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North View of the Salt Tower
George Cruikshank
July 1840
Wood-engraving
10.6 cm high by 7.5 cm wide, vignetted
Illustration for Book II, Ch. XII, of William Harrison Ainsworth's The Tower of London, p. 193.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Delivered by the guard to Lawrence Nightgall and his assistants, he was conveyed to the torture-chamber. The sight of the dreadful instruments there collected, though enough to appal the stoutest breast, appeared to have no terror for him. Scrutinizing the various engines with a look of curiosity, he remarked that none of them seemed to have been recently used; and added, that they would soon be more frequently employed. He had not been there many minutes, when Mauger, the headsman, Wolfytt, the sworn tormentor, and Sorrocold the chirurgeon, arrived, and preparations were made for administering the torture.
The rack has already been described as a large oaken frame, raised about three feet from the ground, having a roller at each end, moved by a lever. Stripped, and placed on his back on the ground, the prisoner was attached by strong cords to the rollers. Stationing themselves at either extremity of the frame, Mauger and Wolfytt each seized a lever, while Nightgall took up his position at the small table opposite, to propose the interrogations, and write down the answers. The chirurgeon remained near the prisoner, and placed his hand upon his wrist. Those preparations made, Nightgall demanded, in a stern tone, whether the prisoner would confess who had instigated him to the crime he had committed. [Chapter XII. — "How Edward Underhill, the 'Hot-Gospeller,' Attempted to Assassinate Queen Mary; and How she was Preserved by Sir Henry Bedingfeld," p. 199]
Only at the close of chapter does Ainsworth justify his having placed a view of the Salt Tower, built in the mid-thirteenth century, at the head of Chapter 12. In the closing pages the illustration's establishing the principal setting becomesclear as Ainsworth recounts how the Hot Gospeller, Edward Underhill's failed attempt to assassinate Queen Mary has led to Nightgall and Mauger's torturing him for information about accomplices. It turns out that Nightgall is conducting his interrogation of the prisoner in the dungeons of the Salt Tower, long associated with torture and ghosts; furthermore, this is where he has secreted Cicely.
The Salt Tower did indeed house the grisly apparatus used in torturing prisoners such as the obdurate Underhill. Ironically, its chief association is with the interrogation and torture of subversive Jesuits, in particular, Michael Moody, who was a member of a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I. Like the Devlin Tower, which has just served as one of Ainsworth's settings, the Salt Tower is located at the south-east corner of the Tower of London, overlooking the River Thames. The Jesuit Priest John Gerard, while imprisoned in the Salt Tower, was questioned and tortured by being repeatedly suspended from chains on the dungeon wall. Like Underhill, Henry Walpole, a young Jesuit priest, despite being subjected to the rack a number of times, refused to divulge the information that the authorities required, and was subsequently burned alive.
Seventeen years after Ainsworth published the novel, architect Anthony Salvin restored the Salt Tower's exterior and windows; perhaps the attention he devoted to it was the direct result of the importance of the Salt Tower in the novel. The Salt Tower appears again in Masque in the Palace Garden of the Tower, Secret Staircase in the Salt Tower, Chamber in the Salt Tower, and Arched Door in the Salt Tower Communicating with Secret Staircase, as well as torture scenes probably enacted in the dungeons of the Salt Tower, significantly Elizabeth confronted with Wyat in the Torture-Chamber in Chapter 34 in the final instalment.In "How Edward Underhill, the 'Hot-Gospeller,' Attempted to Assassinate Queen Mary; and How she was Preserved by Sir Henry Bedingfeld," Ainsworth did much to create the popular image of the Tower of London as a Gothic pile with terrifying underground torture chambers and horrible devices such as the rack and a suit of irons called "The Scavenger's Daughter." Such lurid descriptions of torture as Ainsworth gives at the close of this chapter contributed much to the public's morbid desire to tour the Tower, particularly the Beauchamp Tower, because it contains the inscriptions made by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century prisoners. Ainsworth's firing the public imagination probably led to the government's commissioning Salvin, at the behest of Prince Albert, to undertake a comprehensive restoration of the Tower's mediaeval and Tudor buildings.
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Last modified 15 October 2017