CHAPTER II HISTORICAL SKETCH
Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days江宁东山外国语学校
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:city of god
步步高英语学习机>localrviceHither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Clot lays.thankyou
Omar Khayyam.
新美国梦The protoplasm from which the prent Tower grew was a rude Celtic fort on the river slope of Tower Hill. Then came the Romans and built their London Wall, at the angle of which, commanding the Thames awards, they also constructed a fortress. A portion of this Arx Palatina can still be en to the east of the White Tower. But no part of this Roman work remains in the prent Tower, though Shakespeare speaks of Julius C?sar’s Tower in Richard II.上海口译官网
Tower history, as we know it in any detail, begins with the Conquest. The Conqueror t Gu
ndulf, a well-travelled monk of the monastery{22} of Bec, who had en many beautiful buildings in the cour of his wanderings, to work on the low ground between the hill and the river, and there, on the camping-ground of the Britons and the Romans, aro the White Tower, completed about 1078. Gundulf was not only a builder but an administrator, and the chronicles tell us that, as Bishop of Rochester, where he rebuilt the Cathedral, he was most earnest in the discharge of his episcopal duties.
纳尔逊 罗利赫拉赫拉 曼德拉When we reach the reign of Henry I. we have tidings of our first prisoner, Ralph Flambard, Bishop of Durham. He was immured for illegally raising funds for the upkeep of this very fortress, but had no desire to remain long an inmate within the walls he had been so anxious, aforetime, to prerve. A rope was conveyed to him in a wine-cask. With the wine he “fuddled his keepers”; with the rope he proceeded to lower himlf down the outer wall of the White Tower, and, not at all alarmed at finding the rope too short and his arrival on the ground somewhat sudden, he was able to mount on horback, ride to a aport, and embark for Normandy. Subquently he returned to Durham, where he co
mpleted the Cathedral and built Norham{23} Castle, in which Scott lays the opening scene of Marmion.
subsampleThe Tower now became a royal palace and remained the dwelling-place of the Kings of England, or, at times, the stronghold to which they would retire when danger threatened, until the days of Charles II. At this early period of its history, too, it was found that a collection of wild beasts would lend some zest to life within its walls. This royal menagerie was located on the ground where the ticket-office and refreshment-rooms now stand, and was removed in 1834. It is said that the term “going to e the lions” of a place aro from the fashionable habit of visiting the Tower lions, and the lane off Great Tower Street, just beyond Allhallows Barking, was at one time not Beer but Bear Lane, and evidently led down to the pits in which the bears were expected to provide amument for Court circles. Stephen kept Whitsuntide in the Tower in 1140, and in that year the Tower was in the charge of Geoffrey de Mandeville, who had accompanied the Conqueror to England, but in 1153 it was held for the Crown by Richard de Lucy, Chief Justiciary of England, in tr
ust for Henry of Anjou, and to him it reverted on Stephen’s death. It was{24} a popular superstition at this time that the red appearance of the mortar ud in binding the Tower walls was caud by the blood of beasts having been mixed with it in the making; but the ruddy tint was really the result of an admixture of pulverid Roman bricks with the lime. When Richard I. went off to the Crusades the Tower was left in the keeping of his Chancellor, Longchamp; and King John, on usurping the throne, laid siege to the fortress, which Longchamp surrendered to him. In 1215 the Tower was again besieged, this time by the barons and the citizens of London, but though the stronghold had but a poor garrison it held out successfully. In 1216 the rebellious nobles handed over the custody of the Tower to the Dauphin, Louis, but he appears to have considered the task too irksome, and “speedily returned to his own land.”
One of the greatest names in Tower history is that of Henry III., who appointed Adam of Lambourne master-mason of the buildings, and began to build and rebuild, to adorn and to beautify, never satisfied until he had made the Tower of London a royal dwelling-place i
ndeed. To the Norman Chapel in the White Tower he gave stained glass and decorated the{25}
Image unavailable: THE PORTCULLIS IN BLOODY TOWER
THE PORTCULLIS IN BLOODY TOWER
walls with frescoes; to St. Peter’s, on Tower Green, he gave a t of bells. He constructed the Wharf, and the massive St. Thomas’s Tower and Traitor’s Gate were t up by him. But he had his difficulties to contend with. The additions to the fortification were unpopular with the citizens without the walls, and when a high tide washed away the Wharf, and, undermining the foundations of the new tower over Traitor’s Gate, brought it twice to the ground, the people rejoiced, hoping the King would own that Fate was against him. But after each disaster his only comment ems to have been “Build it stronger!” and there is Henry’s Wharf and St. Thomas’s Tower (recently restored) to this day. Henry also built the outer wall of the Tower facing the Moat, and in many other ways
made the place a stronghold sure. The wisdom of what had been done was soon made manifest, for Henry had many a time to take refuge within Tower walls while rebellious subjects howled on the slopes of Tower Hill. For their unkind treatment of his wife, Queen Eleanor, Henry never forgave the people of London, and so defied them from within what had really become his castle walls. Eleanor was avaricious, proud, arrogant, and became so unpopular{26} that, when on one occasion she had left the Wharf by water, for Westminster, she was received, as her barge came into view of London Bridge, with such execrations and shouts of “Drown the witch!” or sounds to that effect, that she returned in terror to the Tower. In 1244 Griffin, son of Llewellyn, was brought as prisoner to the White Tower and detained as a hostage. He attempted to emulate the redoubtable Flambard by making a rope of his bedclothes and dropping from his window, by such means, to the ground. But he had forgotten to take the weight of his body into his calculations; he was a stout man, his hastily constructed rope was incure, it broke as he hung upon the wall of the Tower, and he was killed by the fall.
Edward I., when he returned from the Holy Land, made the last additions of any conquence that were ever made to the Tower buildings. The Moat was formed in his day and put then into much of its prent shape; it has, of cour, been cleaned out and deepened from time to time, though there was always more mud than water in its basin, and, at one period, it was considered an offence that lead to instant death for any man to be discovered bathing therein, probably becau he{27} was almost certain to die from the effects of a dip in such fluid as was to be found there! Multitudes of Jews were imprisoned in the dungeons under the White Tower in this reign on the charge of “clipping” the coin of the realm, and the Welsh and Scottish wars were the cau of many notable warriors, such as the Earls of Athol, Menteith, and Ross, King Baliol and his son Edward, and, in 1305, the patriot William Wallace, being given habitation in Tower dungeons. The noble Wallace, bravest of Scots, was put to death at Smithfield after some mblance of trial in Westminster Hall. But his name will never be forgotten, for it is enshrined by Burns in one of the noblest of Scottish songs.
