The first Tudor sovereign, Henry VII ( 1485-1509 ) was responsible for constructing the last lasting royal residential edifices at the Tower. He extended his ain diggingss around the Lanthorn Tower adding a new private chamber, a library, a long gallery, and besides laid out a garden. These edifices were to organize the karyon of a much larger strategy begun by his boy Henry VIII ( 1509-47 ) who put up a big scope of timber-framed diggingss at the clip of the enthronement of his 2nd married woman, Anne Boleyn. The edifice of these diggingss, used merely one time, marked the terminal of the history of royal abode at the Tower.
The reigns of the Tudor male monarchs and Queenss were relatively stable in footings of civil upset. However, from the 1530s onwards the unrest caused by the Reformation ( when Henry VIII broke with the Church in Rome ) gave the Tower an expanded function as the place for a big figure of spiritual and political captives.
The first of import Tudor captives were Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher of Rochester, both of whom were executed in 1535 for declining to admit Henry VIII as caput of the English Church. They were shortly followed by a still more celebrated captive and victim, the King & # 8217 ; s 2nd married woman Anne Boleyn, executed along with her brother and four others a small under a twelvemonth subsequently. July 1540 saw the executing of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex and former Chief Minister of the King – in which capacity he had modernised the Tower & # 8217 ; s defense mechanisms and, ironically plenty, sent many others to their deceases on the same topographic point. Two old ages subsequently, Catherine Howard, the second of Henry VIII & # 8217 ; s six married womans to be beheaded, met her decease outside the Cha
pel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula which Henry had rebuilt a few old ages before.
The reign of Edward VI ( 1547-53 ) saw no terminal to the political executings which had begun in his male parent & # 8217 ; s reign ; the immature King & # 8217 ; s protector the Duke of Somerset and his Confederates met their decease at the Tower in 1552, falsely accused of lese majesty. During Edward & # 8217 ; s reign the English Church became more Protestant, but the King & # 8217 ; s early decease in 1553 left the state with a Catholic inheritor, Mary I ( 1553-8 ) . During her brief reign many of import Protestants and political challengers were either imprisoned or executed at the Tower. The most celebrated victim was Lady Jane Grey, and the most celebrated captive the Queen & # 8217 ; s sister Princess Elizabeth ( the hereafter Elizabeth I ) . Religious contention did non stop with Mary & # 8217 ; s decease in 1558 ; Queen Elizabeth I ( 1558-1603 ) spent much of her reign guarding off the menace from Catholic Europe, and of import nonconformists ( people who refused to go to Church of England services ) and others who might hold opposed her regulation were locked up in the Tower. Never had it been so full of captives, or such celebrated 1s: bishops, archbishops, knights, barons, earls and dukes all exhausted months and some of them old ages pine awaying in the towers of the Tower of London.
Little was done to the Tower & # 8217 ; s defense mechanisms in these old ages. The Royal Mint was modified and extended, new depots were built for royal military supplies. In the reign of James I ( 1603-25 ) the Lieutenant & # 8217 ; s house – built in the 1540s and today called the Queen & # 8217 ; s House – was extended and modified ; the male monarch & # 8217 ; s king of beastss were rehoused in better lairs made for them in the West gate barbacan.
