The Tower of London has had many varied roles but it is its function as State prison that lingers in the popular memory.

Prisoners at the Tower were not ordinary offenders. Accused of treason, their offences included:

• trying to kill or depose the monarch
• helping rebels or foreign enemies
• writing or speaking against the monarch
• acting against the interests of the State, including counterfeiting coins

Tower prisoners ranged from monarchs to commoners and although popular myth regards imprisonment in the Tower as a death sentence, reality suggests otherwise. Only 22 executions have ever taken place within the Tower of London and the majority of Tower prisoners sentenced to death met their fate elsewhere.

Some prisoners lingered at the Tower for many years, others tried to escape. Bishop Flambard, a former Constable of the Tower, has the traditional honour of being both its first prisoner and first escapee in 1100.

Important personalities

Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat (1667-1747)

Lord Lovat has the distinction of being the last man to be beheaded on Tower Hill.

On the day of his execution, 9 April 1747, much to his amusement apparently, one of the scaffolds built for spectators collapsed resulting in twenty onlookers being killed. Lovat was 80 years old at the time of his beheading. The execution block displayed in the White Tower is said to have been used in Lovat’s beheading. It is formed from a solid piece of oak and weighs 57kg (125lb).

Thomas Coningsby, 1st Earl Coningsby

Coningsby was imprisoned in the Tower in 1720 for libel against Lord Harcourt, the Lord Chancellor, in a local dispute.

Coningsby strongly opposed the Jacobite claim to the throne. While at the Tower, Coningsby commissioned a beautiful gun to be made, the barrel of which is said to have been forged from swords captured during the Jacobite Rebellion.