on thus. She had been
here before, and her elder boy, destined for so short a reign and so
cruel a death, had been born within the confines of the prison-like
walls. On the second occasion, when the ferocious Richard, Duke of
Gloucester, sought to obtain possession of his younger nephew, he
respected the limits of sanctuary, but with his plausible tongue he
persuaded the Archbishop who accompanied him to consent to his schemes,
and he silenced, if he did not assuage, the mother's fears. So the
little Richard was taken to die in the Tower with his brother, and small
use had sanctuary been to him.

The work of the demolition of this massive keep was going on in 1775,
but it does not seem to have proceeded regularly; people came and tore
away fragments from the walls as they listed, and the gloomy building
vanished piecemeal.

By Acts passed in the early part of the nineteenth century, part of Long
Ditch, Bridge Street, Little George Street, and King Street were cleared
away, also Broad and Little Sanctuary, Thieving Lane, and many small
courts, and on the space thus obtained public seats were placed,
flower-beds planted, and statues erected.

The statues on the quadrangular piece of ground in the centre are of
Peel and Beaconsfield, north and south; Palmerston and Derby on the
east. The statue of George Canning is in the western enclosure. Union
Street ran due eastward to New Palace Yard, and must have cut very near
the place where the statue of Palmerston now stands. The drinking
fountain at the corner of Great George Street was put up by Charles
Buxton in 1865 in memory of the abolition of the slave trade.

Westminster Abbey, Palace, and City stood formerly upon a small island
called Thorney, the Isle of Bramble, a low-lying islet covered with
brambles, nowhere more than three or four feet above the level of
high-tide formed by the fall of the little river, the Tye, into the
Thames. Part of this stream ran down Gardener's Lane; part of it
diverged and ran south, forming a narrow moat or ditch called Long Lane,
turned eastward at College Street, and so fell into the Thames. The
island is mentioned in a charter of 785 by Offa, King of Mercia, as
"Tornica, Locus terribilis"--_i.e._, sacred. It was about 1,410 feet
long and 1,100 feet broad. It was almost entirely, save for a narrow
piece of land on the north, occupied by the King's House and the Abbey.
Both Palace and Abbey were surrounded by walls, one wall being comm