It was an odd place to find an innkeeper.

He had been brought from Bristol to the Tower of London in the spring of 1561, and soon

found himself living in the salt tower, one of the many towers on the site, his was the

one at the southeast corner where the tower bridge meets the River Thames.

He wasn't a guest of the king though, not in the usual sense at least, no Hugh Draper

had been arrested, and during his weeks imprisoned inside those cold stone walls, he noticed the

graffiti left behind by past inmates, carved into the rock with whatever crude implements

they could find, so Hugh Draper began to add his own to the collection.

He carved two pieces of artwork actually, both of which still survive.

The first is an astrological chart, a thick ring with twelve smaller circles forming points

along its path, and a spider's web of criss-crossing lines that connected each one of those to

the others, and around it is what looks like a stone spreadsheet filled with numbers

and symbols, and the second carving was of an astrological globe.

They are odd carvings for a number of reasons, not least of which because they were highly

incriminating.

You see, Hugh Draper had been arrested for sorcery, and although he denied the charges early

on, it's clear from his carvings that he knew much more than he was letting on.

In fact, it's hard to imagine how they could have helped his case.

In the worlds of literature and pop culture, magicians have typically been the hero.

The Merlin to Gandalf and everyone in between, so many of our stories have leaned on the powers

of the Almighty Sorcerer, but that hasn't always been the case.

In fact, for a very long time, those magicians were feared and hated.

...