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Casemate in the Brass Mount
George Cruikshank
October 1840
Wood-engraving
9.5 cm high by8.5 cm wide, vignetted
Illustration for Book the Second, Chapter XXIX, of Ainsworth's The Tower of London, p. 320.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Among those who contrived to distinguish themselves in the action was Xit. Finding his position one of more danger than he had anticipated, he scrambled upon the wall on the right of the By-ward Tower, where, being out of the rush, he could defy at his ease those who were swimming in the moat.
While he was in this situation, Bret, who, it has been mentioned, was thrown into the moat, swam to the wall, and endeavoured to ascend it. Xit immediately attacked him, and adopting the language of Magog to Wyat, threatened to throw him back again if he did not yield.
"I do yield,"replied Bret.
"Your name and rank?"demanded the dwarf, in an authoritative tone.
"Alexander Bret, captain of the London Trained Bands, second in command to Sir Thomas Wyat,” replied the other.
"Here, Magog— Gog— Og— help!” shouted Xit— "I have taken a prisoner. It is Captain Bret, one of the rebel leaders—help him out of the moat, and let us carry him before the queen! I am certain to be knighted for my valour. Mind, I have taken him. He has yielded to me. No one else has had a hand in his capture. [Chapter XXIX. — "The Siege of the Tower," pp. 319]
In the Attack upon the Brass Mount by Lord Guildford Dudley, the reader has an external view of the bastion holding the chief gun emplacements of the Tower of London. In 1554 (supposedly), the Kentish rebels led by Bret and Wyat and the royalists (that is, the supporters of Mary I) are waging a vigorously contested battle on the landward side of the Tower. There, Cruikshank's focus had not been setting but character and action. Legge's Mount and the Brass Mount on the northern outer curtain wall are early artillery angle bastions and beyond the moat were strategic parts of the medieval fortress, but in 1840 were merely a series of deserted rooms. We have also recently seen an 1840 view of this area of the fortress in The Brass Mount, a prosaic wood-engraving that contrasts the action scene in which Lord Guildford Dudley and the protagonist, Cholmondeley, in the wherry, lower left, the largest figures in the sprawling epic canvas, approach the Brass Mount across the moat: "Dudley embarked with Cholmondeloy, who carried his standard, in a small skiff, and waving his sword above his head, pointed to the Brass Mount, and urged his men to the assault" (p. 313).
Left: The first wood-engraving of the what had been the scene of the supposed action of 1554, The Brass Mount, as it looked in 1840. Right: The dynamic action scene in which Dudley and his esquire, Cholmondeley, lead the attack on the north face of the Tower, Attack upon the Brass Mount by Lord Guildford Dudley (October 1840). [Click on images to enlarge them.]
The large semi-circular bastion known as the Brass Mount derives its name from the brass canons installed there to ward off attack from the landward side of the Tower, as suggested by a large townhouse behind the moat in the previous wood-engraving. The Brass Mount and Legge's Mount are not, properly speaking, towers, but artillery basions built into the northern outer curtain wall, beyond the moat and attached to the medieval London Wall. The Brass Mount, although probably somewhat altered in the Victorian era, dates from the reign of Edward I, and was built between 1275 and 1285 to enclose the inner wall completely in order to provide a concentric double defence on the north side of the Tower, adapting the complex to withstand the assault of canon. On the north face of the outer wall are three semicircular bastions, the Brass Mount, the North Bastion, and Legge's Mount, and it is at these points in Ainsworth's fictionalized history that the rebels launch assaults which feature Wyat prominently among the attackers. This far more tranquil view of the scene of battle closes the October instalment on the novel.
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Last modified 22 October 2017