[Footnote 221: Renard to Charles V., January 29: Rolls House MSS.]

[Footnote 222: A letter from Gardiner to Sir William Petre is in the State Paper Office, part of which he wrote with the cypher open under his eyes in the first heat of the discovery. The breadth and depth of the pen-strokes express the very pulsation of his passion:—

"As I was in hand with other matters," the paragraph runs, "was delivered such letters as in times past I durst not have opened; but now, somewhat heated with these treasons, I waxed bolder, wherein I trust I shall be borne with; wherein hap helpeth me, for they be worth the breaking up an I could wholly decypher them, wherein I will spend somewhat of my leisure, if I can have any. But this appeareth, that the letter written from my Lady Elizabeth to the Queen's Highness, now late in her excuse, is taken a matter worthy to be sent into France; for I have the copy of it in the French Ambassador's packet. I will know what can be done in the decyphering, and to-morrow remit that I cannot do unto you."—Gardiner to Petre: MS. Mary, Domestic, State Paper Office.]

Meantime the herald had not been admitted into Rochester. He had read the queen's message on the bridge (January 27), and, being answered by Wyatt's followers that they required no pardon, for they had done no wrong, he retired. Sir George {p.095} Harper, who was joint commander with Wyatt, stole away the same evening to Gravesend, and presented himself to Norfolk. The rebels, he said, were discontented and irresolute; for himself he desired to accept the queen's pardon, which he was ready to earn by doing service against them; if the duke would advance without delay, he would find no resistance, and Wyatt would fall into his hands.

The London bands arrived the following afternoon (January 28), and Norfolk determined to take Harper's advice. The weather was "very terrible." On Monday morning it blew so hard that no boat could live; Wyatt, therefore, would be unable to escape by the river, and an immediate advance was resolved upon. Sir Thomas Cheyne was coming up from Dover; Lord William Howard was looked for hourly, and Abergavenny was again exerting himself: Lord Cobham had urged the duke to wait a few days, and had told him that he had certain knowledge from Wyatt himself that "the Londoners would not fight:"[223] but Norfolk was confident; the men had assured him of their loyalty; and at four o'clock on Monday afternoon he was on the sloping ground facing towards Rochester, within cannon-shot of the bridge. The duke was himself in front, with Ormond, Jerningham, and eight "field-pieces," which he had brought with him. A group of insurgents were in sight across the water, a gun was placed in position to bear upon them; and the gunner was blowing his match, when Sir Edward Bray galloped up, crying out that the "white coats," as the London men were called, were changing sides. The duke had fallen into a trap which Harper had laid for him. Turning round, he saw Brett, the London captain, with all his men, and with Harper at his side, advancing and shouting, "A Wyatt! a Wyatt! we are all Englishmen!" The first impulse was to turn the gun upon them; the second, and more prudent, was to spring on his horse, and gallop with half a dozen others for his life. His whole force had deserted, and guns, money, baggage, and five hundred of the best troops in London fell into the insurgents' hands, and swelled their ranks.

[Footnote 223: Norfolk to the Council from Gravesend, Sunday, January 28, Monday, January 29: MS. Domestic, Mary, State Paper Office.]

No sooner was the duke gone, than Wyatt in person came out over the bridge. "As many as will tarry with us," he cried, "shall be welcome; as many as will depart, let them go," Very few accepted the latter offer. Three parts, even of Norfolk's private attendants, took service with the rebel leader.

{p.096} The prestige of success decided all who were wavering in the county. Abergavenny was wholly forsaken; Southwell escaped to the court; Cheyne wrote to the council that he was no longer sure of any one; "the abominable treason of those that came with the Duke of Norfolk had infected the whole population."[224] Cobham continued to hold off, but his sons came into Rochester the evening of the duke's flight; and Wyatt sent a message to the father expressing his sorrow that he had been hitherto backward; promising to forgive him, however, and requiring him to be in the camp the next day, when the army would march on London. Cobham still hesitating, two thousand men were at the gates of his house[225] by daybreak the next morning (January 30). He refused to lower the drawbridge, but the chains were cut with a cannon-shot, the gates were blown open, and the rebels were storming in when his servants forced him to surrender. The house was pillaged; an oath was thrust on Cobham that he would join, which he took with the intention of breaking it; and the rebels, perhaps seeing cause to distrust him, carried him off to Wyatt as a prisoner.[226] That night the insurgents rested at Gravesend. The next day (January 31) they reached Dartford. Their actual numbers were insignificant, but their strength was the disaffection of London, where the citizens were too likely to follow the example which had been set at Rochester.

[Footnote 224: "It is a great deal more than strange," he added, "to see the beastliness of the people, to see how earnestly they be bent in this their most devilish enterprise, and will by no means be persuaded the contrary but that it is for the commonweal of all the realm."—Cheyne to the Council: MS. Mary, Domestic, vol. iii.]

[Footnote 225: Cowling Castle, a place already famous in English Reforming history as the residence of Sir John Oldcastle.]

[Footnote 226: He contrived to send a letter to the queen the evening of the day on which his house was taken. After describing the scene, he added: "If your Grace will assemble forces in convenient numbers, they not being above 2000 men, and yet not 500 of them able and good armed men, but rascals and rakehells such as live by spoil, I doubt not but your Grace shall have the victory."—Cobham to the Queen: MS. State Paper Office. But Cobham under-estimated the numbers, and undervalued the composition of Wyatt's forces, perhaps intentionally. Renard, who is generally accurate, says that the rebels at this time amounted to three thousand; Noailles says, twelve or fifteen thousand.]

Mary's situation was now really alarming: she was without money, notwithstanding the Jews; she had no troops; of all her ministers Paget alone was sincerely anxious to do her service; for Gardiner, on the subject of the marriage, was as unwilling as ever. It was rumoured that the King of Denmark intended to unite with the French in support of the revolutionists, and Renard began calmly to calculate that, should this report prove {p.097} true, the queen could not be saved. Pembroke and Clinton offered to raise another force in the city and fight Wyatt; but, so far as Mary could tell, they would be as likely to turn against her as to fight in her defence; and she declined their services. Renard offered Gardiner assistance from the Low Countries—Gardiner replied with extreme coldness that he had no desire to see Flemish soldiers in England—and the council generally were "so strange" in their manner, and so languid in their action, that the ambassador could not assure himself that they were not Wyatt's real instigators. Not a man had been raised to protect the queen, and part of her own guard had been among the deserters at Rochester. She appealed to the honour of the lords to take measure for her personal safety; but they did nothing, and, it seemed, would do nothing; if London rose, they said merely, she must retire to Windsor.

The aspect of affairs was so threatening, that Renard believed that the marriage at least would have to be relinquished. It seemed as if it could be accomplished only with the help of an invading army; and although Mary would agree to any measure which would secure Philip, the presence of foreign troops, as the emperor himself was aware, could only increase the exasperation.[227] The queen's resolution, however, grew with her difficulties. If she could not fight she would not yield; and, taking matters into her own hands, she sent Sir Thomas Cornwallis and Sir Edward Hastings to Dartford, with directions to speak with Wyatt, if possible, alone; to tell him that she "marvelled at his demeanour," "rising as a subject to impeach her marriage;" she was ready to believe, however, that he thought himself acting in the interests of the commonwealth; she would appoint persons to talk over the subject with him, and if it should appear that the marriage would not, as she supposed, be beneficial to the realm, she would sacrifice her wishes.[228]

[Footnote 227: Renard to the Emperor, January 29: Rolls House MSS. The Emperor to Renard, February 4: Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 204.]

[Footnote 228: Instructions to Sir Thomas Cornwallis and Sir Edward Hastings: MS. State Paper Office.]

The message was not strictly honest, for the queen had no real intention of sacrificing anything. She desired merely to gain time; and, should Wyatt refuse, as she expected, she wished to place herself in a better position to appeal to her subjects for help.[229] But the move under this aspect was skilful and successful; when Cornwallis and Hastings discharged their commission, Wyatt replied that he would rather be trusted than {p.098} trust; he would argue the marriage with pleasure, but he required first the custody of the Tower, and of the queen's person, and four of the council must place themselves in his hands as hostages.[230]

[Footnote 229: Renard to the Emperor: Rolls House MSS.]

[Footnote 230: Holinshed; Noailles.]

Had Wyatt, said Noailles, been able to reach London simultaneously with this answer, he would have found the gates open and the whole population eager to give him welcome. To his misfortune he lingered on the way, and the queen had time to use his words against him. The two gentlemen returned indignant at his insolence. The next morning (February 1), Count Egmont waited on Mary to say that he and his companions were at her service, and would stand by her to their death. Perplexed as she was, Egmont said he found her "marvellously firm." The marriage, she felt, must, at all events, be postponed for the present; the prince could not come till the insurrection was at an end; and, while she was grateful for the offer, she not only thought it best to decline the ambassadors' kindness, but she recommended them, if possible, to leave London and the country without delay. Their party was large enough to irritate the people, and too small to be of use. She bade Egmont, therefore, tell the emperor that from the first she had put her trust in God, and that she trusted in Him still; and for themselves, she told them to go at once, taking her best wishes with them. They obeyed. Six Antwerp merchant sloops were in the river below the bridge, waiting to sail. They stole on board, dropped down the tide, and were gone.

The afternoon of the same day the queen herself, with a studied air of dejection,[231] rode through the streets to the Guildhall, attended by Gardiner and the remnant of the guard. In St. Paul's Churchyard she met Pembroke, and slightly bowed as she passed him. Gardiner was observed to stoop to his saddle. The hall was crowded with citizens: some brought there by hatred, some by respect, many by pity, but more by curiosity. When the queen entered she stood forward on the steps, above the throng, and, in her deep man's voice, she spoke to them.[232]

[Footnote 231: Vous, asseurant, sire, comme celluy qui l'a veu, que scaichant la dicte dame aller au diet lieu, je me deliberay en cape de veoir de quelle visaige elle et sa compaignie y alloient; que je congneus estre aussy triste et desploree qu'il se peult penser.—Noailles to the King of France, Feb. 1.]

[Footnote 232: La voce grossa et quasi di huomo.—Giovanni Michele: Ellis, vol. ii.] series ii.]

Her subjects had risen in rebellion against her, she said; she had been told that the cause was her intended marriage with the {p.099} Prince of Spain; and, believing that it was the real cause, she had offered to hear and to respect their objections. Their leader had betrayed in his answer his true motives; he had demanded possession of the Tower of London and of her own person. She stood there, she said, as lawful Queen of England, and she appealed to the loyalty of her great city to save her from a presumptuous rebel, who, under specious pretences, intended to "subdue the laws to his will, and to give scope to rascals and forlorn persons to make general havoc and spoil." As to her marriage, she had supposed that so magnificent an alliance could not have failed to be agreeable to her people. To herself, and, she was not afraid to say, to her council, it seemed to promise high advantage to the commonwealth. Marriage, in itself, was indifferent to her; she had been invited to think of it by the desire of the country that she should have an heir; but she could continue happy in the virgin state in which she had hitherto passed her life. She would call a parliament and the subject should be considered in all its bearings; if, on mature consideration, the Lords and Commons of England should refuse to approve of the Prince of Spain as a fitting husband for her, she promised, on the word of a queen, that she would think of him no more.

The spectacle of her distress won the sympathy of her audience; the boldness of her bearing commanded their respect; the promise of a parliament satisfied, or seemed to satisfy, all reasonable demands: and among the wealthy citizens there was no desire to see London in possession of an armed mob, in whom the Anabaptist leaven was deeply interfused. The speech, therefore, had remarkable success. The queen returned to Westminster, leaving the corporation converted to the prudence of supporting her. Twenty-five thousand men were enrolled the next day for the protection of the crown and the capital; Lord William Howard was associated with the mayor in the command; and Wyatt, who had reached Greenwich on Thursday, and had wasted two days there, uncertain whether he should not cross the river in boats to Blackwall, arrived on Saturday morning at Southwark, to find the gates closed on London Bridge, and the drawbridge flung down into the water.

Noailles, for the first time, believed now that the insurrection would fail. Success or failure, in fact, would turn on the reception which the midland counties had given to the Duke of Suffolk; and of Suffolk authentic news had been brought to London that morning.

{p.100} On the flight of the duke being known at the court, it was supposed immediately that he intended to proclaim his daughter and Guilford Dudley. Rumour, indeed, turned the supposition into fact,[233] and declared that he had called on the country to rise in arms for Queen Jane. But Suffolk's plan was identical with Wyatt's; he had carried with him a duplicate of Wyatt's proclamation, and, accompanied by his brother, he presented himself in the market-place at Leicester on the morning of Monday the 29th. Lord Huntingdon had followed close upon his track from London; but he assured the Mayor of Leicester that the Earl of Huntingdon was coming, not to oppose, but to join with him. No harm was intended to the queen; he was ready to die in her defence; his object was only to save England from the dominion of foreigners.

[Footnote 233: "The Duke has raised evil-disposed persons, minding her Grace's destruction, and to advance the Lady Jane, his daughter, and Guilford Dudley, her husband."—Royal Proclamation: MS. State Paper Office. Printed in the additional Notes to Mr. Nichols's Chronicle of Queen Mary. Baoardo says that the duke actually proclaimed Lady Jane.]

In consequence of these protestations, he was allowed to read his proclamation; the people were indifferent; but he called about him a few scores of his tenants and retainers from his own estates in the country; and, on Tuesday morning, while the insurgents in Kent were attacking Cowling Castle, Suffolk rode out of Leicester, in full armour, at the head of his troops, intending first to move on Coventry, then to take Kenilworth and Warwick, and so to advance on London. The garrison at Warwick had been tampered with, and was reported to be ready to rise. The gates of Coventry he expected to find open. He had sent his proclamation thither the day before, by a servant, and he had friends within the walls who had undertaken to place the town at his disposal.

The state of Coventry was probably the state of most other towns in England. The inhabitants were divided. The mayor and aldermen, the fathers of families, and the men of property, were conservatives, loyal to the queen, to the mass, and to "the cause of order." The young and enthusiastic, supported by others who had good reasons for being in opposition to established authorities, were those who had placed themselves in correspondence with the Duke of Suffolk.

Suffolk's servant (his name was Thomas Rampton), on reaching the town, on Monday evening, made a mistake in the first person to whom he addressed himself, and received a cold answer. Two others of the townsmen, however, immediately {p.101} welcomed him, and told him that "the whole place was at his lord's commandment, except certain of the town council, who feared that, if good fellows had the upper hand, their extremities heretofore should be remembered."[234] They took Rampton into a house, where, presently, another man entered of the same way of thinking, and, in his own eyes, a man of importance. "My lord's quarrel is right well known," this person said, "it is God's quarrel, let him come; let him come, and make no stay, for this town is his own. I say to you assuredly this town is his own. I am it."

[Footnote 234: Rampton's Confession: MS. Domestic. Mary, vol. iii. State Paper Office.]

It was now night; no time was to be lost, the townsmen said. They urged Rampton to return at once to Suffolk, and hasten his movements. They would themselves read the proclamation at the market-cross forthwith, and raise the people. Rampton, who had ridden far, and was weary, wished to wait till the morning; if they were so confident of success, a few hours could make no difference: but it appeared shortly that the "good fellows" in Coventry were not exclusively under the influence of piety and patriotism. If a rising commenced in the darkness, it was admitted that "undoubted spoil and peradventure destruction of many rich men would ensue," and with transactions of this kind the duke's servant was unwilling to connect himself.

Thus the hours wore away, and no resolution was arrived at; and, in the meantime, the town council had received a warning to be on their guard. Before daybreak the constables were on the alert, the decent citizens took possession of the gates, and the conspirators had lost their opportunity. In the afternoon Suffolk arrived with a hundred horse under the walls, but there was no admission for him. Whilst he was hesitating what course to pursue, a messenger came in to say that the Earl of Huntingdon was at Warwick. The plot for the revolt of the garrison had been detected, and the whole country was on the alert. The people had no desire to see the Spaniards in England; but sober, quiet farmers and burgesses would not rise at the call of the friend of Northumberland, and assist in bringing back the evil days of anarchy.

The Greys had now only to provide for their personal safety.

Suffolk had an estate a few miles distant, called Astley Park, to which the party retreated from Coventry. There the duke shared such money as he had with him among his men, and bade them shift for themselves. Lord Thomas Grey changed coats {p.102} with a servant, and rode off to Wales to join Sir James Crofts. Suffolk himself, who was ill, took refuge with his brother, Lord John, in the cottage of one of his gamekeepers, where they hoped to remain hidden till the hue and cry should be over, and they could escape abroad.

The cottage was considered insecure. Two bowshots south of Astley Church there stood in the park an old decaying tree, in the hollow of which the father of Lady Jane Grey concealed himself; and there, for two winter days and a night, he was left without food. A proclamation had been put out by Huntingdon for Suffolk's apprehension (January 30), and the keeper, either tempted by the reward, or frightened by the menace against all who should give him shelter, broke his trust—a rare example of disloyalty—and going to Warwick Castle, undertook to betray his master's hiding-place. A party of troopers were despatched, with the keeper for a guide; and, on arriving at Astley, they found that the duke, unable to endure the cold and hunger longer, had crawled out of the tree, and was warming himself by the cottage fire. Lord John was discovered buried under some bundles of hay.[235] They were carried off at once to the Tower, whither Lord Thomas Grey and Sir James Crofts, who had failed as signally in Wales, soon after followed them.[236]

[Footnote 235: Renard to the Emperor: Rolls House MSS.]

[Footnote 236: I follow Baoardo in the account of the duke's capture. Renard says that he was found in the tree by a little dog: "qu'a este grand commencement du miracle pour le succes prospere des affaires de la dicte dame."—Renard to the Emperor, February 8: MS.]

The account of his confederates' failure saluted Wyatt on his arrival in Southwark, on the 3rd of February. The intelligence was being published, at the moment, in the streets of London; Wyatt himself, at the same time, was proclaimed traitor, and a reward of a hundred pounds was offered for his capture, dead or alive. The peril, however, was far from over; Wyatt replied to the proclamation by wearing his name, in large letters, upon his cap; the success of the queen's speech in the city irritated the council, who did not choose to sit still under the imputation of having approved of the Spanish marriage. They declared everywhere, loudly and angrily, that they had not approved of it, and did not approve; in the city itself public feeling again wavered, and fresh parties of the train-bands crossed the water and deserted. The behaviour of Wyatt's followers gave the lie to the queen's charges against them: the prisons in Southwark were not opened; property was respected scrupulously; the only attempt at injury was at Winchester House, and there it {p.103} was instantly repressed; the inhabitants of the Borough entertained them with warm hospitality; and the queen, notwithstanding her efforts, found herself as it were besieged, in her principal city, by a handful of commoners, whom no one ventured, or no one could be trusted, to attack. So matters continued through Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. The lawyers at Westminster Hall pleaded in harness, the judges wore harness under their robes; Doctor Weston sang mass in harness before the queen; tradesmen attended in harness behind their counters. The metropolis, on both sides of the water, was in an attitude of armed expectation, yet there was no movement, no demonstration on either side of popular feeling. The ominous strangeness of the situation appalled even Mary herself.[237]

[Footnote 237: Noailles.]

By this time (February 5) the intercepted letter of Noailles had been decyphered. It proved, if more proof was wanted, the correspondence between the ambassador and the conspirators; it explained the object of the rising—the queen was to be dethroned in favour of her sister; and it was found, also, though names were not mentioned, that the plot had spread far upwards among the noblemen by whom Mary was surrounded. Evidence of Elizabeth's complicity it did not contain; while, to Gardiner's mortification, it showed that Courtenay, in his confessions to himself, had betrayed the guilt of others, but had concealed part of his own. In an anxiety to shield him the chancellor pronounced the cypher of Courtenay's name to be unintelligible. The queen placed the letter in the hands of Renard, by whom it was instantly read, and the chancellor's humour was not improved; Mary had the mortification of feeling that she was herself the last object of anxiety either to him or to any of her council; though Wyatt was at the gates of London, the council could only spend the time in passionate recriminations; Paget blamed Gardiner for his religious intolerance; Gardiner blamed Paget for having advised the marriage; some exclaimed against Courtenay, some against Elizabeth; but, of acting, all alike seemed incapable. If the queen was in danger, the council said, she might fly to Windsor, or to Calais, or she might go to the Tower. "Whatever happens," she exclaimed to Renard, "I am the wife of the Prince of Spain; crown, rank, life, all shall go before I will take any other husband."[238]

[Footnote 238: Renard to Charles V.: Rolls House MSS. February 5.]

The position, however, could not be of long continuance. {p.104} Could Wyatt once enter London, he assured himself of success; but the gates on the bridge continued closed. Cheyne and Southwell had collected a body of men on whom they could rely, and were coming up behind from Rochester. Wyatt desired to return and fight them, and then cross the water at Greenwich, as had been before proposed; but his followers feared that he meant to escape; a backward movement would not be permitted, and his next effort was to ascertain whether the passage over the bridge could be forced.

London Bridge was then a long, narrow street. The gate was at the Southwark extremity; the drawbridge was near the middle. On Sunday or Monday night Wyatt scaled the leads of the gatehouse, climbed into a window, and descended the stairs into the lodge. The porter and his wife were nodding over the fire. The rebel leader bade them, on their lives, be still, and stole along in the darkness to the chasm from which the drawbridge had been cut away. There, looking across the black gulf where the river was rolling below, he saw the dusky mouths of four gaping cannon, and beyond them, in the torch-light, Lord Howard himself, keeping watch with the guard: neither force nor skill could make a way into the city by London Bridge.

The course which he should follow was determined for him. The lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Brydges, a soldier and a Catholic, had looked over the water with angry eyes at the insurgents collected within reach of his guns, and had asked the queen for permission to fire upon them. The queen, afraid of provoking the people, had hitherto refused; on the Monday, however, a Tower boat, passing the Southwark side of the water, was hailed by Wyatt's sentries; the watermen refused to stop, the sentries fired, and one of the men in the boat was killed. The next morning (February 6) (whether permission had been given at last, or not, was never known), the guns on the White Tower, the Devil's Tower, and all the bastions, were loaded and aimed, and notice was sent over that the fire was about to open. The inhabitants addressed themselves, in agitation, to Wyatt; and Wyatt, with a sudden resolution, half felt to be desperate, resolved to march for Kingston Bridge, cross the Thames, and come back on London. His friends in the city promised to receive him, could he reach Ludgate by daybreak on Wednesday.

On Tuesday morning, therefore, Shrove Tuesday, which the queen had hoped to spend more happily than in facing an army of insurgents, Wyatt, accompanied by not more than fifteen hundred men, pushed out of Southwark. He had cannon with {p.105} him, which delayed his march, but at four in the afternoon he reached Kingston. Thirty feet of the bridge were broken away, and a guard of three hundred men were on the other side; but the guard fled after a few rounds from the guns, and Wyatt, leaving his men to refresh themselves in the town, went to work to repair the passage. A row of barges lay on the opposite bank; three sailors swam across, attached ropes to them, and towed them over; and, the barges being moored where the bridge was broken, beams and planks were laid across them, and a road was made of sufficient strength to bear the cannon and the waggons.

By eleven o'clock at night the river was crossed, and the march was resumed. The weather was still wild, the roads miry and heavy, and through the winter night the motley party plunged along. The Rochester men had, most of them, gone home, and those who remained were the London deserters, gentlemen who had compromised themselves too deeply to hope for pardon, or fanatics, who believed they were fighting the Lord's battle, and some of the Protestant clergy. Ponet, the late Bishop of Winchester, was with them; William Thomas, the late clerk of the council; Sir George Harper, Anthony Knyvet, Lord Cobham's sons, Pelham, who had been a spy of Northumberland's on the continent,[239] and others more or less conspicuous in the worst period of the late reign.

[Footnote 239: The Regent Mary to the Ambassadors in England: Granvelle Papers, vol. iv.]

From the day that Wyatt came to Southwark the whole guard had been under arms at Whitehall, and a number of them, to the agitation of the court ladies, were stationed in the queen's ante-chamber. But the guard was composed of dangerous elements. Sir Humfrey Radcliff, the lieutenant, was a "favourer of the gospel;"[240] and the "Hot Gospeller" himself, on his recovery from his fever, had returned to his duties.[241] No {p.106} additional precautions had been taken, nor does it seem that, on Wyatt's departure, his movements were watched. Kingston Bridge having been broken, his immediate approach was certainly unlooked for; nor was it till past midnight that information came to the palace that the passage had been forced, and that the insurgents were coming directly back upon London. Between two and three in the morning the queen was called from her bed. Gardiner, who had been, with others of the council, arguing with her in favour of Courtenay the preceding day, was in waiting; he told her that her barge was at the stairs to carry her up the river, and she must take shelter instantly at Windsor.

[Footnote 240: Underhill's Narrative.]

[Footnote 241: Underhill, however, was too notorious a person to be allowed to remain on duty at such a time of danger.

"When Wyatt was come to Southwark," he says, "the pensioners were commanded to watch in armour that night at the Court.... After supper, I put on my armour, as the rest did, for we were appointed to watch all the night. So, being all armed, we came up into the chamber of presence with our pole-axes in our hands, wherewith the ladies were very fearful. Some lamenting, crying, and wringing their hands, said, Alas! there is some great mischief toward: we shall all be destroyed this night. What a sight is this, to see the Queen's chamber full of armed men: the like was never seen nor heard of! Mr. Norris, chief usher of Queen Mary's privy chamber, was appointed to call the watch to see if any were lacking; unto whom, Moore, the clerk of our check, delivered the book of our names; and when he came to my name, What, said he, what doth he here? Sir, said the clerk, he is here ready to serve as the rest be. Nay, by God's body, said he, that heretic shall not watch here. Give me a pen. So he struck my name out of the book."]

Without disturbing herself, the queen sent for Renard. Shall I go or stay? she asked.

Unless your majesty desire to throw away your crown, Renard answered, you will remain here till the last extremity; your flight will be known, the city will rise, seize the Tower, and release the prisoners; the heretics will massacre the priests, and Elizabeth will be proclaimed queen.

The lords were divided. Gardiner insisted again that she must and should go. The others were uncertain, or inclined to the opinion of Renard. At last Mary said that she would be guided by Pembroke and Clinton. If those two would undertake to stand by her, she would remain and see out the struggle.[242]

[Footnote 242: Renard to Charles V., February 8: Rolls House MSS.]

They were not present, and were sent for on the spot. Pembroke for weeks past had certainly wavered; Lord Thomas Grey believed at one time that he had gained him over, and to the last felt assured of his neutrality. Happily for Mary, happily, it must be said, for England—for the Reformation was not a cause to be won by such enterprises as that of Sir Thomas Wyatt—he decided on supporting the queen, and promised to defend her with his life. At four o'clock in the morning drums went round the city, calling the train-bands to an instant muster at Charing Cross. Pembroke's conduct determined the young lords and gentlemen about the court, who with their servants were swiftly mounted and under arms; and by eight, more than ten thousand men were stationed along the ground, then an open field, which slopes from Piccadilly to Pall Mall. The road or causeway on which Wyatt was expected to advance ran nearly {p.107} on the site of Piccadilly itself. An old cross stood near the head of St. James's Street, where guns were placed; and that no awkward accident like that at Rochester might happen on the first collision, the gentlemen, who formed four squadrons of horse, were pushed forwards towards Hyde Park Corner.

Wyatt, who ought to have been at the gate of the city two hours before, had been delayed in the meantime by the breaking down of a gun in the heavy road at Brentford. Brett, the captain of the city deserters, Ponet, Harper, and others, urged Wyatt to leave the gun where it lay and keep his appointment. Wyatt, however, insisted on waiting till the carriage could be repaired, although in the eyes of every one but himself the delay was obvious ruin. Harper, seeing him obstinate, stole away a second time to gain favour for himself by carrying news to the court. Ponet, unambitious of martyrdom, told him he would pray God for his success, and, advising Brett to shift for himself, made away with others towards the sea and Germany.[243] It was nine o'clock before Wyatt brought the draggled remnant of his force, wet, hungry, and faint with their night march, up the hill from Knightsbridge. Near Hyde Park Corner a lane turned off; and here Pembroke had placed a troop of cavalry. The insurgents straggled on without order. When half of them had passed, the horse dashed out, and cut them in two, and all who were behind were dispersed or captured. Wyatt, caring now only to press forward, kept his immediate followers together, and went straight on. The queen's guns opened, and killed three of his men; but, lowering his head, he dashed at them and over them; then, turning to the right, to avoid the train-bands, he struck down towards St. James's, where his party again separated. Knyvet and the young Cobhams, leaving St. James's to their left, crossed the park to Westminster. Wyatt went right along the present Pall Mall, past the line of the citizens. They had but to move a few steps to intercept his passage, close in, and take him; but not a man advanced, not a hand was lifted; where the way was narrow they drew aside to let him pass. At Charing Cross Sir John Gage was stationed, with part of the guard, some horse, and among them, Courtenay, who in the morning had been heard to say he would not obey orders; he was as good a man as Pembroke. As Wyatt came up Courtenay turned his horse towards Whitehall, and began to move off, followed by Lord Worcester. "Fie! my lord," Sir Thomas {p.108} Cornwallis cried to him, "is this the action of a gentleman?"[244] But deaf, or heedless, or treacherous, he galloped off, calling Lost, lost! all is lost! and carried panic to the court. The guard had broken at his flight, and came hurrying behind him. Some cried that Pembroke had played false. Shouts of treason rung through the palace. The queen, who had been watching from the palace gallery, alone retained her presence of mind. If others durst not stand the trial against the traitors, she said, she herself would go out into the field and try the quarrel, and die with those that would serve her.[245]

[Footnote 243: Letter of William Markham: Tanner MSS. Bodleian Library. Compare Stow.]

[Footnote 244: Renard to Charles V., February 8: Rolls House MSS.]

[Footnote 245: Holinshed.]

At this moment Knyvet and the Cobhams, who had gone round by the old palace, came by the gates as the fugitive guard were struggling in. Infinite confusion followed. Gage was rolled in the dirt, and three of the judges with him. The guard shrunk away into the offices and kitchens to hide themselves. But Knyvet's men made no attempt to enter. They contented themselves with shooting a few arrows, and then hurried on to Charing Cross to rejoin Wyatt. At Charing Cross, however, their way was now closed by a company of archers, who had been sent back by Pembroke to protect the court. Sharp fighting followed, and the cries rose so loud as to be heard on the leads of the White Tower. At last the leaders forced their way up the Strand; the rest of the party were cut up, dispersed, or taken.[246]

[Footnote 246: The dress of the Londoners who came with Wyatt being the city uniform, they were distinguished by the dirt upon their legs from their night march. The cry of Pembroke's men in the fight was "Down with the daggle-tails!"]

Wyatt himself, meanwhile, followed by three hundred men, had hurried on through lines of men who still opened to give him passage. He passed Temple Bar, along Fleet Street, and reached Ludgate. The gate was open as he approached, when some one seeing a number of men coming up, exclaimed, "These be Wyatt's antients." Muttered curses were heard among the bystanders; but Lord Howard was on the spot; the gates, notwithstanding the murmurs, were instantly closed; and, when Wyatt knocked, Howard's voice answered, "Avaunt! traitor; thou shalt not come in here." "I have kept touch," Wyatt exclaimed; but his enterprise was hopeless now. He sat down upon a bench outside the Belle Sauvage Yard. His followers scattered from him among the by-lanes and streets; and, of the three hundred, twenty-four alone remained, among {p.109} whom were now Knyvet and one of the young Cobhams. With these few he turned at last, in the forlorn hope that the train-bands would again open to let him pass. Some of Pembroke's horse were coming up. He fought his way through them to Temple Bar, where a herald cried, "Sir, ye were best to yield; the day is gone against you; perchance ye may find the queen merciful." Sir Maurice Berkeley was standing near him on horseback, to whom, feeling that further resistance was useless, he surrendered his sword; and Berkeley, to save him from being cut down in the tumult, took him up upon his horse. Others in the same way took up Knyvet and Cobham, Brett and two more. The six prisoners were carried through the Strand back to Westminster, the passage through the city being thought dangerous; and from Whitehall Stairs, Mary herself looking on from a window of the palace, they were borne off in a barge to the Tower.

The queen had triumphed, triumphed through her own resolution, and would now enjoy the fruits of victory.

Had Wyatt succeeded, Mary would have lost her husband and her crown; and had the question been no more than a personal one, England could have well dispensed both with her and Philip. But Elizabeth would have ascended a throne under the shadow of treason. The Protestants would have come back to power in the thoughtless vindictiveness of exasperated and successful revolutionists; and the problem of the Reformation would have been more hard than ever of a reasonable solution. The fanatics had made their effort, and they had failed; they had shaken the throne, but they had not overthrown it; the queen's turn was come, and, as the danger had been great, so was the resentment. She had Renard at one ear protesting that, while these turbulent spirits were uncrushed, the precious person of the prince could not be trusted to her. She had Gardiner, who, always pitiless towards heretics, was savage at the frustration of his own schemes. Renard in the closet, Gardiner in the pulpit, alike told her that she must show no more mercy.[247] On Ash Wednesday evening, after Wyatt's {p.110} surrender, a proclamation forbade all persons to shelter the fugitive insurgents under pain of death. The "poor caitiffs" were brought out of the houses where they had hidden themselves, and were given up by hundreds. Huntingdon came in on Saturday with Suffolk and his brothers. Sir James Crofts, Sir Henry Isly, and Sir Gawen Carew followed. The common prisons overflowed into the churches, where crowds of wretches were huddled together till the gibbets were ready for their hanging; the Tower wards were so full that Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were packed into a single cell; and all the living representatives of the families of Grey and Dudley, except two young girls, were now within the Tower walls, sentenced, or soon to be sentenced, to death.

[Footnote 247: "On Sunday, the 11th of February, the Bishop of Winchester preached in the chapel before the queen." "The preachers for the seven years last past, he said, by dividing of words and other their own additions, had brought in many errours detestable unto the Church of Christ." "He axed a boon of the Queen's Highness, that, like as she had beforetime extended her mercy particularly and privately, [and] so through her lenity and gentleness much conspiracy and open rebellion was grown ... she would now be merciful to the body of the commonwealth and conservation thereof, which could not be unless the rotten and hurtful members thereof were cut off and consumed."—Chronicle of Queen Mary, p. 54.]

The queen's blood is up at last, Renard wrote exultingly to the emperor on the 8th of February;[248] "the Duke of Suffolk, Lord Thomas Grey, and Sir James Crofts have written to ask for mercy, but they will find none; their heads will fall, and so will Courtenay's and Elizabeth's. I have told the queen that she must be especially prompt with these two. We have nothing now to hope for except that France will break the peace, and then all will be well." On the 12th of February the ambassador was still better satisfied. Elizabeth had been sent for, and was on her way to London. A rupture with France seemed inevitable, and as to clemency, there was no danger of it. "The queen," he said, "had told him that Anne of Cleves was implicated;" but for himself he was sure that the two centres of all past and all possible conspiracies were Elizabeth and Courtenay, and that when their heads, and the heads of the Greys, were once off their shoulders, she would have nothing more to fear. The prisoners were heretics to a man; she had a fair plea to despatch them, and she would then settle the country as she pleased;[249] "The house of Suffolk would soon be extinct."

[Footnote 248: Rolls House MSS.]

[Footnote 249: Renard to Charles V., February 12: Rolls House MSS.]

The house of Suffolk would be extinct: that too, or almost that, had been decided on. Jane Grey was guiltless of this last commotion; her name had not been so much as mentioned among the insurgents; but she was guilty of having been once called queen, and Mary, who before had been generously deaf to the emperor's advice, and to Renard's arguments, yielded in her present humour. Philip was beckoning in the distance; and while Jane Grey lived, Philip, she was again and again assured, must remain for ever separated from her arms.

{p.111} Jane Grey, therefore, was to die—her execution was resolved upon the day after the victory; and the first intention was to put her to death on the Friday immediately approaching. In killing her body, however, Mary desired to have mercy on her soul; and she sent the message of death (February 9) by the excellent Feckenham, afterwards Abbot of Westminster, who was to bring her, if possible, to obedience to the Catholic faith.

Feckenham, a man full of gentle and tender humanity, felt to the bottom of his soul the errand on which he was despatched. He felt as a Catholic priest—but he felt also as a man.

On admission to Lady Jane's room he told her that she was to die the next morning, and he told her, also, for what reason the queen had selected him to communicate the sentence.

She listened calmly. The time was short, she said; too short to be spent in theological discussion; which, if Feckenham would permit, she would decline.

Believing, or imagining that he ought to believe, that, if she died unreconciled, she was lost, Feckenham hurried back to the queen to beg for delay; and the queen, moved with his entreaties, respited the execution till Monday, giving him three more days to pursue his labour. But Lady Jane, when he returned to her, scarcely appreciated the favour; she had not expected her words to be repeated, she said; she had given up all thoughts of the world, and she would take her death patiently whenever her majesty desired.[250]

[Footnote 250: Baoardo. The writer of the Chronicle of Queen Mary, says, "She was appointed to have been put to death on Friday, but was stayed—for what cause is not known." Baoardo supplies the explanation.]

Feckenham, however, still pressed his services, and courtesy to a kind and anxious old man forbade her to refuse them. He remained with her to the end; and certain arguments followed on faith and justification, and the nature of sacraments; a record of which may be read by the curious in Foxe.[251] Lady Jane was wearied without being convinced. The tedium of the discussion was relieved, perhaps, by the now more interesting account which she gave to her unsuccessful confessor of the misfortune which was bringing her to her death.[252] The night before she suffered she wrote a few sentences of advice to her sister on the blank leaf of a New Testament. To her father, knowing his weakness, and knowing, too, how he would be worked upon to imitate the recantation of Northumberland, {p.112} she sent a letter of exquisite beauty, in which the exhortations of a dying saint are tempered with the reverence of a daughter for her father.[253]

[Footnote 251: Vol. vi. pp. 415-417.]

[Footnote 252: The story told by Baoardo, to whom, it would seem, Feckenham related it.]

[Footnote 253: Foxe, vol. vi.]

The iron-hearted Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Brydges, had been softened by the charms of his prisoner, and begged for some memorial of her in writing. She wrote in a manual of English prayers the following words:—

"Forasmuch as you have desired so simple a woman to write in so worthy a book, good Master Lieutenant, therefore I shall, as a friend, desire you, and as a Christian, require you, to call upon God to incline your heart to his laws, to quicken you in his way, and not to take the word of truth utterly out of your mouth. Live still to die, that by death you may purchase eternal life, and remember how Methuselah, who, as we read in the Scriptures, was the longest liver that was of a man, died at the last; for, as the Preacher saith, there is a time to be born and a time to die; and the day of death is better than the day of our birth. Yours, as the Lord knoweth, as a friend, Jane Dudley."[254]

[Footnote 254: Chronicle of Queen Mary, p. 57, note. In the same manual are a few words in Guilford Dudley's hand, addressed to Suffolk, and a few words also addressed to Suffolk by Lady Jane. Mr. Nichols supposes that the book (it is still extant among the Harleian MSS.) was used as a means of communicating with the duke when direct intercourse was unpermitted. If this conjecture is right, Lady Jane's letter, perhaps, never reached her father at all. There is some difficulty about the memorial which the Lieutenant of the Tower obtained from her. Baoardo says, that she gave him a book, in which she had written a few words in Greek, Latin, and English.

"La Greca era tale. La morte dara la pena al mio corpo del fallo ma la mia anima giustificara inanzi al conspetto di Dio la innocenza mia.

"La Latina diceva. Se la giustitia ha luogo nel corpo mio l'anima mia l'havera nella misericordia di Dio.

"La Inglese. Il fallo e degno di morte ma il modo della mia ignoranza doueva meritar pieta e excusatione appresso il mondo e alle leggi."]

Her husband was also to die, and to die before her. The morning on which they were to suffer he begged for a last interview and a last embrace. It was left to herself to consent or refuse. If, she replied, the meeting would benefit either of their souls, she would see him with pleasure; but, in her own opinion, it would only increase their trial. They would meet soon enough in the other world.

He died, therefore, without seeing her again. She saw him once alive as he was led to the scaffold, and again as he returned a mutilated corpse in the death-cart. It was not wilful cruelty. The officer in command had forgotten that the ordinary road led past her window. But the delicate girl of seventeen was as {p.113} masculine in her heart as in her intellect. When her own turn arrived, Sir John Brydges led her down to the green; her attendants were in an agony of tears, but her own eyes were dry. She prayed quietly till she reached the foot of the scaffold, when she turned to Feckenham, who still clung to her side. "Go now," she said; "God grant you all your desires, and accept my own warm thanks for your attentions to me; although, indeed, those attentions have tried me more than death can now terrify me."[255] She sprung up the steps, and said briefly that she had broken the law in accepting the crown; but as to any guilt of intention, she wrung her hands, and said she washed them clean of it in innocency before God and man. She entreated her hearers to bear her witness that she died a true Christian woman; that she looked to be saved only by the mercy of God and the merits of his Son: and she begged for their prayers as long as she was alive. Feckenham had still followed her, notwithstanding his dismissal. "Shall I say the Miserere psalm?" she said to him.[256] When it was done, she let down her hair with her attendants' help, and uncovered her neck. The rest may be told in the words of the chronicler:—

[Footnote 255: Andate: che nostro Signore Dio vi contenti d'ogni vostro desiderio, e siate sempre infinitamente ringratiato della compagnia che m'havete fatta avenga che da quella sia stata molto piu noiata che hora non mi spaventa la morte.—Baoardo.]

[Footnote 256: The 51st: "Have mercy on me, oh Lord, after thy goodness."]

"The hangman kneeled down and asked her forgiveness, whom she forgave most willingly. Then he willed her to stand upon the straw, which doing, she saw the block. Then she said, I pray you despatch me quickly. Then she kneeled down, saying, Will you take it off before I lay me down? and the hangman answered No, Madam. She tied a kerchief about her eyes; then, feeling for the block, she said, What shall I do; where is it? One of the bystanders guiding her thereunto, she laid her head down upon the block, and stretched forth her body, and said, Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit. And so ended."[257]

[Footnote 257: Chronicle of Queen Mary, pp. 58, 59.]

The same day Courtenay was sent to the Tower, and a general slaughter commenced of the common prisoners. To spread the impression, gibbets were erected all over London, and by Thursday evening eighty or a hundred bodies[258] were dangling {p.114} in St. Paul's Churchyard, on London Bridge, in Fleet Street, and at Charing Cross, in Southwark and Westminster. At all cross-ways and in all thoroughfares, says Noailles, "the eye was met with the hideous spectacle of hanging men;" while Brett and a fresh batch of unfortunates were sent to suffer at Rochester and Maidstone. Day after day, week after week, commissioners sat at Westminster or at the Guildhall trying prisoners, who passed with a short shrift to the gallows. The Duke of Suffolk was sentenced on the 17th; on the 23rd he followed his daughter, penitent for his rebellion, but constant, as she had implored him to be, in his faith. His two brothers and Lord Cobham's sons were condemned. William Thomas, to escape torture, stabbed himself, but recovered to die at Tyburn. Lord Cobham himself, who was arrested notwithstanding his defence of his house, Wyatt, Sir James Crofts, Sir William St. Lowe, Sir Nicholas Arnold, Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, and, as the council expressed it, "a world more," were in various prisons waiting their trials. Those who were suspected of being in Elizabeth's confidence were kept with their fate impending over them—to be tempted either with hopes of pardon, or by the rack, to betray their secrets.[259]

[Footnote 258: Renard says: "A hundred were hanged in London and a hundred in Kent." Stow says: "Eighty in London and twenty-two in Kent." The Chronicle of Queen Mary does not mention the number of executions in London, but agrees with Stow on the number sent to Kent. The smaller estimate, in these cases, is generally the right one.]

[Footnote 259: On Sunday the 11th of February, the day on which he exhorted the queen to severity from the pulpit, Gardiner wrote to Sir William Petre, "To-morrow, at your going to the Tower, it shall be good ye be earnest with one little Wyatt there prisoner, who by all likelihood can tell all. He is but a bastard, and hath no substance; and it might stand with the Queen's Highness's pleasure there were no great account to be made whether ye pressed him to say truth by sharp punishment or promise of life."—MS. Domestic, Mary, vol. iii. State Paper Office. I do not know to whom Gardiner referred in the words "little Wyatt."]

But, sooner or later, the queen was determined that every one who could be convicted should die,[260] and beyond, and above them all, Elizabeth. Elizabeth's illness, which had been supposed to have been assumed, was real, and as the feeling of the people towards her compelled the observance of the forms of justice and decency, physicians were sent from the court to attend upon her. On the 18th of February they reported that she could be moved with safety; and, escorted by Lord William Howard, Sir Edward Hastings, and Sir Thomas Cornwallis, she was brought by slow stages, of six or seven miles a day, to London.[261] Renard had described her to the emperor as probably enceinte through some vile intrigue, and crushed with remorse and disappointment.[262]

[Footnote 260: Renard to the Emperor: Rolls House MSS.]

[Footnote 261: The Order of my Lady Elizabeth's Grace's Voyage to the Court: MS. Mary, Domestic vol. iii. State Paper Office.]

[Footnote 262: Renard to the Emperor: February 17: Rolls House MSS.]

{p.115} To give the lie to all such slanders, when she entered the city, the princess had the covering of her litter thrown back; she was dressed in white, her face was pale from her illness, but the expression was lofty, scornful, and magnificent.[263] Crowds followed her along the streets to Westminster. The queen, when she arrived at Whitehall, refused to see her; a suite of rooms was assigned for her confinement in a corner of the palace, from which there was no egress except by passing the guard, and there, with short attendance, she waited the result of Gardiner's investigations. Wyatt, by vague admissions, had already partially compromised her, and, on the strength of his words, and the discovery of the copy of her letter in the packet of Noailles, she would have gone direct to the Tower, had the lords permitted. The emperor urged instant and summary justice both on her and on Courtenay; the irritation, should irritation arise, could be allayed afterwards by an amnesty.[264] The lords, however, insisted obstinately on the forms of law, the necessity of witnesses, and of a trial; and Renard watched their unreasonable humours with angry misgivings. It was enough, he said, that the conspiracy was undertaken in Elizabeth's interests; if she escaped now, the queen would never be secure.[265] In fact, while Elizabeth lived, the prince could not venture among the wild English spirits, and Charles was determined that the marriage should not escape him.

[Footnote 263: "Pour desguyser le regret qu'elle a," says Renard, unable to relinquish his first conviction.]

[Footnote 264: Renard was instructed to exhort the queen: "Que l'execution et chastoy de ceulx qui le meritent se face tost; usant a l'endroit de Madame Elizabeth et de Cortenay comme elle verra convenir a sa seurete, pour apres user de clemence en l'endroit de ceulx qu'il luy semblera, afin de tost reassurer le surplus."—The Emperor to Renard: Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. pp. 224, 225.]

[Footnote 265: Il est certain l'enterprinse estoit en sa faveur. Et certes, sire, si pendant que l'occasion s'adonne elle ne la punyt et Cortenay, elle ne sera jamais asseuree.—Renard to Charles V.: Tytler, vol. ii. p. 311.]

As soon as the rebellion was crushed, Egmont, attended by Count Horn, returned to complete his work. He brought with him the dispensations in regular form. He brought also a fresh and pressing entreaty that Elizabeth should be sacrificed. An opportunity had been placed in the queen's hand, which her duty to the church required that she should not neglect; and Egmont was directed to tell her that the emperor, in trusting his son in a country where his own power could not protect him, relied upon her honour not to neglect any step essential to his security.[266] Egmont gave his message. The unhappy queen {p.116} required no urging; she protested to Renard, that she could neither rest nor sleep, so ardent was her desire for the prince's safe arrival.[267] Courtenay, if necessary, she could kill; against him the proofs were complete; as to Elizabeth, she knew her guilt; the evidence was growing; and she would insist to the council that justice should be done.

[Footnote 266: Renard to the Emperor, March 8: Rolls House MSS.]

[Footnote 267: La quelle me respondit et afferme qu'elle ne dort ny repose pour le soucy elle tient de la seure venue de son Altesse.—Renard to the Emperor: Tytler, vol. ii.]

About the marriage itself, the lords had by this time agreed to yield. Courtenay's pretensions could no longer be decently advanced, and Gardiner, abandoning a hopeless cause, and turning his attention to the restoration of the church, would consent to anything, if, on his side, he might emancipate the clergy from the control of the civil power, and re-establish persecution. Two factions, distinctly marked, were now growing in the council—the party of the statesmen, composed of Paget, Sussex, Arundel, Pembroke, Lord William Howard, the Marquis of Winchester, Sir Edward Hastings, and Cornwallis: the party of the church, composed of Gardiner, Petre, Rochester, Gage, Jerningham, and Bourne. Divided on all other questions, the rival parties agreed only no longer to oppose the coming of Philip. The wavering few had been decided by the presents and promises which Egmont brought with him from Charles. Pensions of two thousand crowns had been offered to, and were probably accepted by the Earls of Pembroke, Arundel, Derby, and Shrewsbury; pensions of a thousand crowns were given to Sussex, Darcy, Winchester, Rochester, Petre, and Cheyne; pensions of five hundred crowns to Southwell, Waldegrave, Inglefield, Wentworth, and Grey;[268] ten thousand crowns were distributed among the officers and gentlemen who had distinguished themselves against Wyatt. The pensions were large, but, as Renard observed, when Charles seemed to hesitate, several of the recipients were old, and would soon die; and, as to the rest, things in England were changing from day to day, and means of some kind would easily be found to put an early end to the payments.[269]

[Footnote 268: Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 267.]

[Footnote 269: Renard to Charles V., March 8: Rolls House MSS.]

Unanimity having been thus secured, on the day of Egmont's arrival Renard demanded an audience of the lords, and in the queen's presence requested their opinion whether the condition of England allowed the completion of the contract. The life of the prince of Spain was of great importance to Europe; should {p.117} they believe in their hearts that he would be in danger, there was still time to close the negotiation. The rebellion having broken out and having failed, the lords replied that there was no longer any likelihood of open violence. Arundel hinted, again, that the prince must bring his own cook and butler with him;[270] but he had nothing else to fear, if he could escape the French cruisers.

[Footnote 270: Arundel nous dit qu'il convenoit que son alteze amena ses cuyseniers, sommeliers du cave, et autres officiers pour son bouche, que quant aux autres luy y pourvoyeroit selon les coustumes d'Angleterre.—Renard to Charles V.: Rolls House MSS.]

These assurances, combined with the queen's secret promises about Elizabeth, were held sufficient; and on the 6th of March, at three o'clock in the afternoon, the ambassadors were conducted by Pembroke into the presence chamber. The queen, kneeling before the sacrament, called it to witness that, in consenting to the alliance with the Prince of Spain, she was moved by no carnal concupiscence, but only by her zeal for the welfare of her realm and subjects; and then, rising up, with the bystanders all in tears, she gave her hand to Egmont as Philip's representative. The blessing was pronounced by Gardiner, and the proxy marriage was completed.[271] The prince was to be sent for without delay, and Southampton was chosen as the port at which he should disembark, "being in the country of the Bishop of Winchester," where the people were, for the most part, good Catholics.

[Footnote 271: Puis par la main de l'Evesque de Winchester les promesses et paroles de praesenti, furent dictes et prononcees intelligiblement par la diet Egmont seul et la dicte Dame.—Ibid. Compare Tytler, vol. ii. p. 327. The great value of Mr. Tytler's work is diminished by the many omissions which he has permitted himself to make in the letters which he has edited.]

Parliament was expected to give its sanction without further difficulty; the opposition of the country having been neutralised by the same causes which had influenced the council. The queen, indeed, in going through the ceremony before consulting parliament, though she had broken the promise which she made in the Guildhall, had placed it beyond their power to raise difficulties; but other questions were likely to rise which would not be settled so easily. She herself was longing to show her gratitude to Providence by restoring the authority of the pope; and the pope intended, if possible, to recover his first-fruits and Peter's pence, and to maintain the law of the church which forbade the alienation of church property.[272] The English laity {p.118} were resolute on their side to keep hold of what they had got; and to set the subject at rest, and to prevent unpleasant discussions on points of theology, Paget, with his friends, desired that the session should last but a few days, and that two measures only should be brought forward; the first for the confirmation of the treaty of marriage, the second to reassert the validity of the titles under which the church estates were held by their present owners. If the queen consented to the last, her title of Head of the Church might be dropped informally, and allowed to fall into abeyance.[273]

[Footnote 272: Pole's first commission granted him powers only "concordandi et transigendi cum possessoribus bonorum ecclesiasticorum, (restitutis prius si expedire videtur immobilibus per eos indebite detentis,) super fructibus male perceptis ac bonis mobilibus consumptis."—Commission granted to Reginald Pole: Wilkins's Concilia, vol. iv. Cardinal Morone, writing to Pole as late as June, 1554, said that the pope was still unable to resolve on giving his sanction to the alienation.—Burnet's Collectanea.]

[Footnote 273: Paget to Renard: Tytler, vol. ii.]

Gardiner, however, saw in the failure of the insurrection an opportunity of emancipating the church, and of extinguishing heresy with fire and sword.[274] He was preparing a bill to restore the ancient rigorous tyranny of the ecclesiastical courts; and by his own authority he directed that, in the writs for the parliament, the summons should be to meet at Oxford,[275] where the conservatism of the country would be released from the dread of the London citizens. The spirit which, thirteen years before, had passed the Six Articles Bill by acclamation, continued to smoulder in the slow minds of the country gentlemen, and was blazing freely among the lately persecuted priests. The Bishop of Winchester had arranged in his imagination a splendid melodrama. The session was to begin on the 2nd of April; and the ecclesiastical bill was to be the first to be passed. On the 8th of March, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were sent down to the University to be tried before a committee of Convocation which had already decided on its verdict; and the Fathers of the Reformation were either to recant or to suffer the flaming penalties of heresy in the presence of the legislature, as the first-fruits of a renovated church discipline.

[Footnote 274: Par feug et sang.—Renard to Charles V., March 14: Rolls House MSS.; partially printed by Tytler.]

[Footnote 275: Ibid.]

Vainly Renard protested. In the fiery obstinacy of his determination, Gardiner was the incarnate expression of the fury of the ecclesiastical faction, smarting, as they were, under their long degradation, and under the irritating consciousness of those false oaths of submission which they had sworn to a power which they loathed. Once before, in the first reaction against Protestant excesses, the Bishop of Winchester had seen the Six {p.119} Articles Bill carried—but his prey had then been snatched from his grasp. Now, embittered by fresh oppression, he saw his party once more in a position to revenge their wrongs when there was no Henry any longer to stand between them and their enemies. He would take the tide at the flood, forge a weapon keener than the last, and establish the Inquisition.[276] Paget swore it should not be.[277] Charles V. himself, dreading a fresh interruption to the marriage, insisted that this extravagant fervour should be checked;[278] and the Bishop of Arras, the scourge of the Netherlands, interceded for moderation in England. But Gardiner and the clergy were not to be turned from the hope of their hearts by the private alarms of the Imperialists; and in the heart of the queen religious orthodoxy was Philip's solitary rival. Renard urged her to be prudent in religion and cruel to the political prisoners. Gardiner, though eager as Renard to kill Elizabeth, would buy the privilege of working his will upon the Protestants by sparing Courtenay and Courtenay's friends. Mary listened to the worst counsels of each, and her distempered humour settled into a confused ferocity. So unwholesome appeared the aspect of things in the middle of March that, notwithstanding the formal contract, Renard almost advised the emperor to relinquish the thought of committing his son among so wild a people.[279]

[Footnote 276: Establir forme d'Inquisition contre les heretiques.—Renard to Charles V.: Rolls House MSS.]

[Footnote 277: Ibid.]

[Footnote 278: La chaleur exhorbitante.—Charles V. to Renard: Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 229.]

[Footnote 279: Pour estre la plus part des Angloys sans foy, sans loy, confuz en la religion, doubles, inconstans, et de nature jaloux et abhorrissans estrangiers.—Rolls House MSS.]

As opposition to extreme measures was anticipated in the House of Lords, as well as among the Commons, it was important to strengthen the bench of bishops. The pope had granted permission without difficulty to fill the vacant sees; and on the 1st of April six new prelates were consecrated at St. Mary Overies, while Sir John Brydges and Sir John Williams of Thame were raised to the peerage.

The Protestants, it must be admitted, had exerted themselves to make Gardiner's work easy to him. On the 14th of March the wall of a house in Aldgate became suddenly vocal, and seventeen thousand persons were collected to hear a message from Heaven pronounced by an angel. When the people said "God save Queen Mary," the wall was silent; when they said "God save Queen Elizabeth," the wall said "Amen!" When {p.120} they asked, "What is the mass?" the wall said, "It is idolatry." As the nation was holding its peace, the stones, it seemed, were crying out against the reaction. But the angel, on examination, turned out to be a girl concealed behind the plaster. Shortly after, the inhabitants of Cheapside, on opening their shop windows in the morning, beheld on a gallows, among the bodies of the hanged insurgents, a cat in priestly robes, with crown shaven, the fore-paws tied over her head, and a piece of paper clipped round between them, representing the wafer.

More serious were the doings of a part of the late conspirators who had escaped to France. Peter Carew, when he left Weymouth, promised soon to return, and he was received at Paris with a cordiality that answered his warmest hopes. Determined, if possible, to prevent Philip from reaching England, the French had equipped every vessel which they possessed available for sea, and Carew was sent again to the coast of the Channel to tempt across into the French service all those who, like himself, were compromised in the conspiracy, or whose blood was hotter than their fathers'. Every day the queen was chafed with the news of desertions to their dangerous rendezvous. Young men of honourable families, Pickerings, Strangways's, Killegrews, Staffords, Stauntons, Tremaynes, Courtenays, slipped over the water, carrying with them hardy sailors from the western harbours. The French supplied them with arms, ships, and money; and fast-sailing, heavily-armed privateers, officered by these young adventurers in the cause of freedom, were cruising on their own account, plundering Flemish and Spanish ships, and swearing that the Prince of Spain should set no foot on English shores.[280]

[Footnote 280: The French and Calais correspondence in the State Paper Office contains a vast number of letters on this subject. The following extracts are specimens:—

On the 24th of March Thomas Corry writes to Lord Grey that "two hundred vessels be in readiness" in the French harbours. "There is lately arrived at Caen in Normandy Sir Peter Carew, Sir William Pickering, Sir Edward Courtenay, John Courtenay, Brian Fitzwilliam, and divers other English gentlemen. It is thought Sir Peter Carew shall have charge of the fleet. There be three ships of Englishmen, which be already gone to sea with Killegrew, which do report that they serve the king to prevent the coming of the King of Spain."—Calais MSS.

On the 28th of March, Edgar Hormolden writes from Guisnes to Sir John Bourne: "The number of Sir Peter Carew's retinue increaseth in France by the confluence of such English qui potius alicujus praeclari facinoris quam artis bonae famam quaerunt; and they be so entreated there as it cannot be otherwise conjectured but that they practise with France: insomuch I have heard credible intelligence that the said Carew used this persuasion, of late, to his companions: Are not we, said he, allianced with Normandy; yea! what ancient house is either there or in France, but we claim by them and they by us? why should we not rather embrace their love than submit ourselves to the servitude of Spain?"—Calais MSS.

April 17, Dr. Wotton writes in cypher from Paris to the queen: "Yesterday, an Italian brought a letter to my lodging, and delivered it to a servant of mine, and went his way, so that I know not what he is. The effect of his letter is, that for because he taketh it to be the part of every good Christian man to further your godly purpose and Catholic doings, he hath thought good to advertise me that those fugitives of England say to their friends here that they have intelligence of great importance in England with some of the chiefest on the realm, which shall appear on the arrival of the Prince of Spain. Within few days they go to Normandy to embark themselves there, so strong, that, if they do not let the Prince of Spain to land, as they will attempt to do, yet they will not fail, by the help of them that have intelligence with them, to let him come to London."—French MSS. bundle xi.]

{p.121} The queen indignantly demanded explanations of Noailles, and, through her ambassador at Paris, she required the French government to seize "her traitors," and deliver them to her. Noailles, alarmed, perhaps, for his own security, suggested that it might be well to conceal Carew, and to affect to make an attempt to arrest him. But Henry, at once more sagacious and more bold, replied to the ambassador that "he was not the queen's hangman:" "these men that you require," he said, "deny that they have conspired anything against the queen; marry, they say they will not be oppressed by mine enemy, and that is no just cause why I should owe them ill-will."[281] He desired Noailles, with quiet irony, to tell her majesty "that there was nothing in the existing treaties to forbid his accepting the services of English volunteers in the war with the emperor: her majesty might remember that he had invited her to make a new treaty, and that she had refused:" "he would act by the just letter of his obligations."[282]

[Footnote 281: Wotton to the Queen: French MSS. bundle xi. State Paper Office.]

[Footnote 282: Noailles to the King of France: Ambassades, vol. iii.]

Would her subjects have permitted, the queen would have replied by a declaration of war. As it was, she could only relieve herself with indignant words.[283] But Carew and his friends might depend on support so long as they would make themselves {p.122} useful to France. Possessed of ships and arms, they were a constant menace to the Channel, and a constant temptation to the disaffected; and, growing bitter at last, and believing that Elizabeth's life was on the point of being sacrificed, they were prepared to support Henry in a second attempt to seize the Isle of Wight, and to accept the French competitor for the English crown in the person of the Queen of Scots.[284] Thus fatally the friends of the Reformation played into the hands of its enemies. By the solid mass of Englishmen the armed interference of France was more dreaded than even a Spanish sovereign; and the heresy became doubly odious which was tampering with the hereditary enemies of the realm. In London only the revolutionary spirit continued vigorous, and broke out perpetually in unexpected forms. At the beginning of March three hundred schoolboys met in a meadow outside the city walls: half were for Wyatt and for France, half for the Prince of Spain; and, not all in play (for evidently they chose their sides by their sympathies), they joined battle, and fought with the fierceness of grown men. The combat ended in the capture of the representative of Philip, who was dragged to a gallows, and would have been hanged upon it, had not the spectators interfered.[285] The boys were laid hands upon. The youngest were whipped, the elder imprisoned. It was said that the queen thought of gibbeting one of these innocents in real fact, for an example; or, as Noailles put it, as an expiation for the sins of the people.[286]

[Footnote 283: "When the Ambassador replied that his master minded to do justly, her Grace remembering how those traitors be there aided, especially such of them as had conspired her death and were in arms in the field against her; and being not able to bear those words, so contrary to their doings, told the Ambassador that, for her own part, her Majesty minded simply and plainly to perform as she had promised, and might with safe conscience swear she ever meant so; but, for their part, her Grace would not swear so, and being those arrant traitors so entertained there as they be, she could not have found in her heart to have used, in like matter, the semblable part towards his master for the gain of two realms, and with those words she departed."—Gardiner to Wotton: French MSS. bundle xi.]

[Footnote 284: On the 29th of April Wotton wrote in a cypher to Mary; "Towards the end of the summer the French king, by Peter Carew's provocation, intendeth to land the rebels, with a number of Scots, in Essex, and in the Isle of Wight, where they mean to land easily, and either go on, if any number of Englishmen resort unto them, as they say many will, or else fortify themselves there. They council the French king to make war against your Highness in the right and title of the young Queen of Scots."—French MSS. bundle xi.]

[Footnote 285: The execution was commenced in earnest. The prince, says Noailles, "fust souldainement mesne au gibet par ceulx de la part du Roy et de M. Wyatt; et sans quelques hommes qui tout a propoz y accoururent, ils l'eussent estrangle; ce que se peult clairement juger par les marques qu'il en a et aura encores d'icy a long temps au col."—Noailles to Montmorency: Ambassades, vol. iii.]

[Footnote 286: Dict on qu'elle veult que l'ung d'eulx soit sacrifie pour tout le peuple.—Ibid.]

Over Elizabeth, in the meantime, the fatal net appeared to be closing; Lord Russell had received a letter for her from Wyatt, which, though the princess declared that it had never been in her hands, he said that he had forwarded; and Wyatt himself was flattered with hopes of life if he would extend his confession. Renard carried his ingenuity farther; he called {p.123} in the assistance of Lady Wyatt, and promised her that her husband should be spared; he even urged the queen to gain over, by judicious leniency, a man whose apostasy would be a fresh disgrace to his cause, and who might be as useful as a servant as he had been dangerous as a foe.[287] Wyatt, being a man without solidity of heart, showed signs of yielding to what was required of him; but his revelations came out slowly, and to quicken his confession he was brought to his trial on the 15th of March. He pleaded guilty to the indictment, and he then said that Courtenay had been the instigator of the conspiracy; he had written to Elizabeth, he said, to advise her to remove as far as possible from London, and Elizabeth had returned him a verbal message of thanks. This being not enough, he was sentenced to death; but he was made to feel that he might still earn his pardon if he would implicate Elizabeth more deeply; and though he said nothing definite, he allowed himself to drop vague hints that he could tell more if he pleased.[288]

[Footnote 287: Ce qui faict juger a beaulcoup de gens que Wyatt ne mourra point, mais que la dicte dame le rendra tant son oblige par ceste grace de luy rendre la vie qu'elle en pourra tirer beaulcoup de bons et grandes services. Ce qui se faict par le moyen dudict ambassadeur de l'Empereur par l'advis duquel se conduisent aujourdhuy toutes les opinions d'icelle dame, et lequele traice ceste composition avecques la femme dudict Wyatt a laquelle comme l'on diet il a asseure la vie de son dict mari.—Noailles to the Constable of France, March 31. Renard's secrets were betrayed to Noailles by "a corrupt secretary" of the Flemish embassy.—Wotton to the Queen: French MSS. bundle xi. State Paper Office.]

[Footnote 288: Noailles says: Wyatt a este condamne a mourir; toutesfois il n'est encores execute et avant que luy prononcer sa sentence on luy avoit promis tant de belles choses que vaincu par leur doulces paroles oultre sa deliberation, il a accuse beaulcoup de personnages et parle au desadvantage de mylord de Courtenay et de Madame Elizabeth.—Noailles to d'Oysel, March 29. The different parties were so much interested in Wyatt's confession, that his very last words are so wrapped round with contradictions, that one cannot tell what they were. It is certain, however, that he did implicate Elizabeth to some extent; it is certain, also, that he did not say enough for the purposes of the court, and that the court believed he could say more if he would, for, on Easter Sunday he communicated, and the queen was distressed that he should have been allowed to partake, while his confession was incomplete. As to Courtenay, Renard said he had communicated enough, "mais quant a Elizabeth l'on ne peult encores tomber en preuves suffisantes pour les loys d'Angleterre contre elle."—Renard to Charles V.: Rolls House MSS.]

At all events, however, sufficient evidence had been obtained in the opinion of the court for the committal of the princess to the Tower. On the day of Wyatt's trial, the council met, but separated without a resolution; on Friday, the 16th, Elizabeth was examined before them in person; and when she withdrew, Gardiner required that she should be sent to the Tower instantly. Paget, supported by Sussex, Hastings, and Cornwallis, said that {p.124} there was no evidence to justify so violent a measure.[289] Which of you, then, said Gardiner, with dexterous ingenuity, will be responsible for the safe keeping of her person?

[Footnote 289: Holinshed says that a certain lord exclaimed that there would be no safety for the realm until Elizabeth's head was off her shoulders; and either Holinshed himself, or his editor, wrote in the margin opposite, the words: "The wicked advice of Lord Paget."—Renard describes so distinctly the attitude of Paget, that there can be no doubt whatever of the injustice of such a charge against him.]

The guardian of Elizabeth would be exposed to a hundred dangers and a thousand suspicions; the lords answered that Gardiner was conspiring their destruction. No one could be found courageous enough to undertake the charge, and they gave their reluctant consent to his demand. The same night Elizabeth's attendants were removed, a hundred soldiers were picketed in the garden below her window, and on Saturday morning (March 17) the Marquis of Winchester and Lord Sussex waited on her to communicate her destination, and to attend her to a barge.

The terrible name of the Tower was like a death-knell; the princess entreated a short delay till she could write a few words to the queen; the queen could not know the truth, she said, or else she was played upon by Gardiner. Alas! she did not know the queen: Winchester hesitated; Lord Sussex, more generous, accepted the risk, and promised, on his knees, to place her letter in the queen's hands.

The very lines traced by Elizabeth in that bitter moment may still be read in the State Paper Office,[290] and her hand was more than usually firm.

[Footnote 290: MS. Mary, Domestic, vol. iv. Printed by Ellis, 2nd series, vol. ii. p. 255.]

"If ever any one," she wrote, "did try this old saying that a king's word was more than another man's oath, I most humbly beseech your majesty to verify it in me, and to remember your last promise, and my last demand, that I be not condemned without answer and due proof, which it seems that I now am: for that without cause proved I am by your council from you commanded to go unto the Tower, a place more wonted for a false traitor than a true subject: which, though I know I deserve it not, yet in the face of all this realm appears that it is proved; which I pray God that I may die the shamefullest death that any died, afore I may mean any such thing: and to this present hour I protest, afore God who shall judge my truth, whatsoever malice shall devise, that I never practised, counselled, nor consented to anything that might be prejudicial to your person any {p.125} way, or dangerous to the state by any means. And I therefore humbly beseech your majesty to let me answer afore yourself, and not suffer me to trust to your councillors; yea, and that afore I go to the Tower, if it is possible; if not, afore I be further condemned. Howbeit, I trust assuredly your highness will give me leave to do it afore I go, for that thus shamefully I may not be cried out on, as now I shall be, yea, and without cause. Let conscience move your highness to take some better way with me, than to make me be condemned in all men's sight, afore my desert known. Also, I most humbly beseech your highness to pardon this my boldness, which innocency procures me to do, together with hope of your natural kindness, which I trust will not see me cast away without desert: which what it is I would desire no more of God than that you truly knew; which thing, I think and believe, you shall never by report know, unless by yourself you hear. I have heard in my time of many cast away for want of coming to the presence of their prince; and in late days I heard my Lord of Somerset say that, if his brother had been suffered to speak with him, he had never suffered; but the persuasions were made to him so great, that he was brought in belief that he could not live safely if the admiral lived, and that made him give his consent to his death. Though these persons are not to be compared to your majesty, yet I pray God as evil persuasions persuade not one sister against the other, and all for that they have heard false reports, and not hearken to the truth known; therefore, once again kneeling with all humbleness of my heart, because I am not suffered to bow the knees of my body, I humbly crave to speak with your highness, which I would not be so bold to desire if I knew not myself most clear, as I know myself most true. And as for the traitor Wyatt, he might peradventure write me a letter, but on my faith I never received any from him; and for the copy of my letter sent to the French king, I pray God confound me eternally if ever I sent him word, message, token, or letter by any means:[291] and to this my truth I will stand to my death your highness's most faithful subject that hath been from the beginning, and will be to the end." Elizabeth.

[Footnote 291: As soon as Noailles learnt that his enclosure formed part of the case against Elizabeth, he came forward to acquit her of having furnished him with it; "jurant et blasphemant tous les sermens du monde pour la justification de la dicte Dame Elizabeth."—Renard to Charles V., April 3: Rolls House MSS.]

"I humbly crave but one word of answer from yourself."

{p.126} Had Elizabeth known the history of those words of the queen to her, to which she appealed, she would have spared herself the trouble of writing this letter. Sussex fulfilled his promise, and during the delay the tide turned, and the barge could not pass London Bridge till the following day. The queen could not venture to send the princess through the streets; and in dread lest, at the last moment, her prey should be snatched from her, she answered the appeal only by storming at the bearer, and at his friends in the council. "They were going no good way," she said, "for their lives they durst not have acted so in her father's time; she wished that he was alive and among them but for a single month."[292]

[Footnote 292: Renard.]

At nine o'clock the next morning—it was Palm Sunday (March 18)—the two lords returned to Elizabeth to tell her that her letter had failed. As she crossed the garden to the water she threw up her eyes to the queen's window, but there was no sign of recognition. What do the lords mean, she said, that they suffer me thus to be led into captivity? The barge was too deep to approach sufficiently near to the landing-place at the Tower to enable her to step upon the causeway without wetting her feet; it was raining too, and the petty inconveniences, fretting against the dreadful associations of the Traitors' Gate, shook her self-command. She refused to land; then sharply rejecting an offer of assistance, she sprang out upon the mud. "Are all those harnessed men there for me?" she said to Sir John Gage, who was waiting with the Tower guard. "No, madam," Gage answered. "Yes," she said, "I know it is so; it needed not for me, being but a weak woman. I never thought to have come in here a prisoner," she went on, turning to the soldiers; "I pray you all good fellows and friends, bear me witness that I come in no traitor, but as true a woman to the queen's majesty as any is now living, and thereon will I take my death." She threw herself down upon a wet stone; Lord Chandos begged her to come under shelter out of the rain: "better sitting here than in a worse place," she cried; "I know not whither you will bring me."