office of H.M. Commissioners of Works. The Cold Harbour Tower does not appear in the plan of the Tower made in 1726, where the position of the Ordnance Office and store-houses is shown. It may have been removed to make way for these buildings, which in their turn have been swept away; and in dealing with their site the discoveries we are now discussing were made.

It has been suggested that the stone, iron, and lead shot were relics of Sir Thomas Wyat's rebellion against Queen Mary, in the first year of her reign (A.D. 1553); that Wyat not only attacked the Tower, but succeeded in forcing an entrance into it; and that these missiles were fired from the river. This hypothesis may coincide with Harrison Ainsworth's somewhat melodramatic account of an attack by the insurgents and the gallant defence of the Byward Tower by the three giants and their puny colleague, but it is in direct opposition to the accounts given by Holinshed, Grafton and Stow, who wrote sufficiently near to the events they record to give their writings all the prestige of contemporaneous history. From the account of these historians, we find that Wyat, when he left Rochester, came to Southwark on February 3rd, 1553, with about two thousand men, and approached London Bridge; "which, so soon as it was perceived, there was shot off out of the White Tower six or eight shot, but missed them, sometime shooting over and sometime short. After knowledge thereof once had in London, forthwith the drawbridge was cut down and the bridge gates shut. By this time was Wyat entered into Kent Street, and so by St. George's Church into Southwark. He and part of his company came in good array down Bermondsey Street, and they were suffered peaceably to enter Southwark without repulse, all the men then joining with Wyat."

On Shrove Tuesday (February 6th) Wyat moved out of Southwark towards Kingston Bridge. His reason for doing so is thus given by Stow1:

"On this occasion, the night before his departing out of Southwark, by chance as one of the lieutenants men of the Tower named

1 Annales (1592), pp. 1049-50.

Thomas Menchen rowed with a sculler over against the Bishop of Winchesters place1 there was a waterman of the Tower stairs

desired the said lieutenants man to take him in who did so which being espied of Wyat's men seven of them with harquebusses called to them to land again but they would not whereupon each man discharged his piece and killed the said waterman; the sculler rowed through the bridge to the Tower wharfe with the lieutenants man and the dead man in his boat which thing was no sooner known to the lieutenant than the same night and next morning he bent seven great pieces of ordnance culverins and demi cannons full against the foot of the bridge and against Southwark and the two steeples of St Olive and St Mary Overies besides all the pieces on the White Tower, one culvering on the Diveling Tower and three fauconets over the Water Gate."

Then the inhabitants of Southwark pleaded with Wyat, and he turned away to Kingston.

On arriving there, he found 30 ft. or thereabouts of the bridge taken away. Wyat repaired the bridge, and about eleven o'clock in the same night passed with his army over the bridge without resistance or peril, and marched towards London, meaning to have been at the Court Gate before daybreak; but some of his artillery being dismounted by the way, the Earl of Pembroke, General of the Queen's army, was with his men in good order of battle in St. James's Field, beside Westminster two or three hours before Wyat could reach thither. A battle ensued, in which Wyat's army was divided, and he, with a small company, got as far as the Belle Sauvage Inn, near Lud Gate; but, finding the gate shut and guarded by the Queen's troops, he retired to Temple Bar, where Sir Maurice Berkeley found him, and persuaded him to repair to the Court and surrender himself to the Queen which advice he followed, and, on arrival, he was immediately committed to the Tower, and afterwards executed.2

It seems clear from these accounts that Wyat never attacked the Tower with firearms, the only use of which,

1 The Bishop of Winchester's Palace was in Southwark.

2 Stow, in his Survey of London, says distinctly: "Wyat and his people entered Southwark, where they lay till the 6th of February, but could get no entry of the City by the bridge, the same was then so well defended by the Citizens, the Lord Wm. Howard assisting; wherefore he moved towards Kingston, etc., as in my Annals.”

by him, was on the occasion of the waterman being killed; nor that he forced his way into the City over London Bridge. The connection, therefore, with the cannon balls and warlike weapons recently discovered with Wyat's insurrection entirely fails.

The only attack on the Tower where ordnance was used, an account of which I have been able to find, was that made during the contest between the houses of York and Lancaster, when, on the news of the landing of the Earls of March, Salisbury and Warwick, from Calais in 1460, Lord Scales was dispatched with the Earl of Kendal and Lord Lovat, and a considerable body of troops for the protection of London. The Earls of March and Warwick and others went to the King (Henry VI) at Northampton, leaving the Earl of Salisbury to be Governor of the City in their absence. The Lords Scales, Hungerford and Vesey, and others, went to the Tower of London. Then (says Stow in his Annales) was the Tower beseiged both by water and land, and they that were within the Tower cast wildfire into the City and shot many small guns, whereby they brient and slew men, women and children in the streets. Also they of the City laid great guns on the further side of the Thames against the Tower and broke the walls in divers places." On the 10th July in the same year, the battle of Northampton was fought, which led to the overthrow of the Lancastrians; and on the capture of the King the fortress surrendered to the Earl of March.2

3

In Bailey's Hist. of the Tower it is said

Sir John Wenlock carried on the seige on the eastern side of the fortress towards St. Catherines; on the south side artillery was placed on the opposite side of the river; towards the west the seige was conducted by Lord Cobham and certain Aldermen of the City."

It would seem more than probable that the missiles lately discovered were used on the occasion of this attack :

Stow's Annales of England, 1592, p. 669. Holinshed, Grafton and Hall, say the Earls of March, Warwick, etc., went to the King at Coventry (not Northampton). Hall adds: "The King not ignorant of these doings, assembled his army and came to Northampton.

2 Stow's Annales, p. 669.

Referring to Hall and Keene, vol. i, p. 422.

which may also have supplied the materials for Harrison Ainsworth's description, in disregard of the unity of time though not of place.1

On the occasion of our Society's visit to the Tower of London, on the 27th of October, 1880, their attention was drawn to a portion of a wall of Roman construction, which had been brought to light by the removal of a range of buildings erected in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, on the east side of the White Tower, and extending at right angles to those then known as the Horse Armoury, and the remains of the Wardrobe Tower, which formed the north wall of the Horse Armoury. This fragment of Roman wall was subsequently opened out and inspected by our late secretary, Mr. E. P. Loftus Brock, the result of whose investigation was embodied in a paper read by him on the 1st December, 1880, and printed in our journal, vol. 38, p. 127. Subsequently to this, the Horse Armoury and the building used as a warehouse for the Ordnance Department were removed, but care was taken to preserve the portion of Roman wall and what remained of the Wardrobe Tower. This discovery raised anew the question, mooted from time to time, whether there was a Roman fort on this site before the Norman fortress was built, or whether this portion of a Roman wall was part of the City wall. This was discussed by Mr. Brock in his paper, and was also alluded to in a paper, by the present writer, read the same evening, on the "Cradle Tower and other recent discoveries at the Tower of London."2 When the Armoury and Ordnance buildings were removed, further indications of Roman material were found; but owing to the Fenian dynamite scare which was then at its height, strict precautions were taken for regulating access by the public to the Tower, and no further investigations were made.

The discoveries brought to light by the recent excavations have renewed the interest taken in this subject. The piece of Roman masonry was about 2 ft. by 9 in.

1 When this paper was read, one of the cannon balls was exhibited. It was stamped with a capital "H," surmounted by a crown.

2 Journal of the British Archæological Association, 1st Series, vol. xxxvii, p. 279.

by 1 ft., and was found 16 ft. south-west of the southwest angle of the White Tower, 9 ft. 6 in. below the surface. The flue-pipes to the hypocaust are 6 ft. 3 in. long by 7 in. by 4 in., the flues being 5 in. by 2 in. The paving tiles are 8 in. by 8 in. by 1 in.

The difficulty hitherto experienced in coming to any exact conclusion as to the existence of Roman buildings on the site of the Tower has been, that the materials discovered have not been sufficiently indicative of structures for the purpose of defence or habitation, and from their propinquity to the line of the City wall, parts of which have been discovered in the neighbourhood; and it could only be matter of conjecture whether what was discovered was part of a separate building or of the City wall. But we have now the addition of portions of a hypocaust, Roman tiles, and other things which unmistakeably refer to habitation, in addition to masonry of Roman construction; and if we consider these in connection with the previous discovery on the south-east side of the White Tower, we have strong confirmatory evidence, not only of Roman occupation, but in favour of the hypothesis of there having been a fort or other works of defence on some part of the site now occupied by the Tower of London.

It may be as well to give a summary of the various Roman remains which have from time to time come to light and been recorded :

1. In the year 1777, an ingot of silver bearing an inscription which has been read "Ex officinâ Honorii," and three gold coins of Honorius and of Arcadius, were met with in digging the foundations of the Ordnance Office, and below the level of the river. There was also found, in another spot, a sepulchral stone inscribed "Diis manib. T. Licini Ascanivs." There is no evidence as to whether or not this stone marked an interment, or had only been used as old material.1

2. The fragment of Roman wall discovered in 1880, referred to above.

3. The masonry, hypocaust, flue, and other materials recently discovered.

1 Vide Mr. E. P. Loftus Brock's paper, Journal of the British Archæological Association, vol. xxxviii, p. 127, n.