y, safely, but not in irons, with permission to hear mass;
while a few are to be treated with leniency, and have chambers, with a
privy chamber or latrine attached.[51]

In 1303 the King (then at Linlithgow) sent the Abbot of Westminster and
forty-eight of his monks to the Tower on a charge of having stolen
L100,000 of the royal treasure placed in the abbey treasury for
safe-keeping! After a long trial, the sub-prior and the sacrist were
convicted and executed, when their bodies were flayed and the skins
nailed to the doors of the re-vestry and treasury of the abbey as a
solemn warning to other such evildoers,[52] the abbot and the rest of
the monks being acquitted.

No works of any importance can be assigned to the reign of Edward II.,
the only occurrences of importance being the downfall of the Knights
Templars and the imprisonment of many of them at the Tower, where the
Grand Prior, William de la More, expired in solitary confinement a few
months after the close of the proceedings that marked the suppression of
the order; and the escape of Roger Mortimer from the keep (which reads
almost like a repetition of Flambard's), the consequences to the
constable being his disgrace and imprisonment.[53]

The Tower was the principal arsenal of Edward III., who in 1347 had a
manufactory of _gunpowder_ there, when various entries in the Records
mention purchases of sulphur and saltpetre "pro gunnis Regis."[54]

A survey of the Tower was ordered in 1336, and the Return to it is
printed _in extenso_ by Bayley.[55] Some of the towers are called by
names (as for example, "Corande's" and "la Moneye" towers, the latter
perhaps an early reference to the Mint) which no longer distinguish
them. The Return shows that these--the Iron gate tower, "N," the two
posterns of the wharf, and Petty Wales, "_P.P._," the wharf itself, and
divers other buildings--were all in need of repair, the total amount for
the requisite masonry, timber, tile work, lead, glass, and iron work
being L2,154 17s. 8d.!

In 1354 the city ditch is ordered to be cleansed and prevented from
flowing into the Tower ditch, and, according to the _Liber Albus_, the
penalty of death was promulgated against anyone bathing in the Tower
ditch, or even in the Thames adjacent to the Tower!

In 1347 the Tower received, in the person of David, King of Scotland,
the first of a long line of royal prisoners, and in 1358 the large sum
of L2 12s. 9d. was paid for his medicine. John,