hough not permanently, and only for the purposes of their
ephemeral but constant quarrels; and one may suggest that when the
barbaric period was ended, by the landing of William's army, the place
was still, by a tradition now six hundred years old, a public area
under the control of the Crown and one such as would lend itself to
the design of a permanent fortification. William, finding it in this
condition, erected upon it the great keep which was to be the last of
his fortifications along the line of the river, and the pivot for the
control of London.

This keep is of course the White Tower, which still impresses even our
generation with the squat and square shoulders of Norman strength. It
and Ely are the best remaining expressions of the hardy little men,
and it fills one, as does everything Norman, from the Tyne to the
Euphrates, with something of awe. This building, the White Tower, is
the Tower itself; the rest is but an accretion, partly designed for
defence, but latterly more for habitation. Its name of the "White"
Tower is probably original, though we do not actually find the term
"La Blaunche Tour" till near the middle of the fourteenth century. The
presumption that it is the original name is founded upon a much
earlier record--namely, that of 1241, in which not only is it ordered
that the tower be repainted white, but in which mention is also made
that its original colour had been "worn by the weather and by the long
process of time." Such a complaint would take one back to the twelfth
century, and quite probably to the first building of the Keep. The
object of whitening the walls of the Tower is again explicable by the
very reasonable conjecture that it would so serve as a landmark over
the long, flat stretches of the lower river. It was the last
conspicuous building against the mass of the great town, and there are
many examples of similar landmarks used at the head of estuaries or
sea passages. When these are not spires they are almost invariably
white, especially where they are so situated as to catch the southern
or the eastern sun.

The exact date at which the plan was undertaken we do not know, but it
is obviously one with the scheme of building Windsor, and must date
from much the same period. The order to build was given by the
Conqueror to the Bishop of Rochester, Gundulph. Now Gundulph was not
promoted to the See of Rochester till 1077. Exactly twenty years
later, in 1097, the son of the Conquero