A few political prisoners in George III.’s reign; the committal of Arthur O’Connor, one of the “United Irishmen,” in 1798; the imprisonment of Sir Francis Burdett in 1810; and the placing there of the Cato Street conspirators in 1820, brings our list of captives to a close.
In Queen Victoria’s time, on October 30, 1841, a fire occurred within the Inner Ward of the Tower, which threatened at one time during its fury to make sad havoc of surrounding buildings. The storehouse of arms which stood where the barracks are now placed, to the east of St. Peter’s Church, was gutted, and the smoke and flames were blown over towards the White Tower. Fortunately, the store alone was destroyed, and it was reported to have been ugly enough to deserve its fate. The Tower’s last trial came upon it, unawares, in January 24, 1885, when the “Fenians” laid an infernal machine in the Banqueting Room of the White Tower. The explosion that followed did considerable damage to the exhibits in the building, and many visitors were injured, but the White Tower itself, secure in its rock-like strength, was in no way the worse for what might, in more modern buildings, have rent the walls asunder.
The raised portcullis’ arch they pass, The wicket with its bars of brass, The entrance long and low, Flanked at each turn by loopholes strait Where bowmen might in ambush wait (If force or fraud should burst the gate), To gall an entering foe. SCOTT.
The Gascoyne plan of 1597, reproduced at the end of this book, will show a straggling line of buildings running partly up the slope of Tower Hill and terminating in what was known as the Bulwark Gate. It was there that prisoners, with the exception, of course, of those who came by water to Traitor’s Gate, were, in Tudor times, delivered to the custodians of the Tower; and it was there, also, that all who were to be executed on Tower Hill were given by the Tower authorities into the charge of the City officials. Grass grew on the hill and its river slope in those days, and, leaving the Tower Gateway behind, one would, as it were, step into an open meadow, the declivity towards the Moat on one side and the cottages of Petty Wales on the other. The aspect of this main entrance to the Tower has been so altered that it is a little difficult nowadays to reconstruct it in imagination. The Moat made a semicircular bend where the present wooden stockade stands, and it had to be crossed at least twice--some accounts say three times--before the Byward Tower could be reached. The first drawbridge was protected by the Lion Gate; the Lion Tower stood near by to command that gate, and was surrounded by the waters of the Moat. All trace of these outer barbicans and waterways has disappeared; the Towers have been pulled down, the ditch filled up, to make the modern approach to the Wharf.