Rituals, traditions, and ceremonies are all half and parcel of life’s wealthy tapestry. But there should not many ceremonies which were enacted practically each evening for seven centuries, such because the Ceremony of the Keys. In response to Historic Royal Palaces, the gates of the Tower of London have been ritually locked and unlocked since a chilly evening in December 1340, when Edward III was angered to search out that his entrance into the Tower went unchallenged. The constable who was on responsibility was imprisoned for his tardiness, and the king insisted from then on the Tower gates could be locked within the night and opened on the break of daybreak.

The chief Yeoman Warder has to hold the keys and lock the inside and outer gates of the Tower. The warder carrying his conventional crimson garb and Tudor bonnet is flanked in his responsibility by a army escort, and since 1826 the ceremony at all times takes place from seven minutes to 10 p.m. It ends with the warder exclaiming, “God protect King Charles” or whoever is the ruling monarch on the time. The guard on responsibility cries “Amen” because the clock strikes 10, and “The Final Submit” is performed. 

Paranoid and anxious about her safety, the unpopular Queen Mary had the Ceremony of the Keys written down in textual content for posterity. Aside from the duke of Wellington altering the time of the ceremony from sundown to 10 p.m. when he was Tower constable, the ceremony has remained unchanged, even when a German bomb struck the Tower in 1940.