walls
with towers, called the Inner Ballium, having various buildings
interspersed. In the enclosed space, rising high above all its
surroundings, is the great square White Tower, which was the keep of the
old fortress. Tradition assigns a very early date to this stronghold,
but the written records do not go back earlier than William the
Conqueror, who built the White Tower about 1078. It was enlarged and
strengthened by subsequent kings, and Stephen kept his court there in
the twelfth century. The moat was made about 1190. Edward II.'s daughter
was born there, and was known as Joan of the Tower. Edward III.
imprisoned Kings David of Scotland and John of France there. Richard II.
in Wat Tyler's rebellion took refuge in the Tower with his court and
nobles, numbering six hundred persons, and in 1399 was imprisoned there
and deposed. Edward IV. kept a splendid court in the Tower, and Henry
VI., after being twice a prisoner there, died in the Tower in 1471.
There also was the Duke of Clarence drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine,
and the two youthful princes, Edward V. and his brother, were murdered
at the instance of Richard III. Henry VII. made the Tower often his
residence. Henry VIII. received there in state all his wives before
their marriages, and two of them, Anne Boleyn and Catharine Howard, were
beheaded there. Here the Protector Somerset, and afterwards Lady Jane
Grey, were beheaded. The princess Elizabeth was imprisoned in the Tower,
and James I. was the last English sovereign who lived there. The palace,
having become ruinous, was ultimately taken down. The Tower during the
eight hundred years it has existed has contained a legion of famous
prisoners, and within its precincts Chaucer, who held an office there in
Richard II.'s reign, composed his poem _The Testament of Love_, and Sir
Walter Raleigh wrote his _History of the World_.

[Illustration]

The "Yeomen of the Guard," a corps of forty-eight warders, who are
meritorious soldiers, dressed in the uniform of Henry VIII.'s reign on
state occasions, and at other times wearing black velvet hats and
dark-blue tunics, have charge of the exhibition of the Tower. The
entrance is in a small building on the western side, where years ago the
lions were kept, though they have since been all sent to the London
Zoological Garden. From this originated the phrase "going to see the
lions." At the centre of the river-front is the "Traitor's Gate,"
through which persons charged