It will be necessary here to give some figures and proportions of this ancient keep. Its height is 90 feet from ground to battlements. The Keep has four turrets, three being circular, and one square. The windows were much modernised by Sir Christopher Wren, but those in the upper storey are the least altered; only one pair of these, however, have been left in their original state. It was from this window that Bishop Flambard is said to have made his escape. A stone staircase, 11 feet wide, and built in the circular turret on the north-east of the Keep, communicates with all the floors and leads to the roof. The basement of the Keep is a little below the level of the soil on the north side, and is flush with it on the south side. The walls are from 12 to 15 feet thick, the internal area being 91 feet by 73 feet. The large chambers have timbered ceilings, and the smaller are stone-vaulted. Formerly, the basement and the prison within it could only be reached from above, by the staircase running through the circular turret. The great western chamber is 91 feet long by 35 feet in width. In the vault or sub-crypt under the Chapel of St John there is a prison called “Little Ease,” and here Guy Fawkes is supposed to have passed his last fifty days on earth. It opens into a great dungeon which is 47 feet long by 15 feet broad. Formerly, this place was in total darkness, and could have had but little air; at its eastern end it terminates in a semicircle. It was here that in the reign of King John some hundreds of Jews were imprisoned with their families. In later times it was fitted up into a powder magazine, and it is not many years since it was cleared of “villainous” saltpetre. Its walls have been coated with brick, and the ceiling refaced and vaulted, whilst passages have been pierced through its eastern and western extremities. A well 6 feet wide, its sides lined with ashlar stone, which may be of Roman origin, has been found in the floor of this vault, near its south-western angle.
[Illustration: _Stone Staircase in the White Tower._]
On the second floor of the White Tower the walls are 13 feet in thickness, the cross walls being 8 feet. On this floor are five openings communicating between the eastern and the western chambers. The latter is 92 feet long by 37 broad; a vaulted passage 2 feet 10 inches wide being constructed in the thickness of the wall. The eastern chamber is 68 feet long and 30 wide. There is a recess in the north wall which communicates with the exterior of the tower by a double flight of stone stairs facing the river front. And it was at the foot of these steps that the bones, supposed to be those of the little Princes, were discovered in the reign of Charles II. They were subsequently taken to Westminster Abbey. The present stairs are modern. An ancient door, 3 feet in width, opens from this chamber on to a short passage, 5 feet in width, cut in the thickness of the wall, which leads to the well staircase communicating with all the floors. Another door in the south wall leads into the crypt of St John’s Chapel, which is 13 feet 6 inches broad by 39 feet in height; at the east end it is apsidal. Near the apse is a passage 2 feet wide which leads into a vaulted cell 8 feet long by 10 wide. This cell has no windows, and when, in former times, the door, which has been removed, was closed, this dismal prison was plunged in total darkness. It has been asserted, without any foundation, that this cell was that in which Raleigh passed his first imprisonment in the Tower. There is not a shadow of proof to corroborate this. It was probably used in the early years of the fortress as a strong-room for the safekeeping of the church treasure. Although no proof exists as to the imprisonment of Raleigh in this black hole, prisoners were confined here in the days of the sanguinary Queen Mary, as is shown by some half-obliterated inscriptions which can still be seen on the sides of the doorway leading from the crypt to the cell. In one of these the following words have been traced—“He that endureth to the ende shall be saved. M. 10. R. Rudston. Dar. Kent. Ano. 1553.” “Be faithful unto deth, and I wil give the a crowne of life.—J. Fane. 1554.” Also the following:—“T. Culpeper of Darford.” These persons were implicated in the Wyatt insurrection. Lord de Ros mentions rather vaguely in his book on the Tower, an inscription which was discovered about 1867 “in the vault of the White Tower,” of which the following is a copy:—“Sacris vestibus indutus dum sacra mysteria servans, captus et in hoc augusto carcere indusus.—R. Fisher.”