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The Chapel of St. John the Evangelist
Although this Chapel is often referred to as the Chapel Royal of St. John the Evangelist, it is incorrect to do so today. It could well be described as the first chapel royal in the land, but in the reign of Charles II it ceased to be a place of worship and later, when it was restored as a chapel, it was never reinstated as a chapel royal.
The Chapel, built on the two upper storeys of the White Tower, is one of the finest specimens of early Norman architecture. Despite the changing fashions and religious customs since 1078, the Chapel remains today much as it was when Gundolph, Bishop of Rochester, built it. The piers, capitals, bases, barrel-vaulting and arches are of high quality for such early work. Though the Chapel is small, it conveys a sense of strength. Barrel-vaulting is only to be found in the earliest Norman buildings, since the great weight of this type of roof soon led architects to experiment with groined vaulting and pointed arches. Another example of its early Norman style is to be found in the plain T-shaped crosses on some of the capitals, the only carved decoration in the Chapel.
Today the Chapel appears some what austere, but it was not always so. As King Henry III did with St. Peter’s, so he did with St. John’s. In 1240, he gave instructions for repair and ornamentations. The walls were whitewashed, and the cross and beam by the altar were painted. Stained glass was placed in three windows, depicting the Virgin and Child, the Holy Trinity and St. John Evangelist. At the west end was placed a royal pew. From these details we can imagine a chapel more in accord with the fashions of the medieval court.
Throughout the Middle Ages St. John’s was the chapel used by the sovereign when at the Tower. It was here that the Knights of the Bath, after taking their ritual baths in the adjoining room, kept their all-night vigil. Next morning they were created knight by the king and then, in blue gowns and white silk, they escorted him in the coronation procession from the Tower to Westminster. The custom of creating Knights of the Bath at the Tower on the eve of a coronation was begun by Henry IV and was last performed by Charles II in 1661.
Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, was kneeling before the altar when he was seized by Wat Tyler’s rebels, dragged out to Tower Hill and beheaded by the mob for his part, as Chancellor, in the unpopular Government of Richard II. In 1503 the body of Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII, lay in state in the Chapel, surrounded by five hundred tapers, after her death in childbirth. Two years earlier their elder son, Arthur, had been married with great splendour in the Chapel to Catherine of Aragon, the groom being fourteen and his bride fifteen. Catherine, soon a widow, later became the wife of the future Henry VIII, Arthur’s younger brother.
Mary I arranged for a requiem mass in St. John’s for her half-brother, Edward VI, while his funeral according to the rights of the Church of England, was taking place in Westminster Abbey. In 1554 she was betrothed in the Chapel to Philip of Spain, Count Egmont acting as proxy, but by this time it had a plainer appearance, for most of the rich, ornate Medieval furnishing had been removed as a result of religious changes following the break with Rome.
The whole building is crossed from north to south by one wall, which rises from base to summit and divides it into a larger western and a smaller eastern portion. The eastern part is further sub-divided by a wall which cuts off St. John's Chapel, its crypt, and its sub-crypt.
To the left of this is a large mortar used at the siege of Namur in 1794, and fired so frequently that the touch hole or vent became fused with the heat. The carriage was burnt away in the fire of 1841, leaving only the framework of iron, which was filled up with wood at a later period.
On the west side is the rampart known as Princess Elizabeth's Walk and in the south wing is the Council Chamber containing a contemporary memorial tablet of the Gunpowder Plot. In the north wing is the small room where ANNE BOLEYN spent the last days of her life.