, feeling quite
sure something would happen in their favour, and they would be set free;
and then they had heard the sentence that they were to be beheaded! They
came back down the river, and the sunshine might be just as gay, the
water as sparkling, as when they went, but to them it would all seem
different. The journey was short, too short for a man who knew it was
his last! Then when they reached the Tower the barge would sail on up to
the Traitor's Gate, and the dark shadow of the heavy walls would fall on
the prisoner, and he would feel a chill at his heart as he stepped out
on to those cold gray stones.

Of some of those who suffered in the Tower you have heard. Sir Thomas
More landed here when he came in his barge from Chelsea, but we know
that he was too brave and good to feel much fear. Lady Jane Grey landed
here when her father and father-in-law brought her here, calling her
Queen; she came as a queen, but stayed here afterwards as a prisoner.
Did any warning tell her this when she stepped out of the boat?

Queen Elizabeth came here, too, when she was only a princess. Her sister
Mary was on the throne, and Mary feared that people would make Elizabeth
queen, so she sent her as a prisoner to the Tower. We know the very
words Elizabeth said as she landed, though nearly three hundred and
fifty years have passed since then. She exclaimed: 'Here landeth as true
a subject, being a prisoner, as ever landed on these stairs, and before
Thee, O God, I speak it, having none other friends but Thee.' Then she
sat down on a stone, and said: 'Better sit on a stone than in a cell.'
And only the entreaties of her attendant moved her to get up and go on.
She was a prisoner for several years, and at first was not allowed to go
out of her cell at all. Afterwards, when she became Queen on Mary's
death, one of the first places she visited was the Tower, perhaps
because she felt pleased at being a Queen instead of a prisoner, and
wanted to enjoy the contrast.

There were many, many others who landed here, never to come forth again
as free men. Some died in imprisonment; some were beheaded; some
suffered for their crimes; some were innocent, but suffered because they
had aroused the anger of a jealous king. Some went into those walls to
suffer tortures worse than death--tortures of the thumbscrew and rack,
to make them betray the names of their companions. Some came here as
martyrs, because they believed in God, and thought the suff