History of The Tower of London Quiz

Answer: King William I

The Tower of London began as a timber fortress, in an earthern enclosure, on the north bank of the Thames in London. In 1078, William I (the Conqueror) replaced this timber fortress with a massive stone fortress called the Great Tower. The Great Tower has also been called the White Tower since it was whitewashed in 1241, during the reign of Henry III.

The Great Tower rises 90 feet in height, and measures 118 feet by 117 feet. Gannulf, the Bishop of Rochester, is thought to have designed the Great Tower for William I, who reigned from 1066-1087. Geoffrey de Mandeville was appointed as the first Tower Constable.

Not only was the Tower an impregnable fortress, but it also served as a royal residence in London during the reign of several monarchs. Additions, repairs, and improvements to the Tower of London were added over the centuries until is a complex of twenty towers covering an eighteen acre site. Of the other kings mentioned, King Edward (known as the Confessor) was king from 1042-1066, King Harold II was king from January 6, 1066 until October 14, 1066, when he was killed, and his army defeated, by William, the Duke of Normandy, during the Battle of Hastings.

Henry I was the son of William I, and reigned after the death of his brother, William Rufus.

Answer: He climbed down a rope, swam the moat, and escaped.

Rannulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham, was one of the earliest state prisoners to be housed in the Tower of London. He had been the chief minister of King William Rufus. Flambard was actually responsible for several Tower improvements. He was arrested, after William Rufus's death, by King Henry I.

The Bishop of Durham was very well treated in the Tower and even had his own servants. It was during a banquet, hosted by Flambard, that he made his escape. Flambard slipped away from his drunken guards, lowered himself out the his upper cell window on a rope, dropped to the ground, and swam the moat.

His supporters had a horse waiting, and Flambard escaped to France. As I'm sure you know, from high school literature, it was Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the "Canterbury Tales".

Answer: 1241

The Tower was strengthened and repaired by both William Rufus and Henry I, but it was during the reigns of Henry III (1216-72) and Edward I (1272-1307) that bastions, towers, gateways, and walls were added. During the reign of Henry III the area enclosed by the outer walls of the fortress buildings extended to more than twelve acres. Further additions to the Tower were added over time until the area enclosed by the outer walls grew to its present eighteen acres.

Although the whitewash is gone, the name White Tower still remains.

Answer: Duke of Exeter's Daughter

During Henry VI's reign (1422-1461) the rack was commomly being used to torture prisoners in the Tower of London. It was the Duke of Exeter, appointed in 1420 by Henry V as Tower Costable, who first introduced the rack, and from then on, it was known as the Duke of Exeter's Daughter.

The Scavenger's Daughter was introduced by Sir Leonard Skevington, who was Lieutenant of the Tower during the reign of King Henry VIII (1509-1547). The rack was used to inflict pain by stretching, and the Scavenger's Daughter was used to crush the prisoner as they were stretched.

There were all kinds of devious methods of extracting confessions from prisoners. Some others were the thumbscrew, the pilliwinks (used to squeeze the fingers), the brakes (a device for breaking teeth), and the tormento de toca, where water was poured drop by drop onto one part of the prisoner's body, most often on the forehead, to prevent him sleeping. Throughout this period the use of torture, except for certain categories of contempt of court, was utterly contrary to English law ...

Answer: Dungeon too small to do anything but crouch in

The Dungeon of Little Ease is the smallest dungeon of the dungeons found in the White Tower. It was only four feet square, and a prisoner unlucky enough to be put in Little Ease was left to crouch until let out again. Guy Fawkes, one of the conspirators of the infamous Gunpowder Plot, (the plot to blow up Parliament during the reign of King James I on the 5th of November, 1605), spent a day in Little Ease before he was put on the rack.

The idea behind Little Ease was to confine a prisoner in the most uncomfortable way.

Answer: Jane Seymour

Of the four named, only Jane Seymour did not lose her head for angering King Henry VIII. Jane was the mother of Henry VIII's only male heir, Edward VI. She died in childbed in 1537. Sir Thomas More, once Henry VIII's Lord Chancellor, was beheaded in 1535 for refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy.

Henry had broken with the Catholic Church when the Pope refused to grant him a divorce from his first wife, Katherine of Aragon. This led to the Act of Supremmacy in 1534 which declared Henry VIII to be the supreme head of the Church of England. All this came about, of course, so that Henry VIII could divorce Katherine, by whom he did not have a male heir, and marry Anne Boleyn. Anne was the mother of Elizabeth I. Anne was beheaded in 1536. Katherine Howard, Henry VIII's fifth wife, lost her head in 1542.

Many other state prisoners lost their head during Henry VIII's reign.

Answer: Guy Fawkes was put on the Tower of London's rack for the Gunpowder Plot.

The only event that did not occur during the reign of King Charles II (1660-1685) was the infamous Gunpowder Plot, which of course, was a plot, in 1605, to blow up Parliament and King James I. Guy Fawkes and his fellow cospirators were housed in the Tower of London.

In 1679 the skeletal remains of two boys were found buried beneath a staircase in the White Tower. King Charles II was so certain that the skeletons were those of the York Princes, that he had the bones buried in Westminister Abbey. Colonel Blood, in 1671, almost made off with the Crown Jewels from the Tower. During the Great Fire of London in 1666, all the houses within half a mile of the Tower of London were blown up to insure the Tower could be saved. 1,200,000 pounds of treasure, that had been sent by the Goldsmith Company for safe keeping in the Tower, was carried to vaults at Whitehall, because it was feared that the precious metals would melt in the heat. Did you know that William Penn, who founded Pennyslvania, was imprisoned in the Tower in 1668, because he published an unlicensed religious tract?

Answer: 80

I think everyone knows the story of Bonnie Prince Charlie and of how in 1745 the Jacobites tried to oust King George and restore the Stuarts to the throne. Old Scottish Lord Lovat was taken at Culloden in 1746, housed in the Tower of London, and beheaded on April 9, 1747. Lord Lofat was 80 years old, and he was also the last man to be beheaded in England.

This does not mean that condemned prisoners were not hanged-or shot. So many people turned out to see Lord Lovat lose his head that a spectator stand fell-in, crushing several to death.

Answer: 1841

On the night of the October 30, 1841, at 10:30 pm, a fire started because of an overheated flue in the Bowyer Tower. Thirty minutes later, the Bowyer Tower was almost completely destroyed, and the fire had spread to the armories and storehouse to the east of the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula. By midnight the armories were burning so furiously that the heat caused the lead pipes to melt on the walls of the Great Tower.

The Brick Tower then caught fire, and flames threaten to burn Martin Tower where the Crown Jewels of England were kept.

The Keeper of the Jewel House only had the key to the outer room (the Lord Chamberlain had the other keys). Water was sprayed on the walls of Martin Tower as firemen tried to keep the walls cooled down until the Crown Jewels could be removed. One firemen was killed when he was hit by a piece of falling stone. Using crowbars, policemen bent back the bars from in front of the Crown Jewels.

A brave policeman handed out the Crown Jewels piece by piece. He did not leave, even though his uniform was charred from the heat, until everything, except a silver font which would not fit through the bars, had been saved.

The fire was finally under control at 3:15 am, but the two armories, storehouse, Bowyer Tower, and the Brick Tower were destroyed, and both the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula and the Great Tower (White Tower) were badly damaged. The Duke of Wellington was Tower Constable at the time of the fire (he was appointed in 1826), and with the help of Prince Albert, Wellington spearheaded a campaign to get government funds to restore and rebuild the Tower of London. This massive project lasted throughout the rest of the 19th century.

Answer: Rudolf Hess

In 1941, Rudolf Hess (1894-1987) became the last prisoner held in the Tower of London. Hess was Adolf Hitler's Deputy Fuehrer, and was picked up in Scotland, where he had crashed the plane he was flying in solo. He told the British he was there to start peace between Britain and Germany.

After leaving the Bell Tower, Hess spent the remaining years of his life imprisoned in Spandau. In 1914, Carl Lody, a German naval officer, was shot as a spy. Karl Ernst Haushofer (1896-1946) was a big advocate of the geopolitical basis for the Nazi plan of world domination.

He had great influence over Hitler, and was director of the Institute of Geopoltics at the University of Munich. Rather than stand trial during the investigation of war crimes after the defeat of Germany in WWII, Haushofer and his Jewish wife committed suicide in 1946.

In 1891, Charles Wells, an Englishman, broke the bank three times in Monte Carlo. He was never imprisoned in the Tower of London. I hope you enjoyed my quiz on the Tower of London and some of the famous, and infamous, people imprisoned there.