. The earth and its inhabitants .. . most venerable. It waserected by William the Conqueror, to the east of the City and on the banks of theThames, on a site perhaps previously occupied by a Roman castle, for coins of theEmpire and the foundations of walls, believed to be very ancient, have been discoveredthere. Looking across the wide moat of the fortress, now laid out as a garden anddrill-ground, there rises boldly and commandingly the glorious old pile known asthe White Tower. This keep of the ancient fortress, in its simple grandeur,contrasts most advantageously with the pretentious buildi
. The earth and its inhabitants .. . most venerable. It waserected by William the Conqueror, to the east of the City and on the banks of theThames, on a site perhaps previously occupied by a Roman castle, for coins of theEmpire and the foundations of walls, believed to be very ancient, have been discoveredthere. Looking across the wide moat of the fortress, now laid out as a garden anddrill-ground, there rises boldly and commandingly the glorious old pile known asthe White Tower. This keep of the ancient fortress, in its simple grandeur,contrasts most advantageously with the pretentious buildings of more modern datewhich surround it. Its walls, so old chronicles tell us, were cemented with theblood of animals, and in its neighbourhood the blood of human beings has beenshed most freely. Leaving out of account those who fell on both sides duringrevolutions and civil wars in the defence or attack of the fortress, as also theobscure prisoners who were murdered within its precincts, we can count Fis:. 94.—Buckingham many personages known to history whose heads fell on Tower Green, closeto the unpretending church of St. Peter ad Vincula, or on Tower Hill, outsidethe entrance gate. It was here that the sovereigns of England caused to bebeheaded rivals to kingly power, courtiers of whom they had grown tired, wiveswhom they repudiated. Here, too, perished some of those men whose names arejustly venerated in England, and amongst them Algernon Sidney, whomCharles II. caused to be executed in 1685. The Bloody Tower was the sceneof the murder of the children of IV. The history of the Tower is that ofroyal crimes. Upon its blackened walls are painted, in lines of blood, the ambitionof Edward I., the luxuriousness of Henry VIIL, the fanaticism of Mary, the cruelvanity of Elizabeth. Long before the destruction of the French Bastille, theTower of London had twice fallen into the hands of a revolted people ; but neitherWat Tyler nor Jack Cade thought of demolishing
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectgeography, bookyear18
