Secrets Of Great British Castles - Season 1, Episode 2 Tower of London
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00:00For me, a great British castle is a fortress, a palace, a home.
00:11And a symbol of power, majesty and fear.
00:16For nearly 1,000 years,
00:18castles have shaped Britain's famous landscape.
00:24These magnificent buildings have been home to some of the greatest heroes
00:28and villains in our national history.
00:31And many of them still stand proudly today,
00:34bursting with incredible stories of warfare, treachery, intrigue and even murder.
00:45Join me, Dan Jones, as I uncover the secrets behind six great British castles.
00:53This time, I'm exploring one of the oldest and most notorious castles ever built.
01:01A fortress, prison and execution place,
01:06built to inspire fear in everyone who walks through its gates.
01:23Imagine London, one of the great capital cities,
01:28conquered, subjugated and invaded by aliens.
01:32And imagine if they backed up that invasion
01:35by building something new, terrifying and utterly overwhelming.
01:42A gigantic piece of military hardware
01:45designed to show off the power of the invaders
01:48and scare the population after death.
01:53This brooding monolith was from another world,
01:56but it wasn't science fiction, it was very, very real.
02:04Today, the Tower of London is Britain's most visited tourist site.
02:08But back in the 11th century,
02:10it was the state-of-the-art weapon of a new ruling elite.
02:14But, of course, it wasn't built by little green men.
02:18It was the brainchild of one of the most ruthless kings in English history.
02:27William the Conqueror.
02:31William was the illegitimate son and heir of the Duke of Normandy,
02:35which meant he was actually descended from the Vikings.
02:38Unlike any good Viking, he had a taste for sailing to new lands
02:42and taking them for himself.
02:45In 1066, he set his sights on England.
02:49William took an army across the English Channel
02:52and defeated his Saxon rival, Harold, at the Battle of Hastings.
02:57The Norman invasion, perhaps the greatest turning point in English history,
03:02had begun.
03:04After the battle, William and his army raced to London.
03:08They marched around the city, burning everything they came across.
03:12It was a stunning show of force, and it worked.
03:19Within weeks, the terrified citizens of London surrendered without a fight.
03:25On Christmas Day, 1066, William, Duke of Normandy,
03:29was crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey.
03:33But this was more than just a cheeky power grab by a foreign upstart.
03:38It was the beginning of a conquest that would engulf the whole of England.
03:42It was the beginning of a new era,
03:44and it was the beginning of a new era for England.
03:47It was more than just a cheeky power grab by a foreign upstart.
03:51It was the beginning of a conquest that would engulf the whole of England.
03:55And at the heart of the conquest,
03:57William built a series of massive castles
04:00designed to put the masses in their place
04:02and show them that he was their new boss.
04:08The centrepiece of this network
04:10was the vast stone structure known as the White Tower.
04:14It loomed over London, and its location was carefully chosen.
04:18William used a 1,000-year-old blueprint,
04:21left behind from the last great civilisation that had invaded England.
04:26The Romans.
04:32The Normans were building on top of old Roman ruins, right?
04:36Stonecastles is the name of the game.
04:39To say, as the Romans said,
04:42So he's basically setting himself up
04:44as the new imperial kind of power in the land.
04:48A classic example of that one is Colchester, if you like.
04:51Probably the very first stone castle
04:53that's constructed by the Normans in this country,
04:56it could be that one.
04:58Very closely followed by the Tower of London.
05:00And then at London, he builds his massive stone castle,
05:04which is his seat of power within the capital city.
05:07There's another part to this story of the two castles as well, isn't there?
05:10It is. Supposedly, the architect for both sites
05:13is the Bishop of Rochester, a guy called Gundolf.
05:16And J.R.R. Tolkien, who obviously everybody knows for Lord of the Rings,
05:20supposedly takes, because he's an Anglo-Saxon scholar at Cambridge,
05:23takes Gundolf, and Gundolf becomes Gandalf.
05:26And, of course, the Two Towers is the name of the book.
05:30The second book.
05:33But long before the tower inspired Tolkien,
05:36it had a very clear political role.
05:39By building in stone, William was sending a message.
05:43The Normans were here to stay.
05:48The White Tower was 90 feet high and its walls were 15 feet thick.
05:53It earned its name because its whitewashed stone walls
05:56could be seen for miles around.
05:59Londoners would never have seen anything like it.
06:05Heavily armed foreign soldiers stood behind thick stone walls
06:10and it all sent out a clear message.
06:13This was a castle devoted to one simple purpose,
06:17maintaining royal power.
06:24Today, it's hard to know where power comes from.
06:27Today, it's hard to know where power really lies in London.
06:31Is it across the river with the mayor at City Hall?
06:34Is it with the politicians at Westminster?
06:37Is it with the money men in the city?
06:40Well, in the 11th century, there was no doubt where power lay.
06:44This enormous square fortress landed next to London
06:48as threatening and as alien as a spaceship.
06:52Placed next to the most important city in England,
06:56it took nearly a quarter of a century to build, but it was worth it.
07:07William was the new boss and the White Tower proved it.
07:15Now, no-one in England's capital would dare to disobey
07:20their new ruler.
07:22It seems hard to imagine today, but it's not.
07:27If you want to get a sense for how the Tower loomed over London
07:31and overawed Londoners,
07:33the best way is to check out the 21st century equivalent.
07:37This is the Shard, the tallest building in Britain.
07:4172 storeys high, it really does soar above London,
07:47overshadowing everything that stands around it,
07:50much like the Tower of London once did.
07:53The view from up here is absolutely astounding.
07:57It's a cloudy day and you can see still about 14 to 15 miles
08:01in every direction.
08:03This must have been exactly how you'd have felt
08:06if you were a Norman king or a Plantagenet king
08:09down there in the White Tower looking over the medieval city.
08:14And down below all that, the Tower of London looks kind of puny.
08:18But you've got to unimagine all of modern London
08:21and try and think back to what it would have looked like,
08:24say, in the 12th century, when William FitzSteven
08:27wrote his famous description of the city.
08:29And he described the Tower of London there,
08:32bang in the eastern corner, as rising up on ancient foundations.
08:37It's mortar mixed with blood.
08:39Well, that was the eastern end, and the walls came out
08:44and stretched round what we now think of as a square mile.
08:48There was St Paul's Cathedral rising up in the middle.
08:52And then down at the end on the other side you had Westminster.
08:55That was, as now, a political village.
08:59But what was important was at these two points,
09:02the Tower and Westminster marked out a line of power.
09:06Every king before their coronation in the Middle Ages
09:09emerged from the Tower and processed through the city
09:12all the way down to Westminster Abbey to be crowned.
09:15That was the ultimate political pageantry.
09:22In the years that followed William's conquest,
09:25London grew rapidly.
09:27By the end of the 13th century,
09:29the population had reached over 100,000.
09:32And as the city grew, so did the Tower and its supremacy.
09:37And it's that tension between the Tower and the citizens
09:41that lies at the heart of our story.
09:45In times of pomp and celebration, everything started at the Tower.
09:49But in times of chaos and crisis, it was a place to go and retreat.
09:53So this wasn't just a castle designed to overawe the common people.
09:58It was also somewhere to hide from them.
10:02In the 11th century, the White Tower was built by William the Conqueror
10:06as a symbol of Norman power.
10:09Under the kings who followed him,
10:11it grew bigger, stronger and more menacing.
10:15In the 13th century, Henry III extended the castle
10:19to the north and east with a curtain wall.
10:24And he transformed the interior into a comfortable royal palace,
10:28which is how it's been restored today.
10:33But much of the modern castle was the work of Henry's son,
10:37a king who added a truly deadly reputation to the Tower of London.
10:42Henry III's son Edward I was a warrior king
10:46and one of English history's keenest castle builders.
10:49He spent twice as much on the Tower of London as his father,
10:52despite only rarely using it as a royal residence.
10:56But Edward had a difficult relationship with London and with the Londoners.
11:00He liked to be sure that when he needed to,
11:02he could keep his distance from them.
11:06Edward built a second concentric curtain wall to enclose the first
11:11and he extended the moat,
11:13so the tower we see today is essentially the one he completed
11:17and it was sending a very clear message to the city.
11:20Know your place.
11:24And know that I am your king.
11:27In the Middle Ages, castles weren't just places to house soldiers.
11:32They were also heavily involved in royal finance,
11:37both as places to keep the king's money
11:40and to imprison those who tampered with it.
11:47Any kingdom, ancient or modern, depends on a system of commerce,
11:51buying and selling, borrowing and lending and taxation,
11:55and that is something that lies at the dark heart
11:57of two of the most vicious and violent stories
12:00in the history of the Tower of London.
12:05Edward I spent his entire reign fighting expensive foreign wars.
12:10It cost him a fortune
12:12and it made him obsessed with the currency of the realm.
12:19Edward was prepared to deal very harshly with anyone
12:22who meddled with his money.
12:26Medieval coins were made of silver,
12:29a soft metal that was very easy to bend, break and forge.
12:35One of the most common methods of medieval fraud was coin clipping,
12:39cutting away the edges of silver pennies,
12:42melting down the slivers and making new, fake coins of your own.
12:49Since all money technically belonged to the king,
12:52by clipping coins you were actually stealing from the royal pocket.
12:58If you look at the definition of a coin,
13:00it's a piece of precious metal
13:02whose intrinsic value is equal to its face value
13:04and stamped with an official mark guaranteeing its weight and fineness.
13:08So it does exactly what it says on the coin.
13:11You have a penny like that, it contains a penny worth of silver.
13:15And they all have to be the same because that's what money is.
13:17It's the weight of the coin.
13:19The coins were weighed, not normally counted.
13:21Coinage was something that was taken really, really seriously in the Middle Ages.
13:24It had sterling qualities.
13:26English coin was renowned throughout the entire world.
13:29Because it was so pure, so regular.
13:31It was good quality and should have been good weight
13:34and good standard of silver.
13:36Which explains then why anyone who was caught debating the coin...
13:39It was treason. It was treason.
13:43Clipped coins flooded the economy and caused inflation.
13:48They made foreign merchants suspicious of doing business with the English
13:52and they reduced the real amount of tax that could be collected from the people.
13:57In 1278, Edward decided to get a grip on his realm's money.
14:02And the Tower was at the heart of it.
14:07Since Edward wasn't using the Tower much as a royal palace,
14:10he decided to move the mint within the walls.
14:13He built a tower on Mint Street,
14:15which stretches for three sides of the Tower of London.
14:18It was an enormous operation.
14:22Edward's new mint improved the look of his coins.
14:26But as well as fixing the coin itself,
14:28Edward wanted a scapegoat to punish for the widespread crimes of clipping.
14:33He found one in England's most vulnerable community,
14:37a minority that was involved in finance and money lending.
14:42Edward blamed everyone for coin clipping,
14:45but he blamed the Jews more than anyone else.
14:48Throughout the 1270s, he'd already been levying punitive taxes on them,
14:52restricting their ability to trade and do business.
14:55Then, in November 1278,
14:58he suddenly rounded up England's whole Jewish population,
15:02putting 700 Jews here in the Tower.
15:11Come on.
15:41Get in there.
16:12Of all the hundreds of Jews that Edward had imprisoned here in the Tower,
16:17almost half were hanged.
16:22In fact, for every Christian executed for coin clipping,
16:25ten Jews suffered the same fate.
16:28And within a decade, Edward had passed an act of expulsion,
16:32banishing the Jews from England for nearly 500 years.
16:37This was the worst Jewish massacre in British history.
16:42But Edward's actions were met with little more than a shrug
16:46from the rabidly anti-Semitic society of medieval England.
16:50And what was more,
16:52he had bolstered the fearful name of the Tower of London.
16:58By the end of Edward's reign,
17:00no-one would dare to question the authority of the Tower.
17:05But 100 years later, the Tower's mighty reputation was blown to pieces
17:10as the castle found itself at the centre
17:13of the greatest popular uprising in British history,
17:16the Peasants' Revolt.
17:20In the second half of the 14th century,
17:23England was going to the dogs.
17:25The new king, Richard II, was a 14-year-old boy
17:29and the country was being governed by his councils,
17:32including the Lord Chancellor, Archbishop Simon Sudbury.
17:38But Sudbury's rule was a disaster, and throughout the country,
17:42people were starting to mutter about rising up in protest.
17:50In 1381, people were moaning about the same sort of things
17:53they still moan about today.
17:55War, death and money.
17:58A war had been going on with France for generations.
18:01France had wiped out nearly half the population of England.
18:05Then, on top of all that, came a tax, a poll tax,
18:09levied on everyone, old and young, rich and poor.
18:12And there were three of them, levied on England,
18:15one after the other, in four years.
18:19The poll taxes were the final insult
18:21to a country that was well and truly fed up.
18:24On 13th June, a large group of militant protesters,
18:28led by the Kentish rebel Wat Tyler, entered London.
18:32They burned jails and legal offices.
18:34They chopped the heads off anyone associated with the government,
18:38piling their corpses in the streets.
18:42The following morning, Tyler and the rebels turned their attention
18:46to the ultimate symbol of political power.
18:51The Tower of London was the rebels' central focus, but why?
18:55They didn't want the lavish apartments, the royal jewels
18:58or even the coin in the mint.
19:02They didn't want to capture the king, the teenage Richard II,
19:06which is just as well, because on the day they stormed the Tower,
19:09he wasn't even here.
19:13What they really wanted was the traitors who'd imposed the poll tax.
19:17This is like today's Londoners marching along Downing Street
19:20and trying to kidnap the Prime Minister.
19:23Archbishop Sudbury knew that the rebels were baying for his blood.
19:28Terrified, he and his ministers fled to the White Tower,
19:32where they hid in the chapel and prayed for salvation.
19:40Archbishop Sudbury and several other royal ministers
19:43had taken refuge in the Tower
19:45because it was supposed to be the safest place in London.
19:48But when the angry mob birthed through the doors,
19:51suddenly it was the most dangerous.
19:54Sudbury was hiding in this chapel when the rebels found him.
19:58He'd been saying masses all morning
20:00and now he was saying his final prayers.
20:03Most traitors were brought to the Tower,
20:06but now Sudbury was about to be taken out of it.
20:11He was dragged out to Tower Hill and decapitated.
20:15His head was stuck on a spike,
20:17and his bishop's mitre nailed on for good measure.
20:21For a gang of ordinary peasants to take
20:23what was basically the Prime Minister of the day
20:26out of the chapel in the greatest fortress in the land
20:29and hack his head off on Tower Hill, it's completely extraordinary.
20:33This is almost like communism 600 years before its time.
20:39The following day, the young King Richard
20:42met the rebels to hear their complaints.
20:45But the meeting turned violent,
20:47and when Tyler made a move toward the King,
20:50he was grabbed by one of Richard's men and run through.
20:56A revolution was avoided, but only just.
21:08The Peasants' Revolt was one of the most shocking episodes
21:11in English history.
21:13The Parliament on fire, the Chancellor's head on a stick,
21:17and the mighty Tower of London stormed by a gang of villagers.
21:21The lesson, perhaps?
21:23Well, you antagonise the mob at your peril,
21:26but it was also a reminder that the Tower, like any other castle,
21:30was only as strong as the person holding it.
21:36The Tower of London survived
21:38and regained its reputation as a menacing fortress.
21:42Today, it would be the scene
21:44of one of Britain's most notorious and mysterious crimes.
21:54The Tower of London, first built by William the Conqueror,
21:58began its long life as a military weapon aimed at the City of London.
22:03Over the centuries, its power and prestige grew.
22:08The nobles stayed in the Tower the night before their coronations,
22:12and they retreated behind its walls
22:14to ride out periods of rebellion and war.
22:18But occasionally, kings would go into the Tower and never come out.
22:27One of the great mysteries of the Tower
22:29is the story of the two princes.
22:32It's fascinated people for centuries, and it's easy to see why.
22:36This is a riddle worthy of any detective novel,
22:40a crime that changed history and has never been properly solved.
22:47The princes in the Tower were 12-year-old King Edward V
22:51and his brother, the 10-year-old Richard, Duke of York.
22:55In 1483, their father, Edward IV, died suddenly at the age of 40.
23:02The boy's uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester,
23:05took them into his custody and placed them in the Tower of London.
23:12He claimed to be their protector
23:14and promised to rule the kingdom on their behalf.
23:18But soon, Richard's plans changed.
23:23He declared the two princes illegitimate
23:26and took the crown for himself as Richard III.
23:30The boys were no longer in the Tower for their own safety.
23:33They were prisoners.
23:36For a few weeks, passers-by saw young Edward and his brother
23:40playing games in the Tower gardens.
23:43But after a while, their servants were dismissed
23:46and they gradually disappeared from public view.
23:51By the time Richard had been king for a couple of months,
23:54his nephews had vanished completely.
23:59They were never to be seen again.
24:04For centuries, the fate of the boys was a mystery.
24:08Most writers in the Tudor years blamed Richard III,
24:12including William Shakespeare,
24:14who portrayed him as an evil, hunchbacked, crown-stealing murderer.
24:19But was he really a murderer?
24:21Without any bodies, it was difficult for anyone to be sure.
24:25Then, suddenly, startling new evidence was turned up,
24:30hidden deep within the fabric of the Tower of London.
24:45During the reign of Charles II, workmen were remodelling the Tower
24:49when they found the skeletal remains of two children
24:52hidden under this staircase.
25:00When Charles II heard that the bones had been found,
25:04he wanted them reburied with royal dignity,
25:07which is why today they're here in Westminster Abbey
25:10in this beautiful casket designed by the great architect Christopher Wren.
25:15And the inscription on the casket
25:17lays the blame pretty squarely at Richard's door.
25:20It says he suffocated the princes with a pillow
25:23and then usurped the throne.
25:26Richard III was dug up under a car park in Leicester in 2012,
25:30and his bones were subjected to every scientific test you could think of.
25:35Well, this casket hasn't been opened since the 1930s,
25:38almost 100 years.
25:40When it was opened, it was found there were two children's skeletons inside,
25:45and it was discovered that the children's bodies
25:48had been buried in this casket.
25:51When it was opened, it was found there were two children's skeletons inside,
25:56but since then, no permission has been granted
25:59to subject whatever's in there to modern scientific testing.
26:04Until that permission is granted,
26:06the mystery of the princes in the Tower will continue.
26:15Even if the riddle of the princes in the Tower is never solved,
26:19the history will continue to be one of the most notorious in British history
26:24and an important part of the legacy of the Tower of London.
26:28But one thing is for certain.
26:30The princes were not the first prisoners to suffer in this castle,
26:35and they certainly weren't the last.
26:39Two million people flock here every year
26:42to visit one of history's most notorious prisons.
26:45But where's the prison? There are no dungeons here.
26:48It's a chamber.
26:50But OK, over the years, plenty of people have been locked up in this fortress,
26:55ranging from Ranulph Lombard, the first prisoner who escaped,
26:59to the Kray twins, who were banged up here for avoiding military service.
27:03So there are reasons why being sent to the Tower
27:07has become one of history's most resonant phrases.
27:11But in the Tudor years, the Tower earned a new reputation.
27:16It wasn't just a place where people were banged up.
27:19It was a place where people were sent to be executed.
27:23And one English king was particularly fond of sending his victims here.
27:34This massive suit of armour
27:36This massive suit of armour
27:38was once owned by England's most famous king, Henry VIII.
27:42And you look at it, well, it tells you everything you need to know
27:45about Henry's self-image.
27:47It's big, it's manly, it's virile.
27:50It all points very obviously to one place.
27:53And this was owned by Henry towards the end of his life in 1540,
27:57when he was fat and grumpy and ill and tyrannical.
28:01And that's the Henry I associate with the Tower of London,
28:05because it wasn't his fortress or his palace or even his playground.
28:10It was his personal prison,
28:12where he locked up those he thought were traitors.
28:21Henry executed dozens of people during his reign.
28:24Dukes and countesses, monks and nuns,
28:27old women, young men, wives, cousins and chief ministers.
28:32This sums up Henry's frenzied and sometimes indiscriminate bloodlust
28:37quite so much as one of his most faithful servants, Thomas More.
28:44Thomas More was a true Renaissance man.
28:47He was Lord Chancellor and one of Henry's closest advisers.
28:51He was also a deeply spiritual figure,
28:54a philosopher, a lawyer and a famous writer.
28:58And his intellectual principles would set him up
29:01for a breakdown with his monarch.
29:05In 1533, Henry divorced the first of his six wives, Catherine of Aragon,
29:11and married the second, Anne Boleyn.
29:14More thoroughly disapproved,
29:16and although he knew it would enrage Henry,
29:19he resigned from the House of Commons in protest.
29:22As a devout and principled Christian,
29:25More couldn't accept Henry's decision to defy the Pope
29:28by divorcing Catherine and taking Anne as his new queen.
29:31But as one of the king's most powerful ministers,
29:34he didn't want to antagonise Henry either,
29:36so initially he bit his lip and kept quiet.
29:40But then Parliament passed an Act of Succession,
29:43confirming Anne as Henry's queen
29:45and any son she should have as Henry's heirs,
29:48and the king demanded that everybody, including More,
29:51take an oath to support it.
29:58Caught between his loyalty to the church and his allegiance to the king,
30:02More found himself in a desperate and impossible position.
30:06Did he follow the orders of his master
30:09or stay true to his basic Christian principles?
30:12Here at All Saints, his private chapel in Chelsea,
30:16he prayed for guidance,
30:18but when he was summoned before the Archbishop of Canterbury,
30:21he was given an ultimatum.
30:23Support the king or suffer the consequences.
30:29More was presented with the Act of Succession
30:36and read it to himself in silence.
30:39Then he was presented with the Oath of Allegiance.
30:42He read it in silence.
30:44But he couldn't swear the oath.
30:46And so, to use one of the most infamous phrases in British history,
30:50he was sent to the Tower.
30:59There's some debate about where More was held,
31:03but many people think it was here, in the basement of the bell tower,
31:07next to the modern constable's residence,
31:09which is normally off-limits to the public.
31:15In a way, this bare cell, with its sandstone walls
31:19and high, vaulted ceilings, feels like a chapel.
31:23And as a prisoner of conscience, More spent months here,
31:27reflecting on his life and possibly his death.
31:32At first, More's imprisonment wasn't too bad.
31:35He was allowed to read and write, he could have visitors,
31:38he could take walks in the grounds of the Tower.
31:41This was more like a civilised house arrest
31:44than being chucked in a dungeon.
31:47But within months, Parliament had passed yet another act,
31:51making Henry the absolute head of the Church in England.
31:55And cutting the country off from the authority of the Pope,
31:58the pressure on More was building.
32:03They may have been lifelong friends,
32:05but Henry was determined to break More's spirit
32:08and force him to resign.
32:10As one of the most highly respected men in all of England
32:13edged slowly towards his doom,
32:16More himself described what happened next.
32:21So, Andrea, what is this collection we have here?
32:23We have a set of 16th-century transcripts of the works of Thomas More.
32:29God, there's so much of it.
32:31So, this is a collection of the works of Thomas More.
32:36God, there's so much of it.
32:38So, now we know what More's been accused of,
32:40but what was his punishment? Because that's in here as well, isn't it?
32:43So, we are told that he's going to lose all of his properties,
32:47his land, shall be deemed and adjudged in our said sovereign
32:51and his heirs in like estate, form and condition as they were before.
32:56So, what we're saying here is that everything that Henry's given
33:00to Thomas More over the years that More had been in favour
33:03is now being taken back. He's ruined.
33:05Yeah, he loses absolutely everything.
33:07But what about More personally?
33:09Halfway down this page, we read,
33:11and also shall suffer such pains of imprisonment of his body.
33:15So, that great old phrase, sent to the tower,
33:18that's the rest of More's life. Exactly.
33:20The ruthlessness of Henry, I suppose. Absolutely.
33:23By this stage, I mean, he was a complete monster. He really was.
33:27More was visited twice, in May and June 1535,
33:31in an attempt to get him to take the Oath of Allegiance.
33:34But he saw this as a real dilemma.
33:37On the one hand, he was a devout Catholic.
33:39On the other, a loyal subject of the king.
33:42He said, this act of Parliament is like a two-edged sword,
33:45for if a man shall swear one way, it will confound his soul.
33:49If he swears the other way, it will confound his soul.
33:52If a man shall swear one way, it will confound his soul.
33:55If he swears the other way, it will confound his body.
33:58In other words, he was damned if he did, and damned if he didn't.
34:02In the end, when he was pressed to take the oath, More remained silent.
34:08On 1st July 1535,
34:11Thomas More was taken from the Tower of London to Westminster,
34:15where he was tried for high treason.
34:18He was sentenced for just 15 minutes before giving their verdict.
34:23More was found guilty of treason
34:25and he was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
34:28He was taken by boat downriver to the Tower to await his fate.
34:34Having defied his king,
34:36More was sent back to this room to contemplate his awful fate.
34:41On the day before he was due to be executed,
34:44More wrote one final letter to his beloved daughter, Margaret.
34:50What does More have to say?
34:52Because this is the day before he was going to be executed.
34:55This must be quite an emotional letter for him to have written to his daughter.
34:59He says,
35:00I never liked your manner toward me better than when you kissed me last,
35:04for I love when daughterly love and dear charity
35:08have no leisure to look to elderly courtesy.
35:12It's really touching, isn't it?
35:14So he's referring to just after his trial when he's been sentenced to death
35:19and he's being escorted back to the Tower
35:22and Margaret has been waiting, sees him,
35:26breaks through all the soldiers to get to him
35:29and to give him one last hug and to kiss him
35:32and that obviously gave him great...
35:36It uplifted him and gave him great comfort.
35:39She really seemed to understand him
35:41and she seemed to really understand
35:43why he felt unable to swear the oath of supremacy
35:47and she supported him in that decision.
35:49And I think, you know, we're kind of sitting in front of More
35:53putting pen to paper, imprisoned in the Tower of London.
35:57It doesn't get much more spine-tingling than that, really.
36:02At nine o'clock the next morning,
36:04Thomas More was brought from this cell to meet his fate.
36:16In the end, he wasn't hanged, drawn and quartered,
36:19but simply beheaded as a traitor.
36:25His final words were,
36:28His final words were,
36:30the king's good servant, a god's first.
36:35Thomas More's execution was only the beginning
36:38of Henry's reign of terror,
36:40and throughout the Tudor years,
36:42plenty of other noble men and women
36:45found themselves locked up here,
36:47waiting for the executioner's call.
36:50None were more famous than Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn.
36:58Just one year later.
37:02Anne Boleyn stayed in the royal apartments
37:04here at the Tower of London
37:06on the night before her coronation as Henry VIII's queen.
37:09Three years later, she was back on the morning of her execution.
37:13Now, for Anne's daughter, Elizabeth I, it worked the other way round.
37:17She was a prisoner here at the Tower of her sister, Mary I.
37:21Within a matter of months, she was leaving the Tower
37:24on the morning of her own coronation.
37:26At those times, treachery was a fickle concept,
37:29and today's king, queen or royal confidant
37:32could easily be tomorrow's traitor.
37:36But fear of the monarchy would begin to wane.
37:39Less than a century after More's execution,
37:42the balance of power in England would shift.
37:46Soon, the dominance of the Tower of London
37:49would be overshadowed by the will of the people.
37:57From Norman times till the Tudor years,
38:00the Tower of London had been the focus for royal power.
38:04But by the 19th century, it was starting to lose its grip.
38:08This was no longer the main arena for political battles.
38:12Further up the River Thames,
38:14the Houses of Parliament now took centre stage.
38:20Now, the Tower took on another role.
38:23It began to attract tourists,
38:26and they weren't just here to inspect the ramparts.
38:29One of the main attractions was some of its more exotic inhabitants,
38:34because it wasn't just humans who were locked up in the Tower.
38:38This is a story about a bear,
38:40and though the bear which killed the child escaped at this time,
38:44he was afterwards, by command of the king,
38:46baited to death with dogs upon a stage.
38:49It gives us an insight into the cheery humour of the 18th century, doesn't it?
38:53Oh, dear.
38:55What's amazing is this tiny little book
38:58is one of the first known guidebooks to the Tower of London,
39:01and it's full of miniature portraits of animals.
39:05It's extraordinary to think that for 600 years,
39:08the Tower was home to the Menagerie, or London's main zoo.
39:13For more than 900 years, since the time of William the Conqueror,
39:17the Tower of London has been a royal palace.
39:20Now, royals get a lot of gifts.
39:23In fact, the present royal family has received a bear,
39:26two sloths, a baby crocodile, an elephant, a horse and a canary.
39:33In 1252, the King of Norway presented the Tower with a very exotic gift,
39:38its very own polar bear.
39:40Now, the royal records show the purchase of a muzzle, a chain
39:44and a long length of rope so the bear could go fishing
39:47for its own food in the river.
39:51England's medieval kings needed somewhere secure
39:54to put all the animals they received.
39:56Naturally, they chose the strongest castle in the land,
40:00the Tower of London.
40:03Over the years, the Tower was home to everything
40:06from monkeys to Barbary lions...
40:09And my favourite, a pair of dog-faced baboons.
40:12In the 18th century, the Tower of London opened its Menagerie,
40:17or zoo, to the public.
40:19To get in, you had to pay three pennies
40:22or bring along a cat or dog to feed to the lions.
40:27By 1828, the Tower held over 280 animals,
40:32but one man was not impressed.
40:37Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington,
40:40was the heroic general who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.
40:45Now aged nearly 60, he was made Constable of the Tower.
40:49The old soldier had plans for the great fortress
40:52and they didn't include wild animals
40:55or the noisy crowds that came to see them.
40:59As far as the Duke of Wellington was concerned,
41:02the Tower was a barracks for troops, not a circus or a zoo.
41:07On top of that, the place was filthy,
41:09the water in the moat was fetid
41:11and there was cholera among the troops.
41:14Now, Wellington was a founding member of the Zoological Society
41:18and to his mind, cleaning this place up meant the animals had to go.
41:25The Duke of Wellington knew that housing wild animals
41:28in a medieval fortress was an accident waiting to happen,
41:32and he was right.
41:34In 1835, when one of the lions allegedly mauled a soldier,
41:38the Iron Duke had had enough.
41:40He relocated the entire menagerie to Regent's Park,
41:44where it became one of the world's most famous collections of animals,
41:48London Zoo.
41:50Wellington got rid of the animals and the mint,
41:53he drained the moat and he turned the Tower back
41:56into a proper ship-shaped military barracks.
41:59They named the building after him where they now keep the crown jewels.
42:03But you know what? The ultimate irony is,
42:06the Duke of Wellington hated tourists.
42:10Wellington proposed that the public should be kept out of the Tower of London.
42:14He called them a nuisance and a threat to security.
42:18Fortunately for the millions of tourists who come here every year,
42:22he never got his way.
42:26For 900 years, the Tower has dominated London and fascinated the world.
42:32Today, it remains the most famous British castle of them all.
42:37In the end, the story of the Tower is about the mob,
42:41and it always has been.
42:44The Tower was built to frighten and subjugate them.
42:48It's been used to appease them, locking up criminals and foreigners.
42:52Of course it's been used to amuse them,
42:54like coming to the zoo or going out to Tower Hill
42:57to watch traitors being beheaded.
42:59And it still amuses them now,
43:01a royal fortress invaded every day by thousands of ordinary people
43:06pouring in off the streets of London.
43:24THE TOWER
43:28THE TOWER
43:31THE TOWER
43:34THE TOWER
43:37THE TOWER
43:40THE TOWER
43:43THE TOWER
43:46THE TOWER
43:49THE TOWER
43:51THE TOWER