Tower of London

The Tower of London has a very interesting story behind it. A man, who was not even English, William of Normandy began it. At the time he was the cousin of England's Kind Edward. It all started because William became outraged when Edward backed down on his promise to give the throne to William and ended up giving the throne to his English brother-in-law, Harold. William sailed his army across the English Channel to conquer England. On October 14, 1066, he met Harold at Hastings and conquered him. On Christmas Day later that year, William - now called William the conqueror - was crowned King of England. Immediately after William took over as king, he built forts everywhere. One stood in the southeastern corner of London, near an old Roman wall on the north bank of the Thames River. William ordered that this fort be removed in 1078 to be replaced by a huge stone stronghold. This would be the "symbol of his power, a fortress for his defense, and a prison for his enemies". (Fisher, 1987) He named it the Tower of London.

The Tower was finished twenty years later, rising nearly one hundred feet high, with its walls fifteen feet thick in certain places. Inside was a chapel, apartments, guardrooms, and crypts. A wide ditch, a new stone wall, the old Roman wall, and the river protected the Tower. This was done to secure the fact that this tower was a prison that no prisoner would escape from. The Bishop of Durham was probably the Tower's first distinguished prisoner. He was very fat, greedy, and unpopular. His brother dragged him to the prison with his servants and bags of money. But the Bishop lived very well inside the Tower because he could bribe the guards with gold. One night in February 1101, he gave a huge banquet with a lot of food and liquor. When he had gotten the guards very drunk, he pushed his bags through a window and slid down a rope to freedom.

Around the year 1240, King Henry III made this tower his home. He whitewashed the tower, widened the grounds to include a church, a great hall, and other buildings. He renamed the entire new area the Tower of London, and renamed the Tower the White Tower. Although the tower was still a prison, Henry had turned the White Tower into a breathtaking palace. He entertained many important visitors, many of which came with animals as gifts. Near the drawbridge of the tower, Henry built the Lion Tower, a zoo where visitors would be greeted with roaring beasts.

In 1377, when Richard II was king, the Tower continued to be a stronghold. But four years later, on June 14, a group of overtaxed farmers stormed the Tower. Richard and his brothers safely hid themselves inside. But the farmers found the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Royal Treasurer, a tax official, and a doctor. These men were taken to Tower Hill where their heads where chopped off. Richard later made peace with these farmers. The leader of the farmers, Wat Tyler, was beheaded. Richard was eventually thrown into a Tower dungeon, where he was forced to give up the throne to Henry IV.

Several monarchs died in the Tower of London. One was thirteen-year-old King Edward V. When his father, King Edward IV died, his Uncle Richard, the Duke of Gloucester, plotted to take the throne for himself. Richard had the thirteen-year-old king and his younger brother, the Duke of York, taken to the tower. Lord Hastings, a royal officer, tried to protect Edward, but was unsuccessful. Hastings' head was chopped off on the Tower Green, and Edward and his brother were murdered. These murders most likely took place in the Garden Tower, which was later renamed the Bloody Tower.

Since the Tower of London was so dangerous, King Henry VII formed a personal bodyguard. Henry moved into the Tower in 1485 after killing Richard III in a battle. His protectors were called the Yeoman Warders, who to this day still guards the tower. King Henry was a very frugal man. He seldom gave parties and tried very hard to avoid war, which both cost a lot of money.

After the death of Henry VII, the Tower of London was never again used to house an English queen or king. The dungeon was still used to hold England's enemies, and the Tower was still used for many celebrations. The marriage of King Henry VIII to his second wife, Anne Boleyn, took place at the Tower on May 19, 1533. A huge party was thrown for the next 11 days at the Tower, topped off with an enormous feast.

But the Tower of London was not always a place of celebration. On May 19, 1536, Anne Boleyn was executed under Henry's orders at the Tower Green. Anne had been accused of misconduct, but the plain truth was that she had born a daughter rather than a son, who would become a future king of England. This daughter was Elizabeth I, who would later become the Queen of England. Elizabeth was held prisoner in the Tower for two months by the order of her half sister, Queen Mary. Mary felt that Elizabeth was threatening her throne, so she imprisoned her in the Tower. If you look really carefully, you can see Anne Boleyn's Ghost about the tower. She will tell you about the royalty.

Elizabeth was innocent, and people knew it, leading to a public outcry. Elizabeth was released on May 19, 1554 (ironically, May 19 was the day on which Anne Boleyn was married and killed, and the same day that Elizabeth was released from jail.) In 1558, Elizabeth became the queen of England. She spent three days on her coronation in the Tower, to symbolize that it was her duty to "take possession" of it as the royal monarch of England. (Fisher, 1987) On January 15, 1559, she left in a festive parade to be crowned at Westminster Abby. Elizabeth would never return to the Tower.

In 1603, part of the Tower of London became a museum. King James I had ordered that the royal jewels be kept in the Tower Jewel House and be put on display for the Tower visitors. Though its roots trace back to a non-Englishman, the Tower of London has had a very interesting place in English history. It has been the sight of murders, marriages, uproars, museums, and zoos. But the Tower of London will always be remembered as a "symbol of royal power, a fortress for the monarch and a prison for the monarch's enemies". (Fisher, 1987)

Buckingham palace

Buckingham Palace is the official London residence of the British monarch since Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837. It is placed at the end of the Mall, a wide avenue leading from Trafalgar Square, and faces the Victoria Memorial, a statue of Queen Victoria. A statue of Nike, the ancient Greek godness of victory, stands in front of the palace in memory of Queen Victoria too. The royal Banner is set on the roof when the monarch is in residence, and the famous Changing of the guard takes place in the palace forecourt every day from, April to September and every other day from October to March. This is perhaps the most popular happening, which can be seen in Buckingham Palace. Certain rooms are open to the public in August and September while the Queen is not in residence. Buckingham Palace was built by the Duke of Buckingham and Normandy in 1703 and bought by George III in 1761, although St James's Palace continued to be the official royal residence until the accession of Queen Victoria. John Nash remodeled the building, in neo-classical style, in 1825. In 1856 a ballroom was added and in 1913 Sir Aston Webb altered the East Front, which faces the Mall. Marble Arch was the entrance to the palace until it was moved to the northeastern corner of Hyde Park in 1851. The palace has about 600 rooms and is surrounded by 20 hectares of gardens. Some of the state apartments are open to the public in July and August. The Queen's Gallery and the Royal Mews on the southside of the palace are both permanently open to the public. In the queen's Gallery, annual exhibitions of paintings and works of art from the Royal Collection are shown. In the Royal Mews state coaches and carriages are displayed: among them is the Gold State Coach, which was used at every coronation since that of George IV in 1762. The stables, in which the Windsor Grey and Cleveland Bay carriage horses are kept, are also open to the public.

Westminster abbey

An architectural masterpiece of the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, Westminster Abbey also presents a unique pageant of British history - the Confessor's Shrine, the tombs of Kings and Queens, and countless memorials to the famous and the great. It has been the setting for every Coronation since 1066 and for numerous other Royal occasions. Today it is still a church dedicated to regular worship and to the celebration of great events in the life of the nation. Neither a cathedral nor a parish church, Westminster Abbey is a "royal peculiar" under the jurisdiction of a Dean and Chapter, subject only to the Sovereign.

Westminster Abbey, a work of architectural genius, a locus of daily worship, deploying the resources of high musical expertise, a burial place of kings, statesmen, warriors, scientists, musicians and poets is the result of a process of development across the centuries, which represents the response of a monastery and later a post-Reformation church to the stimulus and challenge of its environment.

Edward the Confessor, a curious and in some ways a remote English monarch, the last of the Anglo-Saxon kings sought to re-endow and greatly enlarge a Benedictine monastery on Thorney Island close to his palace of Westminster. Unfortunately, when the church was consecrated on 28 December 1065 he was not present and died a few days later. His mortal remains were entombed behind the High Altar.

The only trace of this Norman monastery is to be found in the round arches and massive supporting columns of the Undercroft in the Cloisters. This now houses the exhibition of treasures but was originally part of the domestic quarters of the monks.

Among the most famous ceremonies that occurred in the Norman Abbey were the coronation of William the Conqueror on Christmas day, 1066, a grim proceeding which taxed all his resources of nerve and endurance and the canonization of Edward the Confessor in 1161.

The Norman Abbey was destined to survive for only two centuries. In the middle of the 13th century, Henry III decided to pull down the Norman Abbey and rebuild it in a new architectural design. It was a great age for cathedrals: in France it saw the construction of Amines, Everex, Chartres, and in England Canterbury, Winchester and Salisbury, to mention a few. King Henry III briefed his architect, Henry de Reyns and sent him abroad to study the contemporary developments in architecture. Under the decree of the King of England, Westminster Abbey was designed to be not only a great abbey and a place of worship, but also a place for the coronation and burials of monarchs.

Every monarch, since William the Conqueror with the exception of Edward V and Edward VIII was crowned in the Abbey. It was natural that Henry III should wish to translate the body of the saintly Edward the Confessor into a more magnificent tomb behind the High Altar. Where Edward is buried, kings and their consorts cluster around --- Henry III, the second founder of the Abbey; Edward I; Richard II; Henry V under his Chantry Chapel, and a galaxy of others. Thus began a process, which has continued to this day. Over three thousand people are either buried or memorialized in Westminster Abbey. Notable among these is the Unknown Warrior, whose grave, close to the west door, has become a place of pilgrimage.

A creative new addition to the Abbey was the glorious Lady chapel built by Henry VII, which now bears his name. The banners of the Knights of the Order of the Bath which surrounds its walls, together with the Battle of Britain Window at the east end, designed by Hugh Easton, give color to a building which the craftsmanship of Torrigiano in the tomb of Henry, first of the Tudor monarchs. It was not until two centuries later that a further addition was made in the western towers, designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor.

Little remains of the original medieval stained glass, once one of the Abbey's chief glories. The great west window and the rose window in the north transept date from the early eighteenth century but the remainder of the glass is nineteenth and twentieth century.

History did not cease with the passing of the medieval monastery at the Reformation. Queen Elizabeth I, buried in one of the apsidal chapels of Henry VII, refounded the Abbey as a Collegiate Church, a Royal Peculiar not subject to the rule of any bishop with the Sovereign as Visitor, and laid down its constitution in a charter granted in 1560. Thus the Abbey was reshaped and newly patterned to discharge a distinctive yet worshipful role in a modern age. The monastic Community had now gone, and was replaced by a Dean and twelve prebendaries, minor canons and a large lay staff. Part of the staff, under the High Steward, was responsible for the civil government of the City of Westminster. Even today, a daily pattern of worship is offered ad gloriam Dei. Special services, representative of a wide spread of interest and social concern, are held regularly. In 1965-66, the Abbey celebrated its 900th anniversary, taking as its theme 'One People'. Such a theme seemed to be fitting for a church which, through a long history of involvement with the developing life of the English people, has produced a world-wide outreach, and in this outreach experienced the inevitable tension between the absolute claims of God's kingdom and the relativity's inherent in the life of man in society .