The Tower
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The constable of the Tower of London holds one of the most ancient offices in England. Its history goes back (almost continuously) to the Norman conquest and the reign of William the Conqueror (1066-87). In October 2001, General Sir Roger Wheeler was appointed – by letter patent of Her Majesty the Queen – as 158th holder of the office.
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The number 158 is the result of a convention adopted at the Tower in the 20th century and is as near as we can get to an exact figure. Some element of uncertainty as to the true number of constables will always remain.
The earliest commanders of the Tower were obviously the predecessors of the present constable, but they went by a different name: 'keeper of the Tower of London'. There are also gaps in the history of the office (this is particularly problematic in the 12th century). In some periods that are documented, the paperwork is confusing, with more than one person at a time being named constable. And finally there is a long period in the 16th and 17th centuries when the office of constable lapsed and the Tower of London was commanded by a junior officer, 'the lieutenant'.
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By convention, constables of the Tower are appointed from among senior military officers, the most famous being the duke of Wellington between 1825 and 1852.
In the earliest years of the Tower, its custody was intended to be hereditary within the de Mandeville family. However, William de Mandeville, son of the first 'keeper', fell into disgrace when he allowed the Tower's first prisoner, Rannulf Flambard, to escape. As a result, the office passed out of his family for 40 years and was only regained by Geoffrey de Mandeville during the chaos of the civil war between Stephen and Matilda in the 12th century.
Not long afterwards, the appointment ceased to be hereditary and became a matter of royal favour. One of the earliest non-hereditary appointees was Thomas Becket, later archbishop of Canterbury, the only holder of the office to become a saint (so far).
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Documents show that most of the duties of a constable in the Middle Ages were connected with the running of the castle: paying the soldiers; maintaining the buildings; supervising various officers, such as the keeper of the king's animals in the royal menagerie; and, most crucially, seeing to the well-being and security of state prisoners.
The constable was personally responsible for the prisoners, and was entrusted with them by the monarch according to the ominous formula: 'You are to guard them securely in the prison of our said Tower in such a way that you shall answer for them body for body ... Fail in no part of this on pain of forfeiture of life and limb and all property you hold in our realms.'
Outside the Tower, the constable was responsible for keeping order in the City of London and, until their expulsion from England in 1290, for regulating and protecting the City's Jewish community.
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The post of constable was made more attractive when it was granted the licence to take certain classes of goods from shipping on the Thames or from merchants entering London by road. These were enumerated by Richard II in 1383 and form the basis of a practice now called 'Constable's Dues'.
In the 20th century, a ceremony was revived in which a detachment from a Royal Navy vessel presents the constable with a barrel of wine, following the grant from Richard II: 'from every boat carrying wine from Bordeaux or elsewhere to the said city, one tun before the mast and one ton aft.'
Other concessions, which have lapsed for obvious reasons, included the right to seize 'all swans swimming under London Bridge to the sea, or from the sea to the said bridge, all manner of horses, oxen, cattle, pigs and sheep which fall into the Thames from the said bridge' or 'any vehicle which falls into the Tower of London moat'.
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The corrupt John de Cromwell (1308-21) was one of the least successful constables in the Tower's history. In addition to the crimes mentioned in The Tower programme, he had caused a riot in 1312 by seizing a piece of land outside the Tower, and was widely suspected of carrying out arbitrary arrests in the City of London. He was also responsible for Hope Castle in Wales: here, as with the Tower, the buildings fell into ruin. After the events of 1321, he found his way back into royal favour through service in the north of England, and was later restored to the constableship of the Tower by Queen Isabella's son, Edward III, as 'our trusty and well-beloved John de Cromwell'.
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Constables – or, in their absence, lieutenants of the Tower – have sometimes been entrusted with tasks of extreme delicacy. Sir William Kingston, constable in the reign of Henry VIII, supervised the imprisonment and execution of his friend Sir Thomas More and, later, of Anne Boleyn. In 1597, Sir Richard Berkeley is said to have resigned in disgust as lieutenant of the Tower for having been forced to supervise the torture of Jesuit prisoners.
His successor, Sir John Peyton, was responsible for the imprisonment of the earl of Essex (whom he was required to strip-search) and the arrangements for his execution (see 'The Bloody Tower'), for preparing the Tower to receive the new king, James I, and for the imprisonment of Sir Walter Ralegh, who attempted suicide while incarcerated there. Peyton understandably felt that the post was 'only composed of trouble, danger, charge and vexation'.
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The duke of Wellington, hero of Waterloo, was constable from 1825 to 1852 and, more than any other individual, was responsible for making the Tower what it is today. During his period of office, institutions such as the Royal Menagerie and Record Office were moved out, the reconstruction of the Tower's buildings in a medieval style began and the moat was drained and converted into a parade ground.
The body of yeoman warders was reformed, with recruitment only from among 'deserving, gallant and meritorious sergeants from the army', replacing a system in which the yeoman warders had bought and sold their places. A further innovation was the rise of tourism at the Tower, a phenomenon that the duke resisted determinedly yet, ultimately, unsuccessfully.
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Since the 19th century, constables have not lived full-time at the Tower; their place has been taken by resident governors. The present resident governor, Major General Geoffrey Field CB OBE, is effectively chief executive of the Tower of London and responsible for all its operations. He and his family live in the Queen's House, a Tudor building prepared in 1540 for Sir Edmund Walsingham, lieutenant of the Tower.
