[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> George Cruikshank —> The Tower of London —> W. H. Ainsworth —> Next]
The Interior of the Cradle Tower
George Cruikshank
April 1840
wood-engraving
9.6 cm high by 9 cm wide, vignetted.
Thirtieth illustration for William Harrison Ainsworth's The Tower of London. A Historical Romance, p. 129.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Returning to the outer ward, the principal fortification on the south was a large square structure, flanked at each angle by an embattled tower. This building, denominated St. Thomas's, or Traitor's Tower, was erected across the moat, and masked a secret entrance from the Thames, through which state prisoners, as has before been related, were brought into the Tower. It still retains much of its original appearance, and recals forcibly to the mind of the observer the dismal scenes that have occurred beneath its low-browed arches. Further on the east, in a line with Traitor's Tower, and terminating a wing of the old palace, stood the Cradle Tower. At the eastern angle of the outer ward was a small fortification over-looking the moat, known as the Tower leading to the Iron Gate. Beyond it a draw-bridge crossed the moat, and led to the Iron Gate, a small portal protected by a tower, deriving its name from the purpose for which it was erected.
At this point, on the patch of ground intervening between the moat and the river, and forming the platform or wharf, stood a range of mean habitations, occupied by the different artisans and workmen employed in the fortress. At the south of the By-ward Tower, an arched and embattled gateway opened upon a drawbridge which crossed the moat at this point. Opposite this drawbridge were the main stairs leading to the edge of the river. The whole of the fortress, it is scarcely necessary to repeat, was (and still is) encompassed by a broad deep moat, of much greater width at the sides next to Tower Hill and East Smithfield, than at the south, and supplied with water from the Thames by the sluice beneath Traitor's Gate. [Chapter IV. — "Of The Tower of London; Its Antiquity and Foundation; Its Magnitude and Extent; Its Keep, Palace, Gardens, Fortifications, Dungeons, and Chapels; Its Walls, Bulwarks, and Moat; Its Royal Inmates; Its Constables, Jailors, Warders, AndOther Officers; ItsPrisoners, Executions, and Secret Murders," p. 133]
Complementing the antiquarian's circuit of the fortifications, Cruikshank's view of the Cradle Tower in 1840 in no way suggests the building's distinguished ancestry as the point at which the old royal palace terminated.
This ancient palace — the scene of so many remarkable historical events, — the residence, during certain portions of their reigns, of all our sovereigns, from William Rufus down to Charles the Second — is now utterly gone. Where is the glorious hall which Henry the Third painted with the story of Antiochus, and which it required thirty fir-trees to repair, — in which Edward the Third and all his court were feasted by the captive John, — in which Richard the Second resigned his crown to Henry of Lancaster, — in which Henry the Eighth received all his wives before their espousals, — in which so many royal councils and royal revels have been held; — where is that great hall? Where, also, is the chamber in which Queen Isabella, consort of Edward the Second, gave birth to the child called, from the circumstance, Joan of the Tower? They have vanished, and other structures occupy their place. Demolished in the reign of James the Second, an ordnance office was erected on its site; and this building being destroyed by fire in 1788, it was succeeded by the present edifice bearing the name. [pp. 136-37]
Built by King Edward III between 1348-1355, the Cradle Towerprovided noble visitors of the highest rank with direct access by water to the king's private residence. Cruikshank's exterior drawing of the Cradle Tower does convey an adequate impression of its fortifications. From the river side one sees a crenellated tower with three arched windows above the arched gateway, which has guardrooms on either side; a groove in the flooring indicates that it once had its own portcullis. In the Plan of the Tower of London in 1553 which Cruikshank drew in 1840, the Cradle Tower is in the lower right quadrant, near the gardens, the Queen's Gallery, and the Great Hall, but those features in fact had not existed since the late eighteenth century, and today no vestige of the former palace except the Cradle Tower remains.
The noble Cradle Tower by 1840, as Cruikshank's prosaic illustration testifies, was serving as a lumber-room for disused furnishings. Completed in 1355, the Cradle Tower had long ceased to be a royal residence by Queen Mary's reign. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, the Cradle Tower housed state prisoners. Father John Gerard, a Jesuit priest under detention, and his fellow prisoner, John Arden, in 1597 managed to escape by swinging from a rope stretched from the Cradle Tower across the moat, where they were met by rescuers waiting in a boat to row them to safety.
"Ainsworth, William Harrison." http://biography.com
Ainsworth, William Harrison. The Tower of London. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Richard Bentley, 1840.
Burton, Anthony. "Cruikshank as an Illustrator of Fiction." George Cruikshank: A Revaluation. Ed. Robert L. Patten. Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1974, rev., 1992. Pp. 92-128.
Carver, Stephen. Ainsworth and Friends: Essays on 19th Century Literature & The Gothic. 11 September 2017.
Department of Environment, Great Britain. The Tower of London. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1967, rpt. 1971.
Chesson, Wilfred Hugh. George Cruikshank. The Popular Library of Art. London: Duckworth, 1908.
Golden, Catherine J. "Ainsworth, William Harrison (1805-1882." Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia, ed. Sally Mitchell. New York and London: Garland, 1988. Page 14.
Kelly, Patrick. "William Harrison Ainsworth." Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 21, "Victorian Novelists Before 1885," ed. Ira Bruce Nadel and William E. Fredeman. Detroit: Gale Research, 1983. Pp. 3-9.
McLean, Ruari. George Cruikshank: His Life and Work as a Book Illustrator. English Masters of Black-and-White. London: Art and Technics, 1948.
Pitkin Pictorials. Prisoners in the Tower. Caterham & Crawley: Garrod and Lofthouse International, 1972.
Sutherland, John. "The Tower of London" in The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 19893. P. 633.
Steig, Michael. "George Cruikshank and the Grotesque: A Psychodynamic Approach." George Cruikshank: A Revaluation. Ed. Robert L. Patten. Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1974, rev., 1992. Pp. 189-212.
Vogler, Richard A. Graphic Works of George Cruikshank. Dover Pictorial Archive Series. New York: Dover, 1979.
Worth, George J. William Harrison Ainsworth. New York: Twayne, 1972.
Vann, J. Don. "The Tower of London, thirteen parts in twelve monthly instalments, January-December 1840." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1985. Pp. 19-20.
Last modified 10 October 2017