Making the Past Present

Another title for this blog could potentially be “London, Part Two,” as I set off for the capital city this morning.  However, since a majority of my time was devoted to seeing as much as I could at the Tower of London, it seemed the most appropriate title.  I also intended to see more of central London, such as Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square, since my first visit to London with the group a few weeks ago did not take me anywhere near the heart of London.  Besides making me very hot, as it was around 90°F outside, this visit to London did give me a much better feel for the city itself; furthermore, since I traveled by myself (the rest of the group went elsewhere this weekend), I was able to binge on historical sites as much as I wanted.  Which, as it turned out, was quite a lot.  Thus, the post that follows is my account of searching in the footsteps of the Tudors and other royal families, from the Tower of London all the way to the National Portrait Gallery.

Once I got to King’s Cross, I headed straight for Tower Hill on the Tube, hoping to get into the Tower of London before it got too crowded and before the lines for the Crown Jewels got enormously long.  Hoping to beat the heat was already a nonissue, as I was sweating within five minutes of getting off the Tube.  However, my original plan was derailed by my stomach, and I decided that it would probably be better to eat before touring the Tower, since I was likely to spend several hours in there. Luckily, the entire area caters to tourists, with several food options near the ticket counters; clearly, the Tower is nearly as good at entrepreneurship today as it was at torture several centuries ago.  By the time that I finished eating and bought my ticket, it was nearly 11:30am, time for a guided tour of the Tower.  What makes these tours especially interesting and special is that they are conducted by the Beefeaters, a nickname for the Yeoman Warders of the Tower.  No one really knows where the name Beefeater comes from, though it might be a reference to the fact that the Warders were originally paid in beef, a valuable commodity.  In the past, the Yeoman Warders were charged with guarding the Tower and its prisoners, as well as conducting the condemned to their executions; today, though they still live at the Tower, they devote their time to educating others about their home.

My guide was quite good, as he bantered with the crowd, as well as informing us about facts both historical, such as who was in what tower, and bloody, such as who suffered the worst execution.  With regard to the former, I learned that the future Elizabeth I was held in the Bell Tower, Henry VI in the Wakefield Tower (where he was killed), and the Princes in the Tower and Sir Walter Raleigh in the Bloody Tower.  The Princes in the Tower are only one of the many mysteries surrounding the Tower of London.  After Edward IV died in 1483, he was succeeded by his young son Edward V, taken to the Tower with his younger brother Richard, Duke of York, to await his coronation.  However, their uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, usurped the throne, becoming Richard III, and the boys were never seen again.  The most likely explanation is that they were murdered in the Tower on the orders of Richard III, although some have tried to claim that Henry VII was responsible, once he came to power.  Likely, no one will even truly know what happened to the Princes in the Tower.

Less mysterious was the death of Henry VI, who had been imprisoned in the Tower after the Lancastrian defeat in 1471, during the Wars of the Roses.  I was able to see the exact spot where Henry was killed while at prayer, according to legend; undoubtedly, in my opinion, the murderer was sent by Edward IV, who wished to make his hold on the throne secure by removing the Lancastrian king.  Yet another royal connection to the Tower of London, which I have already mentioned, is Elizabeth I, who was at the Tower two times in less than five years, albeit for very different reasons.  In 1554, Sir Thomas Wyatt revolted against Mary I, Elizabeth’s half-sister, angry about her intended marriage to Philip II of Spain, as well as her restoration of the Catholic faith in England.  Though she likely did not plot with Wyatt, suspicion fell upon Elizabeth, causing her to be imprisoned in the Tower for several months.  She entered the Tower through Traitors’ Gate, an unwelcome reminder of the fate of her mother, Anne Boleyn, who also passed through that gate, never to return.  However, Elizabeth’s fate was to be different, as she was released later that year, still alive.  Indeed, four years later, in 1558, she would return to the Tower to await her coronation as Queen of England, having survived and succeeded Mary I.  Reading about the Tudors in general, and Elizabeth I in particular, is what first got me interested in history many years ago, so seeing the places that I have read about for so long was truly amazing.

Another highlight (though that might be the wrong word) of my visit to the Tower was seeing Tower Green and the Chapel Royal of St. Peter ad Vincula.  Tower Green is within the walls of the Tower, and was used for private executions, as opposed to Tower Hill, across the modern street, where public executions took place.  Today, there is a monument at Tower Green where the scaffold, where the condemned were beheaded, once stood; however, despite the Tower’s reputation, relatively few people were ever executed there, as one had to be of very high status to merit a private execution.  The names inscribed on the memorial reflect this: Anne Boleyn, queen; Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, descendant of Plantagenet kings; Catherine Howard, queen; Jane Boleyn, Viscountess Rochford; Lady Jane Grey, queen for nine days; and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, among others.  After execution, the bodies were buried in the nearby chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, which literally means St. Peter in chains.  The graves were largely unmarked and underneath the floor of the church until the reign of Queen Victoria, when the bodies were disinterred, some were identified, and all were reburied in a new crypt.  Three graves at the altar were left as they were, though: those of Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, and Jane Grey, though they are still unmarked.  Today, a plaque stands at the back of the chapel, listing the names of those executed whose bodies were able to be identified; it is only a small minority of the hundreds who died.

All of this talk of death brings up an important point: the Tower was not only a prison, but also a royal palace.  Indeed, William the Conqueror built the White Tower, the oldest part of the Tower complex, to serve a dual purpose.  One purpose was, of course, to intimidate his new subjects, discouraging them from rebelling against the Norman regime; the other was to house his court.  My Beefeater guide explained that the royal family would have lived on the upper floor of the White Tower, with courtiers and knights below, and servants farther below, in descending societal order.  Another sign of the Tower’s status as royal palace is, naturally, the presence of the Crown Jewels.  Any visit to the Tower would be incomplete without viewing them, so I stood in line for around a half hour for my turn to see the most precious artifacts of the British royal family.  All I have to say is that the Crown Jewels did not disappoint, as I walked past them twice, and likely could have stood there for hours if I had the time.  They are absolutely spectacular, stunning, amazing, beautiful, and a hundred other adjectives.  I was able to see St. Edward’s Crown, the Imperial State Crown, Queen Mary’s crown, the Queen Mother’s Crown, Mary II’s orb and scepter, and the twelfth century coronation spoon, among others.  I could never possibly describe them accurately, so I will not even try; I will just say this: go see them!

After leaving the Tower, I was very hot, tired, and thirsty, so I rode the Tube to Victoria Station, hoping to find a Starbucks.  I was not disappointed, and so had my most American experience since arriving in England: I had a coffee frappuccino, which tasted very good.  Though I could have stayed for several hours in the relative coolness, there was still much more to see and do before leaving.  From Victoria, I walked to Buckingham Palace and the monument to Queen Victoria.  After seeing Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, which is very impressive from the exterior, I am not sure what I was expecting from Buckingham Palace, but I was almost underwhelmed.  It is impressive in size, as it is undoubtedly massive, surrounded by a fence and huge gates; however, architecturally, it was not as ornamented as I anticipated.  Perhaps this is a consequence of the fact that Buckingham only became the official royal residence in 1837, while Schönbrunn is much older and built in the Rococo style.  The monument to Queen Victoria was quite impressive, though, with a figure in gold sitting atop it, and Victoria herself looking out over the streets of Westminster for all eternity.

From Buckingham Palace, I walked up the side of St. James’s Park, which was full of Londoners trying desperately to escape the oppressive heat; indeed, I must admit that even as a native Southerner, I was feeling the heat greatly by this point, but soldiered on.  Past the park, I headed up Whitehall toward the Cenotaph, passing many government buildings along the way, including the entrance to Downing Street, which was guarded by security, as well as two large gates, so that I could not even see No. 10.  Just before Downing Street was the Cenotaph, Britain’s monument to the millions lost in World War I.  It stands in the middle of the boulevard, adorned with flags honoring the different parts of the empire that sent troops to fight.  Now that it is only a few days to the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I, viewing the Cenotaph seemed especially significant.  According to my guidebook, were Britain’s World War I dead to walk past the Cenotaph four abreast, it would take seven days for all of them to pass.  This scale of human destruction is almost incomprehensible to me, and it is even harder to believe that it was only one hundred years ago.

Walking through Whitehall and up towards Trafalgar Square, I truly felt, for the first time, that I was in the center of a grand city, as the buildings in Westminster were what I initially expected all of London to look like: tall and imposing, with distinct Continental influences.  Furthermore, I think that Trafalgar Square might be my favorite part of London thus far (not sight, for that would have to be the Tower), as it is very open, a welcome change from the closed-in nature of Cambridge’s streets.  In the center of the square is Nelson’s Column, rising hundreds of feet to commemorate Lord Nelson, who defeated Napoleon’s navy at Trafalgar, though he himself was killed.  Other than seeing Nelson’s Column, my real reason for coming to Trafalgar Square was to see the National Portrait Gallery, which sits on the other side of the National Gallery, near the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

The National Portrait Gallery is just what it sounds like: a collection of famous Britons, from the Tudors all the way to the present.  As I find contemporary portraits (and all of modern art) not to my taste, I concentrated on the galleries showcasing the Tudors, Stuarts, Hanoverians, and Victorians.  To move backward in time, I was able to see portraits of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and George V and his family, as well as those of politicians including Arthur Balfour and Benjamin Disraeli.  In honor of the Great War anniversary, there were also two enormous portraits of British generals and British politicians on display.  In the Stuart and Hanoverian galleries, I mainly concentrated on finding portraits of royalty, due to my deep and abiding interest in the British royal family.  I was not disappointed, seeing portraits of James I, Anne of Denmark, Charles I, Henrietta Maria of France, Charles II, William III, and Mary II.

However, the best part of my visit to the Portrait Gallery was undoubtedly the two galleries focusing on the Tudors, one on the early Tudors and one on the Elizabethan Era.  Somewhat oddly, I thought, the early Tudor exhibit began with Richard III, who was no Tudor, but a Plantagenet; I suppose it was a way of showing where the Tudors fit into the great scheme of kings and queens, but to me felt more like the Portrait Gallery had a portrait of Richard III that they had nowhere else to put.  From Richard III, time (and the portraits) moved on to Henry VII, then to side-by-side portraits of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, neither of which I had seen before, whether in a book or online.  Ironically, immediately next to Catherine of Aragon was a portrait of Anne Boleyn, displaying the seductive charm that brought her into Henry’s affections.  Taking up one wall was a cartoon sketch, in pencil, of Henry VIII in his younger, more vigorous state (before he became enormously obese), which served as the plan for a great mural at Whitehall Palace.

Two of the most compelling portraits, in my opinion, were those of Catherine Parr, Henry VIII’s sixth wife, and Mary I, before she became queen.  Part of my fascination with these two portraits stems from the fact that I have long been interested in Tudor styles of dress, which the two artists depicted in great detail.  The expressions on the faces of the two women are also of much interest, as one can see Catherine Parr’s intelligence reflected in her face, as well as a certain serenity around her person, as if she knew she had to remain cool and collected around Henry VIII.  The portrait of a young Mary Tudor, before she became queen, shows Mary’s determination to recover her place as princess in the line of succession.  Unlike Catherine Parr, though, she is not presented as beautiful, for her determination rather overshadows everything else about her facial features.  Knowing Mary’s later history as queen, I found this earlier indication of her single-mindedness to be quite interesting.

After the National Portrait Gallery, I had dinner at a Pret in Trafalgar Square, overlooking Nelson’s Column; Pret is quickly becoming my favorite food chain here in England, with their tasty sandwiches and fruit smoothies.  Once I finished dinner, I headed back to King’s Cross and then to Cambridge, as I am leaving bright and early tomorrow morning for York!