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Every night at eleven o'clock, the warder on guard at the Bloody Tower challenges the Chief Warder, who passes bearing the keys. Each time this conversation follows: "Who goes there?" "Keys." "Whose keys?" "King Edward VII's keys." "Advance King Edward VII's keys, and all's well." Not until then, may the keys in the Chief Warder's care be allowed to pass on.
They recognize no superior jurisdiction and call on force to decide their differences. Force decides. Whether or not might was right, the weaker bows to necessity until a more successful effort can be made. It is easy to understand Gregory VII's ideas on the subject. In peace, armies are playthings in the hands of princes.
The very pictures and realities, these rooms were, of stately comfort; and they were called by the name of kings, King Edward's, King Charles II's, King Henry VII's chamber; and they were hung with beautiful pictures, many of them portraits of these kings.
In accepting the consecrated banner which the pope sent him, he could hardly fail to know that he might be understood to be acknowledging a feudal dependence. When the kingdom was won, however, he found himself unwilling to carry out such an arrangement, whether tacitly or openly promised. To Gregory VII's demand for his fealty he returned a respectful but firm refusal.
Their place of sepulture corresponded with the situation mentioned in the confession of the murderers, so that the report alluded to by More of the removal of the bodies seems to have been a mistake. The antiquaries of the day had no doubt they were the remains of young Edward V and his brother, and King Charles caused them to be fittingly interred in Henry VII's chapel at Westminster.
The roof is ornamented and gilded, and everywhere throughout there is embellishment of color and carving on the broadest scale, and, at the same time, most minute and elaborate; statues of full size in niches aloft; small heads of kings, no bigger than a doll; and the oak is carved in all parts of the panelling as faithfully as they used to do it in Henry VII's time, as faithfully and with as good workmanship, but with nothing like the variety and invention which I saw in the dining-room of Smithell's Hall.
This objection, though felt by the clergy since the day when Anselm had opened the way into England to the principles of the Hildebrandine reformation, had never yet been given decided expression in overt act or led to any serious struggle with the sovereign; and it is clear that it would not have done so in this instance if the papal throne had not been filled by Innocent III. That great ecclesiastical statesman found in the political situation of more than one country of Europe opportunities for the exercise of his decided genius which enabled him to attain more nearly to the papacy of Gregory VII's ideal than had been possible to any earlier pope, and none of his triumphs was greater than that which he won from the opportunity offered him in England.
How the mediaeval cathedral-builders were able to accomplish such intricate work with the means at their command is still one of the great mysteries. There is to-day in the United States no group of workmen who could execute anything approaching this work, to say nothing of such pieces as the vaulting of Henry VII's Chapel at Westminster or of King's College Chapel at Cambridge.
In these days of settled government, when thought and speech are free, it is scarcely possible to realize what men's outlook upon life must have been when walls had ears and a man's foes might be those of his own household. In Henry VII's reign England had not had time to forget the Wars of the Roses, and claimants to the throne were still occasionally executed in the Tower.
The figures are of alabaster or marble, and there are frequently fine brasses on them which bear the inscriptions. It is interesting to remember that the effigy or reclining figure of a Crusader always has the legs crossed. A flight of black marble steps leads up to Henry VII's Chapel. Betty thought this reminded her a little of the choir of St.
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