Архитектурные шедевры Великобритании. Рябцева Е.В. - 42 стр.

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to nobles and gentlemen found guilty of treason. Their deaths were watched by unruly crowds numbering many
thousands. Viewing stands were put up around the scaffold, and sometimes collapsed under the weight of eager
spectators.
Traitors of lowlier status suffered death by hanging, drawing and quartering, sometimes on the Hill but
most often at Tyburn, near the site of Marble Arch. Not all who died on Tower Hill were convicted traitors.
Some were burned as heretics, and others hanged as common criminals, as were the last of those to be executed
on this spot, in 1780.
The Royal Armouries
The Royal Armouries derive from the great arsenal at the Tower which supplied armour and weapons to
the medieval English kings and their armies. The present collection took shape in the reign of Henry VIII who
restocked the Tower arsenal, and also set up a workshop at Greenwich to make fine armour for himself and his
court. Henry’s armours, and those of the early Stuarts, were eventually brought together at the Tower, and early
in Charles II’s reign the historic collection was opened to the public, along with artillery and weapon stores of
the working arsenal.
Subsequently the Tower Armouries were enriched by the return of obsolete weapons to store, and by the
quickening inflow of the spoils of British conquests in every part of the world. As the scholarly study of arms
and armour developed in the 19
th
century, a systematic attempt began to fill in the gaps in the inherited
collections.
At the present time, European armour and weapons, ranging from the age of the Saxons and Vikings up to
the modern times, are displayed in the White Tower and New Armouries. Some pieces from the Royal
Armouries Oriental collection as well as the instruments of torture and punishment are also on view in the
White Tower.
The display includes arms and armour for war, for the tournament, for hunting, for self-defence and for
display and fashion, each type designed carefully for its particular purpose. There are striking examples of
technological innovation and ingenuity, and fine works of art created for wealthy patrons. As well as the Tudor
and Stuart royal armours, still the centrepiece of the collections, the visitor will also encounter many exhibits of
immediate appeal: armours for a giant and a dwarf, and for children, and for horses; gunshields and
combination weapons; fearsome staff weapons and elegant rapiers; and the arsenal displays in the vaults of the
White Tower.
The Crown Jewels
The Tower of London was one of the chief treasuries of the medieval kings, and some of the Crown Jewels
were always kept there. The coronation regalia, however, which were regarded as the relics of St Edward (King
Edward the Confessor, who ruled before the Norman Conquest) were kept at Westminster Abbey, where the
royal saint was buried and coronations took place.
Following the execution of Charles I in 1649, Parliament ordered the coronation ornaments to be brought
to the Tower, the precious metals to be melted down for coinage, and the gems sold off. Nevertheless, several
of the old regalia, or parts of them, reappeared and were refashioned for use at Charles II’s coronation in 1661.
The lower half at least of the coronation crown itself was made up of a medieval crown, perhaps the crown of
Edward the Confessor.
Later monarchs added to the regalia, most notably the Jewelled State Sword made for the coronation of
George IV in 1821, and the Imperial State Crown with which Queen Victoria was crowned in 1837. The major
gemstones set in the crown, however, had a much longer history, including a sapphire taken from the ring said
to have been buried with Edward the Confessor in 1066, and the ruby presented to the Black Prince in 1367.
As well as the coronation ornaments and robes, a number of historic crowns are displayed, including the
Crown of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, which holds the legendary Koh-i-noor diamond.

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