Until some thirty years ago this crypt was used as an armoury, and here many may remember having seen a figure of Queen Elizabeth, mounted on a wooden steed, in a dress supposed to have been worn by her when she returned thanks at St Paul’s for the destruction of the Armada. (This is now in the lower gallery of the White Tower.)
The rooms on this floor of the tower are 15 feet high, with wooden ceilings, which are supported by massive wooden pillars placed in double rows. These wooden columns are comparatively modern, and were probably placed here when the rooms were converted into an armoury, store rooms, and record offices. They are now filled with small-arms, and the roofs are supported by beams strengthened with iron girders. The ancient fireplaces still remain in the eastern wall.
On the second floor of the White Tower are three great chambers. That to the west is 95 feet by 32; that to the east 64 feet by 32; they are 15 feet high. St John’s Chapel, which is on the second floor, forms its cross chamber, and rises through the roof to the top of the tower. A mural passage at the extremity of the western chamber leads to the west end of the south aisle. Mr Clark believes that this was formerly a private entrance from the Palace into the Chapel, being connected with the State rooms of the Tower, one of which is still called the Banqueting Hall.
The fourth floor of the Keep is called the State Floor, and is divided into three chambers 28 feet in height. The room to the west, which is called the Council Chamber, was the scene of that episode at the commencement of the reign of Richard III., immortalised by Shakespeare, when that monarch accused Lord Hastings of treason and had him taken out to instant execution (_Richard III._ Act iii. Scene 4). This chamber is 95 feet long by 46 wide. Within the exterior walls runs a vaulted passage communicating with the stairs in the north-eastern turret. It was in this passage, which is only 3 feet in width, that the soldiers were concealed when Richard had planned Hastings’s death. In Norman times this chamber was used as a State prison, and it was from one of its windows that Bishop Flambard let himself down by a rope. It was also the prison of Charles of Orleans in the reign of Henry V., and had probably served the same purpose in the reign of Edward III., and may have held in its walls both King John of France and David, King of Scotland; here, too, the brothers Mortimer were probably imprisoned in 1324.