Peeps at Royal Palaces of Great Britain. Beatrice Home
Thames, the great highway from the sea. Various additions were made by succeeding monarchs down to Edward III., until it assumed the shape we now see it, with the solid Norman keep in the centre, an inner wall with twelve towers, protected by a strong outer wall surrounded by a deep moat. Only four gateways gave entrance to the fortress, and those were strongly guarded by towers. Any enemy attempting to enter from Tower Hill had to force his way across three branches of the moat, with three successive towers before he could reach the inner wall of the citadel. There were three gateways from the river, a small postern gate for the use of State visitors, the main water gate, which earned the ominous title of Traitor's Gate, due to the frequent arrival of State prisoners, and another entrance east of the Traitor's Gate.
The Keep, or White Tower.
Owing to its immense strength it was more commonly used by the Kings during times of civil war, when from behind its bastioned walls they could bid defiance to the surging mobs outside. John, Edward II., Henry VI., and Edward IV. all retreated there for safety during their troublous reigns, but it is with Richard II., the boy-King, that we associate one of the most dangerous episodes in the eventful life of the city. One midsummer day in 1381 a frenzied mob of countrymen swarmed on Tower Hill, demanding, with no uncertain voice, a redress of grievances. Within the Tower there was great hesitation, the councillors of fifteen-year-old Richard vacillating between a sally with force upon the ill-armed peasants and a granting of their just demands. With something of the insistence of the market-women of Paris when they swarmed up to the gates of Versailles, the savage crowd gained admittance into the Tower, searching for their supposed enemy, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who, as the chief lawyer in England, represented the men who enslaved and starved them. Seizing the poor old man, they dragged him out to Tower Hill, and, with their summary judgment, cut off his head then and there. The story of how Richard saved the situation at Smithfield after the death of Wat Tyler is well known.
Nothing now remains of the palace where the Plantagenet Kings held their Court. It was situated between the White Tower and the Wakefield and Lanthorn Towers. Scarcely used after the reign of Henry VII., save for three days previous to the Coronation procession through the city, it was completely demolished in the reign of William and Mary, every fragment being removed.
The most romantic as well as the most pathetic incidents in the history of the Tower are connected with its forlorn prisoners, doomed to long incarceration or speedy death at the will of despotic monarchs. Even the sovereigns themselves were often captives within its walls. The two young Princes, Edward V. and his brother Richard, entered the Tower under the nominal protection of their uncle Richard III., never to appear again. Anne Boleyn returned as a prisoner to the place which she had formerly entered in triumph just before her Coronation. Retaining her gay spirit to the end, Anne laughingly remarked that she had a little neck, when told that death by execution was quite painless. During the reign of her sister Mary, Queen Elizabeth was brought through the Traitor's Gate to the Tower, where she was confined for some time under suspicion of being implicated in Sir Thomas Wyatt's rebellion.
Though ceasing to be a royal palace, and of little use as a fortress, the Tower retained its position as a State prison until 1820, becoming since then merely a barracks and a guard-house for the Crown jewels.
CHAPTER IV
KENNINGTON PALACE
No royal house has more completely vanished from sight, and even from memory, than the royal palace of Kennington. Few know that such a palace ever existed, and certainly those who dwell upon its site would require to be possessed of keen imaginations, to realize that once all the pageantry of a medieval Court took place, where to-day monotonous streets crowd upon one another. Yet Parliaments assembled and all the ceremonies of State were performed on a spot not far from where Kennington Park now stands. The whim of royal fancy was the cause of the complete obliteration of the palace, other royal houses pleasing the later Kings more than the one upon Lambeth Marsh. Low-lying ground, only redeemed from complete marshland by the embankment of the river, lay between it and the City of London on the north. As it was not until quite the end of the eighteenth century that houses began to be built upon this district, the land being up till then used as market-gardens, it is not surprising that when the palace was destroyed it soon passed from men's minds, no one living in the neighbourhood. The exact date of the destruction of the palace is not known, but its oblivion was almost complete when Camden, the great antiquarian, wrote in 1607, for he says: "The Royal seat call'd Kennington, whither the Kings of England us'd to retire, the discovery whereof 'tis vain to endeavour after, there appearing neither name nor rubbish to direct us."
Though no vestige of the palace now remains, it is reasonable to conjecture, from the analogy of contemporary palaces which still exist, that Kennington Palace was a fortified building, with a strongly embattled wall and deep moat. Deserted by Henry VIII., who found Eltham and Greenwich more to his taste, the building materials were all sold and the palace razed to the ground. Some kind of Tudor manor-house was built upon the site, for a survey taken about the middle of the seventeenth century describes a building of some fair size. Close to it stood a low stone structure with a thatched roof, known as the "Long Barn," which was thought to be part of the old palace. It stood until 1795, when it was pulled down, removing the last trace of historic interest.
As one loses oneself among the maze of houses and streets of Kennington, it is difficult to believe that in the lost palace which rose above the marsh of long ago Harold Harefoot, the son of Cnut, was crowned, Harthacnut, his brother, died either by treachery or accident, and Henry III. held two Parliaments. But of all the Kings whose memory should haunt the spot, the most to be remembered is Richard II., the handsome, popular, pleasure-loving and magnificent Prince. After the early death of his father, the Black Prince, young Richard had been brought up in the palace by his widowed mother.
In later years Richard brought his child-wife, the fair Isabella of France, to Kennington Palace, to rest there for the night before she entered London in state. She was then only eight years old, and was never anything more than Queen in name, for long before she was old enough to be a wife her attractive but unwise husband had been murdered by his enemies.
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