Page:Collection of notable things worth knowing.pdf/5

5

I 1092 a violent tempest did great injury to the Tower; but it was repaired by William Rufus and his successor. The first added another collateral building on the fourth side, between it and the Thames, which was afterwards called St. Thomas’ Tower: beneath that was Traitor’s Gate, through which state prisoners were brought from the river: and, under another, properly enough called the Bloody; for, until these happier ages, there was little difference between confinement and the scaffold, or private assassination.

Here fell the meek usurper Henry VI. by the dagger of the profligate Gloucester. Here, full of horrors, died by the hand of hired ruffians, the unsteady Clarence. Here the sweet innocents, Edward V. and his brother, perished, victims to the ambition of their remorseless uncle. And the empoisoning of Sir Thomas Overby makes up the sum of the known murders, the reproaches of our ancient fortress. We have here a straight-room, or dungeon, called, from the misery which the unhappy occupier of this very confined place endures, the Little Ease. But this will appear a luxurious habitation when compared with the inventions of the age of Louis XI. of France; with his iron cages, in which persons of rank lay for whole years: or his oubliettes, dungeons made in the form of reversed cones, concealed with trap-doors, down which dropped the unhappy victims of the tyrant.