r built the outer wall. The
Keep was then presumed to be completed, and at some time during those
twenty years it must have been begun, probably about 1080. That which
we have seen increasing, the military importance of Windsor,
diminished the military importance of the Tower, until, with the close
of the Middle Ages, it had become no more than a prison. It was not
indeed swamped by the growth of the town, as was its parallel the
Louvre, but the increase of wealth (and therefore of the means of
war), coupled with the correspondingly increased population, made both
urban fortresses increasingly difficult to hold as mediaeval
civilisation developed.

The whole history of the Tower is the history of military misfortune,
which grows as London expands in numbers and prosperity. It probably
held out under Mandeville when the Londoners (who were always the
allies of the aristocracy against the national government) besieged it
under the civil wars of Stephen; but even so there was bad luck
attached to it, for when Mandeville was taken prisoner he was
compelled to sign its surrender. Within a generation Longchamp again
surrendered it to the young Prince John; he was for the moment leading
the aristocracy, which, when it was his turn to reign, betrayed him.
It was surrendered to the baronial party by the King as a trust or
pledge for the execution of Magna Charta, and though it was put into
the hands of the Archbishop, who was technically neutral, it was from
that moment the symbol of a successful rebellion, as it had already
proved to be in the past and was to prove so often again.

It was handed over to Louis of France upon his landing, and during the
next reign almost every misfortune of Henry III. is connected with the
Tower. He was perpetually taking refuge in it, holding his Court in
it: losing it again, as the rebels succeeded, and regaining it as they
failed. This long and unfortunate tenure of his is illumined only by
one or two delightful phrases which one cannot but retain as one
reads. Thus there is the little written order, which still remains to
us for the putting of painted windows into the Chapel of St John, the
northern one of which was to have for its design "some little Mary or
other, holding her Child"--"quandam Mariolam tenenten puerum suum."
There is also a very pleasing legend in the same year, 1241, when the
fall of certain new buildings was ascribed to the action of St.
Thomas, who was seen by a priest