Decline and Imprisonment
The Tower's royal residence began to see less and less use during the Tudor period, with few monarchs staying there for any great period: the last large set of royal lodgings, finished in time for Anne Boleyn’s coronation in 1533, were used only once. Even the most symbolic of visits, the monarch staying the night before their coronation, ceased after 1604. Documentation from the early sixteenth century hints that age and disinterest was having an effect on the Tower's court rooms; the Great Hall needed sheets on the roof to keep rain out.Of course, plenty of royals and important persons still stayed in the Tower during the Tudor period, but they were prisoners. Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, both wives of Henry VIII, and Lady Jane Grey, a proclaimed queen, were executed inside the walls, while the future Elizabeth I spent three months incarcerated there in 1554. The majority of prisoners were connected to the religious strife that engulfed England following Henry VIII's break with Rome. Sir Thomas More was one of the first such casualties to be held in the tower (he was executed in 1535), but hundreds more followed during the reigns of Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I.
The English Civil War
The Tower defences saw little improvement during the early seventeenth century; even the English Civil War (1642-9) failed to inspire much physical change. In theory, this great royal tower could have been used by Charles I to dominate London and secure his presence in the south, but his parliamentarian opponents were fully aware of it and took control of the keep in 1643. Some historians cite Charles' loss of the tower as a key factor in his defeat. Monarchy returned to Britain in 1660, but a more enduring institution than the interregnal government was also produced by the civil war: a permanent garrison in the tower. A much smaller remnant of this force remains stationed there today, although it is no longer large enough to quell anti-royal disturbances in London as in its early decades.The threat of Dutch naval raids in the late 1660's led to improvements in the tower river defences, while a deteriorating political situation prompted a swift modernisation of the castle between 1682 – 86. Gun platforms were added along the walls, the western entrance was rebuilt and room was added for a larger garrison but this renaissance in fortification didn't last long, especially as the castle fell in 1688 without a cannon being fired to James II's enemies. Although George I later reorgansied the defences between 1714 and 1727, the Tower was now acknowledged as being hopelessly out of date as a stronghold. The number of prisoners also dropped sharply.
The Tower of London finds Another Use
Europe is littered with the ruins of castles which fell from royal favour and never found another use, whether replaced by palaces for monarchs or new forts for the military. The structure of the Tower complex meant it unlikely to have survived purely as a prison, but another use had been steadily increasing since the medieval era, one which kept the Tower at the heart of Britain's military fabric during the Tudor period and beyond: storing the national arsenal of artillery.Henry VIII may have lived elsewhere, but he spent £2,844 on a 'Long House of Ordnance' - which stretched across the north curtain wall and stored artillery and ammunition - and towers for various staff. In 1639 the Great Hall was converted into a storehouse for the Ordnance Office and many old – and now apparently unwanted – court buildings were soon altered for keeping supplies, including the White Tower. After the civil war and interregnum, when the restored Charles II was trying to retrieve artillery from across the country, he had to build a new store on the old internal palace gardens to fit everything in. This was the 'New Armories' building. By 1665 the royal buildings along the southern wall were also being converted into storerooms and offices for ordnance matters, at no small cost.
