ickwork; the other, a remarkable
subterranean passage, "9," of which the presence was only detected by
its being accidentally broken into. This, when cleared out, was found to
terminate in a horrible subterranean prison pit under the south-west
angle of the keep (with which, however, it has no means of
communication), that doubtless served as the _oubliette_ of the Tower.
The pit was empty, but the passage was found to contain bones, fragments
of glass and pottery, broken weapons, and many cannon balls of iron,
lead, and stone, relics probably of Wyatt's unsuccessful attack in 1554.
Leaving the pit, the passage dips rapidly, and, tunnelling under both
wards and their walls, emerges a little to the east of Traitors' Gate
(see plan), where its arched head may now be seen from the wharf, though
formerly several feet below the level of the water in the moat. As it
traverses the site of the Hall, there is some reason to suppose that the
lower end served as a sewer, for there was a similar one, dating from
1259, at the old Palace of Westminster, so that this may likewise be
attributed to Henry III.[56]

It will be seen that the blood-curdling description of the horrors of
the rat-pit in Harrison Ainsworth's immortal romance is by no means
devoid of some foundation of fact, though when he wrote its existence
was unknown. Rats from the river would be attracted to the sewer mouth
by the garbage from the palace kitchens, and if any wretched prisoner
had been placed in this dreadful dungeon he would speedily have been
devoured _alive_![57]

The presence of a single subterranean passage at the Tower ought not to
have aroused so much surprise, for such "_souterrains_" were a not
infrequent feature of the mediaeval fortress. They may be found at
Arques, Chateau Gaillard, Dover, Winchester, and Windsor (three), while
Nottingham has its historic "Mortimer's Hole." Sometimes they led to
carefully masked posterns in the ditches, but they were generally
carried along and at the base of the interior faces of the curtain
walls, with the object of preventing attempts at undermining, at once
betrayed to listeners by the dull reverberations of pickaxes in the
rocky ground. There were doubtless others at the Tower, now blocked up
and forgotten; indeed, Bayley mentions something of the kind as existing
between the Devereux and Flint towers.[58]

There is an allusion to them in the narrative by Father Gerard, S.J., of
his arrest, torture in, a