains of one of these collasped buildings.
PRIVATE In 1272 King Edward I (1272-1307) came to the throne determined
to complete the defensive works begun by his father and extend them as a
means of further emphasising royal authority over London. Between 1275
and 1285 the King spent over F21,000 on the fortress creating England’s
largest and strongest concentric castle (a castle with one line of
defences within another). The work included building the existing
Beauchamp Tower, but the main effort was concentrated on filling in
Henry III’s moat and creating an additional curtain wall on the western,
northern and eastern side, and surrounding it by a new moat. This wall
enclosed the existing curtain wall built by Henry III and was pierced by
two new entrances, one from the land on the west, passing through the
Middle and Byward towers, and another under St Thomas’s Tower, from the
river. New royal lodgings were included in the upper part of St Thomas’s
Tower. Almost all these buildings survive in some form today.
Despite all this work Edward was a very rare visitor to his fortress; he
was, in fact, only able to enjoy his new lodgings there for a few days.
There is no doubt though that if he had been a weaker king, and had to
put up with disorders in London of the kind experienced by his father
and grandfather, the Tower would have come into its own as an even more
effective and efficient base for royal authority.
King Edward’s new works were, however, put to the test by his son Edward
II (1307-27), whose reign saw a resurgence of discontent among the
barons on a scale not seen since the reign of his grandfather. Once
again the Tower played a crucial role in the attempt to maintain royal
authority and as a royal refuge. Edward II did little more than improve
the walls put up by his father, but he was a regular resident during his
turbulent reign and he moved his own lodgings from the Wakefield Tower
and St Thomas’s Tower to the area round the present Lanthorn Tower. The
old royal lodgings were now used for his courtiers and for the storage
of official papers by the King’s Wardrobe (a department of government
which dealt with royal supplies). The use of the Tower for functions
other than military and residential had been started by Edward I who put
up a large new building to house the Royal Mint and began to use the
castle as a place for storing records. As early as the reign of Henry
III the castle had already been in regular use as a prison: Hubert de
Burgh, Chief Justiciar of England was incarcerated in 1232 and the Welsh
Prince Gruffydd was imprisoned there between 1241 and 1244, when he fell
to his death in a bid to escape. The Tower also served as a treasury
(the Crown Jewels were moved from Westminster Abbey to the Tower in
1303) and as a showplace for the King’s animals.
After the unstable reign of Edward II came that of Edward III (1327-77).
Edward III’s works at the Tower were fairly minor, but he did put up a
new gatehouse between the Lanthorn Tower and the Salt Tower, together
with the Cradle Tower and its postern (a small subsidiary entrance), a
further postern behind the Byward Tower and another at the Develin
Tower. He was also responsible for rebuilding the upper parts of the
Bloody Tower and creating the vault over the gate passage, but his most
substantial achievement was to extend the Tower Wharf eastwards as far
as St Thomas’s Tower. This was completed in its present form by his
successor Richard II (1377-99).
The Tower in Tudor Times:
A royal prison
PRIVATE The first Tudor monarch, Henry VII (1485-1509) was responsible
for building the last permanent royal residential buildings at the
Tower. He extended his own lodgings around the Lanthorn Tower adding a
new private chamber, a library, a long gallery, and also laid out a
garden. These buildings were to form the nucleus of a much larger scheme
begun by his son Henry VIII (1509-47) who put up a large range of
timber-framed lodgings at the time of the coronation of his second wife,
Anne Boleyn. The building of these lodgings, used only once, marked the
end of the history of royal residence at the Tower.
The reigns of the Tudor kings and queens were comparatively stable in
terms of civil disorder. However, from the 1530s onwards the unrest
caused by the Reformation (when Henry VIII broke with the Church in
Rome) gave the Tower an expanded role as the home for a large number of
religious and political prisoners.
The first important Tudor prisoners were Sir Thomas More and Bishop
Fisher of Rochester, both of whom were executed in 1535 for refusing to
acknowledge Henry VIII as head of the English Church. They were soon
followed by a still more famous prisoner and victim, the King’s second
wife Anne Boleyn, executed along with her brother and four others a
little under a year later. July 1540 saw the execution of Thomas
Cromwell, Earl of Essex and former Chief Minister of the King – in which
capacity he had modernised the Tower’s defences and, ironically enough,
sent many others to their deaths on the same spot. Two years later,
Catherine Howard, the second of Henry VIII’s six wives to be beheaded,
met her death outside the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula which
Henry had rebuilt a few years before.
The reign of Edward VI (1547-53) saw no end to the political executions
which had begun in his father’s reign; the young King’s protector the
Duke of Somerset and his confederates met their death at the Tower in
1552, falsely accused of treason. During Edward’s reign the English
Church became more Protestant, but the King’s early death in 1553 left
the country with a Catholic heir, Mary I (1553-8). During her brief
reign many important Protestants and political rivals were either
imprisoned or executed at the Tower. The most famous victim was Lady
Jane Grey, and the most famous prisoner the Queen’s sister Princess
Elizabeth (the future Elizabeth I). Religious controversy did not end
with Mary’s death in 1558; Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) spent much of
her reign warding off the threat from Catholic Europe, and important
recusants (people who refused to attend Church of England services) and
others who might have opposed her rule were locked up in the Tower.
Never had it been so full of prisoners, or such illustrious ones:
bishops, archbishops, knights, barons, earls and dukes all spent months
and some of them years languishing in the towers of the Tower of London.
Little was done to the Tower’s defences in these years. The Royal Mint
was modified and extended, new storehouses were built for royal military
supplies. In the reign of James I (1603-25) the Lieutenant’s house –
built in the 1540s and today called the Queen’s House – was extended and
modified; the king’s lions were rehoused in better dens made for them in
the west gate barbican.
The Restoration and After:
The Tower and the Office of Ordnance
PRIVATE After a long period of peace at home, the reign of Charles I
saw civil war break out again in 1642, between King and Parliament. As
during the Wars of the Roses and previous conflicts, the Tower was
recognised as one of the most important of the King’s assets. Londoners,
in particular, were frightened that the Tower would be used by him to
dominate the City. In 1643, after a political rather than a military
struggle, control of the Tower was seized from the King by the
parliamentarians and remained in their hands throughout the Civil War
(1642-9). The loss of the Tower, and of London as a whole, was a crucial
factor in the defeat of Charles I by Parliament. It was during this
period that a permanent garrison was installed in the Tower for the
first time, by Oliver Cromwell, soon to be Lord Protector but then a
prominent parliamentary commander.
Today’s small military guard, seen outside the Queen’s House and the
Waterloo Barracks, is an echo of Cromwell’s innovation.
The monarchy was restored in 1660 and the reign of the new king, Charles
II (1660-85), saw further changes in the functions of the Tower. Its
role as a state prison declined, and the Office of Ordnance (which
provided military supplies and equipment) took over responsibility for
most of the castle, making it their headquarters. During this period
another long-standing tradition of the Tower began – the public display
of the Crown Jewels. They were moved from their old home to a new site
in what is now called the Martin Tower, and put on show by their keeper
Talbot Edwards.
PRIVATE Schemes for strengthening the Tower’s defences, some elaborate
and up to date, were also proposed so that in the event of violent
opposition, which was always a possibility during the 1660s and 1670s,
Charles would not be caught out as his father had been earlier in the
century. In the end, none of these came to much, and the Restoration
period saw only a minor strengthening of the Tower. Yet the well
equipped garrison which Charles II and his successors maintained was
often used to quell disturbances in the City; James II (1685-8)
certainly took steps to use the Tower’s forces against the opposition
which eventually caused him to flee into exile.
Under the control of the Office of Ordnance the Tower was filled with a
series of munitions stores and workshops for the army and navy. The most
impressive and elegant of these was the Grand Storehouse begun in 1688
on the site where the Waterloo Barracks now stand. It was initially a
weapons store but as the 17th century drew to a close it became more of
a museum of arms and armour. More utilitarian buildings gradually took
over the entire area previously covered by the medieval royal lodgings
to the south of the White Tower; by 1800, after a series of fires and
rebuildings, the whole of this area had become a mass of large brick
Ordnance buildings. All these, however, have been swept away, and the
only surviving storehouse put up by the Ordnance is the New Armouries,
standing against the eastern inner curtain wall between the Salt and
Broad Arrow towers.
While the Ordnance was busy building storehouses, offices and workshops,
the army was expanding accommodation for the Tower garrison. Their
largest building was the Irish Barracks (now demolished), sited behind
the New Armouries building in the Outer Ward.
The Tower in the 19th Century:
From fortress to ancient monument
PRIVATE Between 1800 and 1900 the Tower of London took on the
appearance which to a large extent it retains today. Early in the
century many of the historic institutions which had been based within
its walls began to move out. The first to go was the Mint which moved to
new buildings to the north east of the castle in 1812, where it remained
until 1968, when it moved to its present location near Cardiff. The
Royal Menagerie left the Lion Tower in 1834 to become the nucleus of
what is now London Zoo, and the Record Office (responsible for storing
documents of state), moved to Chancery Lane during the 1850s, vacating
parts of the medieval royal lodgings and the White Tower. Finally, after
the War Office assumed responsibility for the manufacture and storage of
weapons in 1855, large areas of the fortress were vacated by the old
Office of Ordnance.
However, before these changes took place the Tower had once again – but
for the last time – performed its traditional role in asserting the
authority of the state over the people of London. The Chartist movement
of the 1840s (which sought major political reform) prompted a final
refortification of the Tower between 1848 and 1852, and further work was
carried out in 1862. To protect the approaches to the Tower new
loop-holes and gun emplacements were built and an enormous brick and
stone bastion (destroyed by a bomb during the Second World War)
constructed on the north side of the fortress. Following the burning
down of the Grand Storehouse in 1841, the present Waterloo Barracks was
put up to accommodate 1,000 soldiers, and the Brick, Flint and Bowyer
towers to its north were altered or rebuilt to service it; the Royal
Fusiliers’ building was erected at the same time to be the officers’
mess. The mob never stormed the castle but the fear of it left the outer
defences of the Tower much as they are today.
The vacation of large parts of the Tower by the offices which had
formerly occupied it and an increasing interest in the history and
archaeology of the Tower led, after 1850, to a programme of
‘re-medievalisation’. By then the late 17th and 18th-century Ordnance
buildings and barracks, together with a series of private inns and
taverns, such as the Stone Kitchen and the Golden Chain, had obscured
most of the medieval fortress. The first clearances of these buildings
began in the late 1840s, but the real work began in 1852, when the
architect Anthony Salvin, already known for his work on medieval
buildings, re-exposed the Beauchamp Tower and restored it to a medieval
appearance. Salvin’s work was much admired and attracted the attention
of Prince Albert (husband of Queen Victoria), who recommended that he be
made responsible for a complete restoration of the castle. This led to a
programme of work which involved the Salt Tower, the White Tower, St
Thomas’s Tower, the Bloody Tower and the construction of two new houses
on Tower Green.
In the 1870s Salvin was replaced by John Taylor, a less talented and
sensitive architect. His efforts concentrated on the southern parts of
the Tower, notably the Cradle and Develin towers and on the demolition
of the 18th-century Ordnance Office and storehouse on the site of the
Lanthorn Tower, which he rebuilt. He also built the stretches of wall
linking the Lanthorn Tower to the Salt and Wakefield towers. But by the
1890s, restoration of this type was going out of fashion and this was
the last piece of re-medievalisation to be undertaken. The work of this
period had succeeded in opening up the site and re-exposing its
defences, but fell far short of restoring its true medieval appearance.
The second half of the 19th century saw a great increase in the number
of visitors to the Tower, although sightseers had been admitted as early
as 1660. In 1841 the first official guidebook was issued and ten years
later a purpose-built ticket office was erected at the western entrance.
By the end of Queen Victoria’s reign in 1901, half a million people were
visiting the Tower each year.
The 20th Century
The First World War (1914-18) left the Tower largely untouched; the only
bomb to fall on the fortress landed in the Moat. However, the war
brought the Tower of London back into use as a prison for the first time
since the early 19th century and between 1914-16 eleven spies were held
and subsequently executed in the Tower. The last execution in the Tower
took place in 1941 during the Second World War (1939-45). Bomb damage to
the Tower during the Second World War was much greater: a number of
buildings were severely damaged or destroyed including the mid-19th
century North Bastion, which received a direct hit on 5 October 1940,
and the Hospital Block which was partly destroyed during an air raid in
the same year. Incendiaries also destroyed the Main Guard, a late
19th-century building to the south-west of the White Tower. During the
Second World War the Tower was closed to the public. The Moat, which had
been drained and filled in 1843, was used as allotments for vegetable
growing and the Crown Jewels were removed from the Tower and taken to a
place of safety, the location of which has never been disclosed. Today
the Tower of London is one of the world’s major tourist attractions and
2.5 million visitors a year come to discover its long and eventful
history, its buildings, ceremonies and traditions.
Использованные источники:
Интернет-сайт The Castles Of England
Официальный сайт The Tower of London
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