In 1191, Prince John attacked his brother Richard I’s newly-improved Tower of London, proving that the defences were extremely effective: the castle surrendered only for lack of supplies.  Stone-throwing engines were mounted on the main towers in the following year.   In 1544, Henry VIII’s improvements to the Tower’s defences were put to the test by Sir Thomas Wyatt’s group of Protestant rebels.  This time the Tower’s response was less than impressive: ‘ther was shot off out of the White Tower a vi or viii shot, but myssed them, sometymes shoting over and sometimes shoting short’.

The present Constable of the Tower of London is the 158th in line.  By the mid-16th century, the Constable had handed over day-to-day responsibility for the running of the Tower to its Lieutenant.  The Yeoman Warders were initially set up to guard the king, and the Yeoman Body at the Tower of London split off from the group of servants directly surrounding the monarch when the Tower fell out of regular royal occupation in Tudor times.  In 1555, it was decreed that nine men from the ranks of the Yeoman Warders and gunners were to ward during the day and six at night, and instructions were laid down for securing the keys at night in what is an early account of the Ceremony of the Keys as it still continues today.

It was the Duke of Wellington who stopped the sale of Yeoman Warders’ places, deciding instead that the newly-salaried posts should go to ‘deserving, gallant and meritorious discharged sergeants of the army’.   By 1844 visitors commented on their ‘approved showman style’ in guiding; in 1892 it was commented that each had ‘his own favourite story to tell, and his own particular old joke to crack’, a tradition that continues today.