Note 2 — Chapter XII
Reading edition
Among the contemporary dramatists of Shakespeare, reference to the Tower is made by Peele, Decker, Webster, and Heywood. Peele, in his play of “Edward
I.
,” where Llewellyn, Prince of Wales, mentions how his father broke his neck in attempting to escape from what he calls “Julius Cæsar’s Tower.” Decker and Webster refer to the fortress in their “Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyatt,” and to Guildford Dudley and Jane Grey; Heywood, in his tragedy of “Edward
IV.
,” recounts the murders of Clarence and the sons of Edward, and refers to Queen Elizabeth’s imprisonment in the Tower in his “History of Queen Elizabeth.” There are also allusions to the Tower and to Cromwell, Earl of Essex, and to Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, in the “Doubtful Plays.” The above information I have obtained from that rare scholar and critic, Dr Furnival. Probably scattered about the country are many other inscriptions recording the connection with the Tower of the dead, commemorated as was Sir Edward Walsingham on his tomb by his son Sir Thomas, in the church of St Nicholas at Chislehurst in Kent:
“A knight, sometime of worthie fame, Lyeth buried under this stonie bower; Sir Edmund Walsingham was his name, Lieutenant he was of London Tower.”