16th – 17th century
Interactive timeline - History of the RA
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40 AD
Before the Romans
The pre-Roman site of the Tower of London was probably occupied by an Iron Age farm.
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400 AD
Twilight of the Roman City
Londinium was remodelled and strengthened in response to the threat of Saxon invasion.
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1080 AD
The Conqueror's Castle
Work began on the construction of William the Conqueror's mighty White Tower.
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1200 AD
The Tower Enlarged
A major expansion of the Tower's defences during the reigns of Richard I and King John.
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1240 AD
The Classic Castle
Henry III extended the defences of the Tower and refurbished and enlarged the royal lodgings.
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1300 AD
Apogee of the Medieval Castle
Tower defences extended, to those seen today, by England's greatest warrior king, Edward I.
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1547 AD
The Tudor Power House
During Henry VIII's reign the Offices of Ordnance, Armoury, Mint and Records occupy the Tower.
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1700 AD
Showplace of the Nation
After the Restoration in 1660 armouries displays are established to impress the visiting public.
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1841 AD
The Great Conflagration
The Grand Storehouse including two armouries displays is destroyed by fire on 31 Oct 1841.
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1890 AD
Remedievalisation of the Castle
50 years of restoration transformed the appearance of the Tower following the fire of 1841.
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1940 AD
The Castle at War
WWII aerial bombing threatens the Tower. The Main Guard is destroyed on the 29 Dec 1940.
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2000 AD
The Tower Today
The Tower of London attracts over 2 million visitors per year as a World Heritage Site.
By the end of the 16th century some of the early visitors to the Tower began to record their impressions of the Armoury. Jacob Rathgar, secretary of Frederick, Duke of Wirtenburg, described what they were shown in 1592. Despite the presence of many fine pieces of artillery, Rathgar felt the collection did not compare with those in his native Germany for ‘they stand about in the greatest confusion and disorder’.
Paul Hentzner provided the first detailed description of the Armoury after a visit to London in 1598. He was shown many items belonging to Henry VIII, including a gilt suit of armour, and several historic cannon, among them two wooden pieces used to deceive the French at the siege of Boulogne in 1544.
The following year Joseph Platter, a Swiss traveller from Basle, visited the Tower and again paid attention to the personal armoury of Henry VIII, which he makes clear, was located in the White Tower. Interestingly, reference is made to the cost of viewing the Armoury, with payments being made at four points in the building ‘to a servant appointed to receive the same’.
The complaint by Rathgar in 1592 about the disorderly appearance of the Armoury, repeated by the Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, a decade latter, suggests that little attention was paid to presentation in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
This situation was to change immediately after the Restoration of 1660 with the setting up of two permanent public displays known as the Line of Kings and the Spanish Armoury.
The former, as the name suggests, was a row of figures representing the kings of England. They appeared on life-sized wooden horses wearing what was said to be their personal armour. The line is first recorded in the Tower in an inventory dated October 1660 and it is possible that the display was assembled to mark the visit to the Tower of London in August that year by Charles II after his many years in exile.
The Spanish Armoury was a collection of fearsome-looking weapons, together with a few instruments of torture, claimed to have been taken from the Armada of 1588. The historical basis for this association was quite unsound, however, with few, if any of the objects having Spanish connections.