Leopards, Bears and Ravens... Oh, my!

Most people are familiar with the Tower of London as a prison, where people who were alleged to have committed some crime against the king or queen were detained. But when the first structure was built on the site by William the Conqueror in late 1066, its main purpose was as a fortress. Having just taken over England, William wanted to be sure he could defend London from the Saxons, who were seeking to oust him from their country.

It was originally a motte and bailey castle, which is a defensive tower or keep built on a large earthen mound, the motte, and surrounded by a bailey, a flat raised area where buildings to maintain the troops were constructed. The whole complex was surrounded by defensive walls and a ditch. The first keep William built on the site was of wood. He later replaced it with a stone keep in 1078, which was called the White Tower, which ultimately gave the entire castle its name.

I mention William’s plans for the fortress in my book The Conqueror, when my hero and heroine visit London. The hero, Jobert de Brevrienne, is a knight in William’s army, while my heroine, Edeva, is the daughter of the Saxon eorle whose lands have been given to Jobert by William. The struggle between the Norman French invaders and Saxon natives forms the background for the book.

Over the years, William’s royal descendants continued to make improvements to the Tower of London. Some of the most elaborate additions were made by Henry III in the early 13^th century. From 1216 to 1227 he spent nearly £10,000 on the Tower. Henry’s goal was to make the Tower a luxurious residence for the royal family. But his expensive construction plans angered the English nobility and led to a revolt of the barons. They eventually forced Henry to formally confirm most of the articles of the Magna Carta, which limited the monarchy’s power and became the basis of English government.

When I was researching the era of Henry III for my book The Leopard, I discovered that the Tower had another use that is seldom mentioned in history. Frederick III, the Holy Roman Emperor, gave Henry three leopards, in honor of the three beasts displayed on the royal banner, and these animals were kept at the Tower.  Henry later added a white bear, presumably a polar bear, which was occasionally allowed to fish in the Thames (What a sight that must have been!) and an elephant, for which a separate building was constructed.

The menagerie did not end with Henry’s reign. Animals were housed at the Tower for the next 600 years. Some of the species included in the menagerie were monkeys, ostriches, lions, tigers, wolves, a boa constrictor, grizzly bear, zebras and baboons.

In many cases, the caretakers of these animals had no idea what to feed them or how to maintain them and many of the poor creatures did not survive very long. The conditions they lived in would appall us today, and they undoubtedly distressed compassionate individuals even back then. Indeed, in The Leopard, my hero, acclaimed knight Richard Reivers (known as the Black Leopard), takes the heroine, Astra, to visit the menagerie, and tender-hearted Astra is very distressed by the cramped, unpleasant living conditions the leopards must endure. Her reaction to the animals’ distress makes Richard realize how different she is from all the other women he has known, and he begins to fall in love with tender-hearted, idealistic Astra.

Starting in the late middle ages until the 1800’s, the Tower housed some of the most famous prisoners in English history, including Anne Boleyn, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Elizabeth I, who was held in the Tower for eight weeks by her sister Mary during Mary’s brief reign. (She died before she could execute Elizabeth, or English history might be very different.) Today the Tower is a popular tourist site, and the Crown Jewels are still on display there, as they have been since 1669. In another note on the Tower’s connection to animals, even today six ravens are kept at the Tower at all times, due to the legend that if they are absent, the kingdom will fall.

Postscript:  This post originally appeared on the History Undressed blog: http://www.historyundressed.com/ which offers interesting and fun insights into history and romance. Someone commented on my post that they hadn't thought about the animals being mistreated, and I realized I'd left out some of the more distressing information I discovered in my research. They found proof that the lions kept in the tower were baited with dogs as they discovered both lion and dog skulls in the same level of debris excavated. Also, at one time, the entrance fee to the menagerie was that you had to bring a dog or cat to feed the animals! People clearly didn't have the same sense of animals as sentient creatures back then as we do now. Another reason that for all I enjoy being immersed in the past in books, I'm glad to return to our (mostly) more civilized era.