On the 7th of July the death of Edward VI. was ushered in with signs
and wonders, as if heaven and earth were in labour with revolution.
The hail lay upon the grass in the London gardens as red as blood. At
Middleton Stony in Oxfordshire, anxious lips reported that a child had
been born with one body, two heads, four feet and hands.[1] About the
time when the letters patent were signed there came a storm such as no
living Englishman remembered. The summer evening grew black as night.
Cataracts of water flooded the houses in the city and turned the
streets into rivers; trees were torn up by the roots and whirled
through the air, and a more awful omen--the forked lightning--struck
down the steeple of the church where the heretic service had been read
for the first time.[2]
[Footnote 1: _Grey Friars' Chronicle_: Machyn.]
[Footnote 2: Baoardo's _History of the Revolution
in England on the Death of Edward VI._, printed at
Venice, 1558. A copy of this rare book is in the
Bodleian Library at Oxford.]
The king died a little before nine o'clock on Thursday evening. His
death was made a secret; but in the same hour a courier was galloping
through the twilight to Hunsdon to bid Mary mount and fly. Her plans
had been for some days prepared. She had been directed to remain
quiet, but to hold herself ready to be up and away at a moment's
warning. The lords who were to close her in would not be at their
posts, and for a few hours the roads would be open. The Howards were
looking for her in Norfolk; and thither she was to ride at her best
speed, proclaiming her accession as she went along, and sending out
her letters calling loyal Englishmen to rise in her defence.
So Mary's secret friends had instructed her to act as her one chance.
Mary, who, like all the Tudors, was most herself in the moments of
greatest danger, followed a counsel boldly which agreed with her own
opinion; and when Lord Robert Dudley {p.002} came in the morning
with a company of horse to look for her, she was far away. Relays of
horses along the road, and such other precautions as could be taken
without exciting suspicion, had doubtless not been overlooked.
Far different advice had been sent to her by the new ambassadors of
the emperor. Scheyfne, who understood England and English habits, and
who was sanguine of her success, had agreed to a course which had
probably been arranged in concert with him; but on the 6th, the day of
Edward's death, Renard and M. de Courieres arrived from Brussels. To
Renard, accustomed to countries where governments were everything and
peoples nothing, for a single woman to proclaim herself queen in the
face of those who had the armed force of the kingdom in their hands,
appeared like madness. Little confidence could be placed in her
supposed friends, since they had wanted resolution to refuse their
signatures to the instrument of her deposition. The emperor could not
move; although he might wish well to her cause, the alliance of
England was of vital importance to him, and he would not compromise
himself with the faction whose success, notwithstanding Scheyfne's
assurance, he looked upon as certain. Renard, therefore, lost not a
moment in entreating the princess not to venture upon a course from
which he anticipated inevitable ruin. If the nobility or the people
desired to have her for queen, they would make her queen. There was no
need for her to stir.[3] The remonstrance agreed {p.003} fully with
the opinion of Charles himself, who replied to Renard's account of his
conduct with complete approval of it.[4] The emperor's power was no
longer equal to an attitude of menace; he had been taught, by the
repeated blunders of Reginald Pole, to distrust accounts of popular
English sentiment; and he disbelieved entirely in the ability of Mary
and her friends to cope with a conspiracy so broadly contrived, and
supported by the countenance of France.[5] But Mary was probably gone
from Hunsdon before advice arrived, to which she had been lost if she
had listened. She had ridden night and day without a halt for a
hundred miles to Keninghal, a castle of the Howards on the Waveney
river. There, in safe hands, she would try the effect of an appeal to
her country. If the nation was mute, she would then escape to the Low
Countries.[6]
[Footnote 3: Avant nostre arrivee elle mist en
deliberation avec aulcungs de ses plus confidens ce
qu'elle debvroit faire, advenant la dicte morte; la
quelle treuva, que incontinant la dicte morte
decouverte, elle se debvoit publier royne par
lettres et escriptz, et qu'en ce faisant, elle
conciteroit plusieurs a se declairer pour la
maintenir telle, (et aussy que y a quelque
observance par de ca que celuy ou celle qui est
appele a la couronne se doit incontinent tel
declairer et publier) pour la haine qu'ilz portent
audict duc, le tenant tiran et indigne; s'estant
absolument resolue qu'elle debvoit suyvre ceste
conclusion et conseil, aultrement elle tomberoit en
danger de sa personne plus grand qu'elle n'est et
perdroit l'espoir de parvenir a la couronne. La
quelle conclusion avons treuve estrange, difficile,
et dangereuse, pour les raisons soubzcriptes: pour
aultant que toutes les forces du pays sont es mains
dudict duc: que la dicte dame n'a espoir de
contraires forces ny d'assistance pour donner pied
a ceulx qu'ilz adherer luy vouldroient; que se
publiant royne, le roy et royne designes par le
dict testament (encores qu'il soit mal) prendroient
fondement, de l'invahir par la force et que n'y
aura moien d'y resister si vostre majeste ne s'en
empesche; ce que avons pese pour les grands
affaires et empeschemens qu'elle a contre les
Francoys et en divers lieux, que ne semble convenir
que l'on concite en ceste saison les Angloys contre
vostre Majeste et ses pays.
Comme n'avons peu communiquer verbalement avec
elle, l'avons advertie desdicts difficultes.... Que
si la noblesse ses adherens, ou le peuple la
desiroit et maintenoit pour royne, il le pourroit
demonstrer par l'effect; que la question estoit
grande mesme entre barbares et gens de telle
condition que les Angloys ... luy touchant ces
difficultez pour le respect de sa personne et pour
suyvre la fin de la dicte instruction qu'est de non
troubler le royaulme au desadvantaige de vostre
Majeste--The Ambassadors in England to the Emperor:
_Papiers d'Etat du Cardinal de Granvelle_, vol. iv.
pp. 19, 20.]
[Footnote 4: Nous avons veu par vos lectres
l'advertissement qu'avez donne soubz main a Madame
la princesse nostre cousine, affin qu'elle ne se
laisse forcompter par ceulx qui luy persuadent
qu'elle se haste de se declairer pour royne, que
nous a semble tres bien pour les raisons et
considerations touschez en vosdictes lectres.--The
Emperor to the Ambassadors: Ibid. pp. 24, 25.]
[Footnote 5: Ne se pouvoient faire grand fondement
sur la faveur et affection que aulcuns particuliers
et le peuple peuvent porter a nostredicte cousine,
ne fust que y en y eust plus grant nombre ou des
principaulx, n'estant cela souffisant pour
contreminer la negociation si fondee et de si
longue main que le dict duc de Northumberland a
empris avec l'assistance que doubtez de
France.--Ibid. pp. 25, 26.]
[Footnote 6: Baoardo.]
In London, during Friday and Saturday, the death of Edward was known
and unknown. Every one talked of it as certain. Yet the Duke of
Northumberland still spoke of him as living, and public business was
carried on in his name. On the 8th of July the mayor and aldermen were
sent for to Greenwich to sign the letters patent. From them the truth
could not be concealed, but they were sworn to secrecy before they
were allowed to leave the palace. The conspirators desired to have
Mary under safe custody in the Tower before the mystery was published
to the world, and another difficulty was not yet got over.
The novelty of a female sovereign, and the supposed constitutional
objection to it, were points in favour of the alteration which
Northumberland was unwilling to relinquish. The "device" had been
changed in favour of Lady Jane; but Lady Jane was not to reign alone:
Northumberland intended to hold {p.004} the reins tight-grasped in
his own hands, to keep the power in his own family, and to urge the
sex of Mary as among the prominent occasions of her incapacity.[7]
England was still to have a king, and that king was to be Guilford
Dudley.
[Footnote 7: In the explanation given on the
following Tuesday to the Emperor's ambassadors,
Madame Marie was said--"N'estre capable dudict
royaulme pour le divorce faict entre le feu Roy
Henry et la Royne Katherine; se referant aux causes
aians meu ledict divorce; _et mesme n'estre
suffisante pour l'administration d'icelluy comme
estant femme_, et pour la religion."--_Papiers
d'Etat du Cardinal de Granvelle_, p. 28. Noailles
was instructed to inform the King of France of the
good affection of "the new King" ("le nouveaulx
Roy"). He had notice of the approaching coronation
of "the King;" and in the first communication of
Edward's death to Hoby and Morryson in the
Netherlands, a "king," and not a "queen," was
described as on the throne in his place.]
Jane Grey, eldest daughter of the Duke of Suffolk, was nearly of the
same age with Edward. Edward had been precocious to a disease; the
activity of his mind had been a symptom, or a cause, of the weakness
of his body. Jane Grey's accomplishments were as extensive as
Edward's; she had acquired a degree of learning rare in matured men,
which she could use gracefully, and could permit to be seen by others
without vanity or consciousness. Her character had developed with
their talents. At fifteen she was learning Hebrew and could write
Greek; at sixteen she corresponded with Bullinger in Latin at least
equal to his own; but the matter of her letters is more striking than
the language, and speaks more for her than the most elaborate
panegyrics of admiring courtiers. She has left a portrait of herself
drawn by her own hand; a portrait of piety, purity, and free, noble
innocence, uncoloured, even to a fault, with the emotional weaknesses
of humanity.[8] While the effects of the Reformation of England had
been chiefly visible in the outward dominion of scoundrels and in the
eclipse of the hereditary virtues of the national character, Lady Jane
Grey had lived to show that the defect was not in the reformed faith,
but in the absence of all faith--that the graces of a St. Elizabeth
could be rivalled by the pupil of Cranmer and Ridley. The Catholic
saint had no excellence of which Jane Grey was without the promise;
the distinction was in the freedom of the Protestant from the
hysterical ambition for an unearthly nature, and in the presence,
through a more intelligent creed, of a vigorous and practical
understanding.
[Footnote 8: Letters of Lady Jane Grey to
Bullinger: _Epistolae Tigurinae_, pp. 3-7.]
When married to Guilford Dudley, Jane Lady had entreated that, being
herself so young, and her husband scarcely older, {p.005} she might
continue to reside with her mother.[9] Lady Northumberland had
consented; and the new-made bride remained at home till a rumour went
abroad that Edward was on the point of death, when she was told that
she must remove to her father-in-law's house, till "God should call
the king to his mercy;" her presence would then be required at the
Tower, the king having appointed her to be the heir to the crown.
[Footnote 9: Baoardo--who tells the story as it was
told by Lady Jane herself to Abbot Feckenham.]
This was the first hint which she had received of the fortune which
was in store for her. She believed it to be a jest, and took no notice
of the order to change her residence, till the Duchess of
Northumberland came herself to fetch her. A violent scene ensued with
Lady Suffolk. At last the duchess brought in Guilford Dudley, who
commanded Lady Jane, on her allegiance as a wife, to return with him;
and, "not choosing to be disobedient to her husband," she consented.
The duchess carried her off, and kept her for three or four days a
prisoner. Afterwards she was taken to a house of the duke's at
Chelsea, where she remained till Sunday, the 9th of July, when a
message was brought that she was wanted immediately at Sion House, to
receive an order from the king.
She went alone. There was no one at the palace when she arrived; but
immediately after Northumberland came, attended by Pembroke,
Northampton, Huntingdon, and Arundel. The Earl of Pembroke, as he
approached, knelt to kiss her hand. Lady Northumberland and Lady
Northampton entered, and the duke, as President of the Council, rose
to speak.
"The king," he said, "was no more. A godly life had been followed, as
a consolation to their sorrows, by a godly end, and in leaving the
world he had not forgotten his duty to his subjects. His majesty had
prayed on his death-bed that Almighty God would protect the realm from
false opinions, and especially from his unworthy sister; he had
reflected that both the Lady Mary and the Lady Elizabeth had been cut
off by act of parliament from the succession as illegitimate;[10] the
Lady Mary had been disobedient to her father; she had been again
disobedient to her brother; she was a capital and principal enemy of
God's word; and both she and her sister were bastards born; King Henry
did not intend that the crown should be worn by either of them; King
Edward, therefore, had, before his death, bequeathed {p.006} it to
his cousin the Lady Jane; and, should the Lady Jane die without
children, to her younger sister; and he had entreated the council, for
their honours' sake and for the sake of the realm, to see that his
will was observed."
[Footnote 10: La detta maesta haveva ben
considerato un atto di Parliamento nel quale fu gia
deliberato che qualunque volesse riconoscere Maria
overo Elizabetha sorelle per heredi della corona
fusse tenuto traditore.--Baoardo.]
Northumberland, as he concluded, dropped on his knees; the four lords
knelt with him, and, doing homage to the Lady Jane as queen, they
swore that they would keep their faith or lose their lives in her
defence.
Lady Jane shook, covered her face with her hands, and fell fainting to
the ground. Her first simple grief was for Edward's death; she felt it
as the loss of a dearly loved brother. The weight of her own fortune
was still more agitating; when she came to herself, she cried that it
could not be; the crown was not for her, she could not bear it--she
was not fit for it. Then, knowing nothing of the falsehoods which
Northumberland had told her, she clasped her hands, and, in a
revulsion of feeling, she prayed God that if the great place to which
she was called was indeed justly hers, He would give her grace to
govern for his service and for the welfare of his people.[11]
[Footnote 11: Mr. John Gough Nichols, the
accomplished editor of so many of the best
publications of the Camden Society, throws a doubt
on the authenticity of this scene, being unable to
find contemporary authority for it. It comes to us,
through Baoardo, from Lady Jane herself.]
So passed Sunday, the 9th of July, at Sion House. In London, the hope
of first securing Mary being disappointed, the king's death had been
publicly acknowledged; circulars were sent out to the sheriffs,
mayors, and magistrates in the usual style, announcing the accession
of Queen Jane, and the troops were sworn man by man to the new
sovereign. Sir William Petre and Sir John Cheke waited on the
emperor's ambassador to express a hope that the alteration in the
succession would not affect the good understanding between the courts
of England and Flanders. The preachers were set to work to pacify the
citizens; and, if Scheyfne is to be believed, a blood cement was
designed to strengthen the new throne; and Gardiner, the Duke of
Norfolk, and Lord Courtenay[12] were directed to prepare for death in
three days.[13] But Northumberland would scarcely have risked an act
of gratuitous tyranny. Norfolk, being under attainder, might have been
put to death {p.007} without violation of the _forms_ of law, by
warrant from the crown; but, Gardiner was uncondemned, and Courtenay
had never been accused of crime.
[Footnote 12: Edward Lord Courtenay was son of the
executed Marquis of Exeter and great grandson of
Edward IV. He was thrown into the Tower with his
father when a little boy, and in that confinement,
in fifteen years, he had grown to manhood. Of him
and his fortunes all that need be said will unfold
itself.]
[Footnote 13: Scheyfne to Charles V., July 10: _MS.
Rolls House_.]
The next day, Monday, the 10th of July, the royal barges came down the
Thames from Richmond; and at three o'clock in the afternoon Lady Jane
landed at the broad staircase at the Tower, as queen, in undesired
splendour. A few scattered groups of spectators stood to watch the
arrival; but it appeared, from their silence, that they had been
brought together chiefly by curiosity. As the gates closed, the
heralds-at-arms, with a company of the archers of the guard, rode into
the city, and at the cross in Cheapside, Paul's Cross, and Fleet
Street they proclaimed "that the Lady Mary was unlawfully begotten,
and that the Lady Jane Grey was queen." The ill-humour of London was
no secret, and some demonstration had been looked for in Mary's
favour;[14] but here, again, there was only silence. The heralds cried
"God save the queen!" The archers waved their caps and cheered, but
the crowd looked on impassively. One youth only, Gilbert Potter, whose
name for those few days passed into fame's trumpet, ventured to
exclaim, "The Lady Mary has the better title." Gilbert's master, one
"Ninian Sanders," denounced the boy to the guard, and he was seized.
Yet a misfortune, thought to be providential, in a few hours befell
Ninian Sanders. Going home to his house down the river, in the July
evening, he was overturned and drowned as he was shooting London
Bridge in his wherry; the boatmen, who were the instruments of
Providence, escaped.
[Footnote 14: Noailles.]
Nor did the party in the Tower rest their first night there with
perfect satisfaction. In the evening messengers came in from the
eastern counties with news of the Lady Mary, and with letters from
herself. She had written to Renard and Scheyfne to tell them that she
was in good hands, and for the moment was safe. She had proclaimed
herself queen. She had sent addresses to the peers, commanding them on
their allegiance to come to her; and she begged the ambassadors to
tell her instantly whether she might look for assistance from
Flanders; on the active support of the emperor, so far as she could
judge, the movements of her friends would depend.
The ambassadors sent a courier to Brussels for instructions; but,
pending Charles's judgment to the contrary, they thought they had
better leave Mary's appeal unanswered till they could see how events
would turn. There was one rumour current {p.008} indeed that she had
from ten to fifteen thousand men with her; but this they could ill
believe. For themselves, they expected every hour to hear that she had
been taken by Lord Warwick and Lord Robert Dudley, who were gone in
pursuit of her, and had been put to death.[15]
[Footnote 15: Renard to Charles V.: _Papiers d'Etat
du Cardinal Granvelle_, vol. iv.]
The lords who were with the new queen were not so confident. They were
in late consultation with the Duchess of Northumberland and the
Duchess of Suffolk, when, after nightfall, a letter was brought in to
them from Mary. The lords ordered the messenger into arrest. The seal
of the packet was broken, and the letter read aloud. It was dated the
day before, Sunday, July 9:--
"My lords," wrote Mary, "we greet you well, and have received sure
advertisement that our deceased brother the king, our late Sovereign
Lord, is departed to God's mercy; which news how they be woeful to our
heart He only knoweth to whose will and pleasure we must and do submit
us and all our wills. But in this so lamentable a case that is, to
wit, now, after his majesty's departure and death, concerning the
crown and governance of this realm of England, that which hath been
provided by act of parliament and the testament and last will of our
dearest father, you know--the realm and the whole world knoweth. The
rolls and records appear, by the authority of the king our said
father, and the king our said brother, and the subjects of this realm;
so that we verily trust there is no true subject that can pretend to
be ignorant thereof; and of our part we have ourselves caused, and as
God shall aid and strengthen us, shall cause, our right and title in
this behalf to be published and proclaimed accordingly.
"And, albeit, in this so weighty a matter, it seemeth strange that the
dying of our said brother upon Thursday at night last past, we
hitherto had no knowledge from you thereof; yet we consider your
wisdom and prudence to be such, that having eftsoons amongst you
debated, pondered, and well-weighed the present case, with our estate,
with your own estate, the commonwealth, and all our honours, we shall
and may conceive great hope and trust, with much assurance in your
loyalty and service; and therefore, for the time, we interpret and
take things not for the worst; and that ye yet will, like noblemen,
work the best. Nevertheless, we are not ignorant of your consultation
to undo the provisions made for our preferment, nor of the great
banded provisions forcible whereunto ye be assembled {p.009} and
prepared, by whom and to what end God and you know; and nature can
fear some evil. But be it that some consideration politic, or
whatsoever thing else, hath moved you thereunto; yet doubt ye not, my
lords, but we can take all these your doings in gracious part, being
also right ready to remit and also pardon the same, with that freely
to eschew bloodshed and vengeance against all those that can or will
intend the same; trusting also assuredly you will take and accept this
grace and virtue in good part as appertaineth, and that we shall not
be enforced to use the service of other our true subjects and friends
which, in this our just and rightful cause, God, in whom our whole
affiance is, shall send us.
"Whereupon, my lords, we require and charge you, and every of you, on
your allegiance, which you owe to God and us, and to none other, that
for our honour and the surety of our realm, only you will employ
yourselves; and forthwith, upon receipt hereof, cause our right and
title to the crown and government of this realm to be proclaimed in
our city of London, and such other places as to your wisdom shall seem
good, and as to this cause appertaineth, not failing hereof, as our
very trust is in you; and this our letter, signed with our own hand,
shall be your sufficient warrant."[16]
[Footnote 16: Holinshed.]
The lords, when the letter was read to the end, looked uneasily in
each other's faces. The ladies screamed, sobbed, and were carried off
in hysterics. There was yet time to turn back; and had the Reformation
been, as he pretended, the true concern of the Duke of Northumberland,
he would have brought Mary back himself, bound by conditions which, in
her present danger, she would have accepted. But Northumberland cared
as little for religion as for any other good thing. He was a great
criminal, throwing a stake for a crown; and treason is too conscious
of its guilt to believe retreat from the first step to be possible.
Another blow was in store for him that night, before he laid his head
upon his pillow. Lady Jane, knowing nothing of the letter from Mary,
had retired to her apartment, when the Marquis of Winchester came in
to wish her joy. He had brought the crown with him, which she had not
sent for; he desired her to put it on, and see if it required
alteration. She said it would do very well as it was. He then told her
that, before her coronation, another crown was to be made for her
husband. Lady Jane started; and it seemed as if for the first time the
dreary {p.010} suspicion crossed her mind that she was, after all,
but the puppet of the ambition of the duke to raise his family to the
throne. Winchester retired, and she sat indignant[17] till Guilford
Dudley appeared, when she told him that, young as she was, she knew
that the crown of England was not a thing to be trifled with. There
was no Dudley in Edward's will, and, before he could be crowned, the
consent of Parliament must be first asked and obtained. The
boy-husband went whining to his mother, while Jane sent for Arundel
and Pembroke, and told them that it was not for her to appoint kings.
She would make her husband a duke if he desired it; that was within
her prerogative; but king she would not make him. As she was speaking,
the Duchess of Northumberland rushed in with her son, fresh from the
agitation of Mary's letter. The mother stormed; Guilford cried like a
spoilt child that he would be no duke, he would be a king: and, when
Jane stood firm, the duchess bade him come away, and not share the bed
of an ungrateful and disobedient wife.[18]
[Footnote 17: Le quale parole io senti con mio gran
dispiacere.--Baoardo.]
[Footnote 18: Baoardo.]
The first experience of royalty had brought small pleasure with it.
Dudley's kingship was set aside for the moment, and was soon forgotten
in more alarming matters. To please his mother, or to pacify his
vanity, he was called "Your Grace." He was allowed to preside in the
council, so long as a council remained, and he dined alone[19]--tinsel
distinctions, for which the poor wretch had to pay dearly.
[Footnote 19: Se faisoit servir de mesme.--Renard
to Charles V.: _MS. Rolls House_.]
The next day (July 11) restored the conspirators to their courage. No
authentic accounts came in of disturbances. London was still quiet; so
quiet, that it was thought safe to nail Gilbert Potter by the ears in
the pillory, and after sufficient suffering, to slice them off with a
knife. Lord Warwick and Lord Robert were still absent, and no news had
come from them--a proof that they were still in pursuit. The duke made
up his mind that Mary was watching only for an opportunity to escape
to Flanders; and the ships in the river, with a thousand men-at-arms
on board them, were sent to watch the Essex coast, and to seize her,
could they find opportunity. Meanwhile he himself penned a reply to
her letter. "The Lady Jane," he said, "by the antient laws of the
realm," and "by letters patent of the late king," signed by himself,
and countersigned by the nobility, was rightful queen of England. The
divorce of Catherine of Arragon from Henry VIII. had been prescribed
by {p.011} the laws of God, pronounced by the Church of England, and
confirmed by act of parliament; the daughter of Catherine was,
therefore, illegitimate, and could not inherit; and the duke warned
her to forbear, at her peril, from molesting her lawful sovereign, or
turning her people from their allegiance. If she would submit and
accept the position of a subject, she should receive every reasonable
attention which it was in the power of the queen to show to her.
During the day rumours of all kinds were flying, but Mary's friends in
London saw no reasonable grounds for hope. Lord Robert was supposed by
Renard[20] to be on his way to the Tower with the princess as his
prisoner; and if she was once within the Tower walls, all hope was
over. It was not till Wednesday morning (July 12) that the duke became
really alarmed. Then at once, from all sides, messengers came in with
unwelcome tidings. The Dudleys had come up with Mary the day before,
as she was on her way from Keninghal to Framlingham. They had dashed
forward upon her escort, but their own men turned sharp round,
declared for the princess, and attempted to seize them; they had been
saved only by the speed of their horses.[21] In the false calm of the
two preceding days, Lord Bath had stolen across the country into
Norfolk. Lord Mordaunt and Lord Wharton had sent their sons; Sir
William Drury, Sir John Skelton, Sir Henry Bedingfield, and many more,
had gone in the same direction. Lord Sussex had declared also for
Mary; and, worse than all, Lord Derby had risen in Cheshire, and was
reported to be marching south with twenty thousand men.[22] Scarcely
were these news digested, when Sir Edmund Peckham, cofferer of the
household, was found to have gone off with the treasure under his
charge. Sir Edward Hastings, Lord Huntingdon's brother, had called out
the musters of Buckinghamshire in Mary's name, and Peckham had joined
him; while Sir Peter Carew, the very hope and stay of the western
Protestants, had proclaimed Mary in the towns of Devonshire.
[Footnote 20: Renard to Charles V.: _MS. Rolls
House_.]
[Footnote 21: Ibid.]
[Footnote 22: _Queen Jane and Queen Mary._ Renard
to Charles V.]
Now, when too late, it was seen how large an error had been committed
in permitting the princess's escape. But it was vain to waste time in
regrets. Her hasty levies, at best, could be but rudely armed; the
duke had trained troops and cannon, and, had he been free to act, with
no enemies but those in the field against him, he had still the best
of the game. But Suffolk and {p.012} Northampton, the least able of
the council, were, nevertheless, the only members of it on whom he
could rely. To whom but to himself could he trust the army which must
meet Mary in the field? If he led the army in person, whom could he
leave in charge of London, the Tower, and Lady Jane? Winchester and
Arundel knew his dilemma, and deliberately took advantage of it. The
guard, when first informed that they were to take the field, refused
to march. After a communication with the Marquis of Winchester, they
withdrew their objections, and professed themselves willing to go.
Northumberland, uneasy at their conduct, or requiring a larger force,
issued a proclamation offering tenpence a day to volunteers who would
go to bring in the Lady Mary.[23] The lists were soon filled, but
filled with the retainers and servants of his secret enemies.[24]
[Footnote 23: _Grey Friars' Chronicle._]
[Footnote 24: "Ille impigre quidem, utpote cujus
res agebatur, proponit magna stipendia; conducit
militem partim invitum partim perfidum; constabant
enim majori ex parte satellitia nobilium qui
secreto Mariae favebant."--Julius Terentianus to
John 'ab Ulmis: _Epistolae Tigurinae_, p. 243.]
The men being thus collected, Suffolk was first thought of to lead
them, or else Lord Grey de Wilton;[25] but Suffolk was inefficient,
and his daughter could not bring herself to part with him; Grey was a
good soldier, but he had been a friend of Somerset, and the duke had
tried hard to involve him with Arundel and Paget in Somerset's
ruin.[26] Northampton's truth could have been depended upon, but
Northampton four years before had been defeated by a mob of Norfolk
peasants. Northumberland, the council said, must go himself--"there
was no remedy." No man, on all accounts, could be so fit as he; "he
had achieved the victory in Norfolk once already, and was so feared,
that none durst lift their weapons against him:"[27] Suffolk in his
absence should command the Tower. Had the duke dared, he would have
delayed; but every moment that he remained inactive added to Mary's
strength, and whatever he did he must risk something. He resolved to
go, and as the plot was thickening, he sent Sir Henry Dudley to Paris
to entreat the king to protect Calais against Charles, should the
latter move upon it in his cousin's interest.
[Footnote 25: Renard to Charles V.: _Rolls House
MSS._]
[Footnote 26: Ibid.]
[Footnote 27: _Chronicle of Queen Jane._]
Noailles had assured him that this and larger favours would be granted
without difficulty; while, as neither Renard nor his companions had as
yet acknowledged Lady Jane, and were notoriously in correspondence
with Mary, the French ambassador {p.013} suggested also that he
would do wisely to take the initiative himself, to send Renard his
passports, and commit the country to war with the emperor.[28]
Northumberland would not venture the full length to which Noailles
invited him; but he sent Sir John Mason and Lord Cobham to Renard,
with an intimation that the English treason laws were not to be
trifled with. If he and his companions dared to meddle in matters
which did not concern them, their privileges as ambassadors should not
protect them from extremity of punishment.[29]
[Footnote 28: Noailles, vol. ii.]
[Footnote 29: Ajoutant menace de la rigeur de leurs
lois barbares.--Renard to Charles V.: _Granvelle
Papers_, vol. iv.]
Newmarket was chosen for the rendezvous of the army. The men were to
go down in companies, in whatever way they could travel most
expeditiously, with the guns and ammunition waggons. The duke himself
intended to set out on Friday at dawn. In his calculations of the
chances, hope still predominated--his cannon would give him the
advantage in the field, and he trusted to the Protestant spirit in
London to prevent a revolution in his absence. But he took the
precaution of making the council entangle themselves more completely
by taking out a commission under the Great Seal, as general of the
army, which they were forced to sign; and before he left the Tower, he
made a parting appeal to their good faith. If he believed they would
betray him, he said, he could still provide for his own safety; but,
as they were well aware that Lady Jane was on the throne by no will of
her own, but through his influence and theirs, so he trusted her to
their honours to keep the oaths which they had sworn. "They were all
in the same guilt," one of them answered; "none could excuse
themselves." Arundel especially wished the duke God speed upon his
way, and regretted only that he was not to accompany him to the
field.[30]
[Footnote 30: _Chronicle of Queen Jane._]
This was on Thursday evening. Northumberland slept that night at
Whitehall. The following morning he rode out of London, accompanied by
his four sons, Northampton, Grey, and about six hundred men. The
streets were thronged with spectators, but all observed the same
ominous silence with which they had received the heralds'
proclamation. "The people press to see us," the duke said, "but not
one saith God speed us."[31]
[Footnote 31: Ibid.]
The principal conspirator was now out of the way; his own particular
creatures--Sir Thomas and Sir Henry Palmer, and {p.014} Sir John
Gates, who had commanded the Tower guard, had gone with him.
Northampton was gone. The young Dudleys were gone all but Guilford.
Suffolk alone remained of the faction definitely attached to the duke;
and the duke was marching to the destruction which they had prepared
for him. But prudence still warned those who were loyal to Mary to
wait before they declared themselves; the event was still uncertain;
and the disposition of the Earl of Pembroke might not yet, perhaps,
have been perfectly ascertained.
Pembroke, in the black volume of appropriations, was the most deeply
compromised. Pembroke, in Wilts and Somerset, where his new lands lay,
was hated for his oppression of the poor, and had much to fear from a
Catholic sovereign, could a Catholic sovereign obtain the reality as
well as the name of power; Pembroke, so said Northumberland, had been
the first to propose the conspiracy to him, while his eldest son had
married Catherine Grey. But, as Northumberland's designs began to
ripen, he had endeavoured to steal from the court; he was a
distinguished soldier, yet he was never named to command the army
which was to go against Mary; Lord Herbert's marriage was outward and
nominal merely--a form, which had not yet become a reality, and never
did. Although Pembroke was the first of the council to do homage to
Jane, Northumberland evidently doubted him. He was acting and would
continue to act for his own personal interests only. With his vast
estates and vast hereditary influence in South Wales and on the
Border, he could bring a larger force into the field than any other
single nobleman in England; and he could purchase the secure
possession of his acquisitions by a well-timed assistance to Mary as
readily as by lending his strength to buttress the throne of her
rival.
Of the rest of the council, Winchester and Arundel had signed the
letters patent with a deliberate intention of deserting or betraying
Northumberland, whenever a chance should present itself, and of
carrying on their secret measures in Mary's favour[32] {p.015} with
greater security. The other noblemen in the Tower perhaps imperfectly
understood each other. Cranmer had taken part unwillingly with Lady
Jane; but he meant to keep his promise, having once given it. Bedford
had opposed the duke up to the signature, and might be supposed to
adhere to his original opinion; but he was most likely hesitating,
while Lord Russell had been trusted with the command of the garrison
at Windsor. Sir Thomas Cheyne and Shrewsbury might be counted among
Mary's friends; the latter certainly. Of the three secretaries,
Cecil's opposition had put his life in jeopardy; Petre was the friend
and confidant of Paget, and would act as Paget should advise; Cheke, a
feeble enthusiast, was committed to the duke.
[Footnote 32: "Aliqui subscripserunt, id quod
postea compertum est, ut facilius fallerent
Northumbrum, cujus consilio haec omnia videbant
fieri et tegerent conspirationem quam adornabant in
auxilium Mariae."--Julius Terentianus to John ab
Ulmis: _Epistolae Tigurinae_, p. 242. John Knox
allowed his vehemence to carry him too far against
the Marquis of Winchester, who unquestionably was
not one of those who advised the scheme of
Northumberland. In the "aliqui" of Julius
Terentianus, the letters of Renard, of Scheyfne,
enable us to identify both him and Arundel; but
there must have been many more, in the council or
out of it, who were acting in concert with them.]
The task of bringing the council together was undertaken by Cecil.
Cecil and Winchester worked on Bedford; and Bedford made himself
responsible for his son, for the troops at Windsor, and generally for
the western counties. The first important step was to readmit Paget to
the council. Fresh risings were reported in Northamptonshire and
Lincolnshire;[33] Sir John Williams was proclaiming Mary round Oxford;
and on Friday night or Saturday morning (July 15) news came from the
fleet which might be considered decisive as to the duke's prospects.
The vessels, so carefully equipped, which left the Thames on the 12th,
had been driven into Yarmouth Harbour by stress of weather. Sir Henry
Jerningham was in the town raising men for Mary; and knowing that the
crews had been pressed, and that there had been desertions among the
troops before they were embarked,[34] he ventured boldly among the
ships. "Do you want our captains?" some one said to him. "Yea, marry,"
was the answer. "Then they shall go with you," the men shouted, "or
they shall go to the bottom." Officers, sailors, troops, all declared
for Queen Mary, and landed with their arms and artillery. The report
was borne upon the winds; it was known in a few hours in London; it
was known in the duke's army, which was now close to Cambridge, and
was the signal for the premeditated mutiny. "The noblemen's tenants
refused to serve their lords against Queen Mary."[35] Northumberland
sent a courier at full speed to the council for reinforcements. The
courier returned "with but a slender answer."[36]
[Footnote 33: Cecil's Submission, printed by
Tytler, vol. ii.]
[Footnote 34: Scheyfne to Charles V.: _Rolls House
MSS._]
[Footnote 35: _Chronicle of Queen Jane._]
[Footnote 36: Ibid.]
The lords in London, however, were still under the eyes of the Tower
garrison, who watched them narrowly. Their first {p.016} meeting to
form their plans was within the Tower walls, and Arundel said "he
liked not the air."[37] Pembroke and Cheyne attempted to escape, but
failed to evade the guard; Winchester made an excuse to go to his own
house, but he was sent for and brought back at midnight. Though Mary
might succeed, they might still lose their own lives, which they were
inclined to value.
[Footnote 37: Cecil's Submission: Tytler, vol. ii.]
On Sunday, the 16th, the preachers again exerted themselves. Ridley
shrieked against Mary at Paul's Cross;[38] John Knox, more wisely, at
Amersham, in Buckinghamshire, foretold the approaching retribution
from the giddy ways of the past years; Buckinghamshire, Catholic and
Protestant, was arming to the teeth; and he was speaking at the peril
of his life among the troopers of Sir Edward Hastings.
[Footnote 38: Stow.]
"Oh England!" cried the saddened Reformer, "now is God's wrath kindled
against thee--now hath he begun to punish as he hath threatened by his
true prophets and messengers. He hath taken from thee the crown of thy
glory, and hath left thee without honour, and this appeareth to be
only the beginning of sorrows. The heart, the tongue, the hand of one
Englishman is bent against another, and division is in the realm,
which is a sign of desolation to come. Oh, England, England! if thy
mariners and thy governors shall consume one another, shalt not thou
suffer shipwreck? Oh England, alas! these plagues are poured upon thee
because thou wouldst not know the time of thy most gentle
visitation."[39]
[Footnote 39: Account of a Sermon at Amersham:
_Admonition to the Faithful in England_, by John
Knox.]
At Cambridge, on the same day, another notable man preached--Edwin
Sandys, then Protestant Vice-Chancellor of the University, and
afterwards Archbishop of York. Northumberland the preceding evening
brought his mutinous troops into the town. He sent for Parker, Lever,
Bill, and Sandys to sup with him, and told them he required their
prayers, or he and his friends were like to be "made deacons of."[40]
Sandys, the vice-chancellor, must address the university the next
morning from the pulpit.
[Footnote 40: Some jest, perhaps, upon a shorn
crown; at any rate, a euphemism for decapitation;
for Foxe, who tells the story, says, "and even so
it came to pass, for he and Sir John Gates, who was
then at table, were made deacons ere it was long
after on the Tower Hill."--Foxe, vol. viii. p.
590.]
Sandys rose at three o'clock in the summer twilight, took his Bible,
and prayed with closed eyes that he might open at a {p.017} fitting
text. His eyes, when he lifted them, were resting on the 16th of the
1st of Joshua: "The people answered Joshua, saying, All thou
commandest us we will do; and whithersoever thou sendest us we will
go; according as we hearkened unto Moses, so will we hearken unto
thee, only the Lord thy God be with thee as he was with Moses."
The application was obvious. Edward was Moses, the duke was Joshua;
and if a sermon could have saved the cause, Lady Jane would have been
secure upon her throne.[41]
[Footnote 41: Foxe, vol. viii. p. 590.]
But the comparison, if it held at all, held only in its least
agreeable features. The deliverers of England from the Egyptian
bondage of the Papacy had led the people out into a wilderness where
the manna had been stolen by the leaders, and there were no tokens of
a promised land. To the universities the Reformation had brought with
it desolation. To the people of England it had brought misery and
want. The once open hand was closed; the once open heart was hardened;
the ancient loyalty of man to man was exchanged for the scuffling of
selfishness; the change of faith had brought with it no increase of
freedom, and less of charity. The prisons were crowded, as before,
with sufferers for opinion, and the creed of a thousand years was made
a crime by a doctrine of yesterday; monks and nuns wandered by hedge
and highway, as missionaries of discontent, and pointed with bitter
effect to the fruits of the new belief, which had been crimsoned in
the blood of thousands of English peasants. The English people were
not yet so much in love with wretchedness that they would set aside
for the sake of it a princess whose injuries pleaded for her, whose
title was affirmed by act of parliament. In the tyranny under which
the nation was groaning, the moderate men of all creeds looked to the
accession of Mary as to the rolling away of some bad black nightmare.
On Monday Northumberland made another effort to move forward. His
troops followed him as far as Bury, and then informed him decisively
that they would not bear arms against their lawful sovereign. He fell
back on Cambridge, and again wrote to London for help. As a last
resource, Sir Andrew Dudley, instructed, it is likely, by his brother,
gathered up a hundred thousand crowns' worth of plate and jewels from
the treasury in the Tower, and started for France to interest
Henry--to bribe him, it was said, by a promise of Guisnes and
Calais--to send an army into England.[42] The duke foresaw, and dared
{p.018} the indignation of the people; but he had left himself no
choice except between treason to the country or now inevitable
destruction.[43] When he called in the help of France he must have
known well that his ally, with a successful army in England, would
prevent indeed the accession of Mary Tudor, but as surely would tear
in pieces the paper title of the present queen and snatch the crown
for his own Mary, the Queen of Scots, and the bride of the Dauphin.
[Footnote 42: Renard to Charles V.: _Rolls House
MSS._]
[Footnote 43: La peine ou se retreuve ledict due
est qu'il ne se ose fier en personne, pour n'avoir
faict ou donne occasion a personne de l'aimer,--que
a meu envoyer en France le Millor Dudley son frere,
pour l'assurer du secours que luy a este promis par
le roy de France, et le prier en faire
demonstration pour intimider ceulx de par deca. Car
encores qu'il entende qu'il degoustera davantage
ceulx du pays pour y amener Francois, si est ce
craignant d'estre reboute de son emprinse, et
d'estre massacre du peuple et sa generation, et que
ma dicte dame Marie ne parvienne a la couronne, il
ne respectera chose quelconque: plustot donnera il
pied aux Francois ou peys: tel est le couraige
d'ung homme tiran, obstine, et resolu, signamment
quant il est question de se demesurer pour
regner.--Renard to Charles V.: _Granvelle Papers_,
vol. iv. p. 38.]
But the council was too quick for Dudley. A secret messenger followed
or attended him to Calais, where he was arrested, the treasure
recovered, and his despatches taken from him.
The counter-revolution could now be accomplished without bloodshed and
without longer delay. On Wednesday the 19th July word came that the
Earl of Oxford had joined Mary. A letter was written to Lord Rich
admonishing him not to follow Oxford's example, but to remain true to
Queen Jane, which the council were required to sign. Had they refused,
they would probably have been massacred.[44] Towards the middle of the
day, Winchester, Arundel, Pembroke, Shrewsbury, Bedford, Cheyne,
Paget, Mason, and Petre found means of passing the gates, and made
their way to Baynard's Castle,[45] where they sent for the mayor, the
aldermen, and other great persons of the city. When they were all
assembled, Arundel was the first to speak.
[Footnote 44: The letter is among the _Lansdowne
MSS._ It is in the hand of Sir John Cheke, and
dated July 19. The signatures are Cranmer,
Goodrich, Winchester, Bedford, Suffolk, Arundel,
Shrewsbury, Pembroke, Darcy, Paget, Cheyne, Cotton,
Petre, Cheke, Baker, Bowes.]
[Footnote 45: Fronting the river, about
three-quarters of a mile above London Bridge. The
original castle of Baynard the Norman had fallen
into ruins at the end of the fifteenth century.
Henry VII. built a palace on the site of it, which
retained the name.]
The country, he said, was on the brink of civil war, and if they
continued to support the pretensions of Lady Jane Grey to the crown,
civil war would inevitably break out. In a few more days or weeks the
child would be in arms against the {p.019} father, the brother
against the brother; the quarrels of religion would add fury to the
struggle; the French would interfere on one side, the Spaniards on the
other, and in such a conflict the triumph of either party would be
almost equally injurious to the honour, unity, freedom, and happiness
of England. The friends of the commonwealth, in the face of so
tremendous a danger, would not obstinately persist in encouraging the
pretensions of a faction. It was for them where they sate to decide if
there should be peace or war, and he implored them, for the sake of
the country, to restore the crown to her who was their lawful
sovereign.
Pembroke rose next. The words of Lord Arundel, he said, were true and
good, and not to be gainsaid. What others thought he knew not; for
himself, he was so convinced, that he would fight in the quarrel with
any man; and if words are not enough, he cried, flashing his sword out
of the scabbard, "this blade shall make Mary Queen, or I will lose my
life."[46]
[Footnote 46: E quando le persuasioni del conte
d'Arundel non habiano luogo appresso di voi, o
questa spada fara Reina Maria, o perdero io la
vita.--Baoardo.]
Not a voice was raised for the Twelfth-day Queen, as Lady Jane was
termed, in scornful pity, by Noailles. Some few persons thought that,
before they took a decisive step, they should send notice to
Northumberland, and give him time to secure his pardon. But it was
held to be a needless stretch of consideration; Shrewsbury and Mason
hastened off to communicate with Renard;[47] while a hundred and fifty
men were marched directly to the Tower gates, and the keys were
demanded in the queen's name.
[Footnote 47: Renard had been prepared, by a
singular notice, to expect their coming, and to
suspect their good faith. Ce matin, he wrote,
relating the counter-revolution to the Emperor; ce
matin, a bonne heure, il y a venu une vieille femme
de soixante ans en nostre logis pour nous advertir
que l'on deust faire scavoir a madicte dame Marie
qu'elle se donna garde de ceulx de conseil car its
la vouloient tromper soubz couleur de luy monstrer
affection.--_Granvelle Papers_, vol. iv.]
It is said that Suffolk was unprepared: but the goodness of his heart
and the weakness of his mind alike saved him from attempting a useless
resistance: the gates were opened, and the unhappy father rushed to
his daughter's room. He clutched at the canopy under which she was
sitting, and tore it down; she was no longer queen, he said, and such
distinctions were not for one of her station. He then told her briefly
of the revolt of the council. She replied that his present words were
more welcome to her than those in which he had advised her to accept
{p.020} the crown;[48] her reign being at an end, she asked
innocently if she might leave the Tower and go home.[49] But the Tower
was a place not easy to leave, save by one route too often travelled.
[Footnote 48: Baoardo to Charles V.: _Rolls House
MSS._]
[Footnote 49: Narrative of Edward Underhill:
_Harleian MSS._ 425.]
Meanwhile the lords, with the mayor and the heralds, went to the Cross
at Cheapside to proclaim Mary Queen. Pembroke himself stood out to
read; and this time there was no reason to complain of a silent
audience. He could utter but one sentence before his voice was lost in
the shout of joy which thundered into the air. "God save the queen,"
"God save the queen," rung out from tens of thousands of throats. "God
save the queen," cried Pembroke himself, when he had done, and flung
up his jewelled cap and tossed his purse among the crowd. The glad
news spread like lightning through London, and the pent-up hearts of
the citizens poured themselves out in a torrent of exultation. Above
the human cries, the long-silent church-bells clashed again into life;
first began St. Paul's, where happy chance had saved them from
destruction; then, one by one, every peal which had been spared caught
up the sound; and through the summer evening and the summer night, and
all the next day, the metal tongues from tower and steeple gave voice
to England's gladness. The lords, surrounded by the shouting
multitude, walked in state to St. Paul's, where the choir again sang a
Te Deum, and the unused organ rolled out once more its mighty volume
of music. As they came out again, at the close of the service, the
apprentices were heaping piles of wood for bonfires at the cross-ways.
The citizens were spreading tables in the streets, which their wives
were loading with fattest capons and choicest wines; there was free
feasting for all comers; and social jealousies, religious hatreds,
were forgotten for the moment in the ecstasy of the common delight.
Even the retainers of the Dudleys, in fear or joy, tore their badges
out of their caps, and trampled on them.[50]
[Footnote 50: Renard to Charles V.: _Rolls House
MSS._ All authorities agree in the general
description of the state of London. Renard,
Noailles, and Baoardo are the most explicit and
interesting.]
At a night session of the council, a letter was written to
Northumberland, which Cranmer, Suffolk, and Sir John Cheke consented
to sign, ordering him in the name of Queen Mary to lay down his arms.
If he complied, the lords undertook to intercede for his pardon. If he
refused, they said that they {p.021} would hold him as a traitor, and
spend their lives in the field against him.[51]
[Footnote 51: This letter is among the _Tanner
MSS._ in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. It was
printed by Stowe.]
While a pursuivant bore the commands of the council to the duke,
Arundel and Paget undertook to carry to Mary at Framlingham their
petition for forgiveness, in which they declared that they had been
innocent at heart of any share in the conspiracy,[52] and had only
delayed coming forward in her favour from a desire to prevent
bloodshed.
[Footnote 52: "Our bounden duties most humbly
remembered to your excellent Majesty. It may like
the same to understand, that we, your most humble,
faithful, and obedient subjects, having always, God
we take to witness, remained your Highness's true
and humble subjects in our hearts, ever since the
death of our late Sovereign Lord and master your
Highness's brother, whom God pardon, and seeing
hitherto no possibility to utter our determination
without great destruction and bloodshed, both of
ourselves and others, till this time, have this day
proclaimed in your city of London your Majesty to
be our true natural sovereign liege Lady and Queen;
most humbly beseeching your Majesty to pardon and
remit our former infirmities, and most graciously
to accept our meanings, which have been ever to
serve your Highness truly, and so shall remain with
all our power and force, to the effusion of our
blood, as these bearers, our very good Lords, the
Earls of Arundel and Paget, can, and be ready more
particularly to declare--to whom it may please your
excellent Majesty to give firm credence; and thus
we do and shall daily pray to Almighty God for the
preservation of your most royal person long to
reign over us."--_Lansdowne MSS._ 3. Endorsed, in
Cecil's hand, "Copy of the Letter of the Lords to
the Queen Mary from Baynard's Castle." The
signatures are, unfortunately, wanting.]
The two lords immediately mounted and galloped off into the darkness,
followed by thirty horse, leaving the lights of illuminated London
gleaming behind them.
The duke's position was already desperate: on the 18th, before the
proclamation in London, Mary had felt herself strong enough to send
orders to the Mayor of Cambridge for his arrest;[53] and, although he
had as yet been personally unmolested, he was powerless in the midst
of an army which was virtually in Mary's service. The news of the
revolution in London first reached him by a private hand. He at once
sent for Sandys, and, going with him to the market cross, he declared,
after one violent clutch at his beard, that he had acted under orders
from the council; the council, he understood, had changed their minds,
and he would change his mind also; therefore he cried, "God save Queen
Mary," and with a strained effort at a show of satisfaction, he, too,
like Pembroke, threw up his cap. The queen, he said to Sandys, was a
merciful woman, and there would be a general pardon. "Though the queen
grant you a {p.022} pardon," Sandys answered, "the lords never will;
you can hope nothing from those who now rule."[54]
[Footnote 53: Renard to Charles V.: _Rolls House
MSS._]
[Footnote 54: Foxe, vol. viii.]
It was true that he could hope nothing--the hatred of the whole
nation, which before his late treasons he had brought upon himself,
would clamour to the very heavens for judgment against him. An hour
after the proclamation of Mary (July 20), Rouge-cross herald arrived
with the lords' letter from London. An order at the same time was read
to the troops informing them that they were no longer under the duke's
command, and an alderman of the town then ventured to execute the
queen's warrant for his arrest. Northumberland was given in charge to
a guard of his own soldiers; he protested, however, that the council
had sent no instructions for his detention; and in some uncertainty,
or perhaps in compassion for his fate, the soldiers obeyed him once
more, and let him go. It was then night. He intended to fly; but he
put it off till the morning, and in the morning his chance was gone.
Before he could leave his room he found himself face to face with
Arundel, who, after delivering the council's letter to the queen, had
hastened to Cambridge to secure him.
Northumberland, who, while innocent of crime, had faced death on land
and sea like a soldier and a gentleman, flung himself at the earl's
feet. "Be good to me, for the love of God," he cried; "consider I have
done nothing but by the consent of you and the council." He knew what
kind of consent he had extorted from the council. "My lord," said
Arundel, "I am sent thither by the Queen's Majesty; and in her name I
do arrest you."--"I obey, my lord," the duke replied; "yet show me
mercy, knowing the case as it is."--"My lord," was the cold answer,
"you should have sought for mercy sooner; I must do according to my
commandment."[55]
[Footnote 55: Holinshed.]
At the same moment Sandys was paying the penalty for his sermon. The
university, in haste to purge itself of its heretical elements, met
soon after sunrise to depose their vice-chancellor. Dr. Sandys, who
had gone for an early stroll among the meadows to meditate on his
position, hearing the congregation-bell ringing, resolved, like a
brave man, to front his fortune; he walked to the senate-house,
entered, and took his seat. "A rabble of Papists" instantly surrounded
him. He tried to speak, but the masters of arts shouted "Traitor;"
rough hands shook or dragged him from his chair: and the impatient
theologian, in sudden heat, drew his dagger, and "would have done a
mischief {p.023} with it," had not some of his friends disarmed
him.[56] He, too, was handed over to a guard, lashed to the back of a
lame horse, and carried to London.
[Footnote 56: Foxe, vol. viii. pp. 591-2.]
Mary, meanwhile, notwithstanding the revolution in her favour,
remained a few more days at Framlingham, either suspicious of
treachery or uncertain whether there might not be another change. But
she was assured rapidly that the danger was at an end by the haste
with which the lords and gentlemen who were compromised sought their
pardon at her feet. On the 21st and 22nd Clinton, Grey, Fitzgerald,
Ormond, Fitzwarren, Sir Henry Sidney, and Sir James Crofts presented
themselves and received forgiveness. Cecil wrote, explaining his
secret services, and was taken into favour. Lord Robert and Lord
Ambrose Dudley, Northampton and a hundred other gentlemen--Sir Thomas
Wyatt among them--who had accompanied the duke to Bury, were not so
fortunate. The queen would not see them, and they were left under
arrest. Ridley set out for Norfolk, also, to confess his offences;
but, before he arrived at the court, he was met by a warrant for his
capture, and carried back a prisoner to the Tower.
The conspiracy was crushed, and crushed, happily, without bloodshed.
The inquiry into its origin, and the punishment of the guilty, could
be carried out at leisure. There was one matter, however, which
admitted of no delay. Mary's first anxiety, on feeling her crown
secure, was the burial of her dead brother, who, through all these
scenes, was still lying in his bed in his room at Greenwich. In her
first letter to the Imperial ambassadors, the day after the arrival of
Arundel and Paget at the court, she spoke of this as her greatest
care; to their infinite alarm, she announced her intention of
inaugurating her reign with Requiem and Dirige, and a mass for the
repose of his soul.
Their uneasiness requires explanation.
While on matters of religion there was in England almost every variety
of opinion, there was a very general consent that the queen should not
marry a foreigner. The dread that Mary might form a connection with
some continental prince, had formed the strongest element in
Northumberland's cause; all the Catholics, except the insignificant
faction who desired the restoration of the Papal authority,[57] all
the moderate Protestants, {p.024} wished well to her, but wished to
see her married to some English nobleman; and, while her accession was
still uncertain, the general opinion had already fixed upon a husband
for her in the person of her cousin Edward Courtenay, the imprisoned
son of the Marquis of Exeter. The interest of the public in the long
confinement of this young nobleman had invested him with all imaginary
graces of mind and body. He was the grandchild of a Plantagenet, and a
representative of the White Rose. He had suffered from the tyranny,
and was supposed to have narrowly escaped murder at the hands of the
man whom all England most hated. Nature, birth, circumstances, all
seemed to point to him as the king-consort of the realm.[58] The
emperor had thought of Mary for his son; and it has been seen that the
fear of such an alliance induced the French to support Northumberland.
To prevent the injury which the report, if credited in England, would
have done to her cause, Mary, on her first flight to Keninghal,
empowered Renard to assure the council that she had no thought at all
of marrying a stranger. The emperor and the bishop of Arras, in
assuring Sir Philip Hoby that the French intended to strike for the
Queen of Scots, declared that, for themselves they wished only to see
the queen settled in her own realm, as her subjects desired; and
especially they would prevent her either from attempting innovations
in religion without their consent, or from marrying against their
approbation.[59]
[Footnote 57: I must again remind my readers of the
distinction between Catholic and Papist.
Three-quarters of the English people were
Catholics; that is, they were attached to the
hereditary and traditionary doctrines of the
Church. They detested, as cordially as the
Protestants, the interference of a foreign power,
whether secular or spiritual, with English
liberty.]
[Footnote 58: "Adversity is a good thing. I trust
in the Lord to live to see the day her Grace to
marry such an one as knoweth what adversity
meaneth; so shall we have both a merciful queen and
king to their subjects; and would to God I might
live to have another virtuous Edward."--Epistle of
Poor Pratt to Gilbert Potter, written July 13:
_Queen Jane and Queen Mary_, Appendix, p. 116. The
occasion of this curious epistle was the punishment
of Gilbert on the pillory. The writer was a
Protestant, and evidently thought the Reformation
in greater danger from Northumberland than Mary.
"We have had many prophets and true preachers," he
said, "which did declare that our king shall be
taken away from us, and a tyrant shall reign. The
gospel shall be plucked away, and the right heir
shall be dispossessed; and all for our
unthankfulness. And, thinkest thou not, Gilbert,
this world is now come? Yea! truly! and what shall
follow, if we repent not in time? The same God will
take from us the virtuous Lady Mary our lawful
Queen, and send such a cruel Pharaoh as the Ragged
Bear to rule us, which shall pull and poll us, and
utterly destroy us, and bring us in great
calamities and miseries."]
[Footnote 59: _MS. Harleian_, 523.]
But the emperor's disinterestedness was only the result of his
despondency. While the crisis lasted, neither Charles nor Henry of
France saw their way to a distinct course of action. Charles, on the
20th of July, ignorant of the events in London, {p.025} had written
to Renard, despairing of Mary's success. Jane Grey he would not
recognise; the Queen of Scots, he thought, would shortly be on the
English throne. Henry, considering, at any rate, that he might catch
something in troubled waters, volunteered to Lord William Howard,[60]
in professed compliance with the demands of Northumberland, to
garrison Guisnes and Calais for him. Howard replied that the French
might come to Calais if they desired, but their reception might not be
to their taste.[61] The revolution of the 19th altered the aspect of
the situation both at the courts of Paris and of Brussels. The
accession of Mary would be no injury to France, provided she could be
married in England; and Henry at once instructed Noailles to
congratulate the council on her accession. Noailles himself indeed
considered, that, should she take Courtenay for a husband, the change
might, after all, be to their advantage. The emperor, on the other
hand, began to think again of his original scheme. Knowing that the
English were sincere in their detestation of the Papacy, and
imperfectly comprehending the insular distinction between general
attachment to Catholic tradition and indifference to Catholic unity,
he supposed that the country really was, on the whole, determined in
its adherence to the reformed opinions. But the political alliance was
still of infinite importance to him; and therefore he was anxious
beyond everything that the princess whom he intended to persuade to
break her word about her marriage should be discreet and conciliatory
about religion. He lost not a moment, after hearing that she was
proclaimed queen, in sending her his congratulations; but he sent with
them an earnest admonition to be cautious; to be content with the free
exercise for herself of her own creed, to take no step whatever
without the sanction of parliament, and to listen to no one who would
advise her, of her own authority, to set aside the Act of Uniformity.
Her first duty was to provide for the quiet of the realm; and she must
endeavour, by prudence and moderation, to give reasonable satisfaction
to her subjects of all opinions. Above all things, let her remember to
be a good Englishwoman (_bonne Anglaise_).[62]
[Footnote 60: Governor of Calais.]
[Footnote 61: Noailles.]
[Footnote 62: Charles V. to Renard, July 22:
_Granvelle Papers_, vol. iv.]
It was, in consequence, with no light anxiety that Renard learnt from
Mary her intention of commencing her reign with an act which was so
far at variance with the emperor's advice, and which would at once
display the colours of a party. To give the late king a public funeral
with a ceremonial forbidden {p.026} by the law, would be a strain of
the prerogative which could not fail to create jealousy even among
those to whom the difference between a Latin mass and an English
service was not absolutely vital; and the judicious latitudinarianism
to which the lay statesmen of the better sort were inclining, would
make them dread the appearance of a disposition that would encourage
the revolutionists. She owed her crown to the Protestants as well as
to the Catholics. If she broke the law to please the prejudices of the
latter, Renard was warned that her present popularity would not be of
long continuance.[63]
[Footnote 63: Elle sera odieuse, suspecte, et
dangereuse.--Renard to the Emperor: _Rolls House
MSS._]
Yet, as the ambassador trembled to know, a carelessness of
consequences and an obstinate perseverance in a course which she
believed to be right were the principal features in Mary's character.
He wrote to her while she was still at Framlingham, using every
argument which ought, as he considered, to prevail. He reminded her of
the long and unavailing struggle of the emperor to bring back Germany
out of heresy, where the obstinacy of the Romanists had been as
mischievous to him as the fanaticism of the Lutherans. "Her duty to
God was of course the first thing to be considered; but at such a time
prudence was a part of that duty. The Protestant heresies had taken a
hold deep and powerful upon her subjects. In London alone there were
fifteen thousand French, Flemish, and German refugees, most of them
headstrong and ungovernable enthusiasts. The country dreaded any fresh
convulsions, and her majesty should remember that she had instructed
him to tell the council that she was suspected unjustly, and had no
thought of interfering with the existing settlement of the realm."[64]
[Footnote 64: Renard to Queen Mary, copy enclosed
to Charles V.: _Rolls House MSS._]
With all his efforts, however, Renard could but bring the queen to
consent to a few days' delay; and fearing that she would return to her
purpose, he sent to the emperor a copy of his letter, which he urged
him to follow up. Charles on the 29th replied again, lauding the
ambassador's caution, and suggesting an argument more likely to weigh
with his cousin than the soundest considerations of public policy.
Edward had lived and died in heresy, and the Catholic services were
intended only for the faithful sons of the Church.[65] He desired
{p.027} Renard to remind her that those who had been her most
valuable friends were known to hold opinions far from orthodox; and he
once more implored her to be guided by parliament, and to take care
that the parliament was free. She had asked whether she should imitate
Northumberland and nominate the members of the House of Commons. He
cautioned her against so dangerous an example; he advised her to let
the counties and towns send deputies of their own choice; and if the
writs were sent into Cornwall and the northern counties, which had
remained most constant to the Catholic religion, these places might be
expected to return persons who would support her own sentiments.[66]
[Footnote 65: Vous avez tres bien faict de
desconseillier a la dicte Royne qu'elle fist les
obseques du feu Roy, ce qu'elle peult tant plus
delaisser avecque le repos de sa conscience,
puisque comme escripvez il est decede soustenant
jusques a la fin, selon, qu'il avoit este persuade
de depuis sa jeunesse, les opinions de desvoyez de
nostre ancienne religion: par ou l'on ne peult sans
scrupule luy faire l'enterrement et obseques
accoustumez en nostre dicte religion. Et est bien
que l'ayez persuade par vostre dicte lettre a la
dicte dilation.--Charles V. to Renard, July 29:
_Granvelle Papers_, vol. iv.]
[Footnote 66: Et il seroit a esperer que y
appellant ceulx du Noort et de Cornuailles avec les
autres comme ce sont ceulx qui sont demeurez plus
ferme en la religion, et qui ont demonstre plus
d'affection en son endroit qu'elle trouveroit
envers iceulx pour tout ce qu'elle vouldroit
ordonner plus de faveur.--Ibid.]
If the emperor had been equally earnest in urging Mary to consult the
wishes of her subjects on her marriage, he would have been a truer
friend to her than he proved to be. But prudential arguments produced
no effect on the eager queen; Renard had warned her not to resist
Northumberland; she had acted on her own judgment, and Northumberland
was a prisoner, and she was on the throne. By her own will she was
confident that she could equally well restore the mass, and in good
time the pope's authority. The religious objection to the funeral was
more telling, and on this point she hesitated. Meantime she began to
move slowly towards London, and at the end of the month the reached
her old house of Newhall in Essex, where she rested till the
preparations were complete for her entry into the city.
The first point on which she had now to make up her mind concerned the
persons with whom she was to carry on the government. The emperor was
again clear in his advice, which here she found herself obliged to
follow. She was forced to leave undisturbed in their authorities such
of her brother's late ministers as had contributed to the revolution
in her favour. Derby, Sussex, Bath, Oxford, who had hurried to her
support at Framlingham, were her loyal subjects, whom she could afford
to neglect, because she could depend upon their fidelity. Pembroke and
Winchester, Arundel and Shrewsbury, Bedford, {p.028} Cobham, Cheyne,
Petre, too powerful to affront, too uncertain to be trusted as
subjects, she could only attach to herself by maintaining in their
offices and emoluments. She would restore the Duke of Norfolk to the
council; Gardiner should hold office again; and she could rely on the
good faith of Paget, the ablest, as well as the most honest, of all
the professional statesmen. But Norfolk was old, and the
latitudinarian Paget and the bigoted Gardiner bore each other no good
will; so that, when the queen had leisure to contemplate her position,
it did not promise to be an easy one. She would have to govern with
the assistance of men who were gorged with the spoils of the church,
suspected of heresy, and at best indifferent to religion.
In Mary's absence, the lords in London carried on the government as
they could on their own responsibility. On the 21st Courtenay was
released from the Tower. Gardiner was offered liberty, but he waited
to accept it from the queen's own hand. He rejoined the council,
however, and on the first or second day of his return to the board, he
agitated their deliberations by requiring the restoration of his house
in Southwark, which had been appropriated to the Marquis of
Northampton, and by reminding Pembroke that he was in possession of
estates which had been stolen from the See of Winchester.
On the 25th Northumberland and Lord Ambrose Dudley were brought in
from Cambridge, escorted by Grey and Arundel, with four hundred of the
guard. Detachments of troops were posted all along the streets from
Bishopsgate, where the duke would enter, to the Tower, to prevent the
mob from tearing him in pieces. It was but twelve days since he had
ridden out from that gate in the splendour of his power; he was now
assailed from all sides with yells and execrations; bareheaded, with
cap in hand, he bowed to the crowd as he rode on, as if to win some
compassion from them; but so recent a humility could find no favour.
His scarlet cloak was plucked from his back; the only sounds which
greeted his ears were, "Traitor, traitor, death to the traitor!" He
hid his face, sick at heart with shame, and Lord Ambrose, at the gate
of the Tower, was seen to burst into tears.[67] Edwin Sandys,
Northampton, Ridley, Lord Robert Dudley, the offending judges Cholmley
and Montague, with many others, followed in the few next days.
Montague had protested to the queen that he had acted only under
compulsion, but his excuses were not fully received. Lady
Northumberland {p.029} went to Newhall to beg for mercy for her
sons, but Mary refused to admit her.[68]
[Footnote 67: Renard to Charles V.: _Rolls House
MSS._ Baoardo. _Grey Friars' Chronicle._]
[Footnote 68: Renard to Charles V.: _Rolls House
MSS._]
In general, however, there was no desire to press hard upon the
prisoners. Few had been guilty in the first degree; in the second
degree so many were guilty, that all could not be punished, and to
make exceptions would be unjust and invidious. The emperor recommended
a general pardon, from which the principal offenders only should be
excluded, and Mary herself was as little inclined to harshness. Her
present desire was to forget all that had passed, and take possession
of her power for the objects nearest to her heart. Her chief
embarrassment for the moment was from the overloyalty of her subjects.
The old-fashioned lords and country gentlemen who had attended her
with their retainers from Norfolk, remained encamped round Newhall,
unable to persuade themselves that they could leave her with safety in
the midst of the men who had been the ministers of the usurpation.[69]
[Footnote 69: Ibid.]
Her closest confidence the queen reserved for Renard. On the 28th of
July she sent for him at midnight. On the 2nd of August he was again
with her, and the chief subject of her thoughts was still the funeral.
"She could not have her brother committed to the ground like a dog,"
she said. While her fortunes were uncertain, she allowed Renard to
promise for her that she would make no changes in religion, but "she
had now told the lords distinctly that she would not recognise any of
the laws which had been passed in the minority,[70] and she intended
to act boldly; timidity would only encourage the people to be
insolent;" "the lords were all quarrelling among themselves, and
accusing one another; she could not learn the truth on any point of
the late conspiracy; she did not know who were guilty or who were
innocent; and, amidst the distracted advices which were urged upon
her, she could not tell whether she could safely venture to London or
not; but outward acquiescence in {p.030} the course which she chose
to follow she believed that she could compel, and she would govern as
God should direct her. The emperor, she added, had written to her
about her marriage, not specifying any particular person, but desiring
her to think upon the subject. She had never desired to marry while
princess, nor did she desire it now; but if it were for the interests
of the church, she would do whatever he might advise."
[Footnote 70: She, perhaps, imagined that she was
not exceeding her statutable right in the refusal.
The 17th of the 28th of Henry VIII. empowered any
one of the heirs to the crown named in the king's
will, on arriving at the age of twenty-four, to
repeal laws passed not only in his or her own
minority; but under circumstances such as those
which had actually occurred, where the first heir
had died before coming of age. The 11th of the 1st
of Edward VI. modified the act of Henry, limiting
the power of repeal to the sovereign in whose own
reign the law to be repealed had been passed. But
this act of Edward's was, itself, passed in a
minority, and Mary might urge that she might repeal
that as well as any other statute passed in his
reign in virtue of the act of her father.]
On this last point Renard knew more of the emperor's intentions than
Mary, and was discreetly silent; on other point he used his influence
wisely. He constrained her, with Charles's arguments, to relinquish
her burial scheme. "Edward, as a heretic, should have a heretic
funeral at Westminster Abbey; she need not be present, and might
herself have a mass said for him in the Tower. As to removing to
London, in his opinion she had better go thither at once, take
possession of her throne, and send Northumberland to trial. Her
brother's body ought to be examined also, that it might be ascertained
whether he had been poisoned; and if poisoned, by whom and for what
purpose."[71]
[Footnote 71: Renard to Charles V.: _Rolls House
MSS._]
Mary rarely paused upon a resolution. Making up her mind that, as
Renard said, it would be better for her to go to London, she set out
thither the following day, Thursday, the 3rd of August. Excitement
lent to her hard features an expression almost of beauty,[72] as she
rode in the midst of a splendid cavalcade of knights and nobles.
Elizabeth, escorted by two thousand horse and a retinue of ladies, was
waiting to receive her outside the gates. The first in her
congratulations, after the proclamation, yet fearful of giving
offence, Elizabeth had written to ask if it was the queen's pleasure
that she should appear in mourning; but the queen would have no
mourning, nor would have others wear it in her presence. The sombre
colours which of late years had clouded the court were to be banished
at once and for ever; and with the dark colours, it seemed for a time
as if old dislikes and suspicions were at the same time to pass away.
The sisters embraced; the queen was warm and affectionate, kissing all
the ladies in Elizabeth's train; and side by side the daughters of
Henry VIII. rode through Aldgate at seven in the evening, amidst the
shouts of the people, the thunder of cannon, and pealing of church
bells.[73] At the Tower gates the old Duke of Norfolk, Gardiner,
Courtenay, and the Duchess of Somerset {p.031} were seen kneeling as
Mary approached. "These are my prisoners," she said as she alighted
from her horse, and stooped and kissed them. Charmed by the
enthusiastic reception and by the pleasant disappointment of her
anxieties, she could find no room for hard thoughts of any one; so far
was she softened, Renard wrote, that she could hardly be brought to
consent to the necessary execution of justice. Against Northumberland
himself she had no feeling of vindictiveness, and was chiefly anxious
that he should be attended by a confessor; Northampton was certainly
to be pardoned; Suffolk was already free; Northumberland should be
spared, if possible; and, as to Lady Jane, justice forbade, she said,
that an innocent girl should suffer for the crimes of others.[74]
[Footnote 72: "La beaute de visage plus que
mediocre," are Renard's words to Charles.]
[Footnote 73: Renard; Noailles; Machyn; _Grey
Friars' Chronicle_.]
[Footnote 74: Renard to Charles V.: _Rolls House
MSS._]
The emperor had recommended mercy; but he had not advised a general
indemnity, as Renard made haste to urge. The imperialist conception of
clemency differed from the queen's; and the same timidity which had
first made the ambassadors too prudent, now took the form of measured
cruelty. Renard entreated that Lady Jane should not be spared;
"conspirators required to be taught that for the principals in treason
there was but one punishment; the duke must die, and the rival queen
and her husband must die with him." "We set before her"--Renard's own
hand is the witness against him--"the examples of Maximus and his son
Victor, both executed by the Emperor Theodosius; Maximus, because he
had usurped the purple; Victor, because, as the intended heir of his
father, he might have been an occasion of danger had he lived."[75]
[Footnote 75: Et luy fust propose l'exemple de
Maximus et Victor son filz que Theodose l'Empereur
feit mourir pour s'estre attribue le nom d'Empereur
par tyrannie et l'avoir voulu continuer en son diet
filz Victor, escripvant l'histoire que l'on feit
mourir le filz pour le scandale et danger qu'en
eust peu advenir.--Renard to Charles V.: _Rolls
House MSS._ For the story, see Gibbon, cap. xxvii.]
Looking also, as Renard was already doing, on the scenes which were
around him, chiefly or solely as they might affect the interests of
his master's son, he had been nervously struck by the entourage which
surrounded Elizabeth and the popularity which she, as well as the
queen, was evidently enjoying.
Elizabeth, now passing into womanhood, was the person to whom the
affections of the liberal party in England most definitely tended. She
was the heir-presumptive to the crown; in matters of religion she was
opposed to the mass, and opposed as decidedly to factious and dogmatic
Protestantism; while {p.032} from the caution with which she had
kept aloof from political entanglements, it was clear that her
brilliant intellectual abilities were not her only or her most
formidable gifts. Already she shared the favour of the people with the
queen. Let Mary offend them (and in the intended marriage offence
would unquestionably have to be given), their entire hearts might be
transferred to her. The public finger had pointed to Courtenay as the
husband which England desired for the queen. When Courtenay should be
set aside by Mary, he might be accepted by Elizabeth; and Elizabeth,
it was rumoured, looked upon him with an eye of favour.[76] On all
accounts, therefore, Elizabeth was dangerous. She was a figure on the
stage whom Renard would gladly see removed; and a week or two later he
bid Mary look to her, watch her, and catch her tripping if good
fortune would so permit: "it was better to prevent than to be
prevented."[77]
[Footnote 76: Renard to Charles V.: _Rolls House
MSS._]
[Footnote 77: Signantment sembleroit que vostre
majeste ne se deust confier en Madame Elizabeth que
bien a point, et discouvrir sur ce qu'elle ne se
voit en espoir d'entrer en regne, ne avoir voulu
fleschir quant au point de la religion ny ouyr la
messe; ce que l'on jugeoit elle deust faire pour la
respect de vostre majeste, et pour les courtoysies
dont elle use en son endroit encores qu'elle ny
eust faict sinon l'assister et l'accompaigner. Et
davantage l'on peult discouvrir comme elle se
maintient en la nouvelle religion par practique,
pour attirer et gaigner a sa devotion ceulx quilz
sont de la dicte religion en s'en aider, si elle
avoit intention de maligner; et jacois l'on se
pourroit fourcompter quant a son intention, si est
en ce commencement, qu'il est plus sure prevenir
que d'estre prevenu et penser a ce que peult
advenir; actendu que les objects sont evidens.--Les
Ambassadeurs de l'Empereur a Marie, Reine
d'Angleterre: _Granvelle Papers_, vol. ii. pp.
64-69.]
The queen did not close her ears to these evil whispers; but for the
first few days after she came to the Tower her thoughts were chiefly
occupied with religion, and her first active step was to release and
to restore to their sees the deprived and imprisoned bishops. The
first week in August, Ponet, by royal order, was ejected from
Winchester, Ridley from London, and Scory from Chichester. The See of
Durham was reconstituted. Tunstal, Day, and Heath were set at liberty,
and returned to their dioceses. The Bishop of Ely was deposed from the
chancellorship, and the seals were given to Gardiner. "On the 5th of
August," says the _Grey Friars' Chronicle_, "at seven o'clock at
night, Edmond Bonner came home from the Marshalsea like a bishop, and
all the people by the wayside bade him welcome home, both man and
woman, and as many of the women as might kissed him; and so he came to
Paul's, and knelt on the {p.033} steps, and said his prayers, and
the people rang the bells for joy."[78]
[Footnote 78: _Chronicle of the Grey Friars of
London_, p. 82.]
While Mary was repairing acts of injustice, Gardiner, with Sir William
Petre, was looking into the public accounts. The debts of the late
government had been reduced, the currency unconsidered, to
L190,000.[79] A doubt had been raised whether, after the attempt to
set aside the succession, the queen was bound to take the
responsibility of these obligations, but Mary preferred honour to
convenience; she promised to pay everything as soon as possible.
Further, there remain, partly in Gardiner's hand, a number of hasty
notes, written evidently in these same first weeks of Mary's reign,
which speak nobly for the intentions with which both Mary and himself
were setting generally to work. The expenses of the household were to
be reduced to the scale of Henry VII., or the early years of Henry
VIII.; the garrisons at Berwick and Calais were to be placed on a more
economical footing, the navy reduced, the irregular guard dismissed or
diminished. Bribery was to be put an end to in the courts of
Westminster, at quarter sessions, and among justices of the peace;
"the laws were to be restored to their authority without suffering any
matters to be ordered otherwise than as the laws should appoint."[80]
These first essentials having been attended to, the famous or infamous
book of sales, grants, and exchanges of the crown lands was to be
looked into; the impropriation of benefices was to cease, and decency
to be restored to the parish churches, where the grooms and
gamekeepers should give way to competent ministers; economy, order,
justice, and reverence were to heal the canker of profligate profanity
which had eaten too long into the moral life of England.
[Footnote 79: August 1553. Debts of the crown.
Irish debt, L36,094 18s. Household debts, L14,574
16s. Further household debts, L7450 5s. Berwick
debt, with the wages of the officers, L16,639 18s.
Calais debt, beside L17,000 of loans and other
things, L21,184 10s. Ordnance Office, L3134 7s.
Public works, L3200. Admiralty debt, L3923 4s.
Debts in the Office of the Chamber, L17,968. Debts
beyond the seas by Sir Thomas Gresham's particular
bill, L61,068. Alderney's debt, L3028. Scilly debt,
L3071.--_MS. Mary, Domestic_, vol. i. State Paper
Office.]
[Footnote 80: Note of things to be attended to:
_MS. Mary, Domestic_, vol. i.]
In happier times Mary might have been a worthy queen, and Gardiner an
illustrious minister;[81] but the fatal superstition {p.034} which
confounded religion with orthodox opinion was too strong for both of
them.
[Footnote 81: Another natural feature of these
curious days was the arrest of suspected persons;
one of whom, Edward Underhill, the Hot Gospeller,
has left behind him, in the account of his own
adventures, a very vivid picture of the time.
Underhill was a yeoman of the guard. He had seen
service in the French wars, but had been noted
chiefly for the zeal which he had shown in the late
reign in hunting Catholics into gaol. He had thus
worked his way into Court favour. During the brief
royalty of Jane Grey, his wife was confined. His
child was christened at the Tower church, and
Suffolk and Pembroke were "gossips," and Jane
herself was godmother. The day that Mary was
proclaimed, he put out a ballad, which, as he
expected, brought him into trouble. "The next day,"
he is telling his own story, "after the queen was
come to the Tower, the foresaid ballad came into
the hands of Secretary Bourne, who straightway made
inquiry for the said Edward, who dwelt in
Lymehurst; which he having intelligence of, sent
the sheriff of Middlesex with a company of bills
and glaives, who came into my house, being in my
bed, and my wife newly laid in childbed. The high
constable, whose name is Thomas Joy, dwelled at the
house next to me, whom the sheriff brought also
with him. He being my very friend, desired the
sheriff and his company to stay without for
frighting of my wife, and he would go fetch me unto
him; who knocked at the door, saying, he must speak
with me. I, lying so near that I might hear him,
called unto him, willing him to come unto me, for
that he was always my very friend and earnest in
the gospel, who declared unto me that the sheriff
and a great company was sent for me. Whereupon I
rose and made me ready to come unto him.
"Sir, said he, I have commandment from the council
to apprehend you and bring you unto them.
"Why, said I, it is now ten of the clock at night;
you cannot now carry me unto them.
"No, sir, said he, you shall go with me to my house
in London, where you shall have a bed, and
to-morrow I will bring you unto them in the Tower.
"In the name of God, quoth I, and so went with him,
requiring him if I might understand the cause. He
said he knew none."
Underhill, however, conjectured that it was the
ballad. He "was nothing dismayed;" and in the
morning went readily to the Tower, where he waited
in the presence chamber talking to the pensioners.
Sir Edward Hastings passed through, and as he saw
him, "frowned earnestly." "Are you come?" said
Hastings, "we will talk with you ere you part, I
warrant you." They were old acquaintances.
Underhill had been controller of the ordnance at
Calais when Lord Huntingdon was in command there.
The earl being in bad health, his brother Sir
Edward was with him, assisting in the duties of the
office; and Underhill, being able to play and sing,
had been a frequent visitor at the Government
House. The earl, moreover, "took great delight to
hear him reason" with Sir Edward, on points of
controversy--chiefly on the real presence--where
the controller of the ordnance (according to his
own account) would quote Scripture, and Sir Edward
would "swear great oaths," "especially by the
Lord's foot;" on which Underhill would say, "Nay,
then, it must needs be so, and you prove it with
such oaths," and the earl would laugh and exclaim,
"Brother, give him over, Underhill is too good for
you."
Hastings, it seemed, could not forgive these
passages of wit, and Underhill was too smart for
them. While he stood waiting, Secretary Bourne came
in, "looking as the wolf at the lamb," and seeing
the man that he had sent for, carried him off into
the council room. Hastings was gone, Bedford sat as
President, "and Bedford," says Underhill, "was my
friend, for that my chance was to be at the
recovery of his son, my Lord Russell, when he was
cast into the Thames by Lymehurst, whom I received
into my house, and gate him to bed, who was in
great peril of his life, the weather being very
cold."
Bedford, however, made no sign of recognition.
Bourne read the ballad; on which Underhill
protested that there was no attack on the queen's
title in it. No! Bourne said, but it maintains the
queen's title with the help of an arrant heretic,
Tyndal. Underhill used the word Papist. Sir John
Mason asked what he meant by that: "Sir," he says
that he replied, "I think, if you look among the
priests in Paul's, you shall find some old
mumpsimusses there.
"Mumpsimusses, knave, said he, mumpsimusses! Thou
art an heretic knave, by God's blood!
"Yea! by the mass, said the Earl of Bath, I warrant
him an heretic knave indeed.
"I beseech your honours," Underhill said, "speaking
to the Lords that sat at the table (for those
others stood by and were not of the council), be my
good Lords. I have offended no laws. I have served
the Queen's Majesty's father and brother long time,
and spent and consumed my living therein. I went
not forth against her Majesty, notwithstanding I
was commanded."
He was interrupted by Arundel, who said that, "by
his writing," "he wished to set them all by the
ears." Hastings re-entered at the moment, telling
the council that they must repair to the queen, and
the Hot Gospeller was promptly ordered to Newgate.
The sheriff led him through the streets, his friend
Joy "following afar off, as Peter followed Christ."
He wrote a few words to his wife at the door of
Newgate, asking her to send him "his nightgown, his
Bible, and his lute;" and then entered the prison,
his life in which he goes on to describe.
In the centre of Newgate was "a great open hall."
"As soon as it was supper time," the board was
covered in the same hall. The keeper, whose name
was "Alisander," with his wife, came and sat down,
and half a dozen prisoners that were there for
felony, Underhill "being the first that for
religion was sent unto that prison." One of the
felons had served with him in France. "After
supper," the story continues, "this good fellow,
whose name was Bristow, procured me to have a bed
in his chamber, who could play well upon a rebeck.
He was a tall fellow, and after one of Queen Mary's
guard; yet a Protestant, which he kept secret, for
else, he said, he should not have found such favour
as he did at the keeper's hands and his wife's, for
to such as loved the gospel they were very cruel.
Well, said Underhill, I have sent for my Bible,
and, by God's grace, therein shall be my daily
exercise; I will not hide it from them. Sir, said
he, I am poor; but they will bear with you, for
they see your estate is to pay well; and I will
shew you the nature and manner of them; for I have
been here a good while. They both do love music
very well. Wherefore you with your lute, and I to
play with you on my rebeck, will please them
greatly. He loveth to be merry, and to drink wine,
and she also. If you will bestow upon them, every
dinner and supper, a quart of wine and some music,
you shall be their white son, and have all the
favour they can shew you."
The honour of being "white son" to the governor and
governess of Newgate was worth aspiring after.
Underhill duly provided the desired entertainments.
The governor gave him the best room in the prison,
with all other admissible indulgences.
"At last," however, "the evil savours, great
unquietness, with over many drafts of air," threw
the poor gentleman into a burning ague. He shifted
"his lodgings," but to no purpose; the "evil
savours" followed him. The keeper offered him his
own parlour, where he escaped from the noise of the
prison; but it was near the kitchen, and the smell
of the meat was disagreeable. Finally, the wife put
him away in her store-closet, amidst her best
plate, crockery, and clothes, and there he
continued to survive till the middle of September,
when he was released on bail through the
interference of the Earl of Bedford.--Underhill's
Narrative: _Harleian MSS._ 425.]
{p.035} Edward's body was meanwhile examined. The physicians
{p.036} reported that without doubt he had died of poison, and there
was a thought of indicting the Duke of Northumberland for his murder:
but it was relinquished on further inquiry; the poison, if the
physicians were right, must have been administered by negligence or
accident. The corpse was then buried (August 6) with the forms of the
Church of England at Westminster Abbey; the Archbishop of Canterbury,
who had so far been left at liberty, read the service; it was the last
and saddest function of his public ministry which he was destined to
perform. Simultaneously, as Mary had determined, requiems were chanted
in the Tower Chapel; and Gardiner, in the presence of the queen and
four hundred persons, sung the mass for the dead with much solemnity.
The ceremony was, however, injured by a misfortune; after the gospel
the incense was carried round, and the chaplain who bore it was
married; Doctor Weston, who was afterwards deprived of the deanery of
Windsor for adultery, darted forward and snatched the censer out of
the chaplain's hand. "Shamest thou not to do thine office," he said,
"having a wife, as thou hast? The queen will not be censed by such as
thou."[82] Nor was scandal the worst part of it. Elizabeth had been
requested to attend, and had refused; angry murmurs and curses against
the Bishop of Winchester were heard among the yeomen of the guard;
while the queen made no secret of her desire that the example which
she had set should be imitated. Renard trembled for the consequences;
Noailles anticipated a civil war; twenty thousand men, the latter
said, would lose their lives before England would be cured of
heresy;[83] yet Mary had made a beginning, and as she had begun she
was resolved that others should continue.
[Footnote 82: Strype.]
[Footnote 83: Noailles, vol. ii. p. 111.]
In the Tower she felt her actions under restraint. She was still
surrounded by thousands of armed men, the levies of Derby and
Hastings, the retainers of Pembroke and Arundel and Bedford; the
council were spies upon her actions; the sentinels at the gates were a
check upon her visitors. She could receive no one whose business with
her was not made public to the lords, and whose reception they were
not pleased to sanction; even Renard was for a time excluded from her,
and in her anxiety to see him she suggested that he might come to her
in disguise.[84] {p.037} Such a thraldom was irksome and
inconvenient. She had broken the promise which Renard had been allowed
to make for her about religion; she had been troubled, it is easy to
believe, with remonstrances, to which she was not likely to have
answered with temper; Pembroke absented himself from the presence; he
was required to retire and to reduce the number of his followers; the
quarrels which began while the queen was at Newhall broke out with
worse violence than ever; Lord Derby complained to Renard that those
who had saved her crown were treated with neglect, while men like
Arundel, Bedford, and Pembroke, who had been parties to the treasons
against her, remained in power; Lord Russell was soon after placed
under arrest; Pembroke and Winchester were ordered to keep their
houses, and the court was distracted with suspicion, discord, and
uncertainty.[85]
[Footnote 84: Monseigneur, je n'ay sceu trouver
moien jusques a ceste heure de communiquer avec la
royne, ce que je deliberois faire avec l'occasion
des lectres de sa Majeste, si sans suspicion,
j'eusse pen avoir acces, que n'a este possible pour
estre les portes en la Tour de Londres ou elle este
logee, si gardees que n'est possible y entrer que
l'on ne soit congneu; elle m'avoit faict dire si je
me pouvoys desguiser et prendre ung manteau, mais
il m'a semble pour le mieux et plus seur d'attendre
qu'elle soit a Richemont.--Renard to Charles V.:
_Granvelle Papers_, vol. iv. pp. 71, 72.]
[Footnote 85: Renard to the Emperor: _Rolls House
MSS. Queen Jane and Queen Mary_, p. 15.]
From such a scene Mary desired to escape to some place where she could
be at least mistress of her own movements; her impatience was
quickened by a riot at St. Bartholomew's, where a priest attempted to
say mass; and on Saturday, the 12th of August, she removed to
Richmond. Her absence encouraged the insubordination of the people. On
Sunday, the 13th, another priest was attacked at the altar; the
vestments were torn from his back, and the chalice snatched from his
hands. Bourne, whom the queen had appointed her chaplain, preached at
Paul's Cross. A crowd of refugees and English fanatics had collected
round the pulpit; and when he spoke something in praise of Bonner, and
said that he had been unjustly imprisoned,[86] yells rose of "Papist,
Papist! Tear him down!" A dagger was hurled at the preacher, swords
were drawn, the mayor attempted to interfere, but he could not make
his way through the dense mass of the rioters; and Bourne would have
paid for his rashness with his life had not Courtenay, who was a
popular favourite, with his mother, the Marchioness of Exeter, thrown
themselves on the pulpit steps, while Bradford sprung to his side, and
kept the people back till he could be carried off.
[Footnote 86: Renard says it was at these words
that the exasperation broke out.]
But the danger did not end there. The Protestant orators sounded the
alarm through London. Meetings were held, and inflammatory placards
were scattered about the streets. If {p.038} religion was to be
tampered with, men were heard to say, it was better at once to fetch
Northumberland from the Tower.
Uncertain on whom she could rely, Mary sent for Renard (August 16),
who could only repeat his former cautions, and appeal to what had
occurred in justification of them. He undertook to pacify Lord Derby;
but in the necessity to which she was so soon reduced of appealing to
him, a foreigner, in her emergencies, he made her feel that she could
not carry things with so high a hand. She had a rival in the Queen of
Scots, beyond her domestic enemies, whom her wisdom ought to fear; she
would ruin herself if she flew in the face of her subjects; and he
prevailed so far with her that she promised to take no further steps
till the meeting of parliament. After a consultation with the mayor,
she drew up a hasty proclamation, granting universal toleration till
further orders, forbidding her Protestant and Catholic subjects to
interrupt each other's services, and prohibiting at the same time all
preaching on either side without licence from herself.
Being on the spot, the ambassador took the opportunity of again trying
Mary's disposition upon the marriage question. His hopes had waned
since her arrival in London; he had spoken to Paget, who agreed that
an alliance with the Prince of Spain was the most splendid which the
queen could hope for; but the time was inopportune, and the people
were intensely hostile. The exigencies of the position, he thought,
might oblige the queen to yield to wishes which she could not oppose,
and accept Lord Courtenay; or possibly her own inclination might set
in the same direction; or, again, she might wish to renew her early
engagement with the emperor himself. The same uncertainty had been
felt at Brussels; the Bishop of Arras, therefore, had charged Renard
to feel his way carefully and make no blunder. If the queen inclined
to the emperor, he might speak of Philip as more eligible; if she
fancied Courtenay, it would be useless to interfere--she would only
resent his opposition.[87] Renard obeyed his instructions, and the
result was reassuring. When the ambassador mentioned the word
"marriage," the queen began to smile significantly, not once, but many
times; she plainly liked the topic: plainly, also, her thoughts were
not turning in the direction of any English husband; she spoke of her
rank, and of her unwillingness to {p.039} condescend to a subject;
Courtenay, the sole remaining representative of the White Rose except
the Poles, was the only Englishman who could in any way be thought
suitable for her; but she said that she expected the emperor to
provide a consort for her, and that, being a woman, she could not make
the first advances. Renard satisfied himself from her manner that, if
the Prince of Spain was proposed, the offer would be most entirely
welcome.[88]
[Footnote 87: Car si elle y avoit fantasie, elle ne
laisseroit, si elle este du naturel des autres
femmes, de passer oultre, et si se ressentiroit a
jamais de ce que vous en pourriez avoir dit.--Arras
to Renard: _Granvelle Papers_, vol. iv. p. 77.]
[Footnote 88: Renard to the Bishop of Arras:
_Granvelle Papers_, vol. iv. p. 79. Renard to
Charles V., August 16: _Rolls House MSS._]
The trials of the conspirators were now resolved upon. The queen was
determined to spare Lady Jane Grey, in spite of all which Renard could
urge; but the state of London showed that the punishment of the really
guilty could no longer be safely delayed. On this point all parties in
the council were agreed. On Friday, the 18th of August, therefore, a
court of peers was formed in Westminster Hall, with the aged Duke of
Norfolk for High Steward, to try John Dudley Duke of Northumberland,
the Earl of Warwick, and the Marquis of Northampton for high treason.
Forty-four years before, as the curious remarked, the father of
Norfolk had sat on the commission which tried the father of
Northumberland for the same crime.
The indictments charged the prisoners with levying war against their
lawful sovereign. Northumberland, who was called first to the bar,
pleaded guilty of the acts which were laid against him, but he
submitted two points to the consideration of the court.
1. Whether, having taken the field with a warrant under the Great
Seal, he could be lawfully accused of treason.
2. Whether those peers from whom he had received his commission, and
by whose letters he had been directed in what he had done, could sit
upon his trial as his judges.
The Great Seal, he was answered briefly, was the seal of a usurper,
and could convey no warrant to him. If the lords were as guilty as he
said, yet, "so long as no attainder was on record against them, they
were persons able in law to pass upon any trial, and not to be
challenged but at the prince's pleasure."[89]
[Footnote 89: _Queen Jane and Queen Mary._ The
anomaly in the constitution of the Court amused
Renard, who commented upon it to the Emperor, as an
illustration of England and the English
character.--_Rolls House MSS._]
The duke bowed and was silent.
Northampton and Warwick came next, and, like Northumberland, confessed
to the indictment. Northampton, however, pleaded in his defence, that
he had held no public office {p.040} during the crisis; that he had
not been present at the making of Edward's device, and had been
amusing himself hunting in the country.[90] Warwick, with proud
sadness, said merely, that he had followed his father, and would share
his father's fortunes; if his property was confiscated, he hoped that
his debts would be paid.[91]