Free Ghosts of the Tower of London by Geoff Abbott

end of the wall adjoining the Wakefield Tower. He stared–then his eyes widened with disbelief as the shadow moved … vanished … only to reappear at the next hole! Hardly pausing, the shape slipped past each gaping aperture, gliding silently along behind the crumbling wall. Yet when the sergeant reached the far end, nothing was to be seen on the wide expanse of grass stretching behind the White Tower!

Tower Green
    If ’tis seen, men say ’tis not.
    If ’tis heard, men say the lot
    Of all fools is a simple-mindedness
    Beyond belief.
    So why hold faith in aught
    But candle-flame that burneth,
    Roasting-spit that turneth,
    Lover’s heart that yearneth?
    These are plausible, men saith….
    So keep unto thyself thy tale
    Of yester e’en’s ethereal wraith!

    Tower Green
     

    A central garden, sheltered by plane trees, is known as Tower Green. It is bounded on the east by the White Tower and the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula forms its northernmost side. To the west squats the Beauchamp Tower, while its southern border is the Queen’s House, originally the Lieutenant’s Lodgings – since 1530 the residence of the officer in charge of the Tower of London.
    In such a pleasant oasis it is easy to imagine the royal levees, the parties and merrymaking which must have taken place here during the centuries when the Tower of London was a Royal Residence. Yet one small enclosure on Tower Green constantly reminds us that this is where the private scaffold stood, the five-foot high wooden platform, draped in black, strewn with straw. There, witnessed by the Royal Court and dignitaries of the City of London, perished those whose only crime was to incur a king’s wounded pride or be thought a dangerous rival.
    Before 1536 executions, even of women, were not infrequent; infidelity too, was hardly a rarity. Yet the punishment of death for alleged unfaithfulness – and that in the person of a Queen of England – was unimaginable. That such an event
did
happen has never ceased to horrify and appal subsequent generations.

    Queen Anne Boleyn
    Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII, had been queen two brief years when she was accused of infidelity and treason and sentenced to be ‘either burnt or beheaded on the green within the Tower as his Majesty in his pleasure should think fit’. Confined in the Lieutenant’s Lodgings for four days, she was led out to the private execution site. Strangely enough she was to be beheaded by the sword – a rare weapon of execution in English history, but infinitely preferable to the axe. The latter was a cumbersome and ill-balanced weapon, its primitive design often necessitating more than one stroke.
    Anne mounted the steps and knelt upright, there being no block when the sword was employed. The French headsman, black clad, stepped forward. Her attention being distracted by his assistant, Anne mercifully failed to see the flashing blade as, with one stroke, her head was severed. In accordance with custom, the executioner held her head high – and the gathered assembly gasped in horror as the eyes and lips continued to move! Her pitiful remains were ensconced in an old arrow chest and buried beneath the altar in the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula on Tower Green.
    It is hardly surprising, therefore, that through the centuries apparitions purporting to be those of the doomed queen have been seen, even by those most prosaic and level-headed human beings, soldiers of the British Army.
    In 1864 a sentry of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps on duty at the Queen’s House saw, through the swirling river mist, a white figure. He challenged and, receiving no reply, attacked – only to drive his bayonet through the spectre! Being found in a state of collapse, he was court-martialled but two witnesses at the window of the Bloody Tower corroborated his story and he was acquitted. The phantom figure was seen by other sentries in later years, gaining the sentry post an evil reputation.

    Council