Referring to his imprisonment in England at the trial of the Duke d’Alençon, the Duke said, “I have had experience myself, and in my prison of England, for the weariness, danger, and displeasure in which I then lay, I have many a time wished I had been slain at the battle where they took me.”
It was one of Joan of Arc’s hallucinations that could Charles of Orleans be delivered from his captivity in England and restored to France, that country would be delivered from its conquerors. She declared that he was specially favoured by the Almighty, and longed with all the strength of her great heart to restore him to her native land, and said that if there was no other way of freeing him, she would herself cross the sea and bring him back with her. When, after many years, Charles of Orleans was released, the heroic girl had met her martyrdom nine years before. It is a strange coincidence that whilst the Keep of the Tower held the French poet prince within its walls, another Royal captive, James the First of Scotland, was whiling away the days of his imprisonment by writing verses in the Keep of Windsor Castle.
Until quite recently, the collection of arms and armour stored in the White Tower and the adjacent galleries was in a disgraceful state of neglect, and even in a worse condition than that of mere neglect, for the custodians, in their ignorance, gave names and titles to the arms and armour which must have caused infinite amusement to visitors who possessed any knowledge of the subject. The middle-aged may recall the rows of so-called English kings, beginning with the Plantagenets and ending with the Stuarts, seated on wooden horses. If I mistake not, one of these was dubbed Edward I., and yet another mythical gentleman on his wooden steed played the _rôle_ of a “Royal Crusader.” These things were as genuine as Mrs Jarley’s Waxworks. “Previous to the year 1826,” write Britton and Brayley in their history of the Tower, “nothing could present a more incongruous mass of discordant materials than the Horse Armoury of the Tower of London. Armour of the time of Edward the Sixth was ignorantly appropriated to that of William the Conqueror: foot soldiers were ranged between the horsemen, and those humble ciceroni, the warders, ascribed to the various implements of war names and uses, alike unknown, either in ancient or modern warfare.” But better times were at hand, and a great authority on ancient armour, and the owner of the finest collection of it in England, Dr S. R. Meyrick, undertook to arrange the armour in the Tower. Another expert in armour, J. R. Planché, Somerset Herald, and author of an able history of British costume, as well as of many clever burlesques and extravaganzas, drew up a catalogue. But a huge mass of rubbish and spurious armour were allowed even then to remain amongst the historic and genuine specimens. It is only since Lord Dillon undertook the great task, on which he is still engaged, of entirely re-arranging and re-cataloguing the arms and armour in the White Tower, that it can be properly studied and appreciated. The new catalogue, which will be a work of historic importance, is still unpublished, but from the accounts Lord Dillon has written of the collection, and which is published in the excellent “Authorised Guide” to the Tower and its contents, I am indebted for much of the following information.