#3: On the Tower of London and Accepting Your Fate

Today’s excursion took us to the Tower of London. Walking through the room where the crown jewels were kept felt like an exercise in reverence. Past corridors of coronation regalia, like embellished swords and a robe embroidered with Tudor roses, a projection of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation flickered on the wall of a dark room. Chairs stood in pew-like rows, and guests settled into them wordlessly as if disrupting the silence might somehow make this space less sacred. I don’t think I can ever fully understand what the monarchy means for people who grew up in the U.K. Yet, as we passed by a display of crowns that belonged to the monarchy, some that were made to replace others that were destroyed and some that were recovered after wars, I couldn’t help but think of resurrection. Maybe, there’s something sacred about the fact that this symbol of Britain has continued to return to life again and again. As the White Tower exhibit mentioned, the coronation spoon was all that survived of the crown jewels when parliament took them to be made into coins in the 1600s (Jewel House: Ampulla and Coronation Spoon). In a sense, the fact that this spoon memorializes the crown jewels is fitting because it represents exactly what the Crown Jewels evoke: the connection between the implicit weight of leading a country and the responsibility to approach this duty as if it were a holy thing.

A window next to the staircase in the Bloody Tower.

One exhibition that surprised me was a section of the White Tower devoted to the Ordnance Survey. According to the exhibit, the Ordnance Survey was a city mapping endeavor that grew from a mapping room inside the tower of London (Ordnance Survey). The signs describe these maps as a crucial type of “control” that allowed Britain to protect the country “against rebellions and invasions” (Ordnance Survey), and this particular kind of control immediately reminded me of Straight Line Crazy. Robert Moses sought control through urban planning for himself, and the all-consuming nature of this kind of work ate away at his life and relationships, but what does it mean to stay in one place and devote yourself to the kind of work that sustains the community around you? What kind of challenges come from the slow, patient work of standing still? I wonder if Thomas Colby, a lead geographer for the Ordnance survey that the exhibit mentions, grew tired of returning to the tower every winter to draft maps of the places he’d been (Ordnance Survey), or if he knew that, somehow, it would all be worthwhile.

A Map of Kent. The first map that the Ordnance Survey completed.

What’s left of Walter Raleigh’s lodgings at the Bloody Tower communicate a similar sense of steadfastness. In what was probably my favorite part of the Tower of London Exhibits, we were able to see the room where Walter Raleigh would have worked and the garden he tended during his imprisonment at the Bloody Tower. According to a website affiliated with the Tower of London, Historic Royal Places, Walter Raleigh was imprisoned within the Tower of London three times (“Sir Walter Raleigh”). The first imprisonment occurred as a result of the impulsive explorer marrying in secret against Queen Elizabeth’s strict demands that she be allowed to approve the marriages of those in her court (“Sir Walter Raleigh”). After rule transferred to James I, Raleigh was sentenced to life in prison for conspiring against the king (“Sir Walter Raleigh”). Yet, as the Bloody Tower exhibition indicates, Raleigh still worked during those bleak years by planting a garden of medicinal herbs with which he created remedies for other prisoners and the royal family (Raleigh’s Lost Garden). Raleigh lived the rest of his life without the freedom to roam where he wanted to, but he still lived, and I’m not sure what to make of the part of that decision that requires surrender to an, at times, unjust force.

A Recreation of Walter Raleigh’s Medicinal Garden

Inside the Beauchamp tower exhibit are more remnants of surrender. Carvings made from prisoners are scattered across the walls. Many of them, like the quote attributed to Arthur Poole below, are efforts at repentance. Poole writes, “To serve God/to enter into penance/to obey fate/is to reign” (Graffiti Attributed to Arthur Poole 1564). Although absolutely heart wrenching within the context of what these prisoners experienced, Poole’s final message made me wonder exactly what I believe about fate in general.

A carving attributed to a prisoner named Arthur Poole on the wall of the Beauchamp tower.

Does surrendering to our own fates and making the best of them give us power over them, or is it just another way of losing the life we wanted? I think on most days I would say the latter, and maybe this somewhat individualistic American attitude is what creates a barrier between me and my understanding of the British Monarchy. As I stood in that dark room watching a twenty-five year old Elizabeth II being crowned queen, I was struck by how young she was and how difficult it must have been to set aside the life she had in mind for the one that “fate” or family line had given her. Meanwhile, what I could have seen was a woman who chose to live for the good of others instead of herself by reigning over the life that was planned for her. Sometimes, an unexpected garden in the midst of gray is better than the miles of open sky you wanted. In the spirit of letting go of plans, here’s a picture of an unexpected garden I found on an unplanned outing to see a play that I went to instead of napping in my hotel room.