_The Tower as a Palace._--Most of our Kings from the Conqueror to Charles II. used the Tower as a palace; those who feared their subjects sheltered themselves there, but those who were popular preferred the comfort of Westminster and Whitehall. Mr Clark says that 'the strong monarchs employed the Tower as a prison, the weak ones as a fortress.' After the Middle Ages had closed the sovereigns kept out of the Tower as much as they could, and seldom visited it unless they were officially obliged, and these visits were almost confined to a lodging there on the day before the coronation. Charles II. was the last sovereign to carry out this convention.
William I., William II. and Henry I., all three inhabited the Tower, but it was not till the reign of Stephen that its value as a place of refuge was proved.
With the Empress Matilda at Winchester and King Stephen at London the state of public affairs, with sieges and countersieges, in which neither party gained any great success, came to a deadlock. Stephen, in 1140, sought safety in the Tower in close proximity to his trusty followers--the Londoners, but in the following year he was made a prisoner at Lincoln. The Londoners attended the synod at Winchester and requested the King's release, but without avail. Geoffrey de Mandeville, Constable of the Tower of London (whose faithless conduct in these civil wars has been fully set out by Mr. Horace Round),[94] had been made Earl of Essex by Stephen, but when the Empress came to London he had no compunction in transferring his allegiance to her, for which conduct she loaded him with honours. He was, however, short-sighted in his action, for Matilda treated the Londoners with such contumely that they rose against her and drove her from the city. They also attacked Mandeville in the Tower, but this Mr. Facing-both-ways, finding that the Empress Matilda had fled, and the Queen Matilda (Stephen's wife) taken her place in London, saw no objection to supporting the latter's cause. Stephen was soon afterwards released, and he again honoured Geoffrey de Mandeville. No amount of special favour, however, was sufficient to keep this man to his allegiance, and he planned a revolt in favour of the Empress. This came to naught, and the King captured the fortifications erected by the Earl at Farringdon and took him prisoner. Mandeville took no more part in public affairs, and ended his life as a marauding freebooter in September 1143. Thus ignominiously came to a conclusion the career of a man who held a foremost place in London. He was not wise in his conduct, because in the words of the Empress's charter to him, he made the Londoners 'his mortal foes.' As Dr. Sharpe says of these same Londoners, they 'throughout the long period of civil dissension were generally to be found on the winning side, and held, as it were, the balance between the rival powers.'[95]