Tower Liberties

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The Tower Liberties or Liberties of the Tower of London were areas in the city ​​of London that were not subject to the administration of the City of London or the County of Middlesex , but were directly subordinate to the Tower of London and thus to the constable of the Tower . They belonged to the Tower division , also called Tower Hamlets , which were also subordinate to the constable.

The Tower Liberties had their own taxes , police , and jurisdiction . Originally the area only included the tower and adjacent areas on Tower Hill . Since 1686, the Tower Liberties also comprised three areas outside the tower. From the 19th century the constable of the Tower lost powers to the City of London. Tower and Liberties have belonged to the Whitechapel Board of Works since 1855, to the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney since 1900 , now part of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets .

Thanks to a Royal Charter from James II , three areas were added that had been used by the Crown for a long time to store and test weapons. The Minories between Tower and Aldgate in the City, the Old Artillery Ground in Spitalfields and Wellclose in the East End of London . All of them were former monastery lands that came to the crown after the monasteries were dissolved.

The Minories is a street that runs between Tower and Aldgate. There was a large English ammunition and weapons depot on it. Numerous gunsmiths had already settled in the area before the area came to the tower. Wellclose Square is now part of a Conservation Area .

The residents of the areas enjoyed the privileges that the residents of the tower had - lower taxes, no obligations to the state and their own judicial system. The areas developed into overpopulated urban areas with a reputation for lawlessness over the next hundred years.

The Liberties Prison was originally located on Tower Hill, later in Wellclose. The Tower Liberties court was also located there. The exact extent of the liberties and the specific rights have been a constant source of conflict between the City of London, Middlesex and the Tower. Only the demarcation by Charles II was able to pacify this conflict somewhat. Since the early 19th century, police laws expanded the rights of the London City Council and much of the Tower's administrative suzerainty was lost when the area was added to the Whitechapel Board of Works in 1855. The tower lost its last independent administrative rights in 1900 when it became part of the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney.

Today the Beating of the Bounds takes place every three years , in which a procession of Yeomen Warders and schoolboys walks the former boundaries of the Liberty at the Tower, hits the former boundary stones and threatens anyone who dares to move them. In the other areas of the Liberties, the custom ceased when the Tower came to the Borough of Stepney.

Remarks

  1. ^ Henry Benjamin Wheatley, Peter Cunningham: London Past and Present: Its History, Associations, and Traditions Cambridge University Press, 2011 ISBN 1108028071 p. 547
  2. ↑ Bridget Cherry, Charles O'Brien, Nikolaus Pevsner: London: East, Volume 5 Yale University Press, 2005 ISBN 0300107013 p. 377
  3. ^ Clare Graham: Ordering law: the architectural and social history of the English law court to 1914, p. 404 Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2003 ISBN 0754607879
  4. ^ John Britton: Memoirs of the Tower of London Wm. S. Hein Publishing, 1994 ISBN 0837719771 p. 195

literature

  • Tower Liberties in: Christopher Hibbert Ben Weinreb, John & Julia Keay (eds.): The London Encyclopaedia (3rd Edition) Pan Macmillan, 2011 ISBN 0230738788 p. 924

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