How then could a tradition have arisen with regard to Roman occupation?  It is but a conjecture, though a plausible one, that when the pirate raids grew in severity this knoll down stream was fortified, while still the ruling class was Latin speaking and while still the title of Caesar was familiar, whether before or after the withdrawal of the Legions.  If this were the case, then, on the analogy of other similar sites, one may imagine something like the following:  that in the Dark Ages the masonry was used as a quarry for other constructions, that the barbarians would occasionally stockade the site, though not permanently, and only for the purposes of their ephemeral but constant quarrels; and one may suggest that when the barbaric period was ended, by the landing of William’s army, the place was still, by a tradition now six hundred years old, a public area under the control of the Crown and one such as would lend itself to the design of a permanent fortification.  William, finding it in this condition, erected upon it the great keep which was to be the last of his fortifications along the line of the river, and the pivot for the control of London.

This keep is of course the White Tower, which still impresses even our generation with the squat and square shoulders of Norman strength.  It and Ely are the best remaining expressions of the hardy little men, and it fills one, as does everything Norman, from the Tyne to the Euphrates, with something of awe.  This building, the White Tower, is the Tower itself; the rest is but an accretion, partly designed for defence, but latterly more for habitation.  Its name of the “White” Tower is probably original, though we do not actually find the term “La Blaunche Tour” till near the middle of the fourteenth century.  The presumption that it is the original name is founded upon a much earlier record—­namely, that of 1241, in which not only is it ordered that the tower be repainted white, but in which mention is also made that its original colour had been “worn by the weather and by the long process of time.”  Such a complaint would take one back to the twelfth century, and quite probably to the first building of the Keep.  The object of whitening the walls of the Tower is again explicable by the very reasonable conjecture that it would so serve as a landmark over the long, flat stretches of the lower river.  It was the last conspicuous building against the mass of the great town, and there are many examples of similar landmarks used at the head of estuaries or sea passages.  When these are not spires they are almost invariably white, especially where they are so situated as to catch the southern or the eastern sun.