The Tower of London: the Menagerie

  This granddaddy of all keeps is instantly recognisable and the history of Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London is comparatively well known and much repeated. As it is the first of the castles built by William after the Norman conquest and founded towards the end of 1066 (with the White Tower, which gives the site its name, being constructed in 1078) I could hardly ignore it in a blog largely about castles and Roman remains. I was wary of visiting, fearing the crowds, although I had joined them for the stunning and moving poppy creation in the moat to commemorate WWI - and dead and wounded soldiers of all times.
  However, I went early, as soon as it opened one July morning, and had the place virtually to myself for a while. I was suitably impressed.
The Menagerie
   I did all the enjoyable touristy things, goggling at Henry VIII's armour (just TOO much for first thing of the day!) and wondering why I do not particularly like gold and jewels (that's perhaps the reason I have never married a royal). Then I recalled afterwards that, near where one enters was perhaps the place where a variety of exotic animals was once kept. I thought a few stories about that would be less dog-eared (pun intended.) Nothing now remains of the Lion Tower, constructed by the Leopard Prince, when Edward I, but no CAKE prizes for guessing why it was so called, although we do not know exactly where the animals were housed. A small area here was excavated in 1999 but only domestic animal bones were found, some with (shiver) "gnaw damage". The wild creatures must have been buried elsewhere.

 Two famous animals
   We could guess that one of the earliest inhabitants, a pale or white bear, (probably a polar bear) was kept quite near the river because this gift from King Hakon IV of Norway to King Henry III in 1252 foraged for its own food. The cost of 4 sous a day (i.e. twopence) for feeding the animal for its first year had been felt by the Sheriffs of the City of London to be too great and so the people of the city were told by the king (safely in Windsor) to buy "one muzzle and one iron chain to hold that bear without [outside] the water, one long strong cord, to hold the same bear fishing or washing himself in the Thames." His keeper was also given a thick wrap to wear when he accompanied the fortunate creature to feast on the "far and sweet salmons" later recorded by Holinshed.
    Another later cost was for wine for the elephant which arrived in 1623 for King James as a gift from the Spanish king. Its keepers claimed that, between September and April, the animal would drink nothing but wine, a gallon a day, to protect it from the cold in a foreign land. When it keeled over and died there was speculation that it had not been given enough - but its maintenance would have cost over £275 a year apart from that amount of its regular and abundant tipple.

Stray facts
   During the more than 600 years of its existence, the Tower housed a huge variety of animals in a haphazard and unsystematic fashion, nothing like a modern scientific zoo. The list cannot be complete but there were also: leopards, tigers, panthers, hyenas, wolves, racoons, jackals, a lynx, camels, brown bears (used in baiting), a grizzly called Old Martin, eagles, a porcupine, owls, a rhino and an antelope. The monkey room is of special interest since, for a brief time, visitors were allowed in to wander about despite the damage they suffered from the inhabitants who could pull off their wigs or bite them. It is good to think that, in this case, humans amused animals. Some individual creatures were regarded with great public affection - as they are occasionally today.
   The popularity of the Menagerie as a tourist attraction waxed and waned but there were periods when it was on most people's bucket list: they could either pay the admission cost or offer the family pet. I will spare my sensitive readers the reason for this and prefer the story of the lion which, encountering a spaniel dog in a baiting session, "cherished it, and contracted such a fondness for it, that he would never suffer it to be taken out again, but fed it at his table till he died, which was not till several years after."
  Geoffrey Chaucer - yes, that one - was Clerk of the King's Works for a couple of years and would have had responsibility for the upkeep of buildings connected with the animals.
  The creatures were threatened and terrified by the approach of the Great Fire: Pepys who watched the flames with tears in his eyes had taken the Crewes children to see the lions in 1662: they were so entertained that he described them as being "as pretty and the best behaved that ever I saw of their age." Or did they wonder what would happen to them if they misbehaved?
   For nearly 75 years from 1698 an April Fool hoax was perpetrated: rumours and sometimes posh tickets were issued for the annual ceremony of Washing the Lions. People paid to be taken out in boats for a good view - and to be splashed by the merry oarsmen. That spaghetti harvest has a long tradition.

Attitudes
    The fascinating book from which I have taken most of this information, The Tower Menagerie by Daniel Hahn, documents changing attitudes towards animals over the centuries, from the untutored belief that ostriches could digest iron, to curiosity coupled with an extreme and nauseating cruelty, to a more knowledgeable and enlightened approach. I sometimes think we have swung too far and view them anthropomorphically or value them for their perceived cuteness but that is so much better than the horrors or neglect inflicted on them in earlier eras.

Do visit the Tower when you are in London: go early and afterwards walk along the bank of the Thames to see if you can glimpse the pale ghost of that salmon-eating polar bear idling in the sun or swimming in the water. Do NOT frighten those ravens! You can, of course, get to the capital by bus - I use National Express from Newport and travel in inexpensive luxury, saving my money for CAKE - as always! For opening times click here. To read about another early castle, founded at Chepstow by William FitzOsbern, close ally of the Conqueror, click here.

Chepstow Castle - Marten's Tower

The Tower
   As you walk up towards the entrance to Chepstow Castle, you will see to your left this imposing tower. It used to be called Bigod's Tower since it was built by Roger Bigod III in the late 13th century to a D plan, projecting from the SE curtain wall and taking advantage of its naturally raised position.The original purpose was to provide a second, four-storeyed splendid residence that could be sealed off and defended. When Archdeacon William Coxe visited it in 1798 he was surprised to find "a comfortable suite of rooms" with lodgings for domestics.
   These had been occupied by Henry Marten (1602 - 9th September 1680) who gave his name to the tower. He was imprisoned here, after a stormy and tumultuous life, for about 12 years from 7th December 1668 onwards as a regicide,  being one of the most prominent of the 31 out of 59 Commissioners who signed the death warrant of Charles I in 1649. Marten had always been a staunch republican whose extreme opinions frightened even his supporters. Coxe reports that he took out from a great iron chest at Westminster the crown, robes, sword and sceptre of Edward the Confessor (a king and a saint) and "with a scorn, greater than his lusts and the rest of his vices, he openly declared that there should be no further use of these toyes and trifles" - sacrilege indeed!

His public life
   He was educated at Oxford and entered the Inns of Court: touring Europe in the 1620's he enjoyed the high living there but also encountered the thinking of French stoical philosophers. In his two periods as an MP he made an impression because of his severe republican outlook and was, in fact, expelled and imprisoned in the Tower of London for expressing his view that the royal family should be extirpated and the system of monarchy ended. When Ann Stagg of Southwark presented a women's petition in 1642 calling for political reform, he supported her. He was an enthusiastic committee man, serving on at least 46, but, since reading about committees is even more tedious than attending them, we will pass on to the exciting bits.
   At first he did not take an active soldierly part in the Civil War (he and Cromwell did not get on) but later raised a private regiment to defend his own area and his principles, occasionally stealing horses but attracting followers because of his charismatic personality and radical ideas. He was a sophisticated man of the world, having been a spymaster for Parliament: one receipt shows that he was paid £500 for information and he designed the emblem and mottoes of the Commonwealth regime. In June 1660, he surrendered himself to the authorities as a regicide but behaved so courageously at his trial that he was spared the death penalty. He was at first imprisoned in Windsor Castle until Charles II ordered him to be moved further away to Chepstow because his proximity worried the king.

Picture in National Portrait Gallery, London

His character
  Henry Marten is one of those fascinating personalities who seems to have at least two sides to his character: the serious radical thinker and the reckless libertine. Throughout his life he expressed republican views, tended towards atheism and wanted representative government. He was much maligned for his loose conduct although some of the accusations have no foundation.
   Married twice, the second time to Margaret Staunton, with 8 children in all, he had a long love affair with Mary Ward lasting 30 to 40 years. They lived together as man and wife: she ran the household when he was away and was allowed to visit him in prison. There is little evidence of other affairs although he was accused of being a whoremaster by Charles I: John  Aubrey wrote that he was a "great lover of pretty girls to whom he was so liberal that he spent the greatest part of his estate on them." Certainly he squandered a huge inheritance and passed some time in prison for debt. It cost money, also, to maintain a regiment. Later, too late, he observed that it was important to be "snugge like a snail within our selves, that is our mindes, which nobody can touch," having clothes and house safe.
  Some of that wealth went on clothes since he had a tendency to dandyism: in the portrait above by Sir Peter Lely, his dark cloak is embellished with fur trim and a jet pin and on 2nd December 1649 he paid Christopher Smith £17 8s 5d for a fancy cloak, a suit with taffeta inside and hose lined with calico. His rich diet included: dressed veal, goose, tongue, roast beef, capon, pork, mutton, mince pies and cheese washed down by, on average, 20 pints of beer a day to say nothing of wine and the dark rum supplied by his younger brother.
  He was not a handsome man but he spoke well, had a knack with one-liners and could turn the House with one short but well-crafted contribution. John Lilburne spoke of his "sincerity, uprightness, boldness and gallantry". Certainly he kept Mary Ward loyal to him: there a touching evidence that she liked to think of herself as his wife as she doodled both variations of her name. It was the fact that he flaunted his relationship with her so openly that caused trouble.

The end

   This is the view from inside the castle grounds of Marten's Tower where his apartments were. He was not badly treated and could even go outside. Yet it was a pitiful end of a talented man, though one must remember the background: the execution of the king on January 30, 1649, a freezing day on which Charles I wore 2 heavy shirts so as not to be thought to shiver with fear and at which a terrible groan arose from the huge crowd at the actual beheading, drowning the shouts of the soldiers.
   Marten choked on his supper on 9th Sept., 1680 and died: he had composed an epitaph for himself in the form of an acrostic in which the first letters of each line form his name, showing his wit and way with words. The last two lines read, ironically:

E xamples preach to th' eye, care then (mine says),
N ot how you end but how you spent your dayes.

   He was buried beneath the floor at an entryway of the Priory and Parish Church of St. Mary.

Your visit
   I have written earlier about the castle itself and the pleasant area round the river. It is well worth walking part way across the 200-year-old bridge to see the mighty cliffs on which this fortification rests. Chepstow is served by several buses from the top of town and there is an excellent information centre in the car park by the castle where you can also find the toilets; "Go before you go" is my motto. You can travel a little further north to visit Tintern Abbey or continue on this 69 bus to Monmouth where Henry V was born in the castle and Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote about King Arthur. Other possibilities are the the no 74 to take you to Caldicot Castle, the 75 to Caerwent Roman town and the 63 to Usk with its castle and the battle site of Pwll Melin as well as being the birthplace of Alfred Russel Wallace, evolutionary thinker.
   For opening times for the castle click here.