Prisoners of the Tower of London (Being an Account of Some Who at Divers Times Lay Captive Within its Walls; With Many Portraits and Illustrations)

Prisoners of the Tower of London: Being an Account of Some Who at Divers Times Lay Captive Within its Walls; (with Many Portraits and Illustrations) was written by Violet Brooke-Hunt and published in London in 1901. (440 pages)

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Included at the end of this book are many portraits and illustrations.

Introduction:

.....It would be quite impossible for me to personally mention every work from which I have received valuable help in the compilation and arrangement of these little sketches. Wherever direct quotations have been made I have endeavored to mark the same, but if in any case I have omitted to do so, I crave forgiveness for such an unintentional error; and I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to a long list of writers, from the early chroniclers to the historians of our own day, including the authors of special works on the Tower of London. The shortcomings of this work are all too apparent; and, realizing the greatness of the subject, I am conscious of my own inability to treat it worthily. My hope in sending it out is this, that, being simply written, it may reach those who have not yet realized all the romance which is to be found in our history, and so may help to make the story of the Past more of a reality to those in whose hands lie the destinies of the Future.
.....To General Milman, Major of the Tower, I must make a special acknowledgment of my thanks. But for his kindness and ready help, the task would have been doubly difficult.
Violet Brooke-Hunt.
45 Albert Gate, S.W.

Contents:

Prologue — The Builders Of The Tower — Flambard, The First Prisoner — Two Royal Prisoners Of Wales — Scottish Prisoners — French Prisoners Of War — Richard II. — King Henry VI. — The Little Princes In The Tower — Sir John Oldcastle; The Good Lord Cobham — The Adventures Of Perkin Warbeck — Sir Thomas More — Anne Boleyn — Thomas Cromwell, Earl Of Essex — The Earl Of Surrey — Lady Jane Grey — Lady Katherine Grey — Princess Elizabeth — The Martyrs Of Queen Mary — Robert Devereux, Earl Of Essex — Prisoners For A Queen — Duke Of Norfolk — Sir Walter Raleigh — Arabella Stuart — Gunpowder Plot — Sir John Eliot — Thomas Wentworth, Earl Of Strafford — Algernon Sidney — The Seven Bishops — Lord Nithsdale And The Bad Lord Lovat — The Last Prisoners — The Treasures Of The Tower

Excerpts:

.....When Geoffrey sets his heart on my doing a thing, it generally ends in his getting his way. For one thing, it is very hard to resist his coaxing voice and his persuasive powers, and then his way and my way are so very often the same. Because though there is thirty years and more between us, we both look out on life from a point of view very sympathetic to each other. We are both of us prone to be hero-worshippers, rather than cool critics of character. We both of us get weary of schemes and systems, periods and theories, and we love intensely men and women, as men and women in the moments of their humiliation as well as in the hour of their greatness. And loving them thus, we like to follow them through all those strangely varied and often inconsistent actions which, pieced together, make up that complex thing a human life, only to be fully understood by the One who holds in His hands the tangled threads.
.....So desiring to act as an interpreter between Geoffrey and the storied past, I set out on a task which is a veritable labor of love, and I shall strive to be faithful to my directions, which are very definite: "Please put in adventures and battles, and lots about the prisoners, people, and everything you can think of about the Tower, so that I can shut my eyes and see it happening all over again.